19 Tales of Terror

by Whit Burnett

  news. whining ominously like a loaded shell, flew over her

  listeners' blanched faces, not exploding till long after it had

  passed.

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  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  They stood like stocks, stupidly listening to the sound of the

  words they could not understand. Then Bert said in a flat

  voice, "Not Frankie Tuttle! You didn't say it was Frankie

  Tuttle!'' He took the newspaper from Helen's hand. Through

  the brooding summer twilight the headlines shrieked.

  JEFFERSON STREET MAN GOES SUDDENLY INSANE

  LEAPS FROM THIRD STORY TO DEATH.

  The paper fell from his hand.

  "This very morning," said Helen.

  "That deep cement-covered entrance to the basement," began Mrs. Benson. "Right over the high railing around the sleeping porch. Mary had come home-you knew she'd been away with a sick sister-and she just started up the stairs."

  The Warders, stunned, sank down on their suitcases. Bert's

  mouth hung slackly open.

  Joe Crosby came over from across the street. His lips

  twitched. His eyes were red. He shook Bert's hand without a

  word. The Warders had been but bludgeoned into stupefaction

  by the headlines. They had not believed them. But this silence

  told them what had happened. Mrs. Warder and Imogene began to cry. A film came over Bert's bulging eyes. He got out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and took his hat off, holding it

  on his knee and looking fixedly down at it.

  After a time when they could, they asked the usual questions. And had the usual answers. No imaginable explanation.

  His accounts in perfect order. His health all right-he'd hurt

  his hand of course, but that was not serious; the doctor said it

  was healing without any sign of infection. And everything going extra well with him, seems though-his brother just made Vice President of the company, the luckiest kind of a break,

  his brother thinking the world and all of him-came right over

  the minute he heard of this and took Mary and the children

  back. To make their home with him. Always. Said he'd always

  wanted children in his home. No, everything in the business end

  of his life was fine, couldn't be better. His brother kept saying

  there wasn't anything he wouldn't have done for him. And no

  trouble at home, Lord no! He and Mary were the happiest

  couple on the street. Suspicious of their good faith Bert said

  it seemed as if there must have been some warning. :'No, there

  wasn't. He was just exactly the same as ever, the last time anybody saw him. He'd hurt his hand, you know-was that before you went to Huntsville? No, I guess it was afterwards-and

  that kept him away from the office for a while. It must have

  been while he was at home with that, that he . . . "

  Bert Warder was shocked at a glimpsed possibility of un-

  Tile Marder on Jeffersen Street • 183

  neighborly neglect. "For the Lord's sake, hadn't anybody gone

  in to see that he was all right?" he asked sternly.

  Mrs. Benson defended herself hastily, "Oh yes, yes. Before

  she left Mary had asked me to look after him, and I went over

  there every day. Sometimes twice. But the cleaning-woman

  always said he was asleep. She told me the doctor had given

  him something to deaden the pain in his hand and make him

  drowsy."

  Joe Crosby confirmed this. "Yes, every time I went in too, he

  was asleep. I went clear up to his room, several times. The

  · shades were pulled down and it was dark. But I could see he

  was asleep all right." He answered the stubborn question in

  the other's face. "Yes, I know, Bert, I felt just the way you do,

  as if we might have done something, if we'd been any good.

  But you know there isn't anythin·g anybody can do when it's a

  case of . . . " he drew in a long breath before he could pronounce

  the word, "it was just plain insanity, Bert."

  "Frankie wasn't insane!" rapped out Bert, indignant. "He

  was a swell fellow!"

  Joe lowered his voice and with a dark shamed intonation and

  yet with a certain relish of the enormity he was reporting,

  said, "Bert, when they picked up his body they found he'd

  shaved his head. All over. Every spear of hair shaved off. Down

  to the skin. The way you shave your face."

  This did stagger the questioner. He said feebly, "You don't

  say . • . ! Good gosh, his head! Why, what in the . . . what ever

  would make anybody do that?" and fell back into his stockish

  uncomprehending blankness.

  Mrs. Benson murmured an explanation. "The doctors told his

  brother that's one of the signs of religious mania-the tonsure,

  you know. They told his brother that sometimes insane . . .

  "

  "Oh, they make me tired !" cried Joe Crosby in angry sorrow.

  'They don't know anything about it. Why don't they keep

  still!"

  Bert Warder agreed sadly, "I guess nobody knows anything

  about what causes insanity."

  It came over him that this was no waking nightmare, was

  fact. But he could not admit it as fact. "It just don't seem

  possible to me!" he told them, his voice breaking grotesquely

  in his pain. "Why Frankie and me . . • why, I never had a better

  pal than Frankie Tuttle!"

  FLAN N O'BRIEN

  JOHN D U FFY'S BROTHER

  STRICTLY speaking, this story should not be

  written or told at all. To write it or to tell it is to spoil it. This is

  because the man who had the strange experience we are going

  to talk about never mentioned it to anybody, and the fact that

  he kept his secret and sealed it up completely in his memory is

  the whole point of the story. Thus we must admit that handicap

  at the beginning-that it is absurd for us to tell the story, absurd for anybody to listen to it and unthinkable that anybody should believe it.

  We will, however, do this man one favor. We will refrain

  from mentioning him by his complete name. This will enable

  us to tell his secret and permit him to continue looking his

  friends in the eye. But we can say that his surname is Duffy.

  There are thousands of these Duffys in the world; even at this

  moment there is probably a new Duffy making his appearance

  in some corner of it. We can even go so far as to say that he is

  John Duffy's brother. We do not break faith in saying so, because if there are only one hundred John Duffys in existence, and even if each one of them could be met and questioned, no

  embarrassing enlightenments would be forthcoming. That is because the John Duffy in question never left his house, never left his bed, never talked to anybody in his life, and was never seen

  by more than one man. That man's name was Gumley. Gum1ey

  was a doctor. He was present when John Duffy was born and

  also when he died, one hour later.

  John Duffy's brother lived alone in a small house on an eminence in Inchicore. When dressing in the morning he could gaze across the broad valley of the Liffey to the slopes of the

  Phoenix Park, peacefully distant. Usually the river was indiscernible but on a sunny morning it could be seen lying like a long glistening spear in the valley's palm. Like a respectable

  184

  John DuHy's Brother • 185

  married man, it seemed to be hurrying into Dublin as if to
/>
  work.

  Sometimes, recollecting that his clock was fast, John Duffy's

  brother would spend an idle moment with his father's spyglass,

  ranging the valley with an eagle eye. The village of Chapelizod

  was to the left and invisible in the depth, but each morning the

  inhabitants would erect, as if for Mr. Duffy's benefit, a lazy

  plume of smoke to show exactly where they were.

  Mr. Duffy's glass usually came to rest on the figure of a man

  hurrying across the uplands of the park and disappearing from

  view in the direction of the magazine fort. A small white terrier

  bounced along ahead of him but could be seen occasionally

  sprinting to overtake him after dallying behind for a time on

  private business.

  The man carried in the crook of his arm an instrument which

  Mr. Duffy at first took to be a shotgun or patent repeating

  rifle, but one morning the man held it by the butt and smote the

  barrels smartly on the ground as he walked, and it was then

  evident to Mr. Duffy-he felt some disappointment-that the

  article was a walking stick.

  It happened that this .man's name was Martin Smullen. He

  was a retired stationary-engine-driver and lived quietly with a

  delicate sister at Number Four Cannon Row, Parkgate. Mr.

  Duffy did not know his name and was destined never to meet

  him or have the privilege of his acquaintance, but it may be

  worth mentioning that they once stood side by side at the counter of a public house in Little Easter Street, mutually unrecognized, each to the other a black stranger. Mr. Smullen's call was whiskey, Mr. Duffy's stout.

  Mr. Smullen's sister's name was not Smullen but Goggins,

  relict of the late Paul Goggins, wholesale clothier. Mr. Duffy

  had never even heard of her. She had a cousin by the name of

  Leo Corr who was not unknown to the police. He was sent up

  in 1924 for a stretch of hard labor in connection with the manufacture of spurious currency. Mrs. Goggins had never met him, but heard that he had emigrated to Labrador on hiS

  release.

  About the spyglass. A curious history attaches to its owner,

  also a Duffy, late of the mercantile marine. Although unprovided with the benefits of a University education-indeed, he had gone to sea at the age of sixteen as a result of an incident

  arising out of an imperfect understanding of the sexual relation-he was of a scholarly tum of mind and would often spend

  !he afternoons of his sea-leave alone in his dining room, thumbmg a book of Homer with delight or annotating with erudite sneers the inferior Latin of the Angelic doctor. On the fourth

  186 • Nineteen Tales of Terror

  day of July, 1 927, at four o'clock, he took leave of his senses

  in the dining room. Four men arrived in a closed van at

  eight o'clock that evening to remove him from mortal ken to a

  place where he would be restrained for his own good.

  It could be argued that much of the foregoing has little

  bearing on the story of John Duffy's brother, �ut modem

  ing, it is hoped, has passed the stage when simple ev�nts are

  stated in the void without any clue as to the psychological and

  hereditary forces working in the background to produce them.

  Having said so much, however, it is now permissible to set

  down briefly the nature of the adventure of John Duffy's

  brother.

  He arose one morning--on the 9th of March, 1 932-

  dressed and cooked his frugal breakfast. Immediately afterward, he became possessed of the strange idea that he was a train. No explanation of this can be attempted. Small boys

  sometimes like to pretend that they are trains, and there are

  fat women in the world who are not, in the distance, without

  some resemblance to trains. But John Duffy's brother was certain that he was a train-long, thunderous and immense, with white steam escaping noisily from his feet, and deep-throated

  bellows coming rhythmically from where his funnel was.

  Moreover, he was certain that he was a particular train, the

  9 : 20 into Dublin. His station was the bedroom. He stood absolutely still for twenty minutes, knowing that a good train is equally punctual in departure as in arrival. He glanced often at

  his watch to make sure that the hour should not go by unnoticed. His watch bore the words "Shockproof" and "Railway Timekeeper."

  Precisely at 9 : 20 he emitted a piercing whistle, shook the

  great mass of his metal ponderously into motion and steamed

  away heavily into town. The train arrived dead on time at its

  destination, which was the office of Messrs. Palter and Palter,

  Solicitors, Commissioners for Oaths. For obvious reasons, the

  name of this firm is fictitious. In the office were two men, old

  Mr. Cranberry and young Mr. Hodge. Both were clerks and

  both took their orders from John Duffy's brother. Of course,

  both names are imaginary.

  "Good morning, Mr. Duffy," said Mr. Cranberry. He was

  old and polite, grown yellow in the firm's service.

  Mr. Duffy looked at him in surprise. "Can you not see I am a

  train?" he said. "Why do you call me Mr. Duffy?"

  Mr. Cranberry gave a laugh and winked at Mr. Hodge who

  sat young, neat and good-looking, behind his typewriter.

  "All right, Mr. Train," he said. "That's a cold morning, sir.

  Hard to get up steam these cold mornings, sir."

  John Duffy's Brother • 187

  "It is not easy," said Mr. Duffy. He shunted expertly to his

  chair and waited patiently before he sat down while the company's servants adroitly uncoupled him. Mr. Hodge was sniggering behind his roller.

  "Any cheap excursions, sir?" he asked.

  "No," Mr. Duffy replied. "There are season tickets, of

  course."

  "Third class and first class, I suppose, sir?"

  "No," said Mr. Duffy. "In deference to the views of Herr

  Marx, all class distinction in the passenger rolling stock has

  been abolished."

  "I see," said Mr. Cranberry.

  "That's communism," said Mr. Hodge.

  "He means," said Mr. Cranberry, "that it is now first class

  only."

  "How many wheels has your engine?" asked Mr. Hodge.

  ''Three big ones?"

  "I am not a goods train," said Mr. Duffy acidly. "The wheel

  formation of a passenger engine is four-four-two--two large

  driving wheels on each side coupled, of course, with a fourwheel buggy in front and two small wheels at the cab. Why do you ask?"

  "The platform's in the way," Mr. Cranberry said. "He can't

  see it."

  "Oh, quite," said Mr. Duffy. "I forgot."

  "I suppose you use a lot of coal?" Mr. Hodge asked.

  "About half a ton per thirty miles," said Mr. Duffy slowly,

  mentally checking the consumption of that morning. "I need

  scarcely say that frequent stopping and starting at suburban

  stations takes a lot out of me."

  "I'm sure it does," said Mr. Hodge, with sympathy.

  They talked like that for half an hour until the elderly Mr.

  Polter arrived and passed gravely into his back office. When

  that happened, conversation was at an end. Little was heard

  until lunchtime except the scratch of pens and the fitful clicking

  of the typewriter.

  John Duffy's brother always left the office at one-thirty and

  went home to his lunch. Consequently he started getting stea
m

  up at twelve-forty-five so that there should be no delay at the

  hour of departure. When the "Railway Timekeeper" said that

  it was one-thirty, he let out another shrill whistle and steamed

  slowly out of the office without a word or a look at his colleagues. He arrived home dead on time.

  We now approach the really important part of the plot, the

  incident which gives the whole story its significance. In the

  middle of his lunch John Duffy's brother felt something important, something queer, momentous and magical tak..iD&

  I 88

  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  place inside his head. He seemed to feel a great weight rolling

  off his brain, an immense tension relaxing, clean light flooding

  a place which had been dark. He dropped his knife and fork

  and sat there for a time wild-eyed, a filling of potatoes unattended in his mouth. Then he swallowed, rose weakly from the table and walked to the window, wiping away the perspiration which had started out on his brow.

  He gazed out into the day, no longer a train, but a badly

  frightened man. Inch by inch he went back over his morning.

  So far as he could recall he had killed no one, shouted no bad

  language, broken no windows. He had only talked to Cranberry

  and Hodge. Down in the roadway there was no dark van arriving with uniformed men infesting it. He sat down again desolately beside the unfinished meal.

  John Duffy's brother was a man of some courage. When be

  got back to the office he had some whiskey in his stomach and it

  was later in the afternoon than it should be. Hodge and Cranberry seemed preoccupied with their letters.

  He hung up his hat casually and said, "I'm afraid the train is

  a bit late getting back."

  From below his downcast brows he looked very sharply at

  Cranberry's face. He thought he saw the shadow of a smile

  flit absently on the old man's placid features as they continued poring down on a paper. The smile seemed to mean that a morning's joke was not good enough for the same afternoon.

  Hodge rose suddenly in his corner and passed silently into Mr.

  Palter's office with his letters. John Duffy's brother sighed and

  sat down wearily at his desk.

  When he left the office that night, his heart was lighter and

  he thought he had a good excuse for buying more liquor. Nobody knew his secret but himself and nobody else would ever know.