PAYMENT OPTIONS

Forthcoming titles

(Book titles are subject to change)

A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

and many others

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Richard Marsh: Volume 5

enlarge Click on image to enlarge
enlarge Mouse over the image to zoom in
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Richard Marsh: Volume 5
Leonaur Original
Qty:     - OR -   Add to Wish List

Author(s): Richard Marsh
Date Published: 2012/04
Page Count: 568
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-853-8
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-852-1

The fifth volume of a unique collection of bizarre tales from a master of the genre

Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of British born author Richard Bernard Heldman (1857-1916). His most famous work of supernatural fiction, The Beetle, was published in 1897, the same year as Bram Stoker’s tale of the vampire Count Dracula, and it is believed that initially Marsh’s book, which also features a bizarre and sinister figure capable of ‘shape shifting,’ was even more popular with readers than Stoker’s. Today Marsh’s book is still widely regarded as a classic of its genre. Although a prolific author who wrote in a number of genres including adventure fiction under his real name, Marsh is principally remembered as a writer of supernatural thrillers and his output in this field was prodigious. Most aficionados of the genre have heard of The Beetle, but this special Leonaur collection of the author’s excursions into the other worldly and strange extends to six satisfyingly substantial volumes containing many tales that will be unfamiliar to modern readers.
This penultimate volume includes two novels, ‘The Death Whistle’ and ‘The Chase of the Ruby,’ and four short stories stories of the strange and unusual.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

At first I could not make out what it was that had roused me. Then I felt Violet’s hand steal into mine. Her voice whispered in my ear, “Eric!” I turned over towards her on the pillow. “Be still. They’re here.” I did as she bade me. I was still. I heard no sound but the lazy rippling of the river.<br>
“Who’s here?” I asked, when, as I deemed, I had been silent long enough.<br>
“S-sh!” I felt her finger pressed against my lips. I was still again. The silence was broken in rather a peculiar manner.<br>
“I don’t think you quite understand me.”<br>
The words were spoken in a man’s voice, as it seemed to me, close behind my back. I was so startled by the unexpected presence of a third person that I made as if to spring up in bed. My wife caught me by the arm. Before I could remonstrate or shake off her grasp a woman’s laughter rang through the little cabin. It was too metallic to be agreeable. And a woman’s voice replied—<br>
“I understand you well enough, don’t you make any error!”<br>
There was a momentary pause.<br>
“You don’t understand me, fool!”<br>
The first four words were spoken with a deliberation which meant volumes, while the final epithet came with a sudden malignant ferocity which took me aback. The speaker, whoever he might be, meant mischief. I sprang up and out of bed.<br>
“What are you doing here?” I cried.<br>
I addressed the inquiry apparently to the vacant air. The moonlight flooded the little cabin. It showed clearly enough that it was empty. My wife sat up in bed.<br>
“Now,” she observed, “you’ve done it.”<br>
“Done what? Who was that speaking?”<br>
“The voices.”<br>
“The voices! What voices? I’ll voice them! Where the dickens have they gone?”<br>
I moved towards the cabin door, with the intention of pursuing my inquiries further. Violet’s voice arrested me.<br>
“It is no use your going to look for them. They will not be found by searching. The speakers were Mr. and Mrs. Bush.”<br>
“Mr. and Mrs. Bush?”<br>
Violet’s voice dropped to an awful whisper. “The murderer and his victim.”<br>
I stared at her in the moonlight. Inglis’s pleasant little story had momentarily escaped my memory. Suddenly roused from a dreamless slumber, I had not yet had time to recall such trivialities. Now it all came back in a flash.<br>
“Violet,” I exclaimed, “have you gone mad?”<br>
“They are the voices which I heard last night They are the voices which Mason heard. Now you have heard them. If you had kept still the mystery might have been unravelled. The crime might have been re-acted before our eyes, or at least within sound of our ears.”<br>
I sat down upon the ingenious piece of furniture which did duty as a bed. I seemed to have struck upon a novel phase in my wife’s character. It was not altogether a pleasing novelty. She spoke with a degree of judicial calmness which, under all the circumstances, I did not altogether relish.<br>
“Violet, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that It makes my blood run cold.”<br>
“Why should it? My dear Eric, I have heard you yourself say that in the presence of the seemingly mysterious our attitude should be one of passionless criticism. A mysterious crime has been committed in this very chamber.” I shivered. “Surely it is our duty to avail ourselves of any opportunities which may offer, and which may enable us to probe it to the bottom.”<br>
I made no answer. I examined the doors. They were locked and bolted. There was no sign that anyone had tampered with the fastenings. I returned to bed. As I was arranging myself between the sheets Violet whispered in my ear. “Perhaps if we are perfectly quiet they may come back again.”<br>
I am not a man given to adjectives; but I felt adjectival then. I was about to explain, in language which would not have been wanting in force, that I had no desire that they should come back again, when—<br>
“You had better give it to me.”<br>
The words were spoken in a woman’s voice, as it seemed, within twelve inches of my back. The voice was not that of a lady. I should have said without hesitation, had I heard the voice under any other circumstances, that the speaker had been born within the sound of Bow Bells.
You may also like