... * By LEN SHAW GOOD evening, Officer. Yes. I 'm the-- man who-- 'phoned five minutes ago. Sorry. Bit breathless. Been running Thank you. Glad to sit down. My knees rather shaky. Er excuse me, but haven't we met Somewhere Some thing familiar about your face No, no Never visited the west coast of Scotland before. Never set foot in Kirkudlicht. Oh Mm. Well Must be imagining things ...

... By KEM BENNETT.* ADRIAN BRITTLE, having achieved the age of thirty-two, fqund himself in the mood to marry. He was neither tall nor short, nor was he fat. When provoked, he could display more than competence, either physically or intellectually. He possessed an imaginative wardrobe in good taste and an equable disposition. In fact, Adrian was a catch, and his mother, his sister and his girl ...

... The Short Stories of a Master of Fantasy On February 17, 1947, at the age of eighty-one, the Irish romantic novelist, M. P. Shiel, died at Chichester. The death of this master of fantasy, some of whose works bear the stamp of the poet and the seer, did not pass altogether unnoticed; but throughout his long life he was less widely known than he deserved. Shiel was born at Plymouth, Montserrat, ...

... SLEEPING DRAUGHT By FRANK KING DOCTOR MICHAEL KENT was back at work again after six months in hospital. Six months, during five of which his life had hung on the slenderest of threads, while anxious colleagues fought a desperate battle against death. Michael Kent knew that it would have been better if they had lost that battle, if the thread had snapped. He was young yet-- only just forty. He ...

... ...

... * By MARY DUNN. YOUNG Mr. McFarlane-- late Lieut. McFarlane-- permitted himself the small vanity of stopping his car 50 yards inside the gates of Bruford Park and looking at himself in the driving mirror. The reflection was reassuring: well-cut suit, quiet tie, decidedly more of the officer than the press photographer about him. He could not but think that Lady Colchester would be surprised. ...

... * By NINA WARNER HOOKE. CYNICS have often claimed that all experience brings disillusion. But the astonishing plight in which Mr. Blenkinsop found himself proved to him that this is not necessarily so. Being shipwrecked in tropical waters had turned out to be every bit as highly coloured and uncomfortable as he had pictured it in his wildest flights of fancy. The raft on which he sat with his ...

... b3hL a the stricken heart. fi JfiMl US By CHARLES BIRKIN. FROM what she could see through the halo round the head of St. John the Baptist, the sky appeared to be clearing. Throughout the early morning a depressing drizzle had fallen, which, while realising the aptitude of a weeping heaven for a funeral, Elizabeth Penvill had found distinctly untimely, for owing to ...

... AS OTHERS SEE US* By ERIC SONNISCHEN. THEY stepped out into the bright moonlight that lay over the beach and water. His hand held her arm as he helped her walk through the loose sand. It s beautiful, isn t it He spoke softly, as though not to disturb nature. Yes, it is, she answered. She stopped walking. He stood still, his hands hanging by his sides as his chest expanded with air. He ...

... By SIMON FOWLER. CLOSING the front door softly behind him, Robert Martin stood in the dingy hall of No. 93, Paradise Row. For twenty years, ever since his marriage, he had lived in the same little slut of a house. For twenty years he had sat at the same desk in the same office doing exactly the same kind of work. He hung his hat on the ornate stand which had been his firm's wedding present, in ...

... * By KATE THOMPSON EM, said James Barstead. What do you think to a little surprise? Mrs. Barstead put her chrysanthemum-ringleted head on one side and smiled her sideways smile with one eye shrewdly half-shut. Eh? Just you and me a little week-end in the country What do you think to that She looked at James's bland, grey-grizzled head, his still -rotund person and away from him to the ...

... A FIGHTER PILOTS SHOULDN'T DREAM. aJs* U^-IS By WING SLIP. (BEING OUR SHORT STORY.>* THE two Polish pilots jumped into the dug-out. Spirodvy laughed tensely: I 'm glad we are not mere clay pigeons this time, to be shot out of the sky! Steel fragments sang past above their heads. Zbroutch ducked. We 'll have to fall back. Lieutenant Joseph Rabotsky ignored the swooping Heinkels. This third ...