The Great Fog

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The Great Fog

And Other Weird Tales

H. F. Heard

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

To Christopher Wood
,

These Samples and Simples

CONTENTS

The Crayfish

The Great Fog

Wingless Victory

“Despair Deferred …?”

The Swap

Dromenon

The Cat “I Am”

The Rousing of Mr. Bradegar

About the Author

THE CRAYFISH

“Vertigo. Well, that's all there's to it. Vertigo—a pretty word.” Sergeant Skillin was a psychologist and an Irishman. He believed in word-association tests, even with himself. He loved words for themselves and, so, he'd remark, they'd often give him insights all by themselves. “Oh, prettiness be damned,” was, however, the association reflex he awoke in his companion. Dr. Wendover was a logician and looked it. “The truth is always there, staring you in the face,” he'd say. “Every diagnostician knows that, if only he could see it.” He added now, “Truth's grim face is looking at us now, but I must say it's baffling, damned baffling.”

Sergeant Skillin had called in Dr. Wendover for “a second opinion,” because he agreed with the opinion just expressed. The two men had different methods, but they agreed, generally, in co-operating on a difficult case and they agreed that this was a particularly difficult one. This time their agreement started from scratch—neither of them believed the verdict. But to disbelieve a verdict and to upset it—here again they were in complete accord—are two different and far-apart things.

“Now, stop your free-word-association mantras. They're nothing but mental flatulence. Tell the story over again, right from the beginning.”

Sergeant Skillin was lifelong trained to bear with the tantrums of authorities. He sat down in the big desolate room, in which half-withered hangings drooped from the walls, and took out his big, well-kept notebook. Dr. Wendover strode up and down the bare floor while he was read to:

“It was common knowledge that Howard Smirke didn't get on with his wife. She was friends with Gray Gilmore but wouldn't have a divorce. Most people thought that she and Gray were simply friends. And Smirke himself didn't really want the divorce, since she had the money. He had been making a good deal as a popular doctor but had probably been spending more.

“That's the commonplace story up to last week. Then it took this turn toward strangeness. For no one expected her to be so obliging as to die quickly and cleanly—no long illness and hospital charges. She just fell dead. Heart, of course, was the popular verdict, for Dr. Smirke was the popular one of the two. But the inquest didn't bear out the
vox populi
. The autopsy had shown a perfectly sound organ, surrounded by perfectly sound organs. She should have lived for years. She was a typically healthy woman of thirty-five. Yet the other possible verdict, Foul Play, has also failed to get an innings. She died suddenly, but not secretly. To be exact, six people saw her die. And the autopsy which found her heart and other organs without a trace of disease found them also without trace of poison or toxin. True, her husband was in the same room with her when she died”—Sergeant Skillin waved his book to indicate that this was the place—“but he was not near her. Again the evidence was sixfold. The six witnesses were all between the husband and the wife at the moment of death. A couple reached her before he did. They averred that when they picked her up her neck was broken. There must have been heart failure, and then she crashed, breaking her neck.

“The six—three married couples—had been asked to dinner at the Smirke home. It was two days before Christmas. At dinner Marion Smirke had said, Would they like to help them after dinner to decorate the big studio out in the garden?” Again the Sergeant waved his book to outline the stage.

“They were having a big party there on Christmas Eve. The diners, when they entered, found coiled-up garlands of greenery on the floor here and spent some time draping them on the window frames and looping them along the walls. Finally only one great swag remained to go up. It was to hang the whole length of this long room. Depending from this great boa of foliage was the motto, ‘A Happy Welcome to a Happy Home.' ‘You must let Marion and me hoist this signal,' said Smirke. ‘You can all help us get it into line, but we'll make it fast.'”

“So the six stood along the length of the room, holding the long, wreathed bundle of leaves up in their arms, while Howard Smirke at one end and Marion at the other mounted the tall trestle ladders, which stood at either end and reached some fifteen feet off the floor. (There they stand now, as they stood that night.) Mr. Binton, who was nearest Smirke, was given a bamboo pole with a small ‘u' at the top of it. He was told to fit this into a loop which ended the cord holding the whole long garland together. When he raised it as high as he could, Smirke, bending down so that his head was level with the top step of his ladder, could just take the cord. At the other end of the line (up here), Mrs. Gortch was following out the same instructions. She had been chosen because she was tall. And Marion Smirke, bending down, also reached for the upstretched cord—reached cautiously out till her head, also, was level with her ladder's top step.

“Mrs. Gortch and the two at her end of the line stated that they were actually watching Marion to see if she had got hold of the cord, and to help her as much as they could in raising the long garland, though it wasn't heavy. She stretched her left hand down a little further. Her right was firmly on the top of the ladder. The ladder was perfectly firm. (Try it: you'll find that it is.) Marion's head came a little lower. She was quite at her ease, and cool. She had said, before climbing up, that she wasn't the least inclined to be giddy and that she actually liked heights. And, from the top of the ladder as she bent over and down, she remarked, ‘I can stretch quite safely a little further, if I curl over a little more like a wilting flower.' Her head was now level with the top platform step of this ladder. Her right ear must have actually been touching it. Both her feet were on lower steps. She was perfectly supported. They all say that. Looking up at her, they saw her just keel over. Mrs. Gortch, who was nearest and was just missed by the falling body, thought she heard her gasp something, just as she let go, like ‘Gray.' But that was dismissed as accretional evidence. Perhaps she had made a sound, a cry of some sort, as she slipped. She never made any after she fell. She fell right on her head on this hardwood floor—just there. Shocking, but for her as quick an end as you could imagine. Mrs. Gortch kind of fainted. I suppose it is a bit vertiginous to see that you've missed death by a hairbreadth and through your hostess literally throwing herself at your head and killing herself at your feet.”

“Reflections blur impressions. Go on with the evidence,” ordered Wendover.

“Two other guests, however, raised Marion—a Mr. and Mrs. Lenton. They saw that she was dead. Mr. Binton, up at the other end there, says he didn't know what had happened. Thinks he heard a crash, but knows the first thing he was sure of was that Smirke, at whom he'd been looking up, took a flying leap, almost over
his
head, to the ground, and rushed up the room. There was a group already around Marion then. Smirke pushed them aside, knelt down, took her hand, called to her, seemed beside himself.”

“Um, actor-proof part, as our theatrical friends put it,” Dr. Wendover couldn't resist commenting.

Sergeant Skillin patiently resumed: “After a few moments of dumb grief—that was the majority's opinion, though Mr. Binton said that he groaned—he arose quickly, saying (correctly), ‘We must call the police.' Everyone acted correctly; I took the call myself; came right over here at once. They hadn't even moved the body. Told them they'd acted rightly, though against their natural but wrong feelings.”

“‘What the soldier said,' or the sergeant, ‘is not evidence,'” sententiously quoted Dr. Wendover.

“But it can be germane,” Skillin countered quietly, and began to mutter to himself, “Germane, German, Germ.”

“Stop that and go on with this,” ordered the Doctor, stopping beside the seated sergeant and pointing magisterially to the open notebook.

“There isn't much more. I began by going over the autopsy and verdict. She's away in the mortuary (we're lucky she's not under ground), and Smirke's away, ‘recovering from the shock.' Case is closed and closed pretty tight. And here we are, sitting on the site and wondering how to sight a crack that will let us prize it open again.”