“It was nothing, I simply put my arm around the cook for a few minutes,” mumbles the peer modestly.

  “As I was saying, like most amateurs you overlooked one major point. As you entered I perceived that the apples in your basket were not actually apples, but cannon balls, door knobs, and a few darning eggs, painted scarlet. Once I was assured of your fraudulency, identification was not difficult. Your picture, you may recall, appeared on the third page of The Times a fortnight ago come Martinsmas in connection with a charity foxhunt. By the way, what was the result of that hunt?”

  “Little blighter got away.”

  “My question, sir, was in reference to the proceeds of the hunt. Did the Hurbut Gelding Fund For the Prosecution of Immorality fatten its purse as expected?”

  “Dash it all! I thought it was for The Unwed Mothers Home.”

  “I believe not. But what was this matter on which you wished to consult me?”

  “As a man with your knowledge of London affairs is no doubt aware, my family, while one of the oldest in England, was up to a few years ago, totally impoverished.”

  “This was due to the attempts of your grandfather, a felineophobiac, to construct a clockwork mouse which would rid England of cats, was it not?”

  “Yes. The family fortune could have stood it were it not for his passion for jeweled bearings; those bearings beat us. Are you also familiar with the way in which those fortunes he spent have been regained?”

  “No.” (The Great Detective was always inclined to be a little rude when he was unable to answer a question.)

  “I recall it as though it were yesterday,” says Blassington-Smyth. “The family was gathered about the fire in old Castle Blassington, the last habitable building left to us. Upon the fire we bad just thrown the last piece of good furniture left in the castle, a Louis XIV commode. Then came a knock at the door.”

  “Who was it?” gasps The Poor Stooge, grabbing The Great Detective’s hand for assurance.

  “As a matter of fact, it was a rather pretty young man with curly blond hair, pink cheeks, very red lips, and beautiful blue eyes. He spoke with an American accent which was almost smothered by a pronounced lisp, as I recall.”

  “How was he dressed?” inquires The Great Detective.

  “Strange that you should ask that, for he was oddly dressed indeed. He wore a bright orange sweater, an orange bow tie with white polka-dots, and pink knickers. There were letters of some sort on his sweater—UT I believe. From a few polite questions we learned that he was an American college student vacationing in England. He had been cycling to Slopshire when darkness overtook him and he had tumbled into the moat, having mistaken our garden path for the Slopshire-Digby highway. Fortunately for our self respect, china is uninflammable and we still had a pinch of orange pekoe left, so that we were able to offer him a cup of tea. When he lifted it to his lips a remarkable thing happened. He took on a sip, screamed a few words, and dropped dead.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I can still hear that agonized shriek. He said, ‘They make it better than we do at Shu Fli Pi!’ Then he fell. It was terrible.”

  “Go on,” urges The Great Detective.

  “Well, it was only a few days later that we learned that this strange incident had been the salvation of the family. Castle Blassington, which had been barren for eight hundred years, was haunted!”

  “You opened it to the public at once, no doubt.”

  “Dashed right we did. We charged two shillings, sixpence a head and got it too. Imagine, gentlemen, the only haunted castle in England with an American ghost. We couldn’t keep those tourists away.”

  “It must have been a gold mine, but now—?”

  “Gentlemen, the ghost vanished two days ago!”

  “I see,” muses The Great Detective.

  “It was always regular as clockwork before. Morning, noon and night it might be seen from the battlements to the dungeon, sometimes screaming, sometimes giggling, sometimes shrieking imprecations in Greek, but always there. Now it is there no longer.”

  “Sir Humphrey, is it not correct that your closest neighbor at the castle is a Mr. G. Ruesom?”

  “It is.”

  “And is it not also correct that Mr. Ruesom is an expert on supernatural matters?”

  “He is, but I consulted him, and he declares himself helpless.”

  “Is it not also true that Mr. Ruesom did not take part in the foxhunt?”

  “Right-ho.”

  “Then, Sir Humphrey, I will undertake to aid you in regaining your ghost for 5,000 pounds sterling.”

  “Done, and God bless you!”

  “Your ghost, Sir Humphrey, was lured from the castle by means of some bait, probably a package of Parliament cigarettes or a bottle of creme de menth, by Ruesom who wished to study it at closer quarters than those provided by the castle.

  “If you will wait here a moment—”

  The Great Detective leaves the room for a few moments and returns carrying a package wrapped in brown paper.

  “If you will be so good as to throw this through Ruesom’s window some night, I feel sure your ghost will be frightened into returning to your castle where he has found safety for so many years.”

  Sir Humphrey left without a word but with a smile of thanks on his face.

  “But—but what is in package?” asks The Poor Stooge.

  “A military shoulder patch, a pair of boots, the severed horn of a steer, and—”

  “And what, for God’s sake!”

  “And a copy of a magazine called The Commentator,” replies The Great Detective with a mysterious smile.

  * * *

  [1] This is one of many eccentricities intended to establish him so firmly in the reader’s mind that he cannot be disturbed by the onrushing battalions of similar characters.

  Six from Atlantis

  Thane of Ophir he called himself (though it was not his true name) and Thane he will be called here. His hair was black, his skin olive, the cast of his face one we have not seen upon Earth for ten thousand years: a mobile mouth so wide it seemed a deformity, hawk nose, and wide cheekbones. The eyes that drank the wealth of the ivory towers were narrow and slant, of a green so dark it seemed black. Gates of horn and ivory there were here. He bade his men wait, and stepped through the ivory alone.

  The path had been gravel; as he passed the gleaming towers, its stones turned to gems. Stooping, he picked one up. Topaz, he judged it, and well fit to draw gold. He breathed upon it, polished it on the rawhide of his sword belt, admired it again, and dropped it into…

  Nothingness. Or so it seemed.

  A woman stepped smiling from a tangle of flowering vines. Her golden hair blazed with gems. Deep cups of red-gold struggled to contain breasts so large they threatened to break the precious chains uniting them.

  It was a good topaz, Thane reflected.

  “Our king,” the woman said, “shall learn that you have stolen from him. What he will do when he learns, I know not, but learn he will. Will you step into the vines with me, stranger? Only for a moment.”

  He shook his head.

  She approached him. “The perfume of those flowers halts the flow of time. In them a moment can outlast the waning of the moon—if we will it so. Do you think me beautiful?”

  “I do,” Thane said.

  “I have been so for whole centuries. Because I have lain there, where the years for me have ceased their flow.”

  “I have been offered the black lotus. I refused it. I refuse this, too.”

  “Your loss and mine.” She linked arms with him. Her arm was soft and smooth, rich with strange perfumes. His was hard, brown, and scarred.

  “You have seen strange lands.”

  He shook his head.

  “The smell of the sea is in your hair.”

  He whirled on her, and his left had held a long knife. “The sea has swallowed my house and my sister, with the nation that bred us. Gulped all down whole, and is still unsatisfied. It hungered—and we are gone. It hungers still. Know you why we were thus devoured?”

  She stepped from the path. The roses had fled her cheeks, and her sapphire eyes were full of fear.

  “Earth permits only a certain deviation from the norm,” Thane taught her. “We were great and wise, thus doomed. Our land was like no other and held ten thousand things for which you would find no name. My house was not a house such as you know, nor was my sister a sister. Take me to your king.”

  “He will kill you!”

  Thane smiled, revealing teeth strong and of strange forms. “Many have said that. I tire with hearing it, and saw no bowmen in the ivory towers.”

  “What need has he of guards? He is greater than an army!”

  “So we have heard.” Thane’s sword-hand caught her arm below its broad gold bracelet. “Thus I come alone, hoping he will not fear me. My crew—they are but five—await my return beyond the gate.”

  “They will wait long.”

  “Show me,” he said, and his grip was such that she cried out and he released her.

  Through alabaster passages she led him with linked arms, and at last into a hall so vast its lapis lazuli dome seemed a new sky. To left and right it stretched till its walls were lost to sight; but the way they followed was hemmed by rows of crystal jars, each taller than a man. These held the silver coins of many empires, coins heaped and overflowing.

  Farther, and gold mingled with the silver.

  Farther yet, and gold predominated. Soon it was mingled with jewels whose inner fires flashed through the crystal, lighting it from within.

  Then Thane saw far ahead a mighty throne, and on it an ape greater than any ape. Huge and hairy, swag-bellied and fanged like the nightmare dragons a million years dead, it leered and sneered.

  Before it, three lovely women supported a great golden bowl of melons. These melons—green and yellow, scarlet, spotted, spattered, and striped—the ape took between thumb and forefinger and consumed like grapes.

  A woman taller than the rest rose from the steps of the throne. Seeing her fiery hair and the nobility and savagery of her glance, Thane recalled Red Sonya and licked his lips.

  This woman bore a long rod of gold topped with a jewel of ten score facets that shone like a star. At her back, four women more arranged themselves. Two held trumpets, and two swords. All were fair to the sight; yet it seemed to Thane that the woman who bore the star was fairest of all.

  “Prostrate yourself before our king.” She spoke in ringing tones, and gestured with her rod of gold. “Tell us your mission.”

  Thane stretched his length upon the floor, then rose again.

  “You were not to stand,” the woman who bore the star told him. “By that act you have forfeited your life.”

  “Many times over, I fear, since I stand so every morning.”

  The woman who had linked arms with Thane took his arm again. “Touch me,” she whispered. “Stroke me where you will. Thus you may know joy before death.”

  The ape on the throne grunted; and the woman who bore the star went to him, caressing him while she harkened to such sounds as beasts make when caressed.

  When she returned, she said, “He admires your courage. He will tear out your heart and preserve it with the rest, for such is his custom. He assures you, however, that your conflict will be fair, and wishes to know why you have come here to die.”

  She lowered her voice. “State your business. It may be that he will change his choice and spare you. That is rare, but not unknown.”

  The woman who held Thane’s arm whispered, “Speak, for the longer you speak the longer you shall live.”

  “I am merely a poor but honest slave trader,” Thane explained. “Mine is counted, as your majesty must know, the most humane of professions. For profits that are vanishingly small, and too often vanish altogether, I bring the poorest savages to civilized lands and there procure them useful employment. I beg his majesty to permit me to free his glorious kingdom from the most troublesome of his subjects. You yourself, my lady, would be most welcome aboard my ship—as welcome as old wine and a new wind, even if you came only as a visitor.”

  The woman who bore the star smiled. “I said truly that our king admires your courage. I admire it as much as he now, and regret that I have come to know you only this day, which is to be the day of your demise. Have you bags weighted with turquoise or jasper? These might allay our king’s wrath, though I do not promise it.”

  The woman who held Thane’s arm whispered, “Say yes.”

  Thane shook his head. “None.”

  “Mules loaded with bullion?”

  “Had I such things,” Thane said, “I should buy myself a fair estate in some dull land of peace and plenty, there to dream of home.”

  The monstrous ape grunted, and she went to it again.

  When she returned, she said, “Our king wishes you to learn that gold and gems and all such things draw fair women, even as the topaz you stole draws gold. He has these things, and thus we whom you see are come to him from the farthest reaches of Earth. He advises you to acquire such things in the life to come. Thus you shall surround yourself with beauty.”

  The woman who held Thane’s sword-arm screamed and freed it. As she did, the women who held trumpets put them to their lips. There was naked power and towering port in the golden notes—a sullen fury, too, and terror.

  For the ape was rising, a beast to shake the world.

  Thane, who had known many kings and many governments, reflected that this one was at least honest. He drew his sword.

  Three times he skipped aside, dodging such blows as might have broken walls. Three times he slashed at the great hands that sought his life.

  Other hands, smaller and more fair, caught him from behind. The fourth blow landed, flinging him as far as a strong man might cast a spear. There he lay motionless, his blood staining the chalcedony slabs.

  There one of the women who had held the bowl picked up Thane’s sword and offered it to the ape. It waved her aside and picked up Thane, holding him as a child might hold a broken doll.

  One by one, the ape exhibited Thane’s body to the women, first to her who bore the star, then to her who had three times held Thane’s arm, and last to her who held Thane’s sword. The ape’s eyes were full of questions, for beasts no more than men understand death.

  “He will not move again,” the woman who held Thane’s sword declared.

  “His spirit has flown, O king.” So the woman who had lived for centuries among flowering vines seconded her.

  “His life has been added to your own,” the woman who bore the star assured the ape.

  When that last had spoken, the ape raised Thane’s body to its own face that it might sniff it; as it did, Thane’s left hand drew the long knife and plunged it into the ape’s throat.

  Of all Thane’s fights, the one that followed was strangest, for no sooner had he snatched his sword than the women who held swords were at him, double his number and by no means ignorant of swordcraft. Hard they pressed him, while the woman who bore the star struck at him with her rod of gold.

  When every other woman was dead or fled, she who had thrice held his arm kissed his feet and begged her life.

  “Rise,” he said.

  She did not dare. “I am your slave. Use me! Sell me! Only spare me.”

  He was wiping his sword with the skirt of the woman who had borne the star. “Will you obey me in all things?”

  “I will, I swear it! Am I not fair?”

  “You are a delight to the eye,” he told her, “and no doubt to the hands. I only wish your own were larger.” So saying he sheathed sword and knife. “Hold them out.”

  She did, and he filled them with jewels. He himself took up the star-tipped rod, and motioned to her to follow him. He bled and he limped, but he grinned as well.

  When they had gone beyond the ivory towers, he called his crew and had each take one stone from her, one after another, until the last was gone. Then Thane himself took those that had shone in her hair. They vanished between his hands, and where they went no living man can say.

  “She is fair to look upon,” he told the five who had filled pockets and pouches with jewels, “but she has been the concubine of an ape. Will you have her to wife?”

  One by one, they shook their heads.

  “Nor will I,” he told her. “Go. I leave you to the years.”

  The Lithosphere Whale

  The Lithosphere Whale (Physeter macrocephalus borboros) is more commonly known as the earth whale or the wrong whale. During the great days of whaling in the 19th Century it was called the cachalittle or mobydirt.

  Lithosphere whales may be divided as follows: blubber, whale leather, baleen, spermaceti, petroleum, and fossil amber. These are the only cetaceans known to yield the final valuable commodity. Individuals are commonly solitary, wandering the terrestrial crust in search of food, although pods are occasionally reported as causing earthquakes. Large bulls may dive to a depth of three (or even four) diamond mines. They are air breathers and must surface to breathe once or twice a fortnight. By day, their exhaled breath is often visible for a considerable distance; when seen, the exhalations of these whales are commonly termed “dirt devils.” In the stillness of night they are heard as long whailings. The superstitious belief that they seek to attract railroad trains for reproductive purposes has little basis in fact.

  Diet consists principally of soil squids (q.v.), although coal miners and bomb-shelter residents are taken as well. Calves are said to dine on earthworms, this by filling their mouths with rich soil and forcing it out between their teeth, the worms being retained.

  Unrequited Love

  “Two loves I have, of comfort and despair.”

  —Shakespeare

  You have no reason to listen to me, but may sigh and turn the page and be none the worse for it. Yet I have every reason to speak out. If this public confession of my innocent guilt lifts my spirits to the slightest degree, it will be well worth the loss of your esteem. You see, I am one who had done wrong while seeking to do good. There are millions like me in that, and most acknowledge no smallest trace of guilt.