The Case of the Curio Dealer

By William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. He began a four-year apprenticeship as a cabin boy in 1891. In 1899, he opened W. H. Hodgson s School of Physical Culture offering tailored exercise regimes for personal training. He wrote articles such as Physical Culture versus Recreative Exercises (1903). Hodgson turned his attention to fiction, publishing his first short story, The Goddess of Death (1904). In 1906 the American magazine The Monthly Story Magazine published From the Tideless Sea, the first of Hodgson s Sargasso Sea stories. His first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig , appeared in 1907. Amongst his other works are The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909), Carnacki: The Ghost Finder (1910) and The Night Land (1912).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781609771256

William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was a British author and poet best known for his works of macabre fiction. Early experience as a sailor gave resonance to his novels of the supernatural at sea, The Ghost Pirates and The Boats of the Glen-Carrig, but The House on the Borderland and The Night Land are often singled out for their powerful depiction of eerie, otherworldly horror. The author was a man of many parts, a public speaker, photographer and early advocate of bodybuilding. He was killed in action during the Battle of the Lys in the First World War.

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S.S. Iolanthe,

October 29.

I MET a rum sort of customer ashore in 'Frisco to-day. At least, I was the customer, and he, as a matter of fact, was the shopman. It was one of those Chinese curio shops, that have drifted down, somehow, near to the water front. By the look of him, he was half Chinaman, a quarter negro, and the other quarter badly mixed. But his English was quite good, considering.

You go to England, Cap'n? he asked me.

London Town, my lad, I told him. But you can't come. We don't carry passengers. Try higher up. There's a passenger packet ahead of my ship; you'll see her with the prettily painted funnel.

I not want to come, he explained. Then he came a step nearer to me, and spoke quieter, taking a look quickly to right and left; but there was no one else in the shop.

Want to send a blox home, Cap'n -- a big long blox. Long as you, Cap'n, he told me, almost in a whisper. How much you take him for? Send him down to-night, when dark?

Who've you been murdering now? I said, lighting a cigarette. I should try the bay, and have a good heavy stone or two in the sack. I'm not in the body-hiding line.

The man's yellow dusky face went quite grey, and his eyes set, for an instant, in a look of complete terror. Then some sense of comprehension came into them, and he smiled, in rather a pallid kind of way.

Yo mak-a joke, Cap'n, he said. I not murder any one. The blox contain a mummy, I have to consign to the town of London.

But I had seen the look on his face, when I let off my careless squib about the corpse; and I know when a man's badly frightened. Also, why did he not consign his box of mummy to London in the ordinary way; and why so anxious to send it aboard after dark? In short, there were quite a number of whys. Too many!

The man went to the door, and took a look out, up and down the street; then came away, and went to the inner door, which I presumed was his living-room. He drew back and shut the door gently; then took a walk round the backs of the counters, glancing under them. He came out, and walked once or