The Rupa Book of Heartwarming & The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories Read online

  'You are not travelling alone?' he asked, as he arose to put on his overcoat.

  'Oh! my goodness!' I said, coming down to earth for the first time since I had taken my seat beside him—'certainly not; I had a mother, but I forgot all about her.' Whereupon he said, 'You are past-mistress of the art of flattery!'

  But this remark was told me years afterwards by the old lady who was sitting in the next seat, and who overheard as much of the conversation as she possibly could, so she informed me. Her pencilled notes, read to me when we met by chance in South Reading, Massachusetts, have helped me greatly in the minor details of the interview and my own phraseology, which amused her because of its chatterbox fluency and the amazing response it elicited from so great a man.

  Dickens took me back to the forgotten mother, and introduced himself, and I, still clinging to his hand, left the car and walked with him down the platform until he disappeared in the carriage with Mr Osgood.

  THE RUPA BOOK

  OF

  WICKED STORIES

  By the same author:

  Angry River

  A Little Night Music

  A Long Walk for Bina

  Hanuman to the Rescue

  Ghost Stories from the Raj

  Strange Men, Strange Places

  The India I Love

  Tales and Legends from India

  The Blue Umbrella

  Ruskin Bond's Children's Omnibus

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-I

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-II

  The Ruskin Bond Omnibus-III

  Rupa Book of Great Animal Stories

  The Rupa Book of True Tales of Mystery and Adventure

  The Rupa Book of Ruskin Bond's Himalayan Tales

  The Rupa Book of Great Suspense Stories

  The Rupa Laughter Omnibus

  The Rupa Book of Scary Stories

  The Rupa Book of Haunted Houses

  The Rupa Book of Travellers' Tales

  The Rupa Book of Great Crime Stories

  The Rupa Book of Nightmare Tales

  The Rupa Book of Shikar Stories

  The Rupa Book of Love Stories

  The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories

  The Rupa Book of Heartwarming Stories

  The Rupa Book of Thrills and Spills

  THE RUPA BOOK

  OF

  WICKED STORIES

  Edited by

  Ruskin Bond

  Published by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2005

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Edition copyright © Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2005

  Introduction copyright © Ruskin Bond 2005

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-81-291-1597-3

  Third impression 2014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Mr Swiddler's Flip-Flap

  Ambrose Bierce

  An Imperfect Conflagration

  Ambrose Bierce

  The Blind Spot

  Saki

  Laura

  Saki

  He Said It with Arsenic

  Ruskin Bond

  Hanging at the Mango-Tope

  Ruskin Bond

  Helping Mummy

  Norah C. James

  Really Was a Bluetit

  E.H. W. Meyerstein

  Pendlebury's Trophy

  John Eyten

  The Yellow Cat

  Michael Joseph

  Why Herbert Killed His Mother

  Winifred Holtby

  Golden Silence

  Crosbie Garstin

  The Cat-Lovers

  E.H.W. Meyerstein

  The Women Avenge

  Edgar Jepson

  Beckwith's Case

  Maurice Hewlett

  The Room on the Fourth Floor

  Ralph Straus

  The Great French Duel

  Mark Twain

  Introduction

  In making this selection of stories I was looking for the 'wicked' element. The stories had to be wickedly funny, or bitingly satirical, or masterpieces of black humour, or just plain wicked. Sometimes the protagonists are wicked; sometimes it's the writer who is wicked. But with one or two exceptions, these are not tales of evil-doing; rather, they are tales of how human-beings can invite ridicule or disaster simply by being too clever or too smug or too good!

  The best-known masters of the craft of dark humour were Ambrose Bierce (1842-1915?) and 'Saki' (1870-1916), one an American, the other an Englishman. The straight horror story was pioneered by Edgar Allen Poe, but Bierce went a step further—he gave horror and morbidity a satirical, at times hilarious twist. This gift for black comedy also resulted in his most famous—or infamous—work, The Devil's Dictionary, a copy of which should be on every writer's desk. There was one on mine until a writer more devilish than me pinched it.

  Ambrose Bierce's own life was as strange and macabre as any of his stories. Possibly the loneliest and most reclusive writer in American literary history, he was referred to as dead when he was living, and was mentioned as living when he was undoubtedly dead. In 1914, when he was seventy-two, he wandered into Mexico with the intention of covering the Mexican revolution as an independent correspondent. He was never seen again. Nor was his grave ever found. His last, cryptic note to a friend was typical of his dry wit; 'Pray for me—real loud.'

  Bierce was a contemporary of Mark Twain and may have had some influence on the latter. On one occasion he paid the novelist this back-handed compliment: 'Mark Twain has suffused our country with a peculiar glory by never trying to write a line of poetry.'

  And in another context: 'Mark Twain … has got married. It is not the act of a desperate man … it is the cool, methodical culmination of human nature working in the heart of an orphan hankering for someone with a fortune to love—someone with a bank account to caress.'

  Mark Twain's response, if any, is not on record, but he was capable of the same biting sarcasm, as is evident in the story of 'The Great French Duel,' included here.

  On the other side of the Atlantic, writing in a similar vein, was H.H. Munro, who assumed the nom-de-plume 'Saki'. As a young man he had served in the Burma Police. During World War I, he served in the British Army. His satirical little tales and vignettes caught the fancy of a reading public bored with the strict Victorian moral code. Witty and original, his writing cut through hypocritical social mores like a knife through butter. Still popular today, his work influenced writers such as Roald Dahl and Poppy Z. Brite.

  'Saki', too, had an end worthy of one of his own tales. Only forty-six, he was serving in the trenches in France, when a soldier lit a cigarette in the dark. 'Put that out, you bloody fool—' he ordered, but was cut short by a bullet in the head.

  Some of the other writers represented here are not so well-known, but their stories, culled from old magazines and anthologies, are all readable and entertaining and fall into the category of wickedness in one form or another.

  Michael Joseph was a famous publisher who wrote the occasional story. He was also very fond of cats, and if you offered him a book on cats you had a good chance of seeing it published. In The Yellow Cat' he presents a chilling little story of crime and retribution.

  I have always enjoyed reviving the work of neglected writers whose stories have been undeservedly forgotten. One of these was E.H.W. Meyerstein, poet, novelist and biographer of Chatte
rton—Chatterton the boy-poet, who took his own life after being accused of fraud.

  Crosbie Garstin's story about the old gramophone, 'Golden Silence', is one of my favourites. Garstin led an adventurous life as a horsebreaker on Western ranches, sawyer and miner in British Columbia, and ranger in Matabeleland, where this story is set.

  'The Room on the Fourth Floor' is said to be based on an actual incident. In modern terms, this story would be called faction instead of fiction.

  'And did your Uncle Bill really try to poison you?' is a question I have often been asked.

  'Only in the story,' I have to say. 'But he did poison one or two other people.'

  Ruskin Bond

  April, 2005

  Mr Swiddler's Flip-Flap

  AMBROSE BIERCE

  Jerome Bowles (said the gentleman called Swiddler) was to be hanged on Friday, the ninth of November, at five o'clock in the afternoon. This was to occur at the town of Flatbroke, where he was then in prison. Jerome was my friend, and naturally I differed with the jury that had convicted him as to the degree of guilt implied by the conceded fact that he had shot an Indian without direct provocation. Ever since his trial I had been endeavouring to influence the Governor of the State to grant a pardon; but public sentiment was against me, a fact which I attributed partly to the innate pigheadness of the people, and partly to the recent establishment of churches and schools which had corrupted the primitive notions of a frontier community. But I laboured hard and unremittingly by all manner of direct and indirect means during the whole period in which Jerome lay under sentence of death; and on the very morning of the day set for the execution, the Governor sent for me, and saying 'he did not purpose being worried by my importunities all winter,' handed me the document which he had so often refused.

  Armed with the precious paper, I flew to the telegraph office to send a dispatch to the Sheriff at Flatbroke. I found the operator locking the door of the office and putting up the shutters. I pleaded in vain; he said he was going to see the hanging, and really had no time to send my message. I must explain that Flatbroke was fifteen miles away; I was then at Swan Creek, the State capital.

  The operator being inexorable, I ran to the railroad station to see how soon there would be a train for Flatbroke. The station man, with cool and polite malice, informed me that all the employees of the road had been given a holiday to see Jerome Bowles hanged, and had already gone by an early train; that there would be no other train till the next day.

  I was now furious, but the station man quietly turned me out, locking the gates. Dashing to the nearest livery-stable, I ordered a horse. Why prolong the record of my disappointment? Not a horse could I get in that town; all had been engaged weeks before to take people to the hanging. So everybody said, at least, though I now know there was a rascally conspiracy to defeat the ends of mercy, for the story of the pardon had got abroad.

  It was now ten o'clock. I had only seven hours in which to do my fifteen miles afoot; but I was an excellent walker and thoroughly angry; there was no doubt of my ability to make the distance, with an hour to spare. The railway offered the best chance; it ran straight as a string across a level, treeless prairie, whereas the highway made a wide detour by way of another town.

  I took to the track like a Modoc on the war-path. Before I had gone a half-mile I was overtaken by 'That Jim Peasley,' as he was called in Swan Creek, an incurable practical joker, loved and shunned by all who knew him. He asked me as he came up if I were 'going to the show.' Thinking it was best to dissemble, I told him I was, but said nothing of my intention to stop the performance; I thought it would be a lesson to That Jim to let him walk fifteen miles for nothing, for it was clear that he was going, too. Still, I wished he would go on ahead or drop behind. But he could not very well do the former, and would not do the latter; so we trudged on together.

  It was a cloudy day and very sultry for that time of the year. The railway stretched away before us, between its double row of telegraph poles, in rigid sameness, terminating in a point at the horizon. On either hand the disheartening monotony of the prairie was unbroken.

  I thought little of these things, however, for my mental exaltation was proof against the depressing influence of the scene. I was about to save the life of my friend—to restore a crack shot to society. Indeed, I scarcely thought of That Jim, whose heels were grinding the hard gravel close behind me, except when he saw fit occasionally to propound the sententious, and I thought derisive, query, 'Tired?' Of course I was, but I would have died rather than confess it.

  We had gone in this way about half the distance, probably, in much less than half the seven hours, and I was getting my second wind, when That Jim again broke the silence.

  'Used to bounce in a circus, didn't you?'

  This was quite true! In a season of pecuniary depression I had once put my legs into my stomach—had turned my athletic accomplishments to financial advantage. It was not a pleasant topic, and I said nothing. That Jim persisted.

  'Wouldn't like to do a feller a somersault now, eh?'

  The mocking tongue of this jeer was intolerable; the fellow evidently considered me 'done up,' so taking a short run I clapped my hands to my thighs and executed as pretty a flip-flap as ever was made without a springboard! At the moment I came erect with my head still spinning, I felt That Jim crowd past me, giving me a twirl that almost sent me off the track. A moment later he had dashed ahead at a tremendous pace, laughing derisively over his shoulder as if he had done a remarkably clever thing to gain the lead.

  I was on the heels of him in less than ten minutes, though I must confess the fellow could walk amazingly. In half an hour I had run past him, and at the end of the hour, such was my slashing gait, he was a mere black dot in my rear, and appeared to be sitting on one of the rails thoroughly used up.

  Relieved of Mr Peasley, I naturally began thinking of my poor friend in the Flatbroke jail, and it occurred to me that something might happen to hasten the execution. I knew the feeling of the country against him, and that many would be there from a distance who would naturally wish to get home before nightfall. Nor could I help admitting to myself that five o'clock was an unreasonably late hour for a hanging. Tortured with these fears, I unconsciously increased my pace with every step, until it was almost a run. I stripped off my coat and flung it away, opened my collar, and unbuttoned my waistcoat. And at last, puffing and steaming like a locomotive engine, I burst into a thin crowd of idlers on the outskirts of the town, and flourished the pardon crazily above my head, yelling, 'Cut him down! —cut him down!'

  Then, as every one stared in blank amazement and nobody said anything, I found time to look about me, marvelling at the oddly familiar appearance of the town. As I looked, the houses, streets, and everything seemed to undergo a sudden and mysterious transposition with reference to the points of the compass, as if swinging round on a pivot; and like one awakened from a dream I found myself among accustomed scenes. To be plain about it, I was back again in Swan Creek, as right as a trivet!

  It was all the work of That Jim Peasley. The designing rascal had provoked me to throw a confusing somersault, then bumped against me, turning me half round, and started on the back track, thereby inciting me to hook it in the same direction. The cloudy day, the two lines of telegraph poles, one on each side of the track, the entire sameness of the landscape to the right and left—these had all conspired to prevent my observing that I had put about.

  When the excursion train returned from Flatbroke that evening the passengers were told a little story at my expense. It was just what they needed to cheer them up a bit after what they had seen; for that flip-flap of mine had broken the neck of Jerome Bowles seven miles away!

  An Imperfect Conflagration

  AMBROSE BIERCE

  Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father—an act which made a deep impression on me at the time. This was before my marriage, while I was living with my parents in Wisconsin. My father and I were in the library of our
home, dividing the proceeds of a burglary which we had committed that night. These consisted of household goods mostly, and the task of equitable division was difficult. We got on very well with the napkins, towels and such things, and the silverware was parted pretty nearly equally, but you can see for yourself that when you try to divide a single music-box by two without a remainder you will have trouble. It was that music-box which brought disaster and disgrace upon our family. If we had left it my poor father might now be alive.

  It was a most exquisite and beautiful piece of workmanship—inlaid with costly woods and carven very curiously. It would not only play a great variety of tunes, but would whistle like a quail, bark like a dog, crow every morning at daylight whether it was wound up or not, and break the Ten Commandments. It was this last-mentioned accomplishment that won my father's heart and caused him to commit the only dishonourable act of his life, though possibly he would have committed more if he had been spared: he tried to conceal that music-box from me, and declared upon his honour that he had not taken it, though I knew very well that, so far as he was concerned, the burglary had been undertaken chiefly for the purpose of obtaining it.

  My father had the music-box hidden under his cloak; we had worn cloaks by way of disguise. He had solemnly assured me that he did not take it. I knew that he did, and knew something of which he was evidently ignorant; namely, that the box would crow at daylight and betray him if I could prolong the division of profits till that time. All occurred as I wished: as the gaslight began to pale in the library and the shape of the window was seen dimly behind the curtains, a long cock-a-doodle-doo came from beneath the old gentleman's cloak, followed by a few bars of an aria from Tannhäuser, ending with a loud click. A small hand-axe, which we had used to break into the unlucky house, lay between us on the table; I picked it up. The old man seeing that further concealment was useless took the box from under his cloak and set it on the table. 'Cut it in two if you prefer that plan,' said he; 'I tried to save it from destruction.'