Revelation & Other Tales of Fantascience by Albert E. Cowdrey & Albert E. Cowdrey

Author:Albert E. Cowdrey & Albert E. Cowdrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2021-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

All aboard Mark Twain’s riverboat as we head into a world that’s gone with the wind for a tale of guilt and...redemption? Well, yes and no.

THE OVERSEER

THOUGH APPROPRIATELY RUNDOWN, Nicholas Lerner’s big house on Exposition Boulevard in uptown New Orleans was not haunted. The same could not be said of its owner.

That spring morning in 1903 the old man was getting ready for the day. Or rather, Morse was making him ready.

“So, Mr. Nick,” murmured the valet, applying shaving soap to his employer’s face with an ivory-handled brush, “are you writing a book?”

Damn him, thought Lerner. He knows I detest conversation with a razor at my throat.

“My memoirs,” he muttered. “A few jottings only. Waiting to die is such a bore, I write to pass the time.”

Was that the real reason he’d become a late-blooming scribbler—mere boredom? Most of his life had been devoted to hiding the truth, not revealing it. And yet now....

“I think you must be writing secrets,” smiled Morse, piloting the blade beneath his left ear. “The way you lock your papers in the safe at night.”

“I lock them up,” Lerner snapped, getting soap in his mouth, “because they are private.”

And had better remain so, he thought wryly. The other memorabilia in his small safe—an ancient, rusted Colt revolver; a bill from a Natchez midwife; a forty-year-old spelling book; a faded telegram saying RELIABLE MAN WILL MEET YOU RR LANDING STOP—would mean nothing to any living person.

Then why should he write the story out, give evidence against himself? It seemed to make no sense. And yet, having started, somehow he couldn’t stop.

Humming an old ballad called “Among My Souvenirs”, he pondered the problem but reached no conclusion. He closed his eyes and dozed, only to wake suddenly when Morse asked, “Who is Monsieur Felix?”

Lerner heard his own voice quaver as he replied, “Someone I...knew, long ago. Where did you hear of him?”

“Last night, after you took your medicine, you spoke his name over and over in your sleep.”

“Then I must have seen him in a dream.”

Shrewd comment. Morse knew that the opium he obtained for the old man caused intense dreams, and would ask no more questions.

Without further comment he burnished his employer’s face with a hot towel, combed his hair, and neatly pinned up his empty left sleeve. He removed the sheet that protected Lerner’s costly, old-fashioned Prince Albert suit from spatter, and bore all the shaving gear through the door to the adjoining den and out into the hall. Remotely, Lerner heard Morse’s voice—now raised imperiously—issuing orders to the housemaid and the cook.

Good boy! thought Lerner, checking his image in a long, dusky pier glass. Make ’em jump!

He was rubbing his smooth upper lip to make sure no bristles had been left, when suddenly he leaned forward, staring. Then, with startling energy, his one big hand whirled his chair around.

Of course nobody was standing behind him. A trick of his old eyes and the brown shadows of his bed chamber with its single door, its barred and ever-darkened window.

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