Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 43 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION walk through the cooling streets towards his rooms—a mile or so distant. Again there was the indefinable sense of someone following him. He quickened his pace and made an unnecessary detour. But he could not shake his shadow. Not unnaturally, since those following did not need to track him by sight. He reached his rooming house and let himself in, quietly. For a moment he stood in the dusky Victorian hallway, with the Landseer on his left and the stag’s head hatrack on his right. Irene, her golden head bob- bing above her severe black dress and white, lace-edged apron, came from the kitchen with a tray, and smiled dazzlingly on seeing him. “Hullo, Mr. Michel,’ she said. “Did you see the doctor ?”’ Preoccupied, Michel took a moment to assimilate the question properly. Then he nodded. “Oh yes. Yes, I did.”’ 36 “Is he going to cure your nightmares ?”’ He wondered for the first time how old Irene ‘was. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, he suddenly realised. There was some- thing absorbingly child-like in her pretty face that he had never before noticed. He smiled. “He'll do his best, I suppose.” There was the sound of a bell being rung with vigour and impatience, and Irene started guiltily. She smiled at him with the air of a con- spirator sharing a secret, and made hastily for the drawing room door across the hall, while Michel went on up to his room. Before he drew the curtains, he stood looking out of the window at the lights of London, listening to the noise of the late evening traffic. After a few minutes he shut the window, stopping the noise, pulled the curtains and turned on the radio. He brought in a programme from somewhere the far side comicloooks.conrn