Devils' Spawn by Charles Birkin

Author:Charles Birkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2015-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

THE HARLEM HORROR

Michael Harwood walked quickly along the platform. All around him were people, pushing, jostling—making sure of getting their seats in the train. Yes—he could just do it. He ran the few steps to the sliding door, and stepped inside as they were closing. There was a moment’s pause, and then the train slithered into the black hole of the tunnel. Michael looked at the rows of tired faces of the passengers opposite him. Lord! how he hated the Underground. He opened his paper, and glanced at the headlines.

MYSTERY OF SCIENTIST’S DISAPPEARANCE

SIR JOHN TROWBRIDGE NOT YET FOUND

LADY TROWBRIDGE INCONSOLABLE

and then, lower in the column in angry black letters

WHAT ARE THE POLICE DOING?

He turned over the page. He remembered the case. It had filled the newspapers for the last week. Sir John Trowbridge—perhaps the most brilliant surgeon of the day—had walked out of his house some ten days previously, and had never since been seen.

Michael pondered what could have happened to him. Amnesia had been the popular theory. He turned the page . . .

ACTRESS ROBBED IN HYDE PARK

Michael looked up, the train was running into a station.

“Oxford Circus.”

Briskly he rose to his feet and hurriedly left the train. He was late, and anxious to get home.

Six months later Michael stood on the deck of the ss. Gigantic. He stood spellbound, gazing at the wonder that was New York’s skyline. The dream buildings shot up in arrogant splendour as if to probe the secrets of the sky itself. The towers of the most amazing city in the world, Michael thought, a city that in the last hundred and fifty years had sprung from a humble Colonial town. Yet a city with a black record of crime and mystery. Only recently the world had been horrified at a series of inexplicable disappearances of children from the crowded suburbs of New York. During the last three months no fewer than eight children had vanished; vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them, leaving no trace. In every instance they had been members of poor families—and had last been seen playing in the streets. The American police had done their best, no line of inquiry had been ignored, but nothing had been discovered. There had been a panic among the mothers of the districts, and a national outcry for some solution. Then, after a discreet interval, the matter had been dropped, and the disappearances had taken their place among the unsolved mysteries of recent years.

The morning promised great heat; for it was early July, and New York was experiencing one of its blazing summers.

And now Michael was to set foot in New York for the first time; the gangways were being put into position, the passengers were bustling to and fro in their eagerness to be the first ashore, and the liner was the scene of great activity. The docks were crowded with people meeting friends and relatives—handkerchiefs were fluttering—questions and answers were shouted eagerly by those on deck and those who waited for the moment when officialdom should permit passengers to leave the liner.

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