“Yes,” said Mike quickly, “Freddy’s dog saved your life. You see, your step-daughter would have kept trying.”
People drew in their breaths. “The buns are in your incinerator,” Mike said. “She guessed what happened to the dog, went for the buns, and hid them. She was late, you remember, getting to the disturbance. And she did lie.”
Chief Anderson rose.
“Her mother...” said Matlin frantically, “her mother...”
Mike Russell put his hand on the plump shoulder, “Her mother’s been in torment, tortured by the rivalry between you. Don’t you think her mother senses something wrong?”
Miss Lillian Dana wrapped Freddy in her arms. “Oh, what a wonderful dog Bones was!” She covered the sound of the other voices. “Even when he died, he saved a man’s life. Oh, Freddy, he was a wonderful dog.”
And Freddy, not quite taking everything in yet, was released to simple sorrow and wept quietly against his friend...
When they went to fetch May Matlin, she was not in the house. They found her in the Titus’s back shed. She seemed to be looking for something.
Next day, when Mr. and Mrs. Titus came home, they found that although the little dog had died, their Freddy was all right. The Judge, Russell, and Miss Dana told them all about it.
Mrs. Titus wept. Mr. Titus swore. He wrung Russell’s hand. “...for stealing the gun...” he babbled.
But the mother cried, “...for showing him, for teaching him.... Oh, Miss Dana, oh, my dear!”
The Judge waved from his veranda as the dark head and the blonde drove away.
“I think Miss Dana likes him,” said Ernie Allen.
“How do you know for sure?” said Freddy Titus.
The message in Charlotte Armstrong’s story is worth thinking over, worth your most earnest pondering. Mike Russell asked: What do they teach the kids these days? To turn away? Not to weep for the dead? To skip it? To think of something else? Not to seek the truth? But if we make our children realize how hard it is to discover the truth — that, in Mike Russell’s words, to find the truth is a skill, a technique, that it takes brains, watching, humility, and self examination — if we plant, nourish, cultivate that precious seed in our children s minds, then the world will soon be a far different world, and a better one.
Again, as in the past one hundred and ten years, the detective story points the way, teaches the lesson we must all learn in order to achieve peace on earth, good will toward man. Truth is justice, tolerance, and understanding — by the people, for the people, of the people — regardless of race, color, or creed. That, and that alone, is the secret of a United World — the hope, and the only hope, for a better tomorrow...
The Lord of Time
by Rafael Sabatini[1]
It took us nearly ten years to discover that Rafael Sabatini, one of the most famous historical novelists of our time, author of THE SEA-HAWK, SCARAMOUCHE, and the unforgettable CAPTAIN BLOOD, wrote a series of detective-crime short stories with historical backgrounds. These “turbulent tales” — of “scoundrel violence,” of deception, trickery, swindling, black-mail, treason, robbery, assault, bribery, and murder — offer not only a “compleat calendar of crime,” but also the “compleat criminal.” You will make the acquaintance, authentically costumed and ornamented, of as rich and redolent a collection of rogues as have ever practised their rascalities down through the ages. And each tale is plotted around an [apocryphal] incident in the life of such well-know figures in history as Michaelangelo, Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys (The Hanging Judge), and Casanova.
We plan to bring you at least six of these swashbuckling tales of “villainy unmask’d.” The first three concern Count Alessandro Cagliostro, the 18th Century alchemist, who did an astonishing business in elixirs of youth, love-philtres, magical concoctions which transformed the ugliest ducklings into court beauties, and all manner of cure-alls and panaceas — to say nothing of being able to manufacture diamonds and rubies and 24-carat gold ingots at will, in any size or quantity...
It was Cagliostro’s queer arresting gesture before the crucifix in the great square that supplied the decisive spur to the wishes of the Cardinal-Prince Louis de Rohan.
From the moment of his entrance into Strasbourg, in his gilded rococo coach, drawn by six cream-coloured ponies, Count Cagliostro had been the focus of attention in the town, even before he had afforded evidence of his miraculous powers.
Without fee or guerdon he cured diseases which ordinary doctors had pronounced beyond human relief. As a result, and very soon, the house in which he lodged was besieged from early morning to late evening by the crowds that thronged to implore his aid or to gratify in some degree the extraordinary curiosity he excited. The fame of him ran, like a ripple over water, through Alsace. His power to expel disease was accounted superhuman and was almost the least of the superhuman attributes discovered in him. He was credited with possessing the secret of the fixation of mercury and the transmutation of metals; precious stones composed themselves under his hands from the commonest elements; he could restore youth to the aged, and he was actually master of an elixir of life itself; he possessed gifts of prophecy and clairvoyance, and he could read thoughts as easily as another might detect the signs of emotion on a countenance; to such extraordinary lengths did he carry the art with which Mesmer had lately astonished the world that he was said to have the power of controlling the very souls of men, and that he rendered manifest how far was Mesmer from understanding the application of those forces upon the wells of which he had more or less accidentally blundered. In short, this Count Cagliostro, coming no man knew whence, was being pronounced divine.
That great aristocrat, that noble Maecenas, the Cardinal-Prince de Rohan, who was more royal than the King, for in his veins ran the blood of every house that had ever given kings to France, heard of these marvels, and was moved to desire a nearer acquaintance with them. All his life a passionate student of alchemy, botany, astrology and the occult in general, the Cardinal brought to the study of the supernatural the open-mindedness of a credulous person. It seemed to him that if Cagliostro were indeed sincere, and not merely a charlatan, like so many in France just then, he might bring to real fruition pursuits which His Eminence had hitherto found vexatiously elusive in results. And then came the report of those queer words in the square to quicken this desire.
Count Cagliostro had gone forth one evening to take the air, followed at a respectful distance by his servant, the slight, dark, pallid fellow who bore the curious name of Abdon. The Count’s appearance was that of a man in the prime of life, between thirty and forty. Of middle height, his frame was thick-set and vigorous, and he carried his big coarsely handsome head with an air of majesty on his powerful neck. He was dressed with an ostentation that in itself took the eye. His blue silk coat was laced in gold along the seams, with the sword worn through the pocket; his red-heeled shoes were fastened with buckles of precious stones; brilliants flashed in the billows of lace at his throat; rubies attached his solitaire and glowed in the buckle that held the white plumes in his hat à la mousquetaire. It has been testified by practically all who knew him, and who have left records, that few could support the direct gaze of his full, bold, dark, uncanny eyes.