Black Cat Weekly #123

By Neil S. Plakcy, Mike Adamson, Marion Zimmer Bradley and 7 more

This issue, we have an original mystery from Mike Adamson, plus a recent tale by Neil S. Plakcy (courtesy of our Acquiring Editors). Classic mystery reprints come from Dale Clark and Edgar Wallace. Plus, of course, a solve-it-yourself puzzler by Hal Charles.

I broke out the Adventure category for Vera Shamarin, by William Murray Graydon. It’s an exciting tale of escape from Russia. Not really mystery, but perhaps more suspense, I thought it belonged in its own category. See if you agree.

It’s an all-classic lineup from our science fiction writers: Ted White & Marion Zimmer Bradley lead off, followed by Frank Belknap Long, Ivar Jorgenson, and Edmond Hamilton. Jack Sharkey’s short novel, “The Programmed People,” caps things off.

Here's the lineup:

Mysteries / Suspense:

“A Reliquary in Stone” by Mike Adamson [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
“The Letter of the Law” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]
“Oystery Creek” by Neil S. Plakcy [Barb Goffman Presents short story]
“A Knife in His Chest,” by Dale Clark [novelet]
Angel Esquire, by Edgar Wallace [novel]

Adventure:

Vera Shamarin, by William Murray Graydon [novel]

Science Fiction & Fantasy:

“Phoenix,” by Ted White and Marion Zimmer Bradley [short story]
“Little Men of Space,” by Frank Belknap Long [short story]
“Ozymandias,” by Ivar Jorgenson [short story]
“Sunfire!” by Edmond Hamilton [short story]
The Programmed People, by Jack Sharkey [short novel]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Cat Weekly
• Release date: Jan 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781667631141

Book preview

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

THE CAT’S MEOW

TEAM BLACK CAT

A RELIQUARY IN STONE, by Mike Adamson

THE LETTER OF THE LAW, by Hal Charles

OYSTER CREEK, by Neil S. Plakcy

A KNIFE IN HIS CHEST, by Dale Clark

ANGEL ESQUIRE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

VERA SHAMARIN, by William Murray Graydon

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

PHOENIX, by Ted White and Marion Zimmer Bradley

LITTLE MEN OF SPACE, by Frank Belknap Long

OZYMANDIAS, by Ivar Jorgenson

SUNFIRE! by Edmond Hamilton

grey THE PROGRAMMED PEOPLE, by Jack Sharkey

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2024 by Wildside Press LLC.

Published by Wildside Press, LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

*

A Reliquary in Stone is copyright © 2023 by Mike Adamson and appears here for the first time.

The Letter of the Law is copyright © 2022 by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

Oyster Creek is copyright © 2022 by Neil S. Plakcy. Originally published in Mystery Writers of America Presents: Crime Hits Home. Reprinted by permission of the author.

A Knife in His Chest, by Dale Clark, was originally published in Popular Detective, June 1943.

Angel Esquire, by Edgar Wallace, was originally published in 1908.

Vera Shamarin, by William Murray Graydon, was originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, October 1891.

Phoenix, by Ted White and Marion Zimmer Bradley, was originally published in Amazing Stories, February 1963.

Little Men of Space, by Frank Belknap Long, was originally published in Fantastic Universe, June-July 1953. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

Ozymandias, by Ivar Jorgenson, was originally published in Infinity, November 1958.

Sunfire! by Edmond Hamilton, was originally published in Amazing Stories, September 1962.

The Programmed People, by Jack Sharkey, was originally published in Amazing Stories, June and July 1963.

THE CAT’S MEOW

Welcome to Black Cat Weekly.

Happy 2024!

A new year is always exciting here. With the turning of the calendar, we enter a whole new era of public domain work. Mickey Mouse, as you’ve no doubt heard, has entered the public domain with his 1928 rendition. Already comics artists and film makers are planning new adventures…though oddly enough, they seem to be skewing toward the horror genre, as they did with Winnie the Pooh last year. Not really appealing to me as a viewer, but fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say.

For us, in means a lot more classic mysteries are suddenly available here, and as we take stock of what’s what, you can bet we will be offering a nice selection in coming months.

This issue, we have an original mystery from Mike Adamson, plus a recent tale by Neil S. Plakcy (courtesy of our Acquiring Editors). Classic mystery reprints come from Dale Clark and Edgar Wallace. Plus, of course, a solve-it-yourself puzzler by Hal Charles.

I broke out the Adventure category for Vera Shamarin, by William Murray Graydon. It’s an exciting tale of escape from Russia. Not really mystery, but perhaps more suspense, I thought it belonged in its own category. See if you agree.

It’s an all-classic lineup from our science fiction writers: Ted White & Marion Zimmer Bradley lead off, followed by Frank Belknap Long, Ivar Jorgenson, and Edmond Hamilton. Jack Sharkey’s short novel, The Programmed People, caps things off.

Mysteries & Suspense:

A Reliquary in Stone, by Mike Adamson [Michael Bracken Presents short story]

The Letter of the Law, by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]

Oyster Creek, by Neil S. Plakcy [Barb Goffman Presents short story]

A Knife in His Chest, by Dale Clark [novelet]

Angel Esquire, by Edgar Wallace [novel]

Adventure:

Vera Shamarin, by William Murray Graydon [novel]

Science Fiction & Fantasy:

Phoenix, by Ted White and Marion Zimmer Bradley [short story]

Little Men of Space, by Frank Belknap Long [short story]

Ozymandias, by Ivar Jorgenson [short story]

Sunfire! by Edmond Hamilton [short story]

The Programmed People, by Jack Sharkey [short novel]

Until next time, happy reading!

—John Betancourt

Editor, Black Cat Weekly

TEAM BLACK CAT

EDITOR

John Betancourt

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Barb Goffman

Michael Bracken

Paul Di Filippo

Darrell Schweitzer

Cynthia M. Ward

PRODUCTION

Sam Hogan

Enid North

Karl Wurf

A RELIQUARY IN STONE,

by Mike Adamson

Some cases underline the way the things people believe interact with the facts before them and cast events in a light beneficial to a select few. This mechanism can often be found at work, especially when matters take some difficulty in explaining, and as a detective, I have encountered it from time to time—more so, indeed, since my retirement to Dorset, when I was invalided out of Scotland Yard following the Ripper riots of ’88.

One evening in the May of 1890, I received a telegram. A messenger from the post office in Winslow bicycled the mile to my home of Winterbourne Priory to deliver it, and awaited a reply, which I promptly sent. I had not heard from retired Inspector Rupert Collins—a colleague from my Yard days—since his own departure from London before the grim days of Jolly Jack to pass his later years in the quaint seaside town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset-Devon border. I was sorry to hear he was unwell and intrigued that he wished to see me on some matter he felt would be of interest. I replied, care of the Lyme Regis Hospital on Pound Road, that I would visit him on the morrow, and at once consulted my schedule for the London and South-Western Railway.

I asked the lad to convey another message for me, as I would need to hire a pony trap and driver from the livery stable in town to drive me to Moreton, where I would catch the through train westward to Dorchester and Yeovil. There, I would change trains for Crewkerne and alight at Axminster, from whence the horse-omnibus transported passengers the last five miles to Lyme Regis. One day there would be a rail service into the hill-backed sea town, but not yet.

As a detective, I had been trained to deal in facts and repudiate all else. I was not overly given to speculation, but I expected merely a pleasant couple of days visiting my old senior. Yet, as I packed a valise and set my alarm clock for an early start, I could not have imagined the turn events would take—or I would have also packed my service revolver.

* * * *

Inspector Collins had asthma; that was the long and the short of it. Too many raw nights in the corrosive fog of London and too many stones of tobacco in his years had left him weak-lunged, and while the sea air helped, the mists and fogs of late spring and early summer were often difficult for him. Stricken suddenly, he had been admitted to the hospital and was receiving nebuliser treatment several times a day, between which sessions he chafed at his confinement and ached for the pipe he had smoked habitually for so many years. His manservant, a tall, dour-faced chap named Skilling, was under doctor’s orders to permit no such thing.

I was admitted to his ward during afternoon visiting, and Skilling drew the curtains for a little privacy as he stepped back. I pulled up a chair and eyed the ruddy-faced chap in the bed, dressed in striped pyjamas, with a newspaper spread carelessly across his lap. He did not look at all well and was not the man I remembered, whose bark had kept a department moving. Time truly is the greatest foe.

Thank you for coming, George, was the breathy greeting, and he managed a firm enough shake of the hand. Bad business, this asthma, but I suppose there’s a price to be paid for the life of a copper. Think yourself lucky, my boy— Here he broke off to cough distressingly into a handkerchief. You may need a walking stick to the end of your days, but you’ll get there in better shape than myself. He relaxed into his pillows and tucked the kerchief out of sight. I can’t afford to cough too much. Matron will be back with another treatment. He sighed, as if energy were failing him, and made some pleasant inquiry about how I was coping in my own enforced retirement.

I gave him a few details about having finally got the priory habitable again, about staying busy with this and that but looking after myself with nothing too strenuous. Here, he laughed with a silver brow raised and drew from under his paper the Grosvenor Magazine for Gentlemen, the edition I recognised as containing my account of the dire dealings in Mordland Wood last year.

No false modesty, George. You’re developing a whole new reputation as a first-class investigator, but this time with a taste for the bizarre.

I smiled with a nod of thanks but did not mention the degree to which I had edited down the details of that particular case—there were aspects which will dwell forever only in my notebooks.

In a way, that’s why I asked you to visit. Old detectives have a hard time hanging up their careers and are forever seeing connections between things. If I were half the man I used to be, I’d be out there with you. But, as I’m not…

You’re working on a case? I prompted softly, with a guarded smile.

I would be… He shrugged. It’s hardly a case, more a curiosity that reeks of something secretive. The thing is, it’s not the sort of thing a working police officer appreciates being troubled with.

No crime has been committed, I said with a nod.

Not yet, he agreed. But there may indeed be something nefarious at hand, and if so, someone needs to get it out in the open.

Tell me, I said with a tight smile, sitting forward.

"These are country parts, and people hold their legend and lore close. There’s a tradition among those who work the farms above the cliffs that the dead do not lie easy out there under that channel. The number of ships that have wrecked between Land’s End and Portsmouth is beyond all reckoning, and the lives lost in this stretch of water over hundreds, thousands, of years can lie heavy in anyone’s heart. Well, now and then you’ll hear old people speak of the voice in the mist, which they say is the whisper of all those souls, many of whom perhaps died without having made their peace with the Almighty or lost their way between this world and the next.

Sometimes, it’s said they cry for salvation. You hear their voices on stormy nights, even the sounds of their tools, as those in purgatory work endlessly to repair the ship of souls, that they may sail on at last to His Grace. But the work is without end, a Sisyphus-like torment of roiling water and the undoing of one’s labours, moment by moment. He coughed distractedly, the back of his hand at his lips. It’s grim, like so many country superstitions, but every now and then people will swear they really hear them.

We were getting to the crux now. Who has heard what? I asked softly.

Oh, on chill and windy nights, when the sea is rolling in on the shale and shingle beaches, behind the rumble of the waves, farmhands have heard voices speaking, as if out of the waters, and the rattle of tools and the creak of lines and boards, as if a vessel is being refit. A ploughman taking a walk one raw evening not long ago heard such things and ran with all his might to the nearest pub to guzzle strong ale until friends got the tale from him. Of course, he might have been drunk as a lord to start with.

I spread my hands with a guarded smile. You obviously think there’s more to it. Have there been other reports? Has anything been seen?

Not as such. But people are pale faced of a morning, and tight-lipped. Children are warned away from the cliffs for more reasons than safety. He folded his hands. I took a stroll on the western shore but spotted nothing before this damnable asthma laid me low. I think there’s a very mundane reason for what’s been heard, and it may be innocent, or it may not. He smiled, a twinkle in his eyes. What do you say, George? Fancy a crack at the mystery of the voices in the mist?

What could I say? I extended a hand to shake. I’ll take a look. No promises, but…

Good man, good man! Skilling, here, is at your disposal. He can act as guide, driver, porter—he knows the town like the back of his hand.

Before I could reply, a motion at the curtains heralded the arrival of a pleasant, round-faced elder churchman in dark attire, and I rose to shake hands.

This is Father Davis, the inspector announced. Come to exhort me to pray before this condition gets the better of me. What were we saying about the state of grace?

Rupert is a frightful tease, the priest said with a fond smile as Skilling procured an extra chair for him. I’ve simply come to visit a friend under the weather. He sank into the seat and eyed me keenly. You’ll be the ex-detective he mentioned the other day. Has he bequeathed you his latest adventure?

In full measure, Father, I replied with a quirk of the brows. I must admit to being intrigued. Voices out of the sea—this is the stuff of romantic literature.

Well, I can tell you, people are a bit unsettled. It may be almost the twentieth century, but old ways are the strongest, and there are enough sailors’ graveyards on the coasts of England for sea towns to have a personal connection with the hereafter.

We chatted on this and that, letting the mystery go for the moment, but shortly, a nurse looked through the curtains and advised us that visiting hours would soon be over and the patient needed rest. We shook hands with Inspector Collins, and I left word with Skilling as to my lodgings, but as we stepped out and made our way along the high, pale hallway towards the street, Father Davis caught me by the arm.

If you take this case, you need to be aware of a few things. The priest spoke softly, drawing me into a waiting area. It’s easy to dismiss superstition, but it can be a driving force in people’s lives in much the way religion is. The folklore is almost a counter-canon, or a parallel stream of reality. ‘Lost souls at sea’ is a theme as old as sailors. But this coast is also one of the places where science and mysticism collided—these are the very cliffs where Mary Anning hunted her fossils, eighty years back, and brought out some of the amazing beasts now thought to have wandered the earth long ages ago.

I visited the Hawkins sculptures at Crystal Palace Park more than once, I mused, and they convey a certain life. Likewise with the Natural History Museum, though bones are less evocative for many. How do you feel, as a man of God, about all this?

Davis smiled affably. As a priest, I choose to reserve my personal feelings on the matter, but as a man of sound education, I can appreciate the weight of Huxley’s debates upon Darwin’s behalf. He shrugged. I can walk this coast and see both the physical processes science describes and the hand of God as well. And I think there is something magnificent in that. Think of those cliffs as a book waiting to be read, and each layer of rock the sea breaks away turns a page. Who knows what will be read upon it? Now he sobered. Yet, for all that, we are entirely mortal, and seeking to look upon infinity with a questing light. And sometimes not so questing. Just this morning I heard a most terrible confession and would wish the rules allowed me to speak of it. He smiled thinly but would say no more, and as we walked out, a shiver went up my spine.

* * * *

I enjoyed a tasty seafood platter at the Royal Lion Hotel on Broad Street, just up from the waterfront, as the spring evening drew in. From the windows, I watched great streamers of cloud rising over the sea, by which the locals foretold a change in the weather. This pleasant spell would soon become angry, and the mists that had hung around by night and morning would be driven away by a Channel gale.

After my meal, I took a pint in the bar and listened to local accents as I read the day’s paper by the hearth; yet my ears pricked when words such as ‘cliff edge’ and ‘voices’ reached me. It seemed taboos did not preclude discussion in public, and though my eyes did not lift from the texts, I strained to hear. Something about ‘wouldn’t catch me out there by dark,’ and ‘there’ll be hard times coming, mark my words—this bodes no good.’ Yet the voice that cut across them all belonged to a stranger in a strange land, for the accent was American.

Not just American, it hailed from somewhere in the region they call ‘the West,’ that raw frontier one reads about, filled with lawless sorts and a ferocious indigenous people. I could not help looking up from my paper now and found a broad-faced fellow in a brown suit, face tanned by wind and sun, who had the look of the well-travelled about him.

Surely, he was saying as he waved a glass of dark stout, you folks don’t put store in ghosts and all? There’s some reasonable explanation. Wind can play tricks on the hearing as sure as sun can upon the eye.

You weren’t there, mister, was the grumbly response from a sallow-looking local. My brother heard it, plain as the church bell on Sunday—voices from below when the tide was runnin’ high. He scattered back to his lodgings in Rousdon as fast as his legs’d carry him. A draft of ale punctuated the dissertation. He’s a ploughman, y’understand. Crops are goin’ in all along the south. It takes time to get round the fields with a horse team, and come the end of day, when the light is greyish on the sea and the mist rolls in… well, good Christian folk are as apt as any to feel the veil growin’ thin, especially around May Day.

The American seemed disbelieving but was courteous enough. But surely, voices simply mean someone was there?

Those cliffs are dangerous, another man offered, accompanied by nods of agreement all around. Whole sections of them are known to break away. Why, lives have been lost in living memory. No local person would be out there, especially in the dark, with a tide runnin’ against ’em. And no stranger would be about without a local guide, else they’d likely not live long.

The American spread a large hand and looked around as if for support. He sighted me and seemed to size me up as something other than the sorts he was arguing with. You, sir, he began. You strike me as a man of the world. How do your thoughts run?

To engage in debate without benefit of an introduction, I felt, must be a trait from across the water, but I adapted as smoothly as I could. I tend to favour the mundane explanations, I said slowly, for, all else being equal, the simplest reasons tend to be those most often correct.

He crossed from his stool and offered his hand. Edgar Bishop, sir, from Morrison County, Colorado. It’s a pleasure to meet a level-headed thinker in the old country.

George Trevelyan, I returned easily. What brings you to England, Mr Bishop?

Surveying for possible business opportunities, sir. My associates in the States are on the lookout for good investments. They’re interested in farming, fishing, railroads. Generally expanding.

In twenty-one years as a police officer, I learned to tell a fabrication when I heard it, and some shade of meaning in Bishop’s words was decidedly reserved. Whoever he represented, the purchase of assets in Dorsetshire was unlikely to be their goal. But I smothered my reactions with skill. Welcome to the ‘old country,’ I said with a smile. How are you enjoying it?

Well enough, sir, well enough. My own ancestors were from these parts, so I made it my first port of call. I must say, I’m somewhat surprised to find superstition so entrenched in this day and age.

I felt the locals bristle at that, and a certain defensive feeling blossomed in me. Old ways die hard, I said with an offhand sort of air. This is an old land, Mr Bishop; there were people here long before even the Romans first waded ashore, and you can’t expect the weight of tradition to pare away quickly.

He paused a moment. Are you saying I’m a realist because the United States is still a young country?

A forward-thinking one, I pressed on, with its eye on the possibilities of tomorrow. I would have thought you would appreciate such a sentiment.

Now he smiled a little tightly. I do, sir, I do. But we have our spiritual side also, and our share of tales of the strange. Yet, much as I enjoy the works of Poe, a story is a story.

I’m inclined to agree, I said affably, and let the discussion go, sensing that the locals were becoming resentful. Bishop bade me a goodnight and returned to his drink, and I whiled away another half hour with paper and ale before my room upstairs called softly. But I did not turn in at once. I sat with pencil and telegram blank to draft a message to Scotland Yard, calling in a favour and asking for any information they had on a certain Mr Edgar Bishop.

* * * *

The new day dawned breezy and cool, with flurries of cloud that seemed to herald storms. But they were not here yet, and there was work to do. I breakfasted early and walked out as briskly as my leg allowed. I got my telegram away, then made my way to Rupert’s house, where a sharp knock and a short wait brought Skilling to the door.

Mr Trevelyan, sir, what may I do for you? He was not sleepy-eyed, so he had been up for some while, as befits one used to looking after an elder in some need.

We have some prospecting to do. I need to look over this mysterious shoreline.

In ten minutes, we were away, caped against the sea wind, and I followed Skilling south on the sea front. We turned west at the harbour known as the Cobb and made our way down to the shingle beach. The stretch was lonely, not a soul visible as far as the eye could see. The land rose away in a steep slope to our right, where bare rock faces were exposed amongst greenery, and I squinted into the stiff, salty wind off the Channel as we set out. The going would not be kind to my knee, and I paid especial attention to keeping my footing in the shale and pebbles.

These shores are the famous cliffs where our Miss Anning found the ichthyosaur, all the way back in 1811, Skilling told me with some pride. She found a lot more over the years. Scientific gentlemen will tell you the worth of her discoveries was immeasurable.

I don’t doubt it, I replied softly, my eyes scanning the tumbled rock and strange strata of the Ware cliffs of Monmouth Beach. Soon, we passed across a wide rock pavement scattered with strange spiral forms, which I paused to examine.

Ammonites, Skilling explained. The curled shells of sea creatures.

As we went, he pointed out the stratigraphy in the cliffs. He seemed to have made a study of it, as surely as had Father Davis, and I began to develop a sense of this whole coast as a slice of the ages—the compacted sediments of a lost sea, petrified and frozen in time, uplifted and revealed. These fossils were remainders of a world long gone, a book to be read when the key was understood. This whole coast, eastward to Poole, was a vast reliquary of marble, limestone, and shale.

The morning was brightening somewhat as a few patches of sea fret burned off. I had begun to think my reconnaissance of this windy shore was something of a wild goose chase when my heart sank. A flash of colour bobbed slowly in a tidepool near the head of the beach, where low water had exposed the deeper runnels of this rugged shore, and we hurried on with hearts in our mouths. But I knew there was little point in exerting ourselves. A limp human figure, face down, was beyond all immediate assistance.

* * * *

Skilling hung back, sitting on a boulder, miserable and cold, after fetching the police with a swift jog back to the Cobb Arms pub on the waterfront and the use of their still newfangled telephone device. He had no part to play now; it was police business.

Inspector Victor Raleigh was a bluff, moustached man in middle age, somewhat portly, and I think he made harder going of the cobble beach than my poor leg. His young constables carried a stretcher and a boathook, and I stood back to watch as the body was pulled from the still, clear waters. The flesh was puckered and white, testimony to how long he had been immersed.

Going by the state of the tissues, the poor chap’s been in there between one and two days, I said, hands in my pockets against the wind, as Raleigh scribbled in his notebook. I’ve seen bodies fished out of the Thames that the tide has taken down toward the estuary, so it’s nothing I’m not familiar with.

Much obliged for your input, Inspector, Raleigh huffed. It’s not every day you have a trained professional at the scene of a discovery.

Retired, I stressed again, but I like to keep my hand in, as it were.

And your purpose on the beach, sir? Raleigh fired in. Just taking the air?

No. Professional curiosity, on behalf of an old friend.

That wouldn’t be Mr Collins, would it, sir? My expression confirmed his suspicion. A much-respected colleague, whose experience we’re more than happy to benefit from on occasion. Could you share the connection?

I’m not sure there is one at this point. I gestured to the clifftops and repeated Rupert’s assertion that people hearing voices from the mist over the last week or two might be rooted in some tangible reality, and if they were, that reality was right here on this beach—somewhere.

And now a body turns up, Raleigh added. There’s only so much I put down to coincidence, Mr Trevelyan, and while I think you’re correct in that no connection is, as yet, demonstrated… I’m inclined to proceed as if one does exist. I think I’m justified in stationing a watch. I’d certainly like to know if anyone is coming or going at odd hours.

I watched the dripping body they had extracted from the pool, strong with the smell of salt and sea creatures. As the constables turned him over, water gushed from his mouth. The eyes were still open—an awful sight.

Clothing looks London-standard, I mused. Good-quality shoes; that tie came from a better class of haberdasher.

Raleigh gestured to one of his young men and barked an order. Right, go through his pockets.

The distasteful business produced mundane items. A hotel room key was tagged ‘The London Guesthouse,’ which was on Church Street, and Raleigh wrapped it in a cloth at once. A check of their register will reveal much, he commented as the constable handed up a pocket watch. Stopped at nineteen minutes past ten, presumably the moment this fellow went under, presumably at night. He flicked it open and read an inscription. To Robert, from his loving parents, upon his graduation. He sighed and added it to the growing collection of possessions. A few shillings in silver and copper; a sodden five-pound note; a spare handkerchief; a return ticket on the horse bus to Axminster…

We dropped to a squat by the body and went over it with practiced eyes. A contusion to the head was washed clean by the waves but remained a nasty wound all the same. A rock? Or a weapon? I asked of the universe.Did he fall, or was he pushed?

Raleigh raised straggling brows. This is a treacherous place, Mr Trevelyan. A simple fall can be fatal.

I glanced along the wild shore and thought for a moment before I glanced up at the cliffs and shook my head. As you said, Inspector, there’s only so far coincidence can be driven.

Raleigh sighed through his moustache and gestured to his men. Right, let’s get him back to the station. We rose, and they bundled up the body in a tarpaulin, then heaved up the stretcher and began the difficult negotiation of the pebbles the half mile back to The Cobb. Raleigh hung back for a few moments. We’ll have to wire for a pathologist to come down and give us a cause of death, but after so long in the water, I’m not hopeful of learning much. You’ll need to come by the station and give us a statement, too, sir.

I’ll accompany you.

We’ll go by way of the London Guesthouse.

Skilling, hands in pockets and collar up against the breeze, fell in with us, and I think he could tell from my expression that I was starting to put two and two together.

* * * *

I wrote out a compact statement, knowing how much detail was enough to satisfy, and placed it before Raleigh. At the hotel, we had discovered that our man was one Robert Lovell, and his address was in London. The inspector invited me to assist in the search of his room, which revealed a travelling valise with a change of clothes, a copy of A Study in Scarlet to while away the hours on trains, and, most importantly, papers belonging to the Geology Department of London University. This gave us our next port of call, and at once Raleigh sent a cable to the institution concerned.

A reply was back in thirty minutes. Lovell was on leave from the Geology Department, where he worked as a senior assistant to a professor of palaeontology. I was not sure how much that last word meant to Inspector Raleigh, but it made a few connections for me. There is such a thing as being too mired in the pedantic details, and I was prepared to look further.

With the inspector’s leave, I walked out with Skilling, having promised to check back in the evening. We took luncheon at my hotel, where I received the reply to this morning’s missive to the Yard. I kept the details to myself for the moment, folded the telegram slip and secreted it in my wallet, but my companion could tell the pieces were lining up.

As we enjoyed cold roast beef and fresh bread, I considered my options. I was quite convinced someone was up to something nefarious on the hard shales of Monmouth Beach by night and by mist, but whatever it was had left no discernible mark upon the landscape. Trusting to their return was the best course of action, and I hoped fervently that their task remained incomplete.

We shall visit Inspector Collins and report on our progress, I remarked, glancing at the lowering sky from the leadlight windows of the old hotel. Inspector Raleigh has the area under surveillance, but there are limits to all things, and the kind of weather coming up may give unobserved access to those cliffs only to those willing to stake their lives upon their goal. Would you be up for a foray along the clifftop?

By dark? In a storm? Skilling sat back with a thump. I’d have called it the act of a crazed man, sir. But I see you’re determined, and what sort of servant would I be to turn down the chance of adventure? Cleaning boots, weeding the path, and serving breakfast are the most docile of professions.

Good man, I returned with a tight smile. Unless I miss my guess completely, we’ll have our man this night.

After visiting the hospital, we took the opportunity for a well-earned rest before returning to the police station as promised, by which time the late afternoon sky was a slaty blue-grey with the coming blow. Shopkeeps put up their shutters early; sailors made their craft fast and retired to bars and lodgings. Only a fool—or the desperate—would be out in the weather to come.

In his office, Inspector Raleigh confirmed as much. I’ve left orders that my men are to clear the beach by sundown. Some things are just not possible, and with a rising tide as well as the storm, this blow will pile breakers right to the foot of the cliffs. It’s a good thing you spotted Mr Lovell’s body when you did; there’s no telling where tonight’s tide would have sent it.

So, there’ll be none to watch.

It can’t be helped, Mr Trevelyan, and I’ll not order any man onto those clifftops. Between the wind and the poor footing, it would be odds-on for a fall. And there’d be no coming back from it. He toyed with a pen as he saw my expression. You’re not thinking of keeping watch yourself, sir? It would be my duty as a police officer to strongly dissuade you. We have flimsy enough reason to suspect some wrongdoing, and as yet no idea what it might be. That’s not reason enough in my book to jeopardise lives.

He was adamant and perfectly reasonable, and it was time I shared information. I passed him the telegram from the Yard, to which he applied his reading glasses, and his brows rose. Yes, I added as he finished. The American gentleman seen around town lately, a Mr Edgar Bishop, landed by steamer three weeks ago. His documents of entry list his professional affiliation as Yale University, where he works for a Professor Marsh. I waited to see if this country copper was learned in the scientific scandals across the ocean but saw I would need to provide those details. Professor Marsh has been engaged for some thirty years in a feud with a certain Professor Cope. Between them, they’ve unearthed amazing discoveries—but they have employed the most diabolical methods, including theft, destruction of materials, bribery, and all forms of corruption, plus the publication of rushed and shoddy science. Inspector, we’re sitting in one of the most productive fossil-bearing localities in the world, where seminal discoveries have been made, and this agent for Professor Marsh is ‘scouting for business opportunities’?

I agree, it’s asking a lot of coincidence once again. But the man has broken no law on English soil to the best of our knowledge. We can hardly detain him on suspicion without knowing what the crime might be.

What else but the theft of an English fossil?

Raleigh’s brows went up again. Don’t they have enough of their own?

This area is of a not dissimilar age to the Morrison region of Colorado, which Bishop gave as his place of origin. Perhaps some new and unusual type has turned up there, and a Dorset species is needed for anatomical comparison. Something new and unusual, not yet reviewed in the scientific literature—and which would be very expensive to purchase, were it excavated by local expertise. I smiled with the thrill of the chase. All it takes is for an ambitious local prospector, who finds something he knows is important, to contact Professor Marsh’s office in the hopes of a very substantial fee, and the wheels are put in motion for a little fieldwork from across the pond.

This is a fine theory, Mr Trevelyan; it’s logical and consistent. It would also suggest that our man, Lovell, got too close, saw what he wasn’t meant to, and was silenced in a very final way. After all, he was down here from London as if expressly looking for something. The specimen itself? Or had he received word of Bishop’s arrival and set himself to watch the agent of a notorious figure? He spread his hands, realising the questions were largely rhetorical. Offhand, have you any notion what such a fossil might be worth in hard sterling?

I shrugged. A fairly complete specimen? Something unusual, with real scientific value attached? Hundreds of pounds, to collectors or major institutions. Maybe more.

That’s worth killing for. The inspector folded his hands and scowled. But I still can’t send my men into those conditions on the off chance they’ll spot something.

I nodded my acceptance, then sighed. Would you have them on standby in case a call comes to attend?

I can do that. Raleigh paused, struggled with his better judgement, then unlocked a drawer and produced a revolver and shells. It’s against all the rules, but you’re a twenty-year man and know how things are done. This is a loan from me to you, and woe betide me if this gets up the chain of command. I smiled my thanks and accepted the weapon. You can draw some foul weather gear too. Will Collins’s manservant be with you? Right, then God go with you both.

* * * *

Evening gathered unusually early with the rising storm; indeed, the whole skyscape of the English Channel was a forbidding purple-grey when Skilling and I made our way onto the wild rim above the cliffs. The land had been farmed since antiquity, but the sea gnawed back the arable space, and Skilling told me of times in centuries gone by when whole swathes of crop had sheared away and become islands of turf, separate from the mainland. He had brought a stout rope, a light hammer, pegging for safety lines, and a sailor’s shuttered lantern with which to signal an officer Raleigh had stationed in a safe locality above the town. Three flashes, and the message would be passed—but we would have to cope until officers could make their way to us.

We wore marine oilskins, capes, and hats and were provisioned with a flask of hot tea wrapped in a cloth, another of brandy, for the evening threatened to be devilish cold. We would be hard-pressed to spot anything, I knew, and the proverbial voices from the mist would be well drowned tonight in the roar and crash of breakers. But it might be the only chance there would be to catch the miscreants in the act.

We made our way to a spot a couple of hundred yards from where we had found Lovell’s body below. Already, the tide was well in, with curling white waves folding onto the shore in long rumbles, followed by a harsh hiss as each withdrew. An hour from sundown, we were already in deep twilight as the clouds mounted high, and the stiff wind in our faces made our cheeks ache. We found a hollow among bushes and coarse grasses, worked our way down into the tough gorse thickets for protection, and settled to watch the shore as long as the light lasted.

I had stood many a long watch in my time with the Yard but had to ask myself how intelligent I was—forty-one years old, with a game leg and a stick, camped out in the teeth of a Channel storm. I should be home in bed, with coals glowing in the hearth, but it seems old coppers just can’t let go. I appreciated Skilling’s commitment to our cause and told him as much, which he accepted with gratitude as we strained our eyes in the gathering murk.

As the sun left us, whitecaps became the brightest thing in our world, and the wind worried at our rain gear. We managed a round from the flask, hands wrapped around enamel mugs to scavenge every morsel of warmth, and scanned the cliff slopes below for any sign of life. At last, large drops of rain pelted the bushes, and we settled to endure it, wondering if we would spend the whole night here. If we did, my right leg would be unusable, the knee stiffened and aching intolerably.

But we did not need to endure so long, and our first clue came not from the sea but the land. About ten o’clock, Skilling touched my shoulder and gestured back toward the town, and I glanced up to find a firefly bobbing against the darkness. It gradually resolved into a dim lamp in the hand of a man making his way along the clifftop with a band at his back, four or five in all, carrying tools and lines. They made their way doggedly through the weather, hunch-backed and with felted hats drawn down.

They passed within a dozen strides of our hiding place. We remained stock-still, trusting to the bushes to conceal the glimmer of our yellow oilskins, and watched the men recede. When they were a hundred yards on, we gathered our gear and silently crept after them in the dark, keeping our footing with care as the wind buffeted us and tugged at our coats. Had the officer stationed by Raleigh seen the men go by? There were a dozen ways onto the cliffs; nothing was certain, and we proceeded as if we were on our own.

Eventually, the light became stationary, and we watched from afar—saw it directed to the treacherous edge, then the figures dimly limned in the orange flicker disappeared. We hurried on and cautiously approached the spot, finding the light now below us in the gloom, seemingly following some path known only to the bearer. We crouched in slippery, wet, slick shale and peered after them, but they were below the curvature of the slope—I had to get closer!

First, I had Skilling make the signal with the shuttered lantern, three pulses back toward town. Three more answered, and we knew we had our help on the way. Then Skilling drove an iron peg into the stony sod, his hammer ringing thinly in the gale, and made the rope fast. I tied it securely as a lifeline around my waist, my stick laid aside. He took the strain and paid out as I went gingerly down the slope, feeling myself slip and slide from moment to moment.

My heart was in my mouth as surely as the wind tore the breath from my throat, and rain plastered my sou’wester to my streaming brow. The thunder of waves filled my head, and all I made out in the dimmest, bluish illumination was the roiling of mountainous seas as they creamed at the foot of the cliff and surged upward explosively. Where had the men gone? They could not simply disappear!

I tugged on the line, and Skilling let out more slack. I advanced down the slope, feet tangling in the coarse bushes, loose rock sliding underfoot, until at last I caught the tiny glow of the lantern further down. Now, I craned outward, trusting to Skilling’s strength and the line wrapped around his body, and stared into wind and rain. The glow filled a deep cleft, and I could just make out the figures pressed close to the rockface, hammers and chisels flying in their fists as the waves reached searching fingers for them, soaking them every other moment. I heard their leader—with a clear American twang behind his words—exhorting them with thoughts of wealth.

Almost there, lads, this is it. It’s a foul night, but success belongs to the daring. That’s it, carefully does it…no need to rush. There’s not a soul to see. One more trip down the slope, didn’t I promise you? Then there’s ten golden guineas for every man here!

I raised my voice as I brandished Raleigh’s pistol. Does that include me, Mr Bishop?

The expected dramatic results were absent as the wind carried my voice away, and over the roar of the waters, the miscreants heard nothing at all. Somewhat chastened, I considered going back up and waiting for the inspector’s men to arrive. Certainly, my left leg was tiring fast from taking all my weight. I thrust the gun back into my pocket, plucked the rope three times, and felt Skilling draw me up.

I was soon back on friendlier footing and hunched away from the wind to report my observations—omitting the embarrassing failure of my challenge. They’re cutting something free; that much is obvious. It must be small enough for them to lug out by hand or haul it up with those lines they have. I peered into the blackness, where trees were outlined against the orange glow of the town. Come on, Inspector!

But nothing stirred in that direction yet. It would take time to get word to the station and for the duty constables to then come the mile here, in the teeth of the storm. I appreciated why Raleigh had declined to order men up here. Every moment, I knew we were dicing with our lives, and ten guineas was the price the men below had placed on their own.

At last, I could wait no longer. Lower me down again, Skilling. If they’re nearly done, it’ll be up to us to bail them up when they come up with their loot. I gritted my teeth and set down my stick once more to go cautiously down the slope as the doughty Skilling let out the rope. The wind plucked at me, and I blinked in the rain, felt for the pistol in the pocket of my oilskins, and craned for a glimpse of the workmen.

They were working in relays. Each time a man tired, he was replaced by the next, and with Bishop’s exhortations, they were cutting at feverish pace, every man soaked to the skin and likely in agonies of cold. As I hung precariously out over the precipitous gulf, spray rising almost to my level when the waves boomed in, I saw them begin to rig a cradle of ropes around the plaque-like slab of stone they had nearly cut free. I could make out no detail, but going by the rough rock alongside, this was the last piece of something much larger.

Bishop clutched the lantern, cradling it from the splashing foam and keeping its weak illumination on the job, and his hired hands