Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “The Shadow in the Corner” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Halloween Countdown

Getty images and tip o’ the hat to Tracy

Plot:

Wildheath Grange sits back from the road, the last remnants of a once-vast estate of the Bascom family. The house has a bad reputation among the locals in the nearby village of Holcroft, but it suits the current owner, Michael Bascom, a middle-aged bachelor who spends his days among his books in scientific reading. The only other occupants of the house are his two servants, Daniel Skegg and his wife.

One day, Skegg approaches the master and asks that he hire “a girl” to help his wife, who is getting on in years. Distracted, Bascom agrees but wants her kept out of his way. Skegg explains they’ll have to find someone outside the area because the villagers believe the Grange is haunted.

Bascom reacts with annoyance, but the reader learns that an ancestor of his lost most of the estate and then “destroyed himself” in the Grange.

What luck! Mrs. Skegg finds a girl who has just lost her father and is now homeless. She’ll whip her into shape. Skegg assigns her an attic room to sleep in. It’s the only one up there where the roof doesn’t leak, and it also happens to be where old Anthony Bascom destroyed himself. But what does that matter?

Sometime later, Bascom comes across the girl, Maria, and finds her visibly disturbed. He asks what is wrong. After some hesitation, she tells him she can’t sleep. Her room terrifies her.

He dismisses her; it’s all in her pretty little head.

…but the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders.

Thoughts:

This is a poignant tale, one that deals more with the most vulnerable of Victorian society than with ghosts. The common Victorian trope of a death by suicide leading to a restless spirit appears, but is not dwelt on. At the center of the story is the plight of the orphan girl, Maria. Through no fault of her own, she is cast into the world without friend or protector. She grieves for her father but never shows self-pity. Nor does she complain about the hard work that is now her lot in life. On the contrary, she expresses gratitude for being able to work.

Maria cannot defend herself. She is dependent on the goodwill of those around her and has no appeal should they choose to oppress her. If she makes too much of a nuisance of herself, those in authority could toss her out on her rear end. Her recourse lies in the workhouse, the world’s oldest profession, or starvation.

As science fiction would a century later, “ghost” stories sometimes addressed social issues in the late 19^thcentury. After all, the story isn’t advocating women’s rights or anything. It’s a ghost story, isn’t it?

While it’s sometimes a bit slow for 21st-century readers and can be a bit on the nose, I enjoyed this poignant tale.

Bio: Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was associated with “sensation” fiction, a melodramatic genre from the latter half of the nineteenth century that often incorporated elements of crime and drama while drawing on Gothic and romantic traditions. Her most popular work is the novel, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), which was loosely based on a real-life event and involved unintentional bigamy and (presumably intentional) murder.

Braddon founded the monthly magazine Belgravia in 1866 and edited it until 1876. Concentrating on sensation fiction, Belgravia featured poems, short stories, and serialized novels.

After others purchased the magazine, Braddon was removed from the editorship, and Belgravia went on to bigger things, publishing works by Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, and Arthur Conan Doyle. It folded in 1899.

Braddon and the married publisher John Maxwell lived together without scandal while his wife was confined to an asylum. They married when the wife died. One of their six children, William Babington Maxwell, became a novelist. He also served in World War I.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (37:47)

Title: “The Shadow in the Corner”
Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915)
First published: All the Year Round, 1879
Length: short story

Review of “Scoured Silk” by Marjorie Bowen: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Some twenty years earlier, Mr. Humphrey Orford moved to Covent Garden with his young wife. The understanding is that his family was from Suffolk, where he had considerable estates that he never visited. Only a few weeks after they arrived, his wife, Flora, fell ill and passed away. He erected a small plaque: Flora, wife of Humphrey Orford, Esq. of this Parish, died November 1713, Aged 27 Years.

Mr. Orford settled into a scholar’s life until he decided he wished to marry again and chose Miss Elisa Minden, the daughter of his friend Dr. Minden. The narrator tells the reader there was nothing remarkable about the match; Mr. Orford was “not much above forty-five or so, an elegant, well-looking man, wealthy, with no vices and a calm, equable temper.” Miss Elisa, “though pretty and well-mannered, had an insufficient dowry, [and] no mother to fend for her.”

Mr. Orford even talked of giving up his bookish ways for his intended and taking a trip to Italy. He’d always wanted to see Italy.

Shortly before they were to be married, he brought Miss Minden to the church to see where the first Mrs. Orford lay buried.

Not creepy at all.

“That is to her memory,” he told her. “And you see, there is nothing said as to her virtues.”

Well, that’s ambiguous. And the creepy vibe just shot to eleven.

“She’s buried under your feet,” Mr. Orford continues. “Quite close to where you are standing. Why, think of that, Lizzie, if she could stand up and put out her hand, she could catch hold of your dress.”

Oh, but don’t worry, he tells her when she starts to tremble. Flora is dead.

Do you think Lizzie can get her deposit back from wherever they’re holding the reception? *SHUDDER*

Thoughts:

It really is the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

The story starts slowly. Several pages in, the narrator says, “And [this] is really the beginning of the story.” Yet, the author creates such an atmosphere of dread in what had been ordinary—if not dull—circumstances that the slow boil is not only forgivable but also useful.

Elisa seems a little slow on the uptake, but our heroine is merely crossing her t’s and dotting her i’s. Because she’s been paying attention, she solves a mystery that baffles everyone else. Never fear; the bad guy gets his comeuppance in spades.

I would hesitate to call this great literature, but this was fun in a Sunday matinee sort of way. I enjoyed it, even if I guessed what was going on.

Bio: Marjorie Bowen (legal name Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long) (1885-1952) was a prolific British author of horror, historical fiction, mystery, and crime fiction under various pseudonyms. Her alcoholic father left the family and was later found dead in the street. She turned to writing to help support her mother and sister (the Encyclopedia of Fantasy refers to them as “extravagant.”) and later her own children.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (53:39)

Title: “Scoured Silk”
Author: Marjorie Bowen (legal name Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long) (1885-1952)
First published: All-Story Weekly, June 8, 1918
Length: novelette

Review of “The Open Window” by Saki

Plot:

Mr. Nuttel’s doctors have recommended that he get rest for his nerves. With letters of introduction from his sister, he visits people she knows better than he does. He stops one day at the Sappleton residence. Mrs. Sappleton is late in meeting him, so her “very self-possessed” fifteen-year-old niece speaks to him, letting him know the window is open in observance of the anniversary of a tragedy.

Thoughts:

In this short-short, the reader’s perspective shifts 180 degrees in just a few lines. It is cute, but the tale is more like a joke than a story. Nevertheless, it is effective. The change that is supposed to come to the characters comes to the reader and is one of understanding rather than insight or a shift in worldview.

Nevertheless, this is cute. It involves people talking past each other, and people yanking other people’s chains with a straight face.

Bio: H. H. Munro (1870-1916), better known by his pen name “Saki,” was a British author and journalist now best remembered for his epigrammatic short stories, often satirizing British society’s upper crust. Many of his stories dealt with talking animals, and few of them ended happily. Munro was gay at a time when same-sex relations were considered a crime. Though he was overage, he enlisted for service in WWI and died in 1916 at the Battle of Ancre. According to the story, his last words were, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”

This story can be read and listened to here: (1:08)

Title: “The Open Window”
Author: Saki (legal name Hector Hugh Munro) (1870-1916)
First published: The Westminster Gazette, November 18, 1911
Length: short short

Review of “Negotium Perambulans” by E. F. Benson: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

The narrator describes an isolated fishing village he was sent to when he was ten, “a small boy, weak and sickly and threatened with pulmonary trouble.” He slept not in the house but in a “shelter” in the backyard of his uncle, the local vicar, and spent his days wandering. His uncle taught him about the local fauna and flora. His aunt and uncle lived in a grand house. They let the vicarage out to an artist, John Evans, whom the narrator recalls fondly.

Of course, it wasn’t all wandering around at will and chatting with the kids of the local fisherfolk. Attendance at Sunday services was mandatory. The narrator’s uncle scares the bejesus out of the local kids. One of his tools is the carved panels of the altar rails, salvaged from an earlier church. Among these depictions were the Angel of the Annunciation and the Angel of the Resurrection. A singular one was of a robed priest standing outside the local church holding up a crucifix to what looked like some giant slug-beast, which his uncle referred to as “negotium perambulans in tenebris,” from the Ninety-First Psalm, or the pestilence that walks in the dark. Uncle assured the congregation they could avoid it only by sticking to the straight and narrow. Stories were told of the impious meeting bad ends at the old church—now used as a house.

Thoughts:

The beginning of the story, which recalls an idyllic childhood, is nostalgic and dreamy, though there is an uneasy undercurrent. The fire-and-brimstone sermons of Uncle, meant to put the fear of God in the narrator, the children of town, and their parents, might be viewed with the benefit of years passed with some indulgence. The narrator recalls only being terrified as a boy.

The panel of the slug-like thing is so out of place that it calls out for attention. Later, when the narrator has made his way in life, he returns to the little fishing village. His uncle has passed away. He and his aunt discuss the slug panel. “It made an impression on you, I suppose,” she casually says.

But it’s only part of some local lore, right? One is no more likely to run across the giant slug than to run across, say, the Angel of the Annunciation, right? No one in town would think of blaspheming, anyway. It just wasn’t done.

…but what if…?

This is an odd little tale, combining nostalgia with the terror of scary religion and then a terror of something far stranger. Though a bit wordy and slow in the beginning, it is a nice atmospheric read.

Bio: E. F. (Edward Frederick) Benson (1867-1940) was a British author best known in his lifetime for his 1893 novel Dodo, satirizing British suffragist Ethel Smyth, and his Mapp and Lucia series, which poked fun at the British upper middle class. These have been adapted for TV. In the 80s, British author Tom Holt wrote a couple of sequels. Benson is probably best known today for his short supernatural fiction.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (38:41)

Title: “Negotium Perambulans”
Author: E. F. Benson (1867-1940)
First published: Hutchinson’s Magazine, November 1922
Length: short story

Review of “The Moonlit Road” by Ambrose Bierce: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

The following things happened: Joel Hetman returned from a trip at an unexpected time and used the back door without disturbing anyone. He chased what appeared to be a prowler into the woods, who got away. His wife, Julia, was strangled to death in her bedroom. He summoned his nineteen-year-old son, Joel, Jr., home from his studies at Yale. The son decided to stay and help his father.

A few months later, Joel Sr. and Joel Jr. walked down the road in the moonlight by their house. There was no light in the house. As they approached the gate, the father drew the son’s attention to something he saw. The son saw nothing; the father’s gaze remained fixed. He even took a few steps back. A servant lit a light upstairs. When the son looked for his father, he was nowhere to be found. He never learned what happened to him.

Some twenty years later, a man named Caspar Grattan wrote a statement the night before he was to be hanged. He recalls an earlier prosperous life with a wife and a successful son.

Lastly, a statement is offered through a medium; the other side is very much like this one.

Thoughts:

The story is presented through the statements of three different people at three distinct times. Each offers an honest, if incomplete, account of the story’s events. It’s not difficult for a reader to piece together what happened, of course. It’s not intended to be a mystery, but (as far as I can make out) a comment on how far things can go wrong when people don’t talk to each other.

Each has a unique view of events that the others lack. The three people involved in the story are intimate and love each other, belonging to the same family, but seem to hardly know one another. And they don’t talk. That is the great tragedy because it brings about the death of one character and the ruin of another.

In this ghost story, it is humans, rather than spirits from beyond, who give the reader the chills. So, yeah, it is the typical cheery Ambrose Bierce stuff.

Bio: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914) was an American journalist, writer, and Civil War veteran. Among his best-known works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”—familiar to high school students in the U.S.—and The Devil’s Dictionary, a collection of sardonic definitions of common words. He also wrote a memoir, What I Saw at Shiloh, an unsentimental (at least) account of that battle.

There has been much speculation about his death. He is said to have gone to join the forces of Pancho Villa to observe the Mexican Revolution and disappeared, but a small ocean of ink has been spilled about hows, wheres, and whens.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (29:10)

Title: “The Moonlit Road”
Author: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914)
First published: Cosmopolitan (New York) [not that one], January 1907
Length: short story

Review of “Master of Fallen Years” by Vincent O’Sullivan: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Augustus Barber works in a paper-box manufacturing business in London. The narrator is at pains to tell the reader how ordinary, if commonplace, Augustus is. He doesn’t read anything outside of newspapers and shows no interest in anything spiritual or metaphysical.

After falling ill to the point that he was expected not to recover, Barber changes. He no longer laughs quite so quickly. He has fits of violence and begins to behave inappropriately in other ways. For example, once when the narrator is out with Barber and some friends, Barber “offered some freedom to a lady.” Her gentleman companion, who happens to be a member of Parliament, objects and raises his fist. Something makes him hesitate; it is not fear of Barber, who is a much smaller man. Something encompasses Barber, but then it is gone, and Barber gets decked before his friends can pull him away.

As the behavior grows more outrageous, the ability of the something to influence people increases. Barber frequently falls ill after an episode of angry or offensive conduct. Barber is aware of it and calls it the Other, but cannot control it.

Thoughts:

Poor Barber. The narrator (understandably) doesn’t want to have anything to do with Barber. Once an inoffensive if awkward guy—perhaps reminding the reader of an acquaintance who laughs too loudly at dinner—he becomes an outrageous guy who makes you want to run for fear of seeing flashing lights pull up out front.

The episodes appear to the modern reader like bouts of mental illness, especially because they are often followed by physical illness. Yet, O’Sullivan adds an element of the supernatural. During an episode, he seems to be able to influence people. At first, this is only to not interfere with what he’s doing, as if a toddler has managed to enchant those around him to let him continue with his antics. However, the antics become increasingly dangerous, and their influence grows. What began as annoying (at worst) becomes sinister and perhaps deadly.

This is a weird, sad little story.

Bio: Vincent O’Sullivan (1868-1940) was an American poet, critic, and writer of weird fiction, most notably in the turn-of-the-century Decadent* movement. He spent most of his life in Europe, living quite comfortably until the family coffee business went bust.

This story can be read here:

I could not immediately find an audio version of this story.

*The Encyclopedia of Fantasy describes the Decadent movement thus: “Decadent writers were interested in all things abnormal, artificial, morbid, perverse, and exotic and were much given to symbolism; they were inevitably drawn to fantastic themes and bizarre stylistic embellishments, and their best work dramatically expanded the range, the bizarrerie, and the grandiloquence of fantasy.”

Title: “Master of Fallen Years”
Author: Vincent O’Sullivan (1868-1940)
First published: The Smart Set, 1921
Length: short story

Review of “The Marble Hands” by Bernard Capes: Halloween Countdwon

Plot:

Our hero rides his bike with his friend Heriot to the churchyard. Heriot wants him to check something out but doesn’t want to see it himself. Our hero soon finds what he’s looking for—a grave with no headstone or inscription. A beveled marble curb encloses a graveled area. In the graveled area stand two marble hands as if projecting from the grave. A sculptor friend of the interred made them. The woman insisted that they be her only epitaph.

The woman beneath them was a friend of Heriot’s Aunt Caddie, who disliked her. Heriot, however, liked her. He was only seven.

When the husband of the deceased remarried, the new wife insisted that the hands go. Heriot went to see what the grave looked like without them—but they were still there, looking as lifelike as ever.

Thoughts:

This story is a short-short that can be easily read in one sitting, unless you have a cat who wishes to help you with your reading.

This is a brief, creepy story. The narrator feels the eeriness of the place but doesn’t understand it. His friend tells him the backstory as the two ride their bikes away. He does not, however, settle the crucial question of whether the hands are “real” or not. While she was alive, the owner of the hands was friendly to Heriot. He liked her in return. Now, he’s not so sure…

If this little gothic tale is something less than a masterpiece, it makes for a nice little creepy read.

Bio: Bernard Capes (1854-1918) was a prolific Victorian English author and journalist who mainly wrote ghost and supernatural stories but also romances, mysteries, poetry, and history. His popularity waned after his death during the 1918 flu epidemic. Anthologist Hugh Lamb published a selection of Capes’ stories as The Black Reaper in 1989 (expanded 1998).

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (8:35)

Title: “The Marble Hands”
Author: Bernard Capes (1854-1918)
First published: The Fabulists, 1915
Length: short story

Review of “The Wolf-Man” by Erckmann-Chatrian: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Around Christmas time in the year 18—, our hero Fritz lies fast asleep at the Cygne in Fribourg in the Black Forest when someone awakens him, telling him:

“I have good news for you; I am going to take you to Nideck, two leagues from this place. You know Nideck, the finest baronial castle in the country, a grand monument of the glory of our forefathers?”

At first, Fritz does not recognize his caller, which hurts the other man’s feelings.

“Was it not I who taught you to set a trap, to lay wait for the foxes along the skirts of the woods, to start the dogs after the wild birds? Do you remember me now? Look at my left ear, with a frost-bite.”

“Now I know you,” Fritz says. “That left ear of yours has done it; Shake hands.”

The visitor is Gideon Sperver, Fritz’s friend and foster father. Fritz hasn’t seen him for sixteen years.

Gideon, the old poacher, has honest work now. He’s a huntsman for the Count of Nideck at Nideck Castle. The old count has taken ill. The malady is a strange one, coming and going. No doctor has been able to help him, but Gideon is convinced Dr. Fritz can cure him.

They set off immediately despite the miserable weather. Gideon insists they arrive before nightfall.

On the way to Nideck Castle, they notice an old woman in a black, tattered dress crouching on a hillside some distance from them. She gives Fritz the creeps. Gideon calls her “The Black Plague” and wants to be clear of the sight of her. He calls her a witch and claims that she is “killing the count by inches.”

This makes no sense to Fritz.

When they get to the castle, various servants meet them before Fritz meets his patient and his daughter, Countess Odile. Although confined to his bed, the count seems cheerful and friendly. The count’s appearance rattles Fritz:

“A grey head, covered with short, close hair, strangely full behind the ears, and drawn out in the face to a portentous length, the narrowness of his forehead up to its summit widening over the eyebrows…”

He calls the older man an old wolf.

Word comes that a traveler, Baron of Zimmer-Bluderich, lost in the mountains, wishes to shelter at the castle. The countess agrees but tells the servant to let the baron know the count is ill and cannot receive him.

The count starts an old fight with his daughter. He wants her to marry. Then all his troubles would be over, knowing his line would continue. She demurs, having decided to dedicate herself to God.

Dr. Fritz stays out of the family argument. Once he sees his patient resting comfortably, he leaves. He assures the countess that her father is not in imminent danger and that he may, in fact, recover.

Gideon then leads Fritz to the old Hugh Lupus (hmmm… interesting nickname) Tower, where he’ll stay the night. Nideck greatⁿ granddaddy, for whom the tower was named, built the edifice in the time of Charlemagne.

Gideon and Fritz drink and eat a lot—but that’s probably not what gives Fritz those oddball dreams after he retires to sleep under the bearskins in the alcove.

Thoughts:

This story was originally serialized, so there are many little cliffhangers and colorful characters that serve as red herrings. Some of these may not wear well with the modern reader; the castle porter is a dwarf named Knapwurst. He’s described as ugly, but he’s also learned. He and Fritz become friends. The head butler is Tobias Offenloch, an old soldier from the Nideck regiment. He lost a leg in a battle and has grown fat. His wife is French, Marie Lagoutte. Rounding out the servants is Sébalt Kraft, master of the hounds, a dismal fellow. The servants don’t do much—the master is laid up, after all—and they like to party in the kitchen.

In true gothic fashion, Fritz witnesses the count’s grotesque transformation as a “fit.” He recovers but remains in danger of death. Fritz is a doctor. He should know.

And it is long, making it a nice winter read to enjoy with a cup or three of fortified hot chocolate.

What is the connection between the count and the “Black Plague”? Is she human, or something more? Why has this baron appeared out of nowhere, and why is he so determined to go into the mountains during the snowstorm?

While not all the mysteries are solved, the reader sees a centuries-old family curse unravel amid derring-do, tragedy, and loss. However, this is a nineteenth-century work that includes melodrama and flowery language. The foreshadowing is about as subtle as a kick in the shins. It is in no hurry to get where it’s going. All that said, I rather liked this, more for the company of the characters than the plot.

Bio: Émile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890) were French writers and playwrights who collaborated on much of their work. However, it is now believed that Erckmann wrote the novels and Chatrian largely wrote the plays.

Among their best-known supernatural works are “L’Oeil Invisible” (“The Invisible Eye”), “L’Araignee Crabe” (“The Spider Crab”), “Le Blanc et le Noir” (“The White and Black”), and “La Maison Forestière” (The Forest House).

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here:(4:19:36)

Title: “The Wolf-Man”
Author: Erckmann-Chatrian (a pen name used by Émile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890))
First published: in French “Hugues-le-loup,” Le Constitutionnel, (1859); in English 1876
Length: novella

Review of “Luella Miller” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

The only person alive who remembers Luella Miller is Lydia Anderson, now eighty years old. She never thought Luella was pretty, though her husband Erastus worshipped the ground she walked on. Luella came to teach school but didn’t do much of the teaching. The work was left to one of the older girls, Lottie Henderson, who was happy to teach while Luella sat and embroidered a pocket handkerchief.

Lottie began to fade, but she kept coming to school right to the end. No one ever knew what she died of.

Luella quit teaching when she and Erastus married. Erastus did all the cooking and cleaning; he was happy to do it for his Luella. No one saw the consumption coming on nor realized how quickly it would take such a young man.

Thoughts:

Lydia compares Luella to a willow; she’s pliant and weak but unbreakable. People happily rush to care for her, as if she can’t care for herself, even at their own expense. Luella flourishes as her caretaker of the moment fades away.

How much of this does she realize? It’s hard to say. When Lydia tells her to shift for herself, she insists she can’t. Some commentators online refer to her as a “Marxist vampire.” She seems to suck the vitality out of people.

I confess I’m the first to pick up a torch or a pitchfork for the proletariat, but what strikes me about Luella is that she is a child, a dependent toddler in an adult’s body. She has never faced or overcome challenges, nor has anyone taught her practical skills. She misses the people who die, of course. But more importantly, who will take care of her now? Could she even brew herself a cup of coffee? Left to her own devices, she would starve.

Lydia tells her that Maria, the caretaker of the moment, should “stay home and do her washin’ instead of comin’ over here and doin’ YOUR work, when you are just as well able, and enough sight more so, than she is to do it?”.

Luella regards Lydia like “a baby who has a rattle shook at it. She sort of laughed as innocent as you please. ‘Oh, I can’t do the work myself, Miss Anderson,’ says she. ‘I never did. Maria HAS to do it.’”

Why Luella has been kept a child, the reader is never told. She is not wealthy—she was a schoolteacher who married a man who chopped wood for a living.

An air of the supernatural hangs on in that even after Luella dies, her menace remains.

This is a sad little horror tale.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to and read here: (41:07)

Bio: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) began writing children’s literature as a teenager. Most of her two hundred stories for adults are realistic, such as “A New England Nun.” She also wrote ghost and supernatural stories.

Title: “Luella Miller”
Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)
First published: Everybody’s Magazine, December 1902
Length: short story

Review of “Lot No. 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Jephro Hastie, a student at “Old College” at Oxford, is visiting with his friend, medical student Abercrombie Smith, in the latter’s third-floor turret room. Hastie warns him about the student in the room below his, Edward Bellingham.

“There’s something damnable about him. My gorge always rises around him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices.”

He continues, saying Bellingham is a “demon” at “Eastern languages,” speaking (among others) Coptic, Hebrew, and Arabic. The “demon” Bellingham is also a good friend of William Monkhouse Lee, who lives below him on the ground floor and is a friend of a mutual friend of Hastie.

“You can’t know [Lee] without knowing Bellingham,” Hastie says. Bellingham is engaged to Lee’s younger sister. Hastie describes the match as a “toad and a dove.”

Okay, Jephro, how do you really feel about him?

One night, a scream arises from Bellingham’s room. Medical student Smith runs down to see if he can be of help. He finds Bellingham in a faint. Odd Egyptian artifacts, including a mummified crocodile and a newly acquired human mummy, fill the room. It’s designated by the auctioneer’s mark, Lot 249.

Lee is with Bellingham and explains that he’s obsessed with such things.

Smith revives Bellingham (brandy is apparently useful for such revivals), who seems nervous and embarrassed, locking a yellowed scroll in a drawer.

Over the next few days, Smith hears shuffling and footsteps in Bellingham’s room when he knows his downstairs neighbor has gone out.

Someone or something jumps out of a tree and attacks a student with whom Bellingham has had a long-standing feud. The student doesn’t see the assailant.

Hmmm… could it be…?

Thoughts:

The suspense builds nicely in this story. The oddball downstairs neighbor who studies suspicious things (not medicine or classics, like the normal red-blooded undergrad), the cries, the embarrassed behavior—what is he covering up?—the charm offensive that alternates with naked aggression. Only people who had a beef with Bellingham get attacked or end up in the river.

Although it begins a bit slowly with some interminable scene-setting, this is an enjoyable little tale. Our hero may be a little slow on the uptake, but once he’s clued in, he’s all in a righteous lather. It’s fun to watch.

The reader sees the mummy in its case in Bellingham’s room (ICK), but when it’s out wreaking havoc (…perhaps…), it seems camera-shy. The opening lines set a tone of uncertainty regarding what actually happened and provide the reader with a date of May 1884, some twelve years before the story was published.

The slang places the reader in an informal college setting. When Bellingham tells Smith he’ll soon leave his rooms and let him study, he says, “Three whiffs of baccy, and I am off.”

Come on, guy. That stuff will kill you, ya know.

Another idiom I had to look up. Smith, in an attempt to avoid visits from Bellingham, “sported his oak.” Apparently, it was common for college rooms in those hoary days of yore to have an inner and an outer door. The outer was often oak. If you wanted to be left alone to study, sleep, or avoid your crazy downstairs neighbor, you closed the outside door or “sported the oak.”

One can’t help wondering if Doyle weren’t remembering his own college days, studying for his medical degree—minus the downstairs neighbor reanimating mummies, of course.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the story is written with young men in mind. There are no women in it. Only Lee’s sister Eveline, the “dove,” is mentioned, but she never appears.

The story is one of the first to feature an evil, reanimated mummy, thus spawning a whole army of wrapped critters of the night. Forty years later, Boris Karloff would thump and strangle his way to a lot of startled faces and bloodshed.

While this might be a little slow to start and hold more surprises for the MC than for the reader, I liked it.

Bio: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a British author and physician. He is best known for creating the detective Sherlock Holmes, whose deductive reasoning solved many otherwise unsolvable cases. Holmes remains one of the most popular detectives and has become the subject of many books, plays, and movies. Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887. Unlike Holmes, Doyle was a believer in the supernatural. He also wrote some fantasy, such as The Lost World.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (1:26:26)

Title: “Lot No. 249”
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
First published: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, September 1892
Length: novelette