The Phantom Crusader: A skeleton figure gleamed beneath the ancient armour. The Room that Never Was: The door had been there the night before ... and now there was nothing. The Tunnel: Faint and far beneath them, they could hear the unmistakable sounds... Stranger in the Skill: There was someone at the door, someone strangely, frighteningly familiar. The Stockman: Psychic justice ... strange but sure ... Footprints in the Sand: There was nothing but wilderness for a thousand square miles. What had made the prints?
Release date:
September 30, 2015
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
110
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Supernatural Stories featuring The Phantom Crusader
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Blue Juggernaut
Last Man on Earth
Nemesis
Rodent Mutation
Softly by Moonlight
Somewhere Out There
Suspension
The Intruders
The Macabre Ones
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Unknown Destiny
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Beyond the Void
Beyond Time
Crimson Planet
Dark Continuum
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Perilous Galaxy
Phenomena X
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Spectre of Darkness
Survival Project
The Day the World Died
The Exorcists
The Eye of Karnak
The Man From Beyond
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The Negative Ones
The Return of Zeus
The Ultimate Man
The Uninvited
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The X-Machine
Uranium 235
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World of the Future
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The Shadow Man
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March of the Robots
Mind Force
Nightmare
Power Sphere
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The Faceless Planet
The Forbidden
The Immortals
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“A skeleton figure gleamed beneath the ancient armour.”
THE spade hit something. Borrowdin felt the sensation run up his arm like an electric shock.
“Blast,” he swore savagely. He took the spade out of the ground and laid it down.
“What’s up?” Matthi Singh spoke very commendable English, despite his name and the fact that he had been in the country for only two years.
“I’ve ’it something!” Borrowdin pointed to the trench that the two men were digging. Matthi Singh adjusted his turban, and mopped perspiration from his brow.
“What have you hit, Borrowdin?”
“I dunno.”
Len Jackson, red of face and round of stomach, came out of the foreman’s hut where he had been discussing progress with the clerk of works.
“Wassa marrer, boys? Found an unexploded bomb?”
“We do not know, Jackson sahib,” answered Matthi Singh. “My friend, Mr. Borrowdin, has encountered something with his spade.”
“Well that makes a pleasant change,” commented Jackson.
Borrowdin looked at him darkly from under thick brows.
“Seriously, though, Mr. Jackson, what do you think it is?”
Len leant languidly over the trench.
“Hard to say.” He climbed into the trench, and struck a match.
“I hope it is not a mains gas pipe that is down there, Jackson sahib,” said Matthi Singh.
“I hope so, too!” returned Len Jackson, in a grim, rather phlegmatic voice.
Apparently it was not a gas main, for the match continued to burn without causing any spectacular side events.
“Come and see if you can get some o’ the muck away from the side of it, will you!”
“Right.” Borrowdin and Matthi Singh climbed down into the trench again.
The three men worked away at the object. Their conversation degenerated into a series of grunts and straining sounds.
“Blimey!” commented Len Jackson, “I think it’s an ’elmet! You know, an old-fashioned one, knights in armour, and Crusaders, and that!”
He held up a large, rounded, semi-cylindrical metal object.
“I think I’ve seen something like that in the museum,” said Borrowdin.
Matthi Singh was looking at the helmet very strangely.
“Somewhere it occurs to me, Jackson sahib, that I have seen a helmet like it before. May I see it, please?” Len Jackson handed the helmet over to the Indian.
Matthi Singh examined the helmet from all angles, then rubbed the metal between his finger and thumb as though to test its texture.
“It has a very strange tactile sensation,” he said at last.
Borrowdin raised an eyebrow as though to say that he wished foreigners would be kind enough to speak English so that he could understand them! Len Jackson looked at the side of the gently conical helmet.
“There’s some ’oles round here,” he commented.
“Holes?” queried Matthi Singh. “Oh, yes, there are aperture spaces in the metal, aren’t there?”
“Blimey!” said Borrowdin. “Aperture spaces! Holes! Singhy ol’ mate! Holes! Not aperture spaces, boy. Just plain holes—gaps where there ain’t no metal——”
“Aperture spaces,” repeated Matthi Singh, doggedly. Borrowdin shrugged; Len Jackson was grinning.
“I mean they look to me,” said Matthi Singh, “as though they were meant to hold something.”
“Either that, or they were ventilation,” said Len Jackson.
“What, like ’oles in a cap?” said Borrowdin interrogatively.
“That’s right,” agreed Len. He laughed, “I suppose blokes in the olden days had sweaty skulls same as we ’ave!”
“Wonder if they ’ad dandruff as well,” said Borrowdin, absently.
“You’ve got a lovely mind, you ’ave,” said Jackson.
“Wonder if they ’ad ringworm,” pursued Borrowdin.
“For crying out loud!” exploded Len Jackson. “You ought to be on Emergency Ward 10, never mind a construction gang!” Matthi Singh looked at the little round holes again.
“Perhaps these circular holes are to emit the ringworm,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
Borrowdin exploded into a laugh that ended in a choking cough.
“You smoke too much,” said Len Jackson. “You’ll do yourself in, mate.”
“I believe you’re right,” said Borrowdin, and he lowered himself on to a packing case by the side of the trench. His face was redder now than Jackson’s, and Matthi Singh regarded him in some alarm.
“You think perhaps you should see the doctor, friend Borrowdin,” he said. “As Jackson sahib says, it is a very nasty cough that you have there, very nasty——”
Borrowdin looked up with tears streaming down his face, his eyes were watering profusely. He was still racked by the heavy coughing spasm.
“It’s them fags,” said Jackson, “they’re no good to you Borry boy, no good at all. Pack it in, mate, like I did. Felt a lot better since.”
“I think you’re right,” agreed Borrowdin, when he finally recovered his breath and something of his composure. Jackson took the helmet back to the clerk of work’s office. Matthi Singh and Borrowdin got on with the digging. Within ten minutes Borrowdin was out of the trench again. This time he was holding up a skull, and what looked like the remains of a broken clavicle.
Matthi Singh moved into Borrowdin’s section of the trench and began scrambling about among the bones like an enthusiastic terrier.
George Thompson, clerk of the works, came out of the hut with Len Jackson. Matthi Singh was producing not only bones but pieces of armour, a sword and a dagger.
“There’s no doubt about it now,” said Jackson.
George Thompson shook his head rather dismally. He sighed. He was a tall, slim, melancholy man. Years of construction work accentuate and emphasise character trends. Men who begin with a tendency to plumpness and jollity grow plumper and jollier as the years go by. Men who begin with a tendency to phlegmatic melancholia become more phlegmatic and melancholy as time rolls over them. George Thompson was the epitome of staid, weary, resignation. His eyebrows drooped; his moustache drooped like a straggly grey curtain over lips that turned down at the corners. The lobes of his ears were longer than normal, and this added to the general droopy appearance, giving him a mild resemblance to a bloodhound which has waited too long for its supper.
“We shall have to call them in, I suppose,” said George Thomson.
“Yes, I’m afraid we shall,” agreed Len Jackson, not evincing any more enthusiasm than the clerk of the works had done. “We’re a week behind already,” announced Thomson gloomily.
“ ’Sthe weather,” replied Jackson.
“I’m not blaming you, Len. You and the lads have been doing pretty well,” said Thomson. “I know it’s the weather, and that ruddy main we ran into that wasn’t marked. If young Sproggs hadn’t been so careful, we’d have had a lot more trouble than we have had. He’s a good boy. I think we could give him a bonus at the end of the week, if the Company’ll agree.”
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t. If he hadn’t persisted about that pipe that he found, and stopped Hawkins coming down there with the mechanical digger, we’d have had a month’s hold up! I don’t think they’ll begrudge him a five pound bonus for saving them three or four hundred.”
“And the rest!” added George Thomson.
There was silence for a moment.
“Let the lads carry on working,” said Thomson. “I’ll ring up. Tell them if they find anything else to bring it over here.” He looked down at the duck boards of his “office” floor. The bones and the ancient breastplate lay in a careless heap, The helmet beside them seemed to stare at them disapprovingly as though the little round holes in the side of it were strange, unnatural eyes.
George Thomson picked up the telephone. As he turned away from the heap of pathetic remains on the floor he had the strangest feeling that someone, or something, was looking at him. He had the sensation that someone or something was staring over his shoulder towards the spot where Borrowdin and Matthi Singh were still digging their trench. He shrugged and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.
The sensation of being watched made him very uncomfortable and it took a deliberate effort of will to prevent himself from turning round and looking at the heap of bones on the floor. He vaguely remembered that Wordsworth, or Longfellow, or one of that school, had written a poem about a “Skeleton in Armour.” But that had been a Viking. He was sure that had been a Viking. And this helmet didn’t look like a Viking helmet.
George Thomson had seen the highly authentic Kirk Douglas version of “The Vikings,” and he knew that no self respecting Viking would have worn a helmet like that round, conical affair on the floor.
Despite the unwelcome interruption to his already overdue schedule George could not completely disguise from himself his own rather reluctant interest, perhaps curiosity rather than interest; for despite his melancholy attitude and generally doleful exterior, George Thomson’s soul was not so dead t. . .
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