A man breaks off an affair in order to marry another woman. He is haunted by the ghost of his spurned lover.
13.The Man and the Snake - Ambrose Bierce
A what the Hell just happened sort of story. A zoologist’s guest scoffs at old superstitions, but finds himself paralyzed by the stare of a snake. Bierce reads a bit like Mark Twain crossed with Edgar Allen Poe, but with a style all his own.
14.The Yellow Wall Paper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A woman confined to a rest cure by her husband descends into madness because all she is allowed to do is stare at the wallpaper.
15.The Great God Pan – Arthur Machen
A highly regarded piece of supernatural horror, a profound influence on H. P. Lovecraft. An occult experiment goes wrong, and years later a mysterious woman wreaks havoc on those involved.
16.The Seventh Man – Arthur Quiller-Couch
Six men are trying to survive the dark arctic winter after their shipwreck but are joined by the mysterious presence of a seventh.
17.The Monkey’s Paw – W. W. Jacobs
Beware of what you wish for. A strange object from the East has the ability to grant a certain number of wishes, but it takes you at your word precisely.
18.The Willows - Algernon Blackwood
The Danube was never so scary as it is here. Unsettling use of the natural landscape to convey menace.
19.Thurnley Abbey – Perceval Landon
A stranger explains why he is scared to sleep alone. There is also the matter of a broken promise, and a question unasked.
20.The Music on the Hill - Saki
H. H. Munro (Saki) is best known for his wicked humour. He also wrote several more serious pieces, generally exploring the futile attempts of civilization to impose order on primeval forces of nature and chaos. This one places an ancient god in the English countryside.
21.Casting the Runes - M. R. James
This one should keep peer reviewers up at night. An occult author casts a curse on those who negatively reviewed his work.
I'm not one for horror films, or Zombies, or creepy Halloween decorations. In fact, I hate them. Why, then, am I writing a Halloween post?
Simply put, there are many amazing stories that are perfect for a Halloween mood, and I love stories. After all, that is why I started this blog.
I have selected thirty one stories – one for each day of October – from a variety of times, places, and style. Some are poems, one is a folk ballad, another a folk tale, and two other are stage plays. There are ghost stories, horror stories, fantasy, science fiction, and tales of murder and madness. A few are lighthearted, most are dark. Some have a moral to tell. All of them involve a sense that things are not always quite as they seem to be, and that is the perfect recipe for enjoying Halloween. These stories are arranged in a rough chronological order, from Euripides to Daphne du Maurier. My selection criteria are entirely subjective, and what it boils down to is stories that I enjoy. Isn’t that what recommendations are about? In some cases I have tried to choose lesser known stories and authors, but not always. A few of these stories are very well known, and might even be called obvious choices. I also intend to explore some of these authors at greater length because it is a pity to limit ourselves just to one story.
Because this is a long list, it is split into three.
1.The Bacchae - Euripides
A king persecutes the followers of Bacchus, bringing about his own death by a crazed mob. One of the earliest examples of what we would now term horror stories.
2.The Bridegroom and the Angel of Death – Howard Schwartz
A wedding is disturbed by the appearance of the angel of death himself, sent to take the groom’s life. A Jewish tale from medieval Yemen retold by Howard Schwartz.
3.Tam Lin - Anonymous
The great Scottish ballad of Halloween and true love conquering all. A woman must save her lover from the vindictive fairie queen before he is given as a tithe to Hell.
4.Bluebeard – Charles Perrault
A classic of fairytale horror. Why you should open even the doors that are forbidden. Forget the plot holes.
5.Lenore – Gottfried August Burger
Not Poe’s poem. This one is about death and the lady, a challenge to God’s sovereignty, and a nighttime ride. Burger, in one way or another, has influenced all subsequent horror tales.
6.The Erlking – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A father and son are pursued by the malevolent elf king during a(nother) nighttime ride, but the father refuses to believe until it is too late.
7.The Night Before Christmas – Nikolai Gogol
Gogol has many creepy, Gothic stories, but this one has a light, humorous touch. The Devil tries to get his revenge on a village blacksmith, but fails spectacularly.
8.The Queen of Spades – Aleksandr Pushkin
An officer is obsessed with discovering the secret to winning at cards, but is driven to madness once the secret is revealed.
9.The Masque of the Red Death – Edgar Allen Poe
You cannot have one of these lists without Poe. In this story a prince and his retinue attempt to escape a devastating plague by hiding within a castle, until they throw a party and a mysterious guest arrives uninvited.
10.An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street – Joseph Sheridan le Fanu
One of the finest ghost stories ever written. This one terrified me when I first read it on a winter night while staying in an old house near Hereford as a teenager.
11.The Signal-Man – Charles Dickens
Not a Christmas Carol! Dickens had surprisingly good horror chops as seen in this story about a railroad signalman who has premonitions of death and disaster. Not only is it a good story, Dickens, as usual, had a social agenda in writing it.
This is not the first time that I have blogged on Graham
Greene, and it will certainly not be the last time. Greene was not an admirable
man, he was difficult, even unpleasant, constantly cheating on his wife, and
betraying his faith. Yet, he still possessed enormous insight into the subject
of God, man, and love. To understand his power as a writer, it is worth
examining how he tackled a painful, sensitive topic like suicide.
The Heart of the Matter is a dark novel about adultery, obsession,
dishonesty, the loss of trust, pity, responsibility, and the cost of betraying
one’s principles, all set in wartime West Africa. It is ultimately a story
about how Satan is powerless before God’s love.
It does not seem so, when you reach the end of the book. Scobie
- the protagonist - has killed himself, shattering the lives of his wife, and of
his mistress, the death affecting his entire community. Even God, for all his love
and for all his pleading (in an internal dialogue with Scobie), could not
prevent the suicide. Scobie realizes the enormity of what he has done. Once an
upright man, he has committed adultery. He has taken bribes and perverted
justice. He has even been complicit in murder, David-like, to keep his sin
concealed. What pushes him to take his own life is knowing that he has
blasphemed God, and damned his own soul by partaking of communion as a sinner
who refused to seek absolution. As it turns out, the affair wasn’t much of a
secret. Everyone knew.
The novel is realistic in its portrayal of people, place and
events, but the reader catches glimpses of Heaven and Hell. This is more than the
mere struggles of British colonials in West Africa, it is how the oldest
struggle in the world – for the soul of man, for salvation – plays out in the
lives of individuals living in this world. Satan acts but once in the book, and
is very subtle. Scobie takes pity on a young widow, the survivor of a U-boat
attack, and visits her. This is the start of his affair, and what sets the
events in motion. “[S]he raised her mouth and they kissed. What they had both
thought was safety proved to have been the camouflage of an enemy who worked in
terms of friendship, trust, and pity.”
How is it that God has won, and not Satan?
The novel’s central idea, indeed, its title, is that how we
perceive people is not who they really are. After bringing in the survivors of the U-boat attack, the emaciated, the mad, and the dying, Scobie reflects on the contrast between outward calm and inward turmoil.“Outside the rest-house he stopped
again. The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace
if one hadn't known, just as the stars on this clear night gave also an
impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the
facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what
they called the heart of the matter?”
Scobie himself seems to be a lax Catholic, he doesn’t know if he
believes, and his observance is a matter of habit. As the novel progresses, it
is apparent that Scobie is actually scrupulous such a degree that he cannot
bring himself to accept God’s mercy. Scobie comes to see himself as the cross
upon which Jesus is crucified anew. If God and everyone around him suffer
because of their foolish love for him, then he will cease to exist, and his
death and damnation will cure them of their illness once and for all. Suicide
is the Devil’s triumph because it is the ultimate declaration that there is no
hope.
Scobie’s wife discovers through the diary that this was
suicide and not an unintentional overdose. In her anguish and bitterness, she
takes the diary to their priest.
"He was a bad Catholic."
"That's the silliest phrase in common use," Father
Rank said.
“And at the end, this
– horror. He must have known that he was damning himself.”
"Yes, he knew that all right. He never had any trust in
mercy except for other people."
"It's no good even praying . . ."
Father Rank clapped the cover of the diary to and said, furiously,
“For goodness’ sake, Mrs. Scobie, don't imagine you or I know a thing about
God's mercy."
"The Church says . . ."
"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules.
But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."
God triumphs because he – and only he – knows the heart of
the matter.
In 1966, Bob Dylan was interviewed by Playboy. Over that past year or so he had been involved in a lot of controversy and acrimony over his embrace of rock music.The folk music scene viewed the move as nothing short of treasonous. Naturally, the interview touched on Dylan's view of folk music.
Songs like "Which Side Are You On?" and "I Love You,
Porgy" - they're not folk-music songs; they're political songs. They're
already dead. Obviously, death is not very universally accepted."
Don't get me wrong, I think that Which Side Are You On is a brilliant song, and in my opinion, one of the finest examples of political/propaganda songs ever written. However, it is lacking a certain timeless quality, and it is this quality that Dylan found in what he termed traditional music.
There's nobody
that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing
out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn
into angels - they're not going to die."
The music packs an emotional punch because it is
[T]oo unreal to die. It doesn't need to be protected. Nobody's going to
hurt it. In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off
a record player."
Dylan called it "plain simple mystery," and identified another significant aspect of the music's timelessness- myth.
It comes about from legends,
Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death.[1]
In a earlier interview, Dylan expanded on this mythic aspect of folk/traditional music.
There is--and I'm sure nobody realizes
this, all the authorities who write about what it is and what it should be,
when they say keep things simple, they should be easily understood--folk
music is the only music where it isn't simple. It's never been simple. It's
weird, man, full of legend, myth, Bible and ghosts. I've never written
anything hard to understand, not in my head anyway, and nothing as far out
as some of the old songs. They were out of sight.[2]
One of the more influential sources for this sort of music was Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. When the Anthology was re-released in the mid-1960s, the cover depicted a Depression-era labourer. This fit perfectly with the public perception of folk music as the advocate of social justice, but it misses what Smith was doing. The original cover art was taken from a work by the 17th century esotericist, Robert Fludd. It showed the hand of God reaching out to tune a giant monochord thus harmonising the various spheres. The liner notes quote Alesteir Crowley and Rudolph Steiner, and the albums are in different colours each corresponding to a basic element as its organising principle! The tracks and their placement in the album contribute to the potent sense of mystery. The effect as a whole is alchemy, not social protest. There are songs on the Anthology dealing with harsh working conditions, but they are there because they help to tell a story. They command our attention not because they call us to action, but because the picture they paint is so compelling and vivid that we can't help but be drawn into it.
A classic song from the Anthology, My Name is John Johanna taps into this mythic undercurrent. It transcends the genre of hardship songs because it tells a very individual story without a grand, unifying theory of worker's right vs. labour exploitation behind it. The story's use of myth makes its characters larger than life, in the best traditions of Twain and Dickens. It feels much older than it really is. Songs preaching social justice can get very tedious. Not because there is anything wrong with striving for social justice (I think that we should all be striving for it), but because the message is heavy-handed. Art is subordinated to the message. The world created in John Johanna is not real, and it doesn't correlate to the world at large, but the imaginal effect is what means that it will never die, making its mix of the mundane and the mythic eminently relatable.
Cain flying before Jehovah's Curse by Fernand Cormon
The song opens very intimately with the narrator- John Johanna- giving his name and a little of his story. A migrant worker, he's been everywhere and seen everything, but then he came to Arkansas. In the song Arkansas is not so much a real place as it is the definition of misery, a stand-in for Hell.
John Johanna gets a train ticket, travels to Arkansas, and runs into a friend. While the friend, like the narrator, has an ordinary name- Alan Catcher- he is also known by a nickname: Cain. The nickname is ominous, and Alan Catcher's physical appearance matches it. He is like a walking skeleton, seven feet two inches in height, and his long hair hangs down in rat-tails. The description emphasises his otherworldly nature, though he is fully human. In Western culture, Cain was often depicted as a wild man, whose very appearance is cursed. In short, nothing good can come from associating with the namesake of the original outcast. Alan Catcher claims to run the best hotel in Arkansas, so John Johanna follows him home. The rates are exorbitant, the food is inedible, and starvation is pictured on Catcher's pitiful face. John Johanna plans to live early the next morning, but Alan Catcher talks him into staying and working for him. The same rate as board, and all the beef he can chew. He promises that John Johanna will be transformed into a different (presumably better) man before he leaves. The work is draining swampland, and after six weeks of it, John Johanna feels so thin that he can hide behind a straw. The imagery of swamp has undertones of Hell or Purgatory, such as Dante's portrayal of the Styx, but at any rate, it is entirely unfit for human dwelling. Instead of Paradise, he found the primordial ooze with only swamp rabbits for companions. John Johanna leaves- how he raised the money is never explained- and he is indeed a changed man, but not for the better. The nearest he is willing to approach Arkansas is through a telescope. It is on that surreal note of a telescope that can see from New York to Arkansas that the song ends.
My name is John Johanna, I come from Buffalo town,
For nine long years I've traveled this wide, wide world around.
Through ups and downs and miseries and some good days I've saw,
But I never knew what misery was, till I went to Arkansas. I went up to the station the operator to spy,
Told him my situation and where I wanted to ride,
Said, "Hand me down five dollars, lad, a ticket you shall draw
That'll land you safe by railway in the state of Arkansas." I rode up to the station, I chanced to meet a friend.
Alan Catcher was his name, although they called him Cain.
His hair hung down in rat-tails below his under-jaw,
He said he run the best hotel in the state of Arkansas. I followed my companion to his respected place,
Saw pity and starvation was pictured on his face.
His bread was old corn dodgers, his beef I could not chaw,
He charged me fifty cents a day in the state of Arkansas. I got up that next morning to catch that early train.
He says, "Don't be in a hurry, lad, I have some land to drain.
You'll get your fifty cents a day and all that you can chaw,
You'll find yourself a different lad when you leave old Arkansas." I worked six weeks for the son-of-a-gun, Alan Catcher was his name.
He stood seven feet two inches, as tall as any crane.
I got so thin on sassafras tea I could hide behind a straw,
You bet I was a different lad when I left old Arkansas. Farewell you old swamp rabbits, also you dodger pills,
Likewise you walking skeletons, you old sassafras hills.
If you ever see my face again, I'll hand you down my paw,
I'll be looking through a telescope from home to Arkansas.
Espionage is a dirty business. A dangerous business. A dull business. John le Carre brilliantly captured this in his 1963 novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, as do the following lines from the equally remarkable 1965 screen adaptation. Spies are anything but moral philosophers.
On top of all that, espionage is frequently a spectacularly futile business. You recruit and train a spy, introduce the spy into the right circles, and then, in order to avoid detection and capture, they are hardly ever able to communicate lengthy messages back to the operational centre. If that weren't enough, the intelligence gathered is likely to be under-utilised, or even discarded.[1]
Yes, a damned, depressing business, however, there is a certain aspect of espionage that might be overlooked amidst it all- the absurdly comical. Yes, people really infiltrated Nazi-occupied Europe with evening wear under their wet-suits[2], and the CIA really did build a "cone of silence."[3]
One of the more absurd incidents in espionage history involves a curious mix of the real and the literary.
Though now obscure, William Le Queux almost single-handedly invented the
romantic genre of the spy story of which Ian Fleming's James Bond is the
ultimate representative. It is hard to imagine Bond without Le Queux's mix of sinister, yet exravagant, physically (or mentally) deformed villains, and outlandish plots.
"The hunchback now turned on me with a snarling expression like a
tiger's.
"Fool," he hissed, "you won't be warned," and, raising his arm, he made
a sign with his hand.
Almost instantly the crowd appeared to rise up en masse and to roll
right over us, but as I stumbled backward, headlong from my foothold, I
was astonished to see a man, got up to resemble me exactly in every
feature, scramble on to my place on the upturned case, and in a voice
that seemed my very own, to cry out to the auctioneer: "That, sir, is
the most I can do. I now retire." And as a cheer broke out from the
crowd he too skipped down instantly out of sight.
"Ah, this is indeed treachery," I told myself. And, gripping my teeth
hard, I let my fists go; next, with a mighty effort, I sprang forward to
roll the surging human mob out of my path--to make my voice heard, to
regain my old position, to take command of the situation again, for I
heard the bids still mounting higher, higher, higher.
In vain.
Lord Fotheringay, who, I thought, loved me as a brother, was on me with
a bound like a lion's, and catching me by the throat exerted all his
force and hurled me backwards.
Next second I found myself caught up in other and even stronger arms,
and, before I could utter aught save a muffled curse, I was flung head
first into an empty piano case, the heavy lid of which was instantly
closed on me--but not before I heard the hammer fall and the auctioneer
call: "The deeds are Mr Peter Zouche's. The price is eighteen hundred
pounds." I had been tricked![4]
Prior to the First World War, Germany had many agents at work in Great Britain.
One day, William Le Queux happened to be at Chatham, where he ran into Gustav Steinhauer, leader of Germany's espionage network in Britain. Years later, Steinhauer described the encounter.
"One day while down at Chatham having a look at things in general and, as I imagined, effectively disguised with a false beard, who should I run across but William Le Queux, who had more than a nodding acquaintance with most of the spies in Europe. He at once warned the police and I had Melville on my track forthwith."[5]
Steinhauer's exploits, it seems, were later borrowed by Ian Fleming for Auric Goldfinger and his plot to steal the gold from Fort Knox.[6]
Melville was Sir William Melville, also known as "M," the first chief of Britain's MI5. Fleming adopted the initial (and much of Melville's personality) for Bond's chief[7]
So, what we have is the prototype of a character in the James Bond books pursuing the prototype of another character (a grown man wearing a patently false beard no less), after being tipped off by the pioneering author of the genre.
John le Carre (following in the footsteps of Somerset Maugham and Graham
Greene) would latter shatter this genre of spy story with books like
the aformentioned Spy Who Came in from the Cold, as well as The Looking
Glass War, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and A Perfect Spy, but can the popularity of
James Bond be denied? He is likely what immediately, almost subconsciously, comes to mind when the subject of spies is mentioned. After all, there is some truth to this image, too.
[1]For example, Abner Bennigsen AKA Goglidze- the Soviet agent who infiltrated a relatively high-ranking position in the SS- only made direct contact with his operators four or five times during the Second World War, and the valuable Messerschmidt plans that he acquired were completely ignored by the Red Army. http://berkovich-zametki.com/2006/Zametki/Nomer7/Heyfec1.htm
[3]"OTS designed a new type of “secure room” that improved the confi dence of the CIA that their operational discussions were protected from KGB eavesdropping. The special room, including chairs and tables, was constructed entirely of clear plastic to expose any electronic listening devices, or “bugs.” In theory, it was comparable to the fictional “cone of silence” from the 1960s television show Get Smart." Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, Henry R. Schlesinger, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda (Penguin Group Inc.: New York, 2008), 494.
[5]Gustav Steinhauer, Steinhauer: The Kaiser's Master Spy (Appleton: New York, 1931), 62. See also Stella Rimington's introduction to the 2007 edition of the Greene brothers' The Spy's Bedside Book. Both it and the book in general are a treasure trove of espionage stories, fictional and real. Selections from Le Queux feature prominently.
[6]Goldfinger, of course, has other, self-evident prototypes (such as the architect Erno Goldfinger), but historian Andrew Cook has made a good case for Steinhauer.
I have a delightful Russian-language anthology of Vladimir Nabokov miscellania, which I acquired in Utah, of all places. For me, that makes a fun little Nabokov connection with Utah even funner.
The following is taken entirely from Will South's book, Andy Warhol Slept Here? (thereare lots of other fun stories in the book) which Signature Books has generally posted free, in its entirety, on their website.
http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=21175
*************************
Vladimir Nabokov was a twice-exiled writer and scientist; first from
his native Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, then from Paris in
advance of the Nazi invasion of Western Europe. He arrived in America in
1940, and over the next two decades established himself as one of the
most brilliant authors of the twentieth century.
Nabokov struggled financially in America for years, supporting his
wife, his young son, and himself on his wages from teaching Russian
literature at Wellesley College and later at Cornell. Then, in 1955, he
achieved stunning success, artistically and financially, with the
publication of the sumptuous and sinister novel Lolita. A classic story saturated with derangement, romance, and fate, Lolita remains a literary force that reverberates through the American cultural consciousness.
Long before the publication of Lolita, Nabokov’s word magic
caught the attention of University of Utah professor Brewster Ghiselin,
who invited Nabokov to the University’s Annual Writers Conference.
Nabokov accepted. His only serious concern about attending, he expressed
to Ghiselin, was hygienic: “Last but not least—will I have a private
bath or shower?” He and his son, Dmitri, also managed to find time
during the conference to play some tennis with a member of the local
literati, Wallace Stegner.
Nabokov’s first and perhaps more
meaningful visit to Utah, however, came very early in his American
career. His publisher, James Laughlin, owned the Alta Lodge in the
Wasatch mountains. Nabokov asked Laughlin if he could stay at the hotel,
which was largely empty due to the war.
Vladimir Nabokov with University of Utah students in 1949.
Photograph courtesy Special Collections, University of Utah Marriott Library.
In June 1943 Vladimir was able to indulge
the passion that occupied him as much as writing: butterfly
collecting. Nabokov was a serious lepidopterist and worked during this
period at the Harvard Entomological Museum. At Alta he roamed what he
called “the tapering lines of firs on the slopes amid a grayish green
haze of aspens” in search of rare winged species. According to
biographer Brian Boyd:
For Nabokov, Utah was a fortunate
choice: one of the few states in which little butterfly collecting had
been done, and with mountain ranges isolated by deserts and therefore
likely to have evolved new species. Despite a severe climate with icy
winds and noisy thunderstorms, he would walk along the valleys and
mountain slopes, whenever the sun came out, from twelve to eighteen
miles a day, clad only in shorts and tennis shoes, offering a generous
target for gadflies. He wanted to rediscover the haunts of Melissa Annetta, a long-lost subspecies of the Lycaeides
genus that he had been working on the previous winter, and with the
help of nine-year-old Dmitri, he found it on lupine among firs on both
sides of the Little Cottonwood River, not far from Alta.
Vladimir Nabokov in Salt Lake City with son, Dimitri, and wife, Véra.
I am LDS, so it is rather fun to come across unexpected references to Mormons in unrelated books.
One of the pivotal scenes in A Gun For Sale, Graham Greene's 1936 novel of political assassination and revenge, is the gas practice in the streets of Nottwich.
Raven, the hare-lipped hired killer, tracks down those who double-crossed him to the town of Nottwich. Since Europe has been brought to the brink of war by his assassination of the minister of an unnamed country, military drills are taking place throughout England. This particular one allows him to evade police pursuit and take his revenge.
In the 1942 film noir classic, This Gun For Hire, the story is transposed to wartime San Francisco. The gas-mask sequence begins at 1:12:42.
In the book, several medical students decide to rag conchies- conscientious objectors- and everyone not wearing a gas-mask. "What they wanted were people who cared so little about their country that they wouldn't even take the trouble to put on a gas-mask."[1] After a particularly violent episode where they trash the room of a bookish colleague, the students come across a senile old woman.
Almost immediately they picked up an old woman. She didn't in the least
know what it was all about. She thought it was a street collection and
offered them a penny. They told her she had to come along to the
hospital; they were very courteous and one offered to carry her basket;
they reacted from violence to a more than usual gentility. She laughed
at them. She said, 'Well I never, what you boys will think up next!' and
when one took her arm and began to lead her gently up the street, she
said, 'Which of you's Father Christmas?' Buddy didn't like that: it hurt
his dignity: he had suddenly been feeling rather noble: 'women and
children first': 'although bombs were falling all round he brought the
woman safely...' He stood still and let the others go on up the street
with the old woman; she was having the time of her life; she cackled and
dug them in the ribs: her voice carried a long distance in the cold
air. She kept on telling them to ' take off them things and play fair',
and just before they turned a corner out of sight she was calling them
Mormons. She meant Mohammedans, because she had an idea that Mohammedans
went about with their faces covered up and had a lot of wives. An
aeroplane zoomed overhead and Buddy was alone in the street with the
dead and dying until Mike appeared. Mike said he had a good idea. Why
not pinch the mummy in the Castle and take it to the hospital for not
wearing a gas-mask?[2]
Buddy, the medical students' ringleader, then chases after another man without a gas-mask, but this time it is Raven...
[1]Graham Greene, A Gun For Sale: An Entertainment, 1936, p. 142.
