The ghouls

by Haining, Peter, comp

  "To whom do you refer?" Simon Lafleur demanded. "Surely you

  cannot mean that pocket edition husband of yours—that dwarf, Jacques CourbeT

  "Ah, but I do, Simon! Alas, he has broken me!"

  "He—that toothpick of a man?" the bareback rider cried, with one of his silent laughs. 'Why, it is impossible! As you once said yourself, Jeanne, you could crack his skull between finger and thumb like a hickory nut!"

  "So I thought once. Ah, but I did not know him then, Simon! Because he was small, I thought I could do with him as I liked. It seemed to me that I was marrying a manikin. 'I will play Punch and Judy with this little fellow/ I said to myself. Simon, you may imagine my surprise when he began playing Punch and Judy with me!"

  "But I do not understand, Jeanne. Surely at any time you could have slapped him into obedience!"

  "Perhaps," she assented wearily, "had it not been for St. Eustache. From the first that wolf dog of his hated me. If I so much as answered his master back, he would show his teeth. Once, at the beginning, when I raised my hand to cuff Jacques Courbe, he sprang at my throat and would have torn me limb from limb had not the dwarf called him off. I was a strong woman, but even then I was no match for a wolf!"

  "There was poison, was there not?" Simon Lafleur suggested.

  "Ah, yes, I, too, thought of poison, but it was of no avail. St. Eustache would eat nothing that I gave him and the dwarf forced me to taste first of all food that was placed before him and his dog. Unless I myself wished to die, there was no way of poisoning either of them."

  "My poor girl!" the bareback rider said, pityingly. "I begin to understand, but sit down and tell me everything. This is a revelation to me, after seeing you stalking homeward so triumphantly with your bridegroom on your shoulder. You must begin at the beginning."

  "It was just because I carried him thus on my shoulder that I have had to suffer so cruelly," she said, seating herself on the only other chair the room afforded. "He has never forgiven me the insult which he says I put upon him. Do you remember how I boasted that I could carry him from one end of France to the other?"

  "I remember. Well, Jeanne?"

  "Well, Simon, the little demon has figured out the exact distance in leagues. Each morning, rain or shine, we sally out of the house—he on my back, the wolf dog at my heels—and I tramp along the dusty roads till my knees tremble beneath me from fatigue. If I so much as slacken my pace, if I falter, he goads me with his cruel little golden spurs, while,

  at the same time, St. Eustache nips my ankles. When we return home, he strikes so many leagues off a score which he says is the number of leagues from one end of France to the other. Not half that distance has been covered and I am no longer a strong woman, Simon. Look at these shoes!"

  She held up one of her feet for his inspection. The sole of the cowhide boot had been worn through; Simon Lafleur caught a glimpse of bruised flesh caked with the mire of the highway.

  "This is the third pair that I have had," she continued hoarsely. "Now he tells me that the price of shoe leather is too high, that I shall have to finish my pilgrimage barefooted."

  "But why do you put up with all this, Jeanne?" Simon Lafleur asked angrily. "You, who have a carriage and a servant, should not walk at all!"

  "At first there was a carriage and a servant," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, "but they did not last a week. He sent the servant about his business and sold the carriage at a near-by fair. Now there is no one but me to wait on him and his dog."

  "But the neighbours?" Simon Lafleur persisted. "Surely you could appeal to them?"

  "We have no near neighbours, the farm is quite isolated. I would have run away many months ago if I could have escaped unnoticed, but they keep a continual watch on me. Once I tried, but I hadn't travelled more than a league before the wolf dog was snapping at my ankles. He drove me back to the farm and the following day I was compelled to carry the little fiend till I fell from sheer exhaustion."

  "But tonight you got away?"

  "Yes," she said, with a quick, frightened glance at the door. "Tonight I slipped out while they were both sleeping and came here to you. I knew that you would protect me, Simon, because of what we have been to each other. Get Papa Copo to take me back in the circus and I will work my fingers to the bone! Save me, Simon!"

  Jeanne Marie could no longer suppress her sobs. They rose in her throat, choking her, making her incapable of further speech.

  "Calm yourself, Jeanne," Simon Lafleur said soothingly. "I will do what I can for you. I shall have a talk with Papa Copo tomorrow. Of course, you are no longer the same woman that you were a year ago. You have aged since then, but perhaps our good Papa Copo could find you something to do."

  He broke off and eyed her intently. She had stiffened in the chair, her face, even under its coat of grime, had gone a sickly white.

  'What troubles you, Jeanne?" he asked a trifle breathlessly.

  "Hush!" she said, with a finger to her lips. "Listen!"

  Simon Lafleur could hear nothing but the tapping of the rain on the roof and the sighing of the wind through the trees. An unusual silence seemed to pervade the Sign of the Wild Boar.

  "Now don't you hear it?" she cried with an inarticulate gasp. "Simon, it is in the house—it is on the stairs!"

  At last the bareback rider's less sensitive ears caught the sound his companion had heard a full minute before. It was a steady pit-pat, pit-pat, on the stairs, hard to dissociate from the drip of the rain from the eaves, but each instant it came nearer, grew more distinct.

  "Oh, save me, Simon, save me!" Jeanne Marie cried, throwing herself at his feet and clasping him about the knees. "Save me! It is St. Eustache!"

  "Nonsense, woman!" the bareback rider said angrily, but nevertheless he rose. "There are other dogs in the world. One the second landing there is a blind fellow who owns a dog. Perhaps it is he you hear."

  "No, no—it is St. Eustache's step! My God, if you had lived with him a year, you would know it, too! Close the door and lock it!"

  "That I will not," Simon Lafleur said contemptuously. "Do you think I am frightened so easily? If it is the wolf dog, so much the worse for him. He will not be the first cur I have choked to death with these two hands!"

  Pit-pat, pit-pat— it was on the second landing. Pit-pat, pit-pat— now it was in the corridor, and coming fast. Pit-pat— all at once it stopped.

  There was a moment's breathless silence and then into the room trotted St. Eustache. Monsieur Jacques Courbe sat astride the dog's broad back, as he had so often done in the circus ring. He held a tiny drawn sword, his shoe-button eyes seemed to reflect its steely glitter.

  The dwarf brought the dog to a halt in the middle of the room and took in, at a single glance, the prostrate figure of Jeanne Marie. St. Eustache, too, seemed to take silent note of it. The stiff hair on his back rose up, he showed his long white fangs hungrily and his eyes glowed like two live coals.

  "So I find you thus, madame!" Monsieur Jacques Courbe said at last. "It is fortunate that I have a charger here who can scent out my enemies as well as hunt them down in the open. Without him, I might have had some difficulty in discovering you. Well, the little game is up. I find you with your lover!"

  "Simon Lafleur is not my lover!" she sobbed. "I have not seen him once since I married you until tonight! I swear it!"

  "Once is enough," the dwarf said grimly. "The impudent stable-boy must be chastised!"

  "Oh, spare him!" Jeanne Marie implored. "Do not harm him, I beg of you! It is not his fault that I came! I—"

  But at this point Simon Lafleur drowned her out in a roar of laughter.

  "Ho, ho!" he roared, putting his hands on his hips. "You would chastise me, eh? Now d'un Men! Don't try your circus tricks on me! Why, hop-o-my thumb, you who ride on a dog's back like a flea, out of this room before I squash you! Begone, melt, fade away!" He paused, expanded his barrel-like chest, puffed out his cheeks and blew a great breath at the dwarf. "Blow
away, insect," he bellowed, "lest I put my heel on you!"

  Monsieur Jacques Courb£ was unmoved by this torrent of abuse. He sat very upright on St. Eustache's back, his tiny sword resting on his tiny shoulder.

  "Are you done?" he said at last, when the bareback rider had run dry of invectives. "Very well, monsieur! Prepare to receive cavalry!" He paused for an instant, then added in a high, clear voice: "Get him, St. Eustache!"

  The dog crouched and, at almost the same moment, sprang at Simon Lafleur. The bareback rider had no time to avoid him and his tiny rider. Almost instantaneously the three of them had come to death grips. It was a gory business.

  Simon Lafleur, strong man as he was, was bowled over by the wolf dog's unexpected leap. St. Eustache's clashing jaws closed on his right arm and crushed it to the bone. A moment later the dwarf, still clinging to his dog's back, thrust the point of his tiny sword into the body of the prostrate bareback rider.

  Simon Lafleur struggle valiantly, but to no purpose. Now he felt the fetid breath of the dog fanning his neck and the wasp-like sting of the dwarf's blade, which this time found a mortal spot. A convulsive tremor shook him and he rolled over on his back. The circus Romeo was dead.

  Monsieur Jacques Courbe cleansed his sword on a kerchief of lace, dismounted and approached Jeanne Marie. She was still crouching on the floor, her eyes closed, her head held tightly between both hands. The dwarf touched her imperiously on the broad shoulder which had so often carried him.

  "Madame," he said, "we now can return home. You must be more

  careful hereafter. Ma foi, it is an ungentlemanly business cutting the throats of stable-boys!"

  She rose to her feet, like a large trained animal at the word of command.

  "You wish to be carried?" she said between livid lips.

  "Ah, that is true, madame," he murmured. "I was forgetting our little wager. Ah, yes! Well, you are to be congratulated, madame—you have covered nearly half the distance."

  "Nearly half the distance," she repeated in a lifeless voice.

  "Yes, madame," Monsieur Jacques Courbe continued. "I fancy that you will be quite a docile wife by the time you have done." He paused and then added reflectively: "It is truly remarkable how speedily one can ride the devil out of a woman—with spurs!"

  Papa Copo had been spending a convivial evening at the Sign of the Wild Boar. As he stepped out into the street he saw three familiar figures preceding him—a tall woman, a tiny man and a large dog with upstanding ears. The woman carried the man on her shoulder, the dog trotted at her heels.

  The circus owner came to a halt and stared after them. His round eyes were full of childish astonishment.

  "Can it be?" he murmured. "Yes, it is! Three old friends! And so Jeanne Marie still carries him! Ah, but she should not poke fun at Monsieur Jacques Courbe! He is so sensitive; but, alas, they are the kind that are always henpecked!"

  MOST DANGEROUS GAME

  RICHARD CONNELL

  (RKO-Radio: 1932 et al)

  Not all the early horror films relied entirely on monsters and things that go hump in the night for their effect. Indeed, as the genre grew more sophisticated, adventurous producers and directors started looking even further afield for subjects that terrorized by implication or frightened by tension. A distinguished example of this type of production is Most Dangerous Game, made in 1932 and based on the story of the same title which had won its American author, Richard Connell, the O'Henry Memorial Award in 102.4..

  The plot concerns a sadistic Russian general who lures unsuspecting people on to the Caribbean island where he lives, and then gives them a chance to run for freedom—pursuing them as human prey with his bloodhounds. The camera-work in the film is particularly outstanding during the main chase sequence, when the human quarry (here, differing from the story, a man and a woman') slowly begin to turn the tables on their pursuer, skilfully using the general's own methods of hunting to bring about his downfall. The picture expertly develops terror and tension as it progresses, allowing the audience little respite, and reflects great credit on the directing team of Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel.

  In his definitive study, Le Surrealisme au Cinema, Ado Kyrou describes Most Dangerous Game as "the perfect example of the good sadistic film . . . a masterpiece of surrealist cinema". (The story has also been refdmed twice, in 1945 as A Game of Death, directed by Robert Wise, and in 1956 as Run For the Sun, with Trevor Howard and Richard Widmark.)

  THERE was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller. Rainsford,

  reclining in a steamer chair, indolently puffed on his favourite briar. "It's so dark/' he thought, "that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—"

  An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times. Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.

  He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain coolheadedness had come to him; it was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the yacht became faint and ever-vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out entirely by the night.

  Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more, he thought, and then—

  Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high, screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror. He did not recognize the animal that made the sound, he did not try to; with fresh vitality he swam towards the sound. He heard it again, then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.

  "Pistol shot," muttered Rainsford, swimming on.

  Ten minutes of determined effort brought another sound to his ears —the most welcome he had ever heard—the muttering and growling of the sea breaking on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he

  saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the very edge of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of trees and underbrush might hold for him did not concern Rainsford just then. All he knew was that he was safe from his enemy, the sea, and that utter weariness was on him. He flung himself down at the jungle edge and tumbled headlong into the deepest sleep of his life.

  When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him new vigour; a sharp hunger was picking at him. He looked about him, almost cheerfully.

  "Where there are pistol shots there are men. Where there are men there is food," he thought. But what kind of men, he wondered, in so forbidding a place? An unbroken front of snarled and ragged jungle fringed the shore.
>
  He saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore and Rainsford floundered along by the water. Not far from where he had landed, he stopped. Some wounded thing, by the evidence a large animal, had thrashed about in the underbrush; the jungle weeds were crushed down and the moss was lacerated; one patch of weeds was stained crimson. A small, glittering object not far away caught Rainsford's eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.

  "A twenty-two," he remarked. "That's odd. It must have been a fairly large animal, too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It's clear that the brute put up a fight."

  He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find—the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, now slipping on a rotten log or a loose stone, but making headway; night was beginning to settle down on the island.

  Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coastline, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, for there were many lights. But as he forged his way along he saw to his astonishment that all the lights were in one enormous building—a lofty structure with pointed towers plunging upwards into the gloom. His eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial chateau; it was set on a

  high bluff and on three sides of it cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy lips in the shadows.

  "Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage, he found, when he opened the tall spiked iron gate. The stone steps were real enough, the massive door with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real enough, yet about it all hung an air of unreality. He lifted the knocker and it creaked up stiffly as if it had never before been used. He let it fall and it startled him with its booming loudness. He thought he heard steps within, the door remained closed. Again Rainsford lifted the heavy knocker and let it fall. The door opened then, opened as suddenly as if it were on a spring, and Rainsford stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The first thing his eyes discerned was the largest man Rainsford had ever seen—a gigantic creature, solidly made and black-bearded to the waist. In his hand the man held a long-barrelled revolver and he was pointing it straight at Rainsford's heart. Out of the snarl of beard two small eyes regarded Rainsford.