“Is that all?” he asked, with a deadly attempt at casualness.
Then the boy gave tongue, with a voice so shrill and terrible that it seemed to pierce the ear-drums.
“That’s all!” he screamed. “I tell you that’s all. I didn’t dream nothing more! Nothing at all!”
The eyes glared. The jaw was so rigid that the words came through with the effect of ventriloquy.
For the first time in the encounter Mr. Dofferty’s intellectual interest was aroused. He forgot his anger with the boy and his shame of himself. He was conscious only of an exceeding curiosity. What more was it the boy had dreamed, the terror of which made him a gibbering idiot?
What on earth could it be?
“Listen, Albert,” he said coaxingly. “Don’t be frightened. I know you dreamed something more. I’d like to know what it was. Won’t you tell me?”
“Nothing more! I didn’t dream nothing more!” The boy stamped his feet.
“I assure you, you’re going to tell me!” Mr. Dofferty said. “You might as well tell me now, as later.”
He was not going to have the struggle start all over again. He was feeling completely worn out. He got down from the table. The cane had fallen to the floor. He reached down and lifted it. He swished it through the air. “Won’t you tell me, Albert?” he asked once again.
The boy said nothing.
Then the man’s patience snapped. The cane went hissing into the air and came screaming down again. He did not know where it landed, on the boy’s hands, body, or face.
The boy did not know, either. He knew nothing more excepting that the whole world was a blackness with a great wind roaring in it. Then, at last, the wind ceased roaring and there was light in the world again. He became aware that he was in the sanctum of Mr. Dofferty, his headmaster. He became aware of Mr. Dofferty’s body extended interminably between his own legs and the legs of the table. The Malay kris that Mr. Dofferty used as a paper-knife stuck out from between his ribs.
The boy leaned forward, pointing towards the ivory handle, where the blood gushed above the blade.
“That’s what I dreamed!” his lips went. “That’s what I dreamed!”
Now that you have finished Louis Golding’s “Pale Blue Nightgown,” we hope you agree with us that it is one of the most remarkable short stories you have ever read...
The story first appeared in book form in a limited edition of only 64 copies — 60 for public sale and 4 probably retained by the publisher, Lord Carlow, whose Corvinus Press of London issued the slim volume in October 1936. In this edition (one of the truly rare first editions among modern English books) the story is followed by a Postscript, specially written by the author. Mr. Golding’s postscript is so fascinating, and throws such a brilliant light on the conception of “Pale Blue Nightgown,” that we cannot refrain from quoting it in full.
“Several of my friends,” wrote Mr. Golding, “including Lord Carlow who printed this tale, have suggested that it might add to its interest if I concluded with, as a postscript, a brief note regarding its origin.
“I dreamed this tale, as I have dreamed tales before. I mean that I have dreamed events, in which I personally may, or may not, have been involved, and at a certain stage in the dreaming I have said to myself, ‘I will make a tale out of this dream. It ought to make a good tale.’
“Sometimes I have made the resolution after the dream was over, at the moment of awakening. But that is perhaps not unusual. The interest lies in the concurrence of the tale-making impulse with the dreaming of the events dreamed, while the dream mind was still unconscious of their denouement.
“I say that I have dreamed tales before and decided to write them. But I have never actually done so till now. For the fact was that they proved to be nonsense, as most dreams are, with no coherence in episode and character and with no finale, in any acceptable literary value.
“ ‘Pale Blue Nightgown’ was unlike them. The characters are as real to me now as they were when I dreamed them. The central situation still terrifies me as it terrified me the night it evolved between a bed-sheet and a pillow-case drenched with sweat. The denouement has as much ‘surprise’, in the formal O. Henry sense, as any tale I have composed in my waking moments.
“I remember two things in that night-dreaming, the appalling vividness of the events themselves, and my insistence throughout: ‘What a good story this will make.’ I think I was trying to comfort myself for my profound wretchedness. I was equally sorry for the poor small boy and the poor headmaster. My heart was wracked with pity for them.
“At the same time I was consumed with curiosity. ‘How,’ I asked myself, ‘is it going to end?’ The ending was as startling and terrifying to myself as it has been to my friends since, if I am to believe them.
“To sum up. On one level I was dreaming a dream, on another level my conscious literary mind was preoccupying itself with the dream as literary material. On still another level, one of the characters I was dreaming himself had dreamed a dream which gave the whole dream episode its motive power and its denouement.
“It is that superimposition of levels of consciousness which has seemed odd enough to absolve these words of postscript from the charge of impertinence. So I hope, at least.”
George Harmon Coxe
Invited Witness
From a strictly realistic viewpoint (and we do not mean the hard-boiled school), “Invited Witness” is one of the toughest tales George Harmon Coxe ever strait jacketed into less than 3,000 words.
“Speak your piece, Charlie, and quit stallin’.” Jack Wolfe leaned back in his chair and rolled a cigarette.
“I know what you want. I read that Sob Sister story in The Record. I’m a killer, eh? And you’re being big-hearted — gonna give me a chance to tell my side of the story maybe.”
Wolfe stuck the finished cigarette in one corner of his mouth, lighted it, and turned to face me.
For a moment or so I studied that thin, gray-eyed face with its pointed chin and almost lipless mouth. Then I could feel the flush that swept over my face. I dropped my eyes and picked at the brim of my dark hat.
I wasn’t prepared for a direct attack. I had hoped to get around to the subject in a more diplomatic manner. Now he had me where I couldn’t sidestep — not and get away with it.
“Something like that,” I mumbled. “This Varelli was a family man and—”
“Yeah. He was. Had a wife and two kids. He drove a Packard and they were starving. All they got was a monthly beating. And Varelli had only killed two men. The last one was a bank messenger — was shot four times. Four times, Charlie, and the kid never had a gun. Think it over. I suppose it would have been better if I’d let Varelli make it three. But then I wouldn’t be here to give you your story, would I, Charlie?”
Wolfe’s voice was bantering but there was no smile on his face.
I didn’t answer right away, couldn’t think of anything to say. Jack Wolfe was Special Investigator for the District Attorney and he had the reputation of getting things done. He had all kinds of authority to back him up. He was practically independent as an operative, responsible only to the D.A. Yet he could call on the police if he needed help.
This Varelli had been a rat, a murderer — anyone could tell you that. And Wolfe had done a good job in knocking him off. But he had, nevertheless, the unsavory reputation of a killer. Most people left the “e” off his name — labeled him The Wolf, and public sentiment was against him.