New Supernatural Stories

By Lionel Fanthorpe and Patricia Fanthorpe

Fear, Stark gripping, unreasonable fear is one of the primitive, basic human emotions. Fear. It distorts the mind, destroys the soul, paralyses the body. Fear? What makes men afraid? Darkness . . . death . . . hideous monstosites . . .weird supernatural beings . . . what makes you afraid? Why are we drawn towards the things that terrify us? Horror pulls humanity like a magnet.

Involved in the ghost story we cannot put down, we wish the lights were brighter. We long for morning. Was that a footstep? Is that a face peering over your shoulder? What did you see then out of the corner of your eye disappearing just beyond the edge of reality?

If you enjoy weird fantasy you must read NEW SUPERNATURAL STORIES containing fifteen nerve-chilling original stories by leading supernatural authors LIonel and Patricia Fanthorpe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PS Publishing
• Release date: Jul 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781786369796

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FOREWORD

BRITAIN’S LAST PULP WRITER

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THE FIRM OF John Spencer & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. was founded in 1947 by Samuel Assael (1920–98) and his business partner, Maurice Nahum (1916–94).

One of numerous so-called mushroom publishers that sprang up in Britain following the relaxation of paper rationing after the end of World War II, the company started out producing one-off pulp-style magazines with titles such as Ace Western (1949), Crime Confessions (1948), Phantom Detective Cases (1948) and Thrilling Western (1948), with most of the contents written by the ubiquitous Norman Wesley Firth and John F. Wyatt, who were credited under a variety of pseudonyms.

This became a model that the publisher would adopt for much of the next two decades.

These early genre magazines were followed in the early 1950s by the launch of four pocket-sized science fiction magazines: Futuristic Science Stories (1950–58), Tales of Tomorrow (1950–54), Worlds of Fantasy (1950–54) and Wonders of the Spaceways (1951–54).

With juvenile cover artwork by Gerald Facey, Norman Light, Ray Theobald and other artists who were probably paid a pittance for their work, the stories were written to order by a group of freelance writers, who usually received a flat rate of ten (or sometimes fifteen) shillings per 1,000 words. The pseudonymous credits in the John Spencer SF titles hid the identities of a number of now mostly-forgotten authors, including the aforementioned John F. Wyatt and Norman A. Lazenby (who both wrote under the house name Hamilton Donne), along with early fiction by such emerging talents as Sydney J. Bounds, John S. Glasby and E.C. Tubb.

In 1954, with the popularity of pulp magazines beginning to wane, John Spencer & Co. moved into paperback publishing with a number of imprints, of which Badger Books is probably the best known.

Run on a shoestring budget from a spare room in a second-hand West London clothes shop at 24 Shepherd’s Bush Road, Samuel Assael and Maurice Nahum oversaw all aspects of the day-to-day publishing and wholesale bookselling business with a staff of just three young employees—one to help Nahum with the accounts and the other two packing books.

Although Badger Books began publishing Westerns, war, gangster, romance, foreign legion and science fiction novels in pocket book format, it was the launch of two original magazine series devoted to weird fiction that would shape the direction of the company over the following decade.

Although Out of This World (1954–55) only lasted for two issues, the company had much more success with its other strange, weird, exciting title, Supernatural Stories, which was published from 1954 until 1967 and encompassed 108 volumes.

Co-edited by Assael and Nahum under the John S. Manning pseudonym and saddled with another lurid cover painting by John Theobald, the series started out as a bi-monthly pocket magazine in May 1954, with the first eight volumes consisting almost entirely of fiction written by John S. (Stephen) Glasby under such pseudonyms as A.J. Merek, Ray Cosmic, Randall Conway, Michael Hamilton and Max Chartair.

When John Spencer & Co. decided to move Glasby away to some of their better-selling genre lines in 1955, the publisher approached E. (Edwin) C. (Charles) Tubb, a rising star in science fiction who was already working for Spencer’s line of Western novels, to write an entire volume of Supernatural Stories.

After almost two year’s hiatus, the series returned with a ninth edition in the spring of 1957, containing six stories all written by Tubb under various pen-names to protect his appearance in other, higher-paying markets. However, that was to be his only volume, as the author had already turned down Spencer’s offer so that he could concentrate on his SF work for other publishers.

By now, John Spencer & Co. had relocated to a small office at 131 Brackenbury Road, Hammersmith, London W6, and the distinctive Badger Books logo now adorned the top left-hand corner of Supernatural Stories, which had now been transformed into a paperback anthology series.

The indefatigable John Glasby returned for the next two volumes in the series, and then Badger found the author who would come to define the imprint for the remainder of its existence.

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Robert Lionel Fanthorpe was born in Dereham, Norfolk, on February 9, 1935.

As a boy, discovering books by H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne and others in the school library led to a lifelong fascination with all things paranormal and Fortean.

From reading the fictional paranormal, I started wondering whether equally intriguing mysteries existed in what we laughingly think of as ‘reality’, he recalls. We live in a very strange universe and the more we investigate, the more we know that we don’t know!

Lionel left school at the age of fifteen and, after working as a journalist for a local newspaper, he made his literary debut for John Spencer & Co. two years later with stories in their pocket-sized science fiction magazines Futuristic Science Stories and Worlds of Fantasy.

He had also already had a couple of stories published in the second volume of Supernatural Stories (including the cover tale, ‘The Incredulist’), and was a natural choice to take over writing the series after E.C. Tubb turned the job down.

The first all-Fanthorpe edition of Supernatural Stories was No.12 (October, 1957), which featured five stories published under his usual R.L. Fanthorpe byline, along with the pseudonyms Pel Torro, Lionel Roberts, Leon Brett and Trebor Thorpe.

The series had also received a boost the previous volume with the introduction of the enigmatic H. (Henry) Fox as cover artist. Although Ray Theobold would continue to contribute covers into the early 1960s, Fox (along with the equally mysterious D. Rainey) would eventually become almost as closely associated with Supernatural Stories as Fanthorpe himself.

Following Lionel’s marriage to Patricia Alice Tooke on September 7, 1957, they began collaborating on the books, with Patricia also eventually becoming his agent, manager and business partner.

Since we met in the mid-1950s we have always been loving partners in everything we do, Lionel explains, "and her involvement in our books began with her vital encouragement when I had writer’s block and the publishers were waiting.

Patricia would do research, suggest new ideas and provide very helpful, positive criticism, he recalls. Her eye for detail and accurate continuity is much better than mine and when she analyses a piece that I’ve written, I can see clearly what improvements and modifications are needed. If we can use the analogy of a factory producing goods, I’m the machinist and Patricia is the quality control inspector.

The way Badger Books worked was that the company would acquire the cover artwork before a book was written. Sometimes this art was obtained from other sources (such as publishers Ace or Avon in America) and had already been used to illustrate a completely different book. They would then send the art and a sample blurb to the author, whose job was to quickly come up with a list of alternate titles, a brief cover blurb and copy introduction to fit the illustration. Badger would then decide on a combination they liked—often apparently at random—and once the synopsis had been accepted, the author would have somewhere between three days and a week to turn it into a 160-page book of short stories or a 45,000-word novel.

Lionel’s preferred method of writing was to cover himself with a blanket to focus his concentration and, with the help of a well-thumbed thesaurus, dictate his story directly onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder. This would then go off to a pool of four or five audio-typists (including Patricia, Lionel’s mother and various family members and friends) for transcription. Once he was close to his specified word-limit, he would bring the story to a hasty conclusion.

There were occasions when we had hilarious fun, he remembers. One of the audio-typing gang would ring and say, ‘Did you know that last reel made twenty-nine pages, so we’re on page 154 already?’. Standard Badger length was 158 pages. It meant I had heroes on the far side of the galaxy in a crippled ship, surrounded by hideous, aggressive aliens...and three pages in which to bring them home. That accounted for more than a few of the infamous ‘with-a-single-bound-he-was-free’ endings.

Lionel also got to compose his own cover blurbs and, as a bit of fun, would often cover himself in praise, once notably comparing his own work to that of Poe, Blackwood and Lovecraft!

Lionel and Patricia also managed to write themselves into some of the tales in Supernatural Stories, plus a few of the novels—as sceptical newspaperman-turned-psychic investigator Val Stearman and his wife, the mysterious La Noire (who may be thousands of years old, but doesn’t look it). Beginning with ‘The Seance’ in Supernatural Stories No.14 (February, 1958), most of these tales appeared under the Bron Fane alias.

The speed at which all the stories and novels were churned out for Badger resulted in a stream-of-consciousness prose style that is probably unique in British pulp fiction—Lionel would often draw upon philosophical or pseudo-scientific discussions to pad out the background to his hurriedly-constructed yarns in order to reach the required length. As a result, you will often find a delirious mixture of history, religion, the paranormal and ancient mythology all wrapped up together with extensive research information or long theoretical dissertations in a single story—not to mention the occasional plot device blatantly lifted from the collected works of Shakespeare, Homer or Chaucer.

However, as befitting someone who was ordained as an Anglican priest in the Church in Wales in 1987 and is a minister of the Universal Life Church, good always triumphed over evil in the end.

Some of those early books might be best described as an exploration of the limits of the preposterous, admits the author. "Just how many Roget synonyms can be squeezed into a paragraph without exciting the attention of the publisher?

With experience came fascinating new ways to pad things out: long monosyllabic conversations with one word on each new line; didactic technical or philosophical passages when I couldn’t think of anything else to do with two characters except have them talk to each other while stuck in an elevator.

It’s very easy to make fun of Lionel Fanthorpe’s prose from today’s point of view. In fact, there’s a book that is almost entirely dedicated to doing just that—Debbie Cross’ Down the Badger Hole: R. Lionel Fanthorpe: The Badger Years (Wrigley-Cross Books, 1995), which was good-naturedly compiled with the co-operation of the subject himself.

Of course, it’s not difficult to quote from almost any of his genre books from sixty years ago and come up with such deathless snippets as these two from Supernatural Stories No.53 (January, 1962):

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The darkness all around him was thick, black, stygian. It was a stifling, overwhelming, suffocating darkness. A horrifying terrifying darkness. A darkness of the nethermost pit of hell. Indescribable. It seemed like an oppressive darkness, like the darkness of some foul underground dungeon, to which the blessed light of the sun never gained access. It was velvety; almost tactile. He was inhaling it; it was penetrating the pores of his skin; it seemed that the world had always been darkness, that the world always would be darkness. It was a timeless darkness, a weird, horrifying, overwhelming eternal darkness. He felt as though this was the darkness of a tomb, and that he had been buried alive...

—‘Fly, Witch, Fly’, as by Leo Brett

and...

The grey voice of the grey Seaforth glided greyly on to their ears, like a tide of putrescent grey molasses.

—‘The Room with the Broken Floor’, as by Pel Torro

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And there are plenty more where those came from! However, I think that the author’s critics and detractors are missing the point.

As Mike Ashley observed in his groundbreaking ‘Index and Annotated Commentary to the John Spencer Fantasy Publications (1950–66)’ in the first issue of Fantasy Readers Guide (1979): Fanthorpe treated the whole operation somewhat tongue-in-cheek. He knew that Spencer’s seldom, if ever, read the stories, and so he frequently included the most preposterous of in-jokes and created the most unlikely people. All his characters were stereotyped, and stories were packed with padding.

In October 1958 the frequency of Supernatural Stories changed from bi-monthly to monthly for a while, although by the mid-1960s the publication schedule was all over the place. From No.29 onwards, Badger Books also started including an occasional full-length novel as part of the series under the Supernatural Special banner.

With sales beginning to tail off, Supernatural Stories finally ceased publication in the summer of 1967, with the final two volumes exclusively written by John S. Glasby. For one of his final stories in the series, ‘Curse of the Khan’ (in volume No.105, Autumn 1966), Lionel wrote many of his pseudonyms into the story as characters opposing the supernatural creations of an immortal entity that had once been Genghis Khan. 

Of the 108 volumes of Supernatural Stories that appeared, four were confusingly called Out of This World (the same as John Spencer & Co.’s short-lived companion title), and although the numbering goes up to 109, it would appear that volume 108 was never published!

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Lionel Fanthorpe contributed numerous titles to the whole range of John Spencer’s genre lines—especially the science fiction novel series. Although often credited under his own name, his work also appeared under such shared house names as Victor La Salle, John E. Muller and Karl Zeigfreid, or a bewildering array of exclusive pen-names that included Lee Barton, Thornton Bell, Leo Brett, Bron Fane, Lionel Roberts, Pel Torro and Olaf Trent, amongst many others.

In fact, the exact number of titles Lionel wrote for Badger Books in between various other jobs (including working as a full-time journalist and, later, as a school teacher) is not known—even by the author! The best estimates range somewhere between 160 and 200 titles. According to one source, Lionel wrote nearly ninety books for John Spencer & Co. during a three-year period between 1961 and 1963, which would work out at an average of a 158-page volume every twelve days!

The Badger bubble more or less dissolved in the 1960s, recalls Lionel, but we greatly enjoyed turning out vast numbers of horror, fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories for them.

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All of which brings us to this present volume...

I hope that the above has given you a better understanding of just how and when those original books were created, and I think you’ll agree that far from being dismissed as a hack science fiction and horror writer (which has been the popular perception for far too long), Lionel Fanthorpe’s literary achievements are not only remarkable, but also make him one of the most successful genre pulp authors in British literature!

Which is why it is such a pleasure to present this collection of New Supernatural Stories, containing fifteen original collaborations written in the unique tradition of Lionel and Patricia’s work for Badger Books all those years ago.

Within these pages you will discover new stories featuring vampires, zombies, were-beasts, demons, ghosts, witches, warlocks, wizards and many other kinds of paranormal creatures, all infused with a heady mixture of monsters, magic, mythology and musings, told in that classic stream-of-consciousness style by authors disciplined at hitting a designated word-length within a given deadline.

It can truly be said that they just don’t write them like this anymore!

Two other points about this current collection: If you are lucky enough to own one of the limited hardcover editions from PS Publishing, then you should know that Lionel signed it with his greatly cherished Parker 51 fountain pen, which he bought back in 1951 when they first came out. It cost him around £6.00 in those days, which was a week’s wages!

Secondly, as mentioned above, Lionel Fanthorpe sold his first short stories to John Spencer & Co.’s pocket science fiction magazines Futuristic Science Stories and Worlds of Fantasy in 1952. That means that, with this book, he celebrates exactly seventy years in print!

There are not too many authors who can claim that kind of longevity—in any genre.

—Stephen Jones

London, England

December, 2021

INTRODUCTION

THE UNIVERSE WE live in is a strange, weird and eerie place, and this collection of New Supernatural Stories spotlights some of the bizarre entities that allegedly share it with us.

It might be asked whether the ideas of vodyanoys, shape-shifters, demons and genies would have occurred in fiction if there had not been any glimpses of them in reality.

Each of our stories here focuses on a different paranormal being with its own peculiar characteristics. These mysterious creatures range from vampires, yetis, poltergeists and were-beasts to ghosts, mermaids, witches and warlocks.

We married in 1957, and have worked together on everything we have written since then. As a professional journalist on the staff of The Norfolk Chronicle back in the 1950s, Lionel tends to be the one who handles the mechanical side of actually producing the writing, while Patricia generates the ideas and checks the details meticulously.

In addition to writing supernatural fiction—novels as well as short stories—we have also worked as psychic investigators for many years, and examined several of the world’s most intriguing unsolved mysteries at first-hand. We have then written up our findings.

These have ranged from the Creeping Coffins of Barbados and the Treasure Pit on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, to the village of Rennes-le-Château, in Southern France, with its mysterious priest, Father Bérenger Saunière.

As a schoolboy, Lionel greatly enjoyed reading Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and his first attempt to sell anything was a poem that began: I must go back into space again...The publisher sent it back with a note saying they didn’t do poetry, but would be happy to see a novel or short story. Consequently, he sold his first two short stories, ‘Worlds Without End’ and ‘Discovery’, to John Spencer & Co.’s Futuristic Science Stories series in 1952.

Writing paperbacks in those days often meant that John Spencer would send a rough sketch of the proposed cover, and ask us for a selection of titles and blurbs, plus the back cover introduction to the book. They would then make their selection and say they wanted the completed manuscript within seven days. Lionel would often dictate the stories using an old-style reel-to-reel tape recorder—which is now preserved in his archive in the Cardiff Metropolitan University Library at 200 Western Avenue in Cardiff, Wales.

We would have loved the opportunity to proof-read the books, but never got the typescripts back to work on.

—Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

Cardiff, Wales

July, 2021

THE TRAIL OF THE WEREBEAST

A drawing of a warrior holding a sword Description automatically generated

BRIAN AND SOPHIE Carruthers were looking carefully at the tourist map of North Wales and especially at the Colwyn Bay area.

There’s a remote chance of finding a Ley’s whitebeam in Wyrddach Forest, said Brian hopefully. They’re incredibly rare now, and I’d love to get a photograph of one and include it in my next article in one of the nature magazines.

Do you really think there might be any in Wyrddach? asked Sophie. They are one of Wales’ rarest trees.

It’s very remote, said Brian, which increases the chance of finding a whitebeam.

Sophie put a finger on the tourist map. This Bwystfil Castle Hotel is very close to the edge of Wyrddach.

Let’s give it a try, said Brian, and picked up the phone. Do we want an inside room or one of their chalets? he asked over his shoulder.

Chalet would be best, said Sophie.

Brian completed the booking, and they packed their bags and set off for Colwyn Bay and the Bwystfil Castle Hotel. It was a long journey, and as they grew closer to the hotel, the edge of Wyrddach Forest gave an impression of remote wildness.

What must it have been like here in Medieval times? asked Sophie.

What might have lived in Wyrddach then, pondered Brian. Wolves, bears, lynxes...

The people would have needed Bwystfil as a safe refuge from the wild animals in those days, said Sophie. She paused thoughtfully. Maybe that was why they built it.

They reached the hotel, booked in, and took the keys to chalet 14. It was possible to get their car very close to the chalet and on to the demarcated parking space. The interior was well designed and pleasantly decorated.

They unpacked, made a cup of tea, and then went out to explore the nearest parts of Wyrddach Forest before sunset.

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The hotel guide said that evening meals were served from 7:00 p.m. until 9:00, and it was 7:30 when they arrived at the big, oak-panelled dining room. There was an excellent menu, and by the time they had reached the coffee and liqueur stage they felt that the Bwystfil Castle Hotel had been a good choice.

As they walked slowly back to chalet 14, Sophie paused. You often say I’m sensitive to atmosphere, don’t you?

Very definitely, said Brian. Sometimes, it’s almost as if you’re telepathic, and picking up people’s thoughts and feelings.

That certainly happens between us, she said warmly. I really can feel your love, and it’s wonderful. But I’ve been getting very strong negative impressions from the hotel proprietor, very adverse impressions indeed. I think he’s a bullying tyrant to his staff, and that poor little girl, Zella, who was our waitress tonight, she’s terrified of him.

Did you notice his full name on the alcohol licence on the wall? asked Brian.

Yes, I’ve never seen a name like it. She tried hard to remember it. I think it was something like Perry...or Peryglus in full...

That’s as I recall it, said Brian.

As soon as they were back in their chalet, he switched on his laptop. Got it! he said after a few moments. "That’s weird! Peryglus is Welsh for dangerous. Brian used the search engine again. The surname Siarc is just as bad—it’s Welsh for shark."

Dangerous shark, said Sophie meaningfully. Only a singularly dangerous character, proud of his own evil, would choose an alias like that.

Suddenly there was a faint, distant roaring sound coming from the depths of the Wyrddach Forest.

Can you hear that? said Sophie quietly. Something’s growling in the distance. It seems to be deep in the forest.

I shouldn’t think there are any bears there now, said Brian. He paused thoughtfully. Sophie’s hobby was shooting, and she was an international competitor. Did you bring your kit? he asked.

You know I never go anywhere without it, she chuckled.

There was another distant roaring sound.

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They made sure that the door was properly secured. Sophie double-checked her .44 magnum and laid it on the bedside cabinet. Brian looked at it admiringly.

That should stop anything, he said approvingly.

They slept well, although once or twice in the night they thought they heard the strange, distant growling sounds from the Wyrddach Forest.

They made their morning tea in the chalet, and then walked back to the big oak-panelled dining room for breakfast.

The food was of the same high standard as the previous night’s dinner, and they both felt ready to start their search for the elusive whitebeam tree.

Almost half a mile in from the forest’s edge, they encountered an elderly mushroom gatherer. His basket was half-full of inkcaps, porcini and bolete, and he looked up from his picking with a smile.

Good morning, are you after mushrooms too?

No, we’re trying to find a whitebeam, said Brian. He patted his camera. I want to get a photograph of it, if there is one. They’re very rare, so I’m not too optimistic.

There’s a legend about those beautiful whitebeams, said the old mushroom-picker. Some people think that they contain cherubs and angels who have been doing good on the Earth, and are resting in the whitebeams on their way back to Heaven. He paused and his voice changed a little, as if he was hesitating about whether to say what was on his mind. There are supposed to be other rare things in Wyrddach Forest, he continued. We’ve got legends in the village that go back to the Middle Ages. He laughed gently. That’s when I was a boy!

I love to hear legends, said Sophie. Would you have time to tell us some of them now?

Nothing I’d like more, said the mushroom-picker. This is a lonely job, and I enjoy company.

Brian and Sophie found a comfortable place to sit at the foot of a big sequoia, and the old mushroom-picker began:

I’m Caron Ceri, and I was born here in the village seventy-six years ago. I grew up here. We’re all like one big family, so the old people enjoy telling the legends to the youngsters. He paused thoughtfully. "It must be well over seventy years since I first heard these tales. I think the basic idea was to warn the children of the dangers here in Wyrddach Forest. The stories begin with the tale of a powerful magician—a man very much like King Arthur’s Merlin. It was said that he was attacked by outlaws as he walked through the forest, but they made a grave mistake in attacking such a man.

He called up a storm and lightning struck and killed many of them. He directed it like a huge sword in the sky. Others he killed by hurling thunderbolts at them. It tells in the legend of how the last of the outlaws fell to his knees and begged for mercy, and the magician said that because he had acted like an animal, he should become one—and that he would change from man to beast and back again as the moon changed. The magician laid what they called the ‘Curse of the Werebeast’ on him. The old mushroom picker paused. Well, the other legends are derived from that one. There were dangerous wild beasts in this forest for many centuries and, from time to time, people were killed by them. When a badly mauled body was found, it was said that the werebeast had done it. When strange sounds were heard in the forest, people would be afraid that the werebeast was looking for its next victim—and nobody would want to go amongst the trees. He paused again.

There were fearless huntsmen who went looking for the creature. One said that he had fired his musket at it, but it had had no effect, and he was lucky to escape with his life. Another of the villagers had been a professional soldier, a mercenary in Eastern Europe, before he retired. He said that people he had met over there had talked of werebeasts and said that silver would kill them—as it was said to kill vampires—but that he had never seen one killed. The old man got to his feet. I shall have to get back to my mushrooms now. It’s been very nice to meet you.

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Sophie and Brian walked deeper into Wyrddach Forest in search of a whitebeam. Three hours later, they were on the point of heading back to the Bwystfil Hotel for lunch, when Brian spotted one. He ran towards the tree and examined it in detail.

It really is, he said excitedly. It’s growing beautifully. He stood Sophie beside it for the first three shots and then continued photographing it from every angle.

Let me take one of you beside it, she said at last, and he passed the camera to her.

As they headed back to the hotel, talking excitedly about the article that Brian was planning to write, they suddenly heard a distant growling. They stood stock-still and looked at each other.

We both heard that, didn’t we? asked Sophie.

We certainly did, said Brian.

Could there possibly be any vestige of truth in those legends that Caron told us? asked Sophie. She patted the butt of her .44 magnum.

Remember what he said about the guy who used a musket on it a few centuries back?

Yes, agreed Sophie, and I also remember what he said about silver being effective—like it is in the vampire legends.

Let’s just suppose then, said Brian, that by a million-to-one chance, there is some truth behind those vampire and werebeast legends. Have we got any silver that we could use to tip the shells in your gun?

There’s the silver chain on that old necklace my grandmother left me, said Sophie. I rather like it...and I’m actually wearing it now...but I could easily take a couple of links out of it, and re-join it. She paused. It would still be quite wearable if it was a link or two shorter, and you’ve got a marvellous toolkit back in the car. It wouldn’t be a problem, and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

There came another distant growl from behind them, deep within the Wyrddach Forest.

Brian glanced at his watch. Let’s get back to the chalet and get those bullets done before we go to lunch, he said.

They eventually arrived back at their car, took out the extensive toolkit, and carried it into the cabin. Less than half an hour later, all six magnum rounds in Sophie’s gun had silver tips.

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They had got