Police are searching today for Dr. J. E. Lawlor, well-known physician and scientist, following a report from his secretary, James Brock, that he had disappeared from his home at 2100 Van Ness Avenue. ...

Higher and higher through the night mounted the small, trim space-launch. Far below the lights of St. Louis, capital of the Terrestrial League, shone as myriad stars and reflected gleams on the flat s...

Higher and higher through the night mounted the small, trim space-launch. Far below the lights of St. Louis, capital of the Terrestrial League, shone as myriad stars and reflected gleams on the flat s...

Bull Mike’s open hand drove at him, its hard heel striking his chin. With a gasp the Martian collapsed and would have fallen had not Neil caught and supported him. “Here, none of that, Bull Mike!” bar...

Yaxa, the prisoner, was of course ignorant of all these things as he sat alone in his secret prison. Food came to him by dumbwaiter and he did not see a human face. It was not until the middle of Janu...

The television drama broadcast from the Martian pleasure city of Pulambar, was one of the cynical tragicomedies that the men of Mars love so well. As it unfolded certain gases were released in the aud...

I had come to the Art Museum to see the special show of Goya prints, but that particular gallery was so crowded that I could hardly get in, much less see or savor anything; wherefore I walked out agai...

To Whom It May Concern: Few words are best, as Sir Philip Sidney once wrote in challenging an enemy. The present account will be accepted as a challenge by the vast army of skeptics of which I once ma...

To Whom It May Concern: Few words are best, as Sir Philip Sidney once wrote in challenging an enemy. The present account will be accepted as a challenge by the vast army of skeptics of which I once ma...

“You don’t believe in psychic phenomena,” said Doctor Otto Zoberg yet again, “because you won’t.” This with studied kindness, sitting in the most comfortable chair of my hotel room. I, at thirty-four,...

I have sat down with the purpose of writing out, plainly and even flatly, all that happened to me and to Doctor Otto Zoberg in our impromptu adventure at psychic investigation; yet, almost at the star...

It was Zoberg who suggested that I take Susan Gird for a relaxing drive in my car. I acclaimed the idea as a brilliant one, and she, thanking me quietly, put on an archaic-seeming cloak, black and hea...

Just when I got up I do not remember, but I was on my feet as the grapplers separated. Without thinking of danger⁠—and surely danger was there in the room⁠—I might have rushed forward; but Susan Gird,...

The cell was an upper room of the town hall, with a heavy wooden door and a single tiny window. The walls were of bare, unplastered brick, the floor of concrete and the ceiling of whitewashed planks. ...

It proves something for human habit and narcotic-dependence that my first action upon rising was to pull out a cigarette and light it. The match flared briefly upon rich greenness. I might have been i...

It did not charge at once, or I might have been killed then, like John Gird, and the writing of this account left to another hand. While it closed cautiously in, I was able to set myself for defense. ...

When I stepped into the open with Judge Keith Pursuivant, the snow had ceased and a full moon glared through a rip in the clouds, making diamond dust of the sugary drifts. By its light I saw my compan...

He leaned toward the bookshelf beside him, pawed for a moment, then laid two sizable volumes on the desk between us. “If this were a fantasy tale, Mr. Wills,” he said with a hint of one of his smiles,...

It may seem incredible that later in the night I slept like a dead pig; yet I had reason. First of all there was the weariness that had followed my dangers and exertions; then Judge Pursuivant’s whisk...

I think that both Susan and I fairly reeled before this news, like actors registering surprise in an old-fashioned melodrama. As for Judge Pursuivant, he turned to the table, cut a generous wedge of t...

We followed Judge Pursuivant, Susan and I, without much of a thought beyond an understandable dislike for being left alone on the brink of the timber. It was a slight struggle to get through the close...

Neither of us said anything for a while after that. I stoked up the fire, to be doing something, and it made us so uncomfortably warm that we had to crowd away from it. Sitting close against the tree-...

Deliberately I had turned my face toward the section beyond the fire, for, as I have said repeatedly, it was there that I had heard the movements and cries of the being that had so strongly moved and ...

“Perhaps I was born what I am,” he began. “At least, even as a lad I knew that there was a lust and a power for evil within me. Night called to me, where it frightens most children. I would slip out o...

Unlike most actors, I do not consider my memoirs worth the attention of the public. Even if I did so consider them, I have no desire to carry my innermost dear secrets to market. Often and often I hav...

Unlike most actors, I do not consider my memoirs worth the attention of the public. Even if I did so consider them, I have no desire to carry my innermost dear secrets to market. Often and often I hav...

The counterman in the little hamburger stand below Times Square gazed at me searchingly. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” he asked, and when I shook my head he made a gesture as of inspiration. “I got ...

I did not follow Jake’s suggestion exactly. Instead of buying new garments throughout, I went to the pawnshop where I had of late raised money on the remnants of a once splendid wardrobe. Here I redee...

Keith Hilary Pursuivant, the occultist and antiquary, was as arresting as Varduk himself, though never were two men more different in appearance and manner. Our first impression was of a huge tweed-cl...

The judge would not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he co...

Sigrid, with Jake in attendance as usual, had left New York on the morning after Varduk’s reading of Ruthven. They had driven in the car Jake had helped Davidson to buy, and thus they avoided the usua...

Jake’s narrative did not give me cheerful expectations of the Lake Jozgid Theater. It was just as well, for my first glimpse of the place convinced me that it was the exact setting for a play of morbi...

We went down a back stairway that brought us to the empty stage. A light was already burning, and I remember well that my first impression was of the stage’s narrowness and considerable depth. Its bac...

When finally I slept, it was to dream in strange, unrelated flashes. The clearest impression of all was that Sigrid and Judge Pursuivant came to lead me deep into the dark woods beyond the lodge. They...

I scowled at Davidson in surprised protest at his intrusion. Judge Pursuivant did not scowl, but I saw him lift his walking-stick with his left hand, place his right upon the curved handle, and gave i...

Judge Pursuivant and I remained sitting on the roadside bank until Davidson had completely vanished around a tree-clustered bend of the way. Then my companion lifted a heavy walking-boot and tapped th...

I doubt if any writer, however accomplished, has ever done full justice to the emotion of terror. To mention the icy chill at the backbone, the sudden sinewless trembling of the knees, the withering d...

One of the most extraordinary features of the entire happening was that it had so little immediate consequence. Judge Pursuivant reached his cabin safely, and came to visit us again and again, but nev...

Our final rehearsal, on the night of the twenty-first of July, was fairly accurate as regards the speeches and attention to cues, but it lacked fire and assurance. Varduk, however, was not disappointe...

Pursuivant closed the book with a loud snap, laid it down on the table, and caught me by the arm. “Come away from here,” he said in a tense voice. “Outside, where nobody will hear.” He almost dragged ...

Sigrid and I struck on the instant the proper note of affectionate gayety, and I could feel in the air that peculiar audience-rhythm by which an actor knows that his effort to capture a mood is succes...

Enid Mandifer tried to stand up under what she had just heard. She managed it, but her ears rang, her eyes misted. She felt as if she were drowning. The voice of Persil Mandifer came through the fog, ...

Enid Mandifer tried to stand up under what she had just heard. She managed it, but her ears rang, her eyes misted. She felt as if she were drowning. The voice of Persil Mandifer came through the fog, ...

Lieutenant Kane Lanark was one of those strange and vicious heritage-anomalies of one of the most paradoxical of wars⁠—a war where a great Virginian was high in Northern command, and a great Pennsylva...

Lanark, a young, serious-minded bachelor in an era when women swaddled themselves inches deep in fabric, had never seen such a sight before; and to his credit be it said that his first and strongest e...

Jager, bending, lifted the newspaper and then dropped it back. He said something that, for all his religiosity, might have been an oath. “What’s the matter, sergeant?” demanded Lanark. Jager’s brows w...

Neither Lanark nor the others remembered that they began to fight for their lives; they only knew all at once that they were doing it. There was a prolonged harsh rattle of gunshots like a blast of ha...

It was spring again, the warm, bright spring of the year 1866, when Kane Lanark rode again into the Fearful Rock country. His horse was a roan gray this time; the bay gelding had been shot under him, ...

Then there was silence. Lanark sat his tired roan and gazed at Enid, rather hungrily, but only a segment of his attention was for her. The silence crowded in upon him. His unconscious awareness grew c...

Lanark stumped for a furlong or more, to the yard of the old house, and the horse followed unwillingly⁠—so unwillingly that had there been a tree or a stump at hand, Lanark would have tethered and lef...

Jager’s Negro servant was quite as good a cook as promised. Lanark, eating chicken stew and biscuits, reflected that only twice before had he been so ravenous⁠—upon receiving the news of Lee’s surrend...

The silence was not so deadly the following noon as Lanark and Jager dismounted at the hitching-rack in front of Enid Mandifer’s; perhaps this was because there were two horses to stamp and snort, two...

Through the crosshatching of new-leafed branches the full moon shone down from its zenith. Lanark and Enid Mandifer walked gingerly through the night-filled timber in the gulley beyond which, they kne...

It had been some minutes before eleven o’clock when Jager reined in his old black horse at a distance of two miles from Fearful Rock. Most of those now alive who knew Jager personally are apt to descr...

The combination of pluck and common sense is something of a rarity, and men who possess that combination are apt to go far. Kane Lanark was such a man, and though he charged unhesitatingly across the ...

Lanark’s guess was wrong; Enid Mandifer had not retreated westward up the gulley. She had stared, all in a heart-stopping chill, as Lanark made for the thing that terrified her. As though of themselve...

“Don’t!” Enid screamed. “Don’t, it’s only I⁠—” Lanark growled, and spun back to face what was now hoisting itself above ground level. “And be careful of me, too,” said the object. “It’s Jager, Mr. Lan...

Wind touched the pines on the ridge, and stirred the thicket forest on the hills opposite; but the grassy valley between, with its red and white houses at the bottom, was as still as a painted backdro...

Old Jael Bettiss, who lived in the hollow among the cypresses, was not a real witch. It makes no difference that folk thought she was, and walked fearfully wide of her shadow. Nothing can be proved by...

Gender paused at the top of the bald rise, mopped his streaming red forehead beneath the wide hat-brim, and gazed backward at his forty-nine captives. Naked and black, they shuffled upward from the na...

At a point about four miles out of Crispinville, a lean-looking rabbit, with black-and-white smudgings on the gray of his ears and long hind legs, came flopping out on the pavement and paused in full ...

Old Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi. He was unique among Californians in professing absolutely no...

It was not very large, as asteroids go, but about it clung a silvery mist of atmosphere. Deeper flashes through the mist betokened water, and green patches hinted of rich vegetation. The space-patroll...

Helen took long steps to keep up with her father. Her chubby face, solemn in its pointed blue hood, turned up to him. “What are these woods called, Daddy?” she asked for the fifth time. “The Indians c...

For six months Judge Pursuivant had intended to visit that old dwelling with the strange history, but Judge Pursuivant often has trouble finding time to do what he most wants. The fall passed, the win...

Yes, Jack Wilmot wrote so concerning me, and rallied me, saying these lines he would cut upon my monument; and now he is dead at thirty-three, while I live at fifty, none so merry a monarch as folks d...

Black velvet infinity all around, punctured and patterned with the many-hued jewels of space⁠—comforting, somehow, because they made the same constellation patterns you used to see on Earth. There was...

Wasn’t Shiloh supposed to be named after an angel or a devil? Angels and devils were both there, sorting the two armies through for who should live and who die, who go to heaven and who go to hell. We...

Wasn’t Shiloh supposed to be named after an angel or a devil? Angels and devils were both there, sorting the two armies through for who should live and who die, who go to heaven and who go to hell. We...

I remembered that adventure, strangest moment of all my war-boyhood on a late night in the fall of 1876. The wagon track I walked was frozen to rutted concrete. Wind as cold as fear rustled the tall d...

“I repeat,” began Jaeger, as I gobbled, “that your second appearance to me is in the nature of an act of Providence. How could you meet my need so aptly twice, with years and a continent in which to b...

In the outer night rose again the whickering cry, that rose into a shrill yearning whine. Jaeger cocked his bearded head sidewise. “The flying horned one summons his faithful. This is their day, and m...

I knew an instant of terror more complete and sickening than any that had been mine in the war, a worse chill than at Murfreesboro, Selma or Shiloh itself. Then the terror departed from me, and left m...

Jaeger’s talk about the influence called hypnotism came back to my mind later, when I found myself outside in the chill moonglow, the revolver in my right hand, moving with quick stealth toward a dist...

The morning sun was warm, invigoratingly so. Jaeger and I strove, with grubbing hoe and shovel, at earth that was no longer frozen to stony hardness. “Make the grave wide, but not too shallow,” he dir...

My senses came to me slowly and somehow shyly, as if not sure of their way or welcome. I felt first⁠—pressure on my brow and chest, as if I lay face downward; then the tug and buffet of a strong, prob...

My senses came to me slowly and somehow shyly, as if not sure of their way or welcome. I felt first⁠—pressure on my brow and chest, as if I lay face downward; then the tug and buffet of a strong, prob...

They rose, but stood off respectfully. The officer spoke first. “I am Rohbar, field commander of this defense position,” he said with crisp respect. “Sporr is a mystic doctor, full of godly wisdom. Do...

She smiled, as if I had complimented her. “Oh, the man was up for elimination. He was supernumerary. Of course, if he had succeeded in his capture of prisoners and one of the devices that make those p...

Rohbar glared, but I could have smiled. Smiled in welcome. He was extricating me from a most embarrassing position. I faced him and spoke steadily. “My friend, you were rude to me at our first meeting...

I stared at her, astounded, shocked⁠—and suddenly remembering things. “Barak,” I repeated foolishly. “Barak. Yes, I am Barak. I⁠—how did I get here? Things are still so shadowy⁠—but I’m beginning to r...

I struck a pose as I stood there. I hoped that a grim and heroic attitude might give them pause. “It’s Barak!” said an officer at the forefront of the Newcomers. “Barak!” echoed a warrior of Dondromog...

“I’ve watched you in the sky,” I whispered, staring in shocked disbelief at the humanoid male from the little space ship. “For three nights, with my telescope.” I gestured toward the roof where the in...

Their glassite space helmets fogged, and their metal glove joints stiffened in the incredible surface cold: but the two men who could work finished their job. In the black sky glistened the little arc...