Guilty as Charged: Fantastic Crime Stories. Philip E. High

out, we never arrived at anything. Oh, yes, Trench would classify and index events. Such and such a type of phenomena, elemental, category so-and-so, but we had gained no actual knowledge whatever. What actually was an elemental and why the hell did it behave as it did?

      Question two, all these appearances and hauntings, did they only occur when there was someone around to witness them? Did the headless horseman and the gray ladies only put in an appearance when there was an audience to watch them?

      There was a horrible manifestation around a ruined castle in Poland. Something invisible went howling in and out of entrances and along corridors for minutes on end. I say invisible, but that description is not wholly true. It was, in truth a miniature tornado, swirling, and, as I say, howling just like an insane wind. As it swirled, it collected fragments around it, just like a tornado. There was dust, dead leaves, small stones, and anything small enough to be sucked up. The worst part to me was the bitter cold that came with it. Poland is very hot in mid-summer, but this draped some of the damp walls with ice. Just to make itself really revolting, it left a trail of foul-smelling green slime behind it that took the best part of five minutes to sort of fade away.

      Our ‘research’ made no attempt to find out what it was or why it did what it did. Again I have to ask, did it put on a show like that, day in and day out, or did it just take the stage for visitors?

      Just one more fact about me before continuing with events. As I have said, I was in the Special Branch of the Armed Services and I saw a fair amount of action. There was no major war, but someone seemed to be fighting someone else somewhere all the time.

      In one little incident we took some mortar fire and one of our officers got blown to pieces. His personal gun, something rather special, landed beside me. It was an Antrok, not mentioned in the official lists and on test. I took it, I don’t know why—perhaps, at the time, I thought I might get quite a bit of money later. Honestly, I can’t quite recall my thoughts or feelings at the time.

      The point is, no one would know I had the weapon and there would be no one to report I had ever handled it. Although I had never cared much for killing, guns in themselves had always fascinated me.

      As for getting the damn thing smuggled out, that was child’s play. Anyone who has been in the armed forces soon learns that with the right contacts and the money to keep them happy almost anything is possible.

      I hid the gun almost in the open; it looked like a part of a marine engine on a bench and under repair.

      Anyway, to bring things up to date as it were, we trooped into this holiday place and settled in. Poole and Trench set up the equipment, cameras, things to keep a check on the temperature and various detection meters which I had never fully understood.

      The place was not too bad inside, the tables and chairs were a bit dusty but that was all. There was, I admit, a sour, sort of decaying smell which I didn’t care for very much, but perhaps that would go away when we had passed in and out a few times.

      Finally we finished the preparations and sat down. There was a large table in the main room and a meal appeared. Flasks of hot coffee and piles of sandwiches. Judie was responsible for the sandwiches—I think she thought she was catering for an army.

      “As I told you when we came in,” said Trench. “This was a nasty one. I don’t know who marked this place down first, but whoever did attracted our predecessors. Yes, a couple of investigators were here before us, two men, Charles Landis and George Parker. According to records they came in here at seven in the evening and were never seen alive again.”

      “They were killed here?” asked Poole.

      “That I do not know. I only know that their bodies were found in the sea in rather gruesome circumstances. The nasty part being that neither body was complete. There was the upper torso of Landis, head and shoulders down to the waist, and the lower part of Parker from the waist down. No one has ever found the remaining halves of either man.”

      Trench filled his pipe and put a lighted match to the bowl. “The point is that the police went though this place with a fine tooth comb, not to mention the pick of forensic science, but there was nothing. There seems no doubt that the butchery was undertaken elsewhere. One drop of blood and forensic would have found it.”

      “It is confirmed that they were here?” asked Hammond.

      “No doubts at all on that score, all their equipment was set up ready for use. As a matter of fact, two cameras, one infrared, took pictures of the police as they entered.”

      “Then someone must have informed them.”

      “Yes, someone anonymous rang up and said there was a lot of screaming going on in the place, which again raises a weird point. The properties on both sides were empty, waiting for holiday people who had booked weeks before, so who the hell heard screaming?”

      Conversation lapsed after that. We finished coffee in silence but I was uneasy. Perhaps I am developing a psychic faculty or something but, when it works, something nasty usually turns up. That place in Poland I mentioned, for example, my scalp was sort of tight and prickly a good hour before anything happened. Again, that sour smell had not gone away; if anything, it was stronger, and more sickly than ever.

      Trench rose, knocked out his pipe on an ashtray, and looked at me. “Going to take another look upstairs. I’ll take front room this time, like you to take the back.”

      “Coming.” I rose and followed him. Trench always liked to do a double-check.

      The back room was not much different to the front save that this one had a single bed frame—no bedclothes or mattresses, of course. There were two hard chairs, a cramped shower and toilet behind a green door, and that about covered it. The Venetian blinds on the windows looked as if they were about to fall to pieces.

      I was just about to join Trench in the front room when there was a sort of choked cry from downstairs.

      “Come down— Oh God!— Oh God!— Oh God!—come down!” Poole’s voice, he not only sounded hysterical but on the verge of tears.

      Trench and I almost clattered down the stairs together but stopped on the last three steps. What we saw at first glance didn’t make sense, but I can see the scene vividly in my mind as if it had happened today. Poole was behind a chair, clinging to the back of it with both hands. His eyes bulged, his mouth was open, and he seemed unable to see anything but the sofa.

      Judie was upright, absolutely colourless, rigid as an iron bar, her hand pressed tightly over her mouth and she was screaming. There was no sound, but I could feel what she was doing—a long anguished and silent scream.

      Hammond was lying back on the sofa, apparently at ease, eyes closed as if in sleep. He was not dead, I could see his chest rising and falling and, at that moment I felt only dazed, the picture made no sense.

      “What the hell’s going on?” Trench sound aggressive.

      I went over to Judie and made her sit down. She seemed almost fixed to the wall against which she had been standing, as if trying to push her way through it backwards. When I got her to move, her limbs moved jerkily like those of a puppet, and she was still silently screaming, I could tell.

      Poole made gurgling sounds and kept pointing jerkily with his finger. Finally he managed to put words together, unevenly but slowly making sense.

      “His arm—his bloody arm—dear God!”

      I looked but I could make no sense of the words. Granted, Hammond might be unconscious but he looked normal enough to me. “What are you talking about, Poole?”

      He did not answer directly, it was quite clear he had lost us. “I kept my head at first, I rang for an ambulance. Granted I went to pieces after, but I rang for an ambulance.”

      Trench shouted. “Blast the bloody ambulance. What’s this about his arm?”

      “Look for yourself!” Poole shouted back. “Feel Hammond’s left sleeve, there’s nothing in it.”

      I went forward and