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    From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery
    From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery
    From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery
    Ebook62 pages56 minutes

    From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery

    By John Russell Fearn

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    About this ebook

    Richard Shaw thinks he's been blessed when he and his new bride Beryl survive a car smash. Both make rapid recoveries from their injuries, both have apparently fully recovered. But Beryl is strangely changed. As the doctor tells Richard: “As far as we can tell medically, she is normal again, except for one thing--the way she looks at you. I don’t think I have ever seen such a strange light in the eyes of a woman before!” Despite Beryl’s odd, even sinister, new mental outlook, Richard buys an isolated house in the country--at his wife’s insistence--and tries to pursue a normal married life. And then the murders begin....
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateNov 16, 2011
    ISBN9781434437150
    From Afar: A Science Fiction Mystery

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      Book preview

      From Afar - John Russell Fearn

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1946 by John Russell Fearn

      Copyright © 1982, 2011 by Philip Harbottle

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For Morgan Wallace

      CHAPTER ONE

      It is a remarkable story that I have to tell, but since I have the permission of the law, and of my wife to do so, I think that I ought to set the whole astounding experience on record since it is still occupying the energies of the world’s greatest psychiatrists. Surely no married couple was ever so damned as Beryl and I from the start of our life together....

      We were married on a glorious June day. Our engagement had not been a long one. In fact I had reached the age of thirty-seven, and had come to consider myself as almost a confirmed bachelor when a visit to a Birmingham stockbroker’s firm brought me into contact with Beryl Wilson. At that time she was a very efficient secretary to a wealthy broker.

      My own business being in stocks and shares, I conceived all sorts of reasons for going to Birmingham, and finally—well, you know how such things are—Beryl Wilson became Mrs. Richard Shaw. I had become utterly entranced with this blonde-haired girl with the merry blue eyes. She was eight years my junior; filled with a terrible zest for living. I never knew a girl to love speed so much.

      Taking it all round our marriage was a pretty quiet affair. When we left the church we had already decided that our honeymoon would be spent at a quiet little hotel in Cornwall, to which I was going to drive us in my car. So, loaded up with luggage and with old shoes tied on the car’s rear bumper we started off on that brilliantly sunny morning.

      Everything fixed? Beryl asked me, when we were speeding down the country lanes.

      Everything, I acknowledged smiling. I’ve arranged that we stop at the Ashdown Hotel for lunch, when we can also get rid of these fancy-dress clothes, then on again to Cornwall. We’ll be there by teatime.

      I suppose, she mused, we are indeed absolutely alone—just together in the world if I can put it that way. You have only a housekeeper and a handyman; I have—or had—only a landlady. No parents—

      And all the future before us, I murmured. I’m fairly well off for money, with a good business. We don’t need anybody to help us....

      Beryl nodded dreamily; then, as she watched the road ahead she sat up suddenly. Bright-eyed, she turned to me.

      Let me drive for a while, Dick, will you? You don’t go half fast enough for my liking. You know how I like to get along—especially in a lovely roadster like this. Go on! Please!

      Well, it isn’t easy to refuse your bride when she puts it like that; so I stopped the car and we changed places. I watched her slender, capable hands grip the steering wheel. She let in the clutch and depressed the accelerator gently—at first. For about a couple of miles she drove as sedately as if following a hearse, presumably to get the feel of the car, then her merry blue eyes glanced at me.

      Feel in the mood for a nice, swift run? she asked me, impishly.

      Within limits, I responded, a trifle uneasy as I remembered her weakness.

      My assent settled it for her. Gradually her foot pressed lower on the accelerator, and I watched the speed indicator creep up from forty to fifty, then gradually, to sixty. We were in an unrestricted area, of course, with a straight sunlit lane devoid of traffic ahead of us, but even so it seemed a pretty alarming rate to me.

      But Beryl was not nearly satisfied yet. She was enjoying every moment of this, the wind blowing the blonde hair back from her lovely face, her eyes fixed keenly straight ahead. Sixty—sixty-six—seventy—seventy-five—!

      Berry! I cried at last. Berry, for heaven’s sake ease up a bit!

      Why? We’re only just getting a real move on—! And she added five miles an hour to the speed in mischievous retaliation. Then, suddenly, it happened! I could not be quite sure what occurred but I noticed a queer expression settle on Beryl’s face. It was not the look of sudden illness but more of fear and intense perplexity.

      This seemed odd to me for I had never seen her afraid in all the time I had known her, and certainly never perplexed. Perhaps it lasted fifteen seconds, then, quite abruptly, her features went blank and her hands dropped from the wheel into her lap.

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