Short Stories (single author) Books

Jean de Marselait, Inquisitor Extraordinary of the King of France, raised his head from the parchments that littered the crude desk at which he sat. His glance shifted along the long stone-walled, torchlit room to the file of mail-clad soldiers who stood like steel statues by its door. A word from him and two of them sprang forward. "You may bring in the prisoner," he said. The two disappeared... more...

THE GOLDSMITH'S DAUGHTER. A LEGEND OF MADRID. Many, many years ago, in those "good old times" so much bepraised by antiquaries and the laudatores temporis acti,—the good old times, that is to say, of the holy office, of those magnificent autos when the smell of roasted heretics was as sweet a savor in the nostrils of the faithful, as that of Quakers done remarkably brown was to our godly... more...

The red-headed secretary asked, "Names, please?" "Ted Baker." "Bill Stephens." "To see H. Joshua Blair. We have an appointment." "It's for three-thirty. We called up two weeks ago." The secretary said, "Oh, yes. I have you on the list." She checked them off, studied them vaguely, asked, "What was it you wanted to see Mr. Blair about?" Ted... more...

There was a colored crayon in a crowded shop-window. Other people passed it by, but a Youth of the Town, with Hope in his heart, leaned over the guard-rail and looked upon the beauty of that pictured face long and earnestly. It was the head of a pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes. She was clad in a dainty white gown, loose-flowing and beautiful. In her left hand, slender and uplifted, a letter;... more...

THE CHILD Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during their entire married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple, sincere, without suspicion or malice. He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He was making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business, and he... more...

I had arrived at Inley Abbey that afternoon, and was sitting at dinner with Inley and his pretty wife, whom I had not seen for five years, since the day I was his best man, when we all heard faintly the tolling of a church bell. Lady Inley shook her shoulders in a rather exaggerated shudder. "Someone dead!" said her husband. "It's a mistake to build a church in the grounds of a... more...

What they called me, that was what started it. I'm as good an American as the next fellow, and maybe a little bit better than men like that, big men drinking in a bar who can't find anything better to do than to spit on a man and call him Mex. As if a Mexican is something to hide or to be ashamed of. We have our own heroes and our own strength and we don't have to bend down to men like... more...

She had been asleep. Now she stretched luxuriously beneath the crisp white sheet that the vapid August heat decreed. From memory to memory her dream-fogged mind drifted, and to the yet-to-be. It was good to remember, and to imagine, and to see and feel and hear.... She smiled. She was Ruth Halsey, fourteen, brunette, and pretty. Earl, and Harry, and Buhl had told her she was pretty. Especially Buhl.... more...

INTRODUCTION There are good things which we want to share with the world and good things which we want to keep to ourselves. The secret of our favourite restaurant, to take a case, is guarded jealously from all but a few intimates; the secret, to take a contrary case, of our infallible remedy for seasickness is thrust upon every traveller we meet, even if he be no more than a casual acquaintance about... more...

"We moor in ten minutes," I said. We were flying at reduced speed because of the heavy fog we had run into at the outer fringe of Earth's atmosphere. But I knew we were within forty or fifty miles of the Trans-Space base. I had counted the miles on this particular trip because of the load of radium we were carrying from the Venusian mines. I wouldn't draw a completely relieved breath... more...