Women in White

Without, a midwinter twilight, where wandering snowflakes eddied in the bitter wind between a leaden sky and frost-bound earth. Within, a garret; gloomy, bare, and cold as the bleak night coming down. A haggard youth knelt before a little furnace, kindling a fire, with an expression of quiet desperation on his face, which made the simple operation strange and solemn. A pile of manuscript lay beside him, and in the hollow eyes that watched the white leaves burn was a tragic shadow, terrible to see,—for he was offering the first-born of heart and brain as sacrifice to a hard fate. Slowly the charcoal caught and kindled, while a light smoke filled the room. Slowly the youth staggered up, and, gathering the torn sheets, thrust them into his bosom, muttering bitterly, “Of all my hopes and dreams, my weary work and patient waiting, nothing is left but this. Poor little book, we’ll go together, and leave no trace behind.”

The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson is a chilling tale of survival and horror on a remote island. The story explores the psychological and physical degradation caused by a mysterious, flesh-eating fungus, creating a suspenseful and thought-provoking experience for fans of short mystery books.

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be “a simple tale” proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London’s fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. The novel, one of the best Conrad’s works, deals broadly with anarchism, espionage and terrorism.

THE POLICEMAN’S DISCOVERY “Eleven o’clock and a windy night!” might have been the cry of a mediæval watchman at that hour on the 24th July 19–. Constable Mulligan was more reticent, as it formed no part of his duties to intimate publicly the time or the state of the weather. Nevertheless the bells of the Anglican Church, Troy, London, S.W., chimed the hour through the clamour of a high wind; and those people who were not in bed must have decided to retire. Not that any one appeared to be stirring. The lights were extinguished in all windows within the range of Mulligan’s vision, and the flashing of his lantern on the doors and gates in Achilles Avenue showed that they were discreetly closed. Not even a tramp or a cat enlivened the roadway. Mulligan was apparently the sole waking person in a sleeping world. Troy was a bran-new suburb, built by a jerry-builder, who knew Greek history through the medium of Lempriere’s Dictionary.

THE LEATHER FUNNEL My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His house was that small one, with the iron railings and grass plot in front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with lichens, and the walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It looked a small house from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular library of occult literature, and the fantastic curiosities which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends.