The Saki Megapack Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Saki Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved. For more information, contact the publisher.

  * * * *

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Over the last few years, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has proved to be one of our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!).

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS

  The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.

  THE MEGAPACK SERIES

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  MEET THE AUTHOR: SAKI

  Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse.

  Beside his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled “A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns,” a fantasy about a future German invasion of Britain.

  Born in Akyab, Burma (also known as Myanmar) when it was still part of the British Empire, Hector Hugh Munro was the son of Charles Augustus Munro and Mary Frances Mercer (1843–72). Mary was the daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer; and her nephew, Cecil William Mercer, became a famous writer as Dornford Yates. Charles Munro was an Inspector-General for the Burmese Police.

  In 1872, on a home visit to England, Mary was charged by a cow; and the shock caused her to miscarry. She never recovered and soon died. Charles Munro sent his children, including two-year-old Hector, to
England, where they were brought up by their grandmother and aunts in a strict puritanical household.

  Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth, Devon and at Bedford School. On a few occasions, when he retired, Charles travelled with Hector and his sister to fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893, Hector followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma (like George Orwell a generation later). Two years later, having contracted malaria, he resigned and returned to England.

  At the start of World War I, although 43 and officially over-age, Munro refused a commission and joined 2nd King Edward’s Horse as an ordinary trooper, later transferring to 22nd Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, where he rose to the rank of lance sergeant. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially still too sick or injured. In November 1916, when sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, during the Battle of the Ancre he was killed by a German sniper. His last words, according to several sources, were “Put that bloody cigarette out!” After his death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood.

  ABOUT “THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS”

  TO THE LYNX KITTEN,

  WITH HIS RELUCTANTLY GIVEN CONSENT,

  THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

  DEDICATED

  The short story collection The Chronicles of Clovis, which follows, was originally appeared in 1911. The original introduction by A.A. Milne is omitted due to copyright issues.

  Story notes from the original publication:

  “The Background” originally appeared in the Leinsters’ Magazine; “The Stampeding of Lady Bastable” in the Daily Mail; “Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger,” “The Chaplet,” “The Peace Offering,” “Filboid Studge” and “Ministers of Grace” (in an abbreviated form) in the Bystander; and the remainder of the stories (with the exception of “The Music on the Hill,” “The Story of St. Vespaluus,” “The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope,” “The Remoulding of Groby Lington,” and “The Way to the Dairy,” which have never previously been published) in the Westminster Gazette. To the Editors of these papers I am indebted for courteous permission to reprint them.

  ESMÉ

  “All hunting stories are the same,” said Clovis; “just as all Turf stories are the same, and all—”

  “My hunting story isn’t a bit like any you’ve ever heard,” said the Baroness. “It happened quite a while ago, when I was about twenty-three. I wasn’t living apart from my husband then; you see, neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance. In spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up. But we always hunted with different packs. All this has nothing to do with the story.”

  “We haven’t arrived at the meet yet. I suppose there was a meet,” said Clovis.

  “Of course there was a meet,” said the Baroness; all the usual crowd were there, especially Constance Broddle. Constance is one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas decorations in church. ‘I feel a presentiment that something dreadful is going to happen,’ she said to me; ‘am I looking pale?’

  “She was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard bad news.

  “‘You’re looking nicer than usual,’ I said, ‘but that’s so easy for you.’ Before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some gorse-bushes.”

  “I knew it,” said Clovis, “in every fox-hunting story that I’ve ever heard there’s been a fox and some gorse-bushes.”

  “Constance and I were well mounted,” continued the Baroness serenely, “and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight, though it was a fairly stiff run. Towards the finish, however, we must have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. It was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just beneath us.

  “‘There they go,’ cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, ‘In Heaven’s name, what are they hunting?’

  “It was certainly no mortal fox. It stood more than twice as high, had a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck.

  “‘It’s a hyaena,’ I cried; ‘it must have escaped from Lord Pabham’s Park.’

  “At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a half-circle and looked foolish. Evidently they had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.

  “The hyaena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyaena were left alone in the gathering twilight.

  “‘What are we to do?’ asked Constance.

  “‘What a person you are for questions,’ I said.

  “‘Well, we can’t stay here all night with a hyaena,’ she retorted.

  “‘I don’t know what your ideas of comfort are,’ I said; ‘but I shouldn’t think of staying here all night even without a hyaena. My home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn’t find here. We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.’

  “We trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the beast following cheerfully at our heels.

  “‘What on earth are we to do with the hyaena?’ came the inevitable question.

  “‘What does one generally do with hyaenas?’ I asked crossly.

  “‘I’ve never had anything to do with one before,’ said Constance.

  “‘Well, neither have I. If we even knew its sex we might give it a name. Perhaps we might call it Esmé. That would do in either case.’

  “There was still sufficient daylight for us to distinguish wayside objects, and our listless spirits gave an upward perk as we came upon a small half-naked gipsy brat picking blackberries from a low-growing bush. The sudden apparition of two horsewomen and a hyaena set it off crying, and in any case we should scarcely have gleaned any useful geographical information from that source; but there was a probability that we might strike a gipsy encampment somewhere along our route. We rode on hopefully but uneventfully for another mile or so.

  “‘I wonder what that child was doing there,’ said Constance presently.

  “‘Picking blackberries. Obviously.’

  “‘I don’t like the way it cried,’ pursued Constance; ‘somehow its wail keeps ringing in my ears.’

  “I did not chide Constance for her morbid fancies; as a matter of fact the same sensation, of being pursued by a persistent fretful wail, had been forcing itself on my rather over-tired nerves. For company’s sake I hulloed to Esmé, who had lagged somewhat behind. With a few springy bounds he drew up level, and then shot past us.

  “The wailing accompaniment was explained. The gipsy child was firmly, and I expect painfully, held in his jaws.

  “‘Merciful Heaven!’ screamed Constance, ‘what on earth shall we do? What are we to do?’

  “I am perfectly certain that at the Last Judgment Constance will ask more questions than any of the examining Seraphs.

  “‘Can’t we do something?’ she persisted tearfully, as Esmé cantered easily along in front of our tired horses.

  “Personally I was doing everything that occurred to me at the moment. I stormed and scolded and coaxed in
English and French and gamekeeper language; I made absurd, ineffectual cuts in the air with my thongless hunting-crop; I hurled my sandwich case at the brute; in fact, I really don’t know what more I could have done. And still we lumbered on through the deepening dusk, with that dark uncouth shape lumbering ahead of us, and a drone of lugubrious music floating in our ears. Suddenly Esmé bounded aside into some thick bushes, where we could not follow; the wail rose to a shriek and then stopped altogether. This part of the story I always hurry over, because it is really rather horrible. When the beast joined us again, after an absence of a few minutes, there was an air of patient understanding about him, as though he knew that he had done something of which we disapproved, but which he felt to be thoroughly justifiable.

  “‘How can you let that ravening beast trot by your side?’ asked Constance. She was looking more than ever like an albino beetroot.

  “‘In the first place, I can’t prevent it,’ I said; ‘and in the second place, whatever else he may be, I doubt if he’s ravening at the present moment.’

  “Constance shuddered. ‘Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?’ came another of her futile questions.

  “‘The indications were all that way,’ I said; ‘on the other hand, of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do.’

  “It was nearly pitch-dark when we emerged suddenly into the highroad. A flash of lights and the whir of a motor went past us at the same moment at uncomfortably close quarters. A thud and a sharp screeching yell followed a second later. The car drew up, and when I had ridden back to the spot I found a young man bending over a dark motionless mass lying by the roadside.

  “‘You have killed my Esmé,’ I exclaimed bitterly.

  “‘I’m so awfully sorry,’ said the young man; I keep dogs myself, so I know what you must feel about it. I’ll do anything I can in reparation.’

  “‘Please bury him at once,’ I said; ‘that much I think I may ask of you.’

  “‘Bring the spade, William,’ he called to the chauffeur. Evidently hasty roadside interments were contingencies that had been provided against.

  “The digging of a sufficiently large grave took some little time. ‘I say, what a magnificent fellow,’ said the motorist as the corpse was rolled over into the trench. ‘I’m afraid he must have been rather a valuable animal.’