Essential Novelists - Arthur Machen

Оглавление

Arthur Machen. Essential Novelists - Arthur Machen

Table of Contents

The Author

The Three Impostors

PROLOGUE

ADVENTURE OF THE GOLD TIBERIUS

THE ENCOUNTER OF THE PAVEMENT

NOVEL OF THE DARK VALLEY

ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING BROTHER

NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL

INCIDENT OF THE PRIVATE BAR

THE DECORATIVE IMAGINATION

NOVEL OF THE IRON MAID

THE RECLUSE OF BAYSWATER

NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER

STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN CLERKENWELL

HISTORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH SPECTACLES

ADVENTURE OF THE DESERTED RESIDENCE

The Terror

CHAPTER I - The Coming of the Terror

CHAPTER II - Death in the Village

CHAPTER III - The Doctors Theory

CHAPTER IV - The Spread of the Terror

CHAPTER V - The Incident of the Unknown Tree

CHAPTER VI - Mr. Remnant's Z Ray

CHAPTER VII - The Case of the Hidden Germans

CHAPTER VIII - What Mr. Merritt Found

CHAPTER IX - The Light on the Water

CHAPTER X - The Child and the Moth

CHAPTER XI - At Treff Loyne Farm

CHAPTER XII - The Letter of Wrath

CHAPTER XIII - The Last Words of Mr. Secretan

CHAPTER XIV - The End of the Terror

About the Publisher

Отрывок из книги

Title Page

The Author

.....

"All right, come on then. You go first, Nichols, and Jim and I will give the gentleman an arm."

They took me out into the sunlight, and then I understood the meaning of a dull murmur that had vaguely perplexed me while I was dressing. There were about two hundred men waiting outside, and some women too, and when they saw me there was a low muttering growl. I did not know what I had done, but that noise made my heart beat and the sweat come out on my face. I saw confusedly, as through a veil, the tumult and tossing of the crowd, discordant voices were speaking, and amongst all those faces there was not one glance of mercy, but a fury of lust that I did not understand. I found myself presently walking in a sort of procession up the slope of the valley, and on every side of me there were men with revolvers in their hands. Now and then a voice struck me, and I heard words and sentences of which I could form no connected story. But I understood that there was one sentence of execration; I heard scraps of stories that seemed strange and improbable. Some one was talking of men, lured by cunning devices from their homes and murdered with hideous tortures, found writhing like wounded snakes in dark and lonely places, only crying for some one to stab them to the heart, and so end their torments; and I heard another voice speaking of innocent girls who had vanished for a day or two, and then had come back and died, blushing red with shame even in the agonies of death. I wondered what it all meant, and what was to happen, but I was so weary that I walked on in a dream, scarcely longing for anything but sleep. At last we stopped. We had reached the summit of the hill, overlooking Blue Rock Valley, and I saw that I was standing beneath a clump of trees where I had often sat. I was in the midst of a ring of armed men, and I saw that two or three men were very busy with piles of wood, while others were fingering a rope. Then there was a stir in the crowd, and a man was pushed forward. His hands and feet were tightly bound with cord, and though his face was unutterably villainous I pitied him for the agony that worked his features and twisted his lips. I knew him; he was amongst those that had gathered round Smith in Black Gulf Cañon. In an instant he was unbound, and stripped naked; and borne beneath one of the trees, and his neck encircled by a noose that went around the trunk. A hoarse voice gave some kind of order; there was a rush of feet, and the rope tightened; and there before me I saw the blackened face and the writhing limbs and the shameful agony of death. One after another, half a dozen men, all of whom I had seen in the cañon the night before, were strangled before me, and their bodies were flung forth on the ground. Then there was a pause, and the man who had roused me a short while before, came up to me and said:—

.....