Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
“After I went to live in Charlottetown I became acquainted with the following facts which seem to throw light on my story:
“The ground on which Binstead stood had been cleared about 1840 by a rich Englishman, who had built a very nice house. Getting tired of colonial life, he sold the property to a man whose name I forget, but I will call Pigott — that was like the name.
“He was a man of low tastes and immoral habits, but a capital farmer. It was he who added all the back wing to the house and made the necessary divisions, et cetera, for farming the land.
The Phantom Child
“He had two sisters in his service, the daughters of a laborer who lived in a regular hovel about three miles nearer town. After a time each sister gave birth to a boy.
“Very little can be learned of the domestic arrangements, since Pigott bore so bad a name that the house was avoided by respectable people. But it is certain that one sister and one baby disappeared altogether, although when and how is a complete mystery.
“When the other baby was between one and two years old Piggot sold Binstead to an English gentleman named Fellows, from whom we later hired it with the intention of eventually buying it.
“The sister returned to her father’s house, and, leaving the baby with her mother, Mrs. Newbury, went to the States and has never returned. Before leaving she would reveal nothing except that the boy was her sister’s, her own being dead.
“It was this very Harry Newbury that we had unwittingly engaged as a farm servant when we leased the place years later.
“He came to bid me farewell a few months after I left Binstead, saying that he would never return there. In 1877 I inquired about him, and found that he had never been seen since.”
Even more eerie is the record of the phantom child which haunts Block Island, fifteen miles off the shore of Rhode Island. According to the account given, a young woman, returning from a ball at Sandy Point on a crisp fall evening a hundred years ago, gave birth to a child on the way and strangled it, hiding its body in an empty hay crib by the roadside.
Old residents of Block Island claim that its doleful cry is still to be heard in the gray afternoons when the wind whistles across the Clay Head. As the wind pipes up low at first, but getting shriller, the infant’s wail increases in intensity, ending in a shriek a little higher and wilder than the blast.
There is a reasonable suspicion that this wail may be the product of the imagination of the people who claim to have heard it. But there can be no doubt as to the authenticity of the appearance of the phantom ship, the Palatine. This ship has been seen by too many people who are not of a suspicious type, and who have not hesitated to let their names be known.
The story of the Palatine, the ship lured on the rocky coast of Block Island by false beacons during the last century, and afterward pillaged and fired by the islanders, is probably familiar to the readers of Dana and Whittier.
Since then the ship is said to appear at irregular intervals, portending disaster to the descendants of those who were suspected of wrecking and robbing her.
The Ship on Fire
The phantom ship was last seen on February 9, 1880. On that occasion the apparition was seen by more than fifty people on different parts of the island. Among them were United States Senator Nathan F. Dixon, the Dodges, Isaac Church, Captain Dickens and his family and relatives, and others not so well and favorably known in that section.
The following description of its appearance was given to a New York Times reporter by Mrs. Rose, one of the residents of the island:
“The evening twilight was setting in, and the sea was glassy and unruffled. It was almost a dead calm on Block Island Sound.
“I was on my veranda, which faces the north, when I noticed the windows shining as though a great bonfire was reflected on them. I turned toward the ocean and saw a great ship come sailing out from behind Clay Head, to the north, and glide swiftly over the sea in the direction of Newport.
“I was surprised to see that every sail was set, and she was bending under her canvas as though driven before a strong wind, while there was apparently no wind elsewhere on the Sound.
“I was still more astonished that she appeared to be all on fire, from the water’s edge to her highest sail, and that the flames seemed to leap up toward the gray sky. The sea around her was lit up with the radiance.
“The strangest thing was that the flames seemed to have no effect on the ship, and, though she was in sight for nearly fifteen minutes, her sails were not consumed. The vessel glided swiftly eastward, and disappeared slowly from view.
“As soon as I saw the Palatine I knew that something dreadful was going to happen, and I told my neighbor so as soon as I could.
“Only four days later a party of young Block Islanders, descendants of those who wrecked the ship, were drowned in Newport Harbor.”
The accounts of this flaming phenomenon were so authentic that several years later a group of scientific men went out to Block Island to investigate it.
They gathered evidence from a score of islanders, consulted together, and then offered a natural explanation that was even more absurd than any which had been advanced by those who believe in the supernatural.
“Haunts of the Invisible” will be continued in an early issue of Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction
Rabbits
by Austin Roberts
“THE THING THAT MAKES ME MAD, SON,” SAID OLD POP, “IS THAT A MAN DON’T GENERALLY GET GOOD SENSE UNTIL HE’S TOO OLD TO USE IT”
I
It was almost closing time at Cohn Brothers. Jacob, the elder partner, patted his departing customer affectionately on the shoulder. It had been a cash sale and as he turned back at the doorway he paused to survey the store with satisfaction.
Old Stern, the bookkeeper, was busy checking over next month’s bills and “Looey,” the younger Cohn, was surreptitiously watching Miss Getz put on her galoshes. Jacob chuckled. There had been no rain for two hours.
Less friendly eyes had also marked the scene with approval. “Wolf” Harris, with a last appraising glance up and down the street silently entered the store.
Before the unsuspecting Jacob knew what was happening he felt a hard object thrust against his ribs on the left side and heard a cold voice advise in his ear: “Walk right down to the cashier’s cage, guy, an’ make it snappy.”
Too astonished to feel fear, Jacob automatically did as he was directed with a calmness he was later to shudderingly refer to as presence of mind.
Once behind the cashier’s window Mr. Harris operated with the assured technique of a successful surgeon. A wave of his blued automatic flattened the senior partner and the old bookkeeper against the wall while with a swiftness that was almost painless he located and emptied the cash drawer; even the secret bill compartment.
Some inner consciousness beyond Jacob’s control wrenched out the words:
“Say, mister, don’t take the checks. Leave ’em; they ain’t no good to you.”
A smile flitted across the hard face of the gunman.
“You’re a game little guy an’ Jew to the last, aintcha? Well, I don’t want the checks; take ’em.”