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The Shadowy Escort

by A. M. Burrage

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Almost everybody has at one time or another wanted to write a detective story, but, for the greater well-being of publishers and publishers’ readers, not everybody has tried. Among those who have, with varying degrees of success, must be numbered a lot of men and women who would not have attempted to enter the realm of letters by any other frontier. Detective fiction has a fascination for nearly every type of mind. Thus it may happen that the butcher’s boy cannot bring himself to deliver the meat until he has read the explanation of what really did happen in Chapter Six, and the Cabinet Minister, also immersed in another copy of the same work, forgets to protest because his dinner is late.

This is due to the age-old, natural, human love of a puzzle; and the ambition to create a puzzle of one’s own, instead of merely trying to solve other peoples’, is a natural after-growth.

Serrald had read detective fiction for years as a mental relaxation. When he dined out he talked about the Russian School and the influence of the Arthurian Legend upon our early poets; when he got home he went on reading The Mystery of Bloodshot Grange. This he regarded as a secret vice, and did not own to it until he discovered that many of his intellectual friends, who also should have known better, made similar concessions to their lower natures.

Serrald was a man in the middle thirties who liked to pose as an intellectual. He was employed in one of the higher branches of the Civil Service, and had been immune from any other service during the early years of the War. But when the newspapers had invented ‘Cuthbert’, and printed rude remarks about Government Rabbit Warrens, he had joined the Army as a private, and later received a commission after several months’ service in France. Apparently he had done very well in the Army, but he rarely spoke about those days. The War had been too vulgar a brawl for a young man with a taste for intellectualism.

It was some years after the War that Serrald confided to his friend Masters his intention of writing a detective novel. He said that it might be better fun than continuing to read them, and that there must be a lot of fun to be had in laying false clues and finding for them sound and logical reasons for being included in the tale.

‘I mean,’ he added, ‘to write a perfectly insoluble mystery story—insoluble, that is, until the reader has reached the last page.’

Masters smiled at this modest ambition.

‘Any ideas?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. My murder is going to be an act of omission, not of commission. The murderer turns out to be only a murderer in the sense that he has found his victim in a predicament in which death must supervene if he refuses help—and he just refuses help and leaves him to die. There is another strong criminal interest in the story, but before I can get on with it I’ve got to invent something new in the way of ciphers. I want a cipher that doesn’t look like a cipher. It must, of course, be very difficult to solve and be very innocent in appearance, so that anybody finding it would scarcely guess that it conveyed a message at all.’

Masters considered.

‘Short or long messages?’ he asked.

‘Oh, short would do. Just something by which criminals could warn each other of danger, and make appointments, and all that.’

‘I’ll have a good think,’ said Masters, ‘and tell you if anything occurs to me.’

Two evenings later he came round to Serrald’s rooms, ‘I’ve got your cipher,’ he said, with the smile of one who anticipates praise.

‘Oh? Got the key written down?’

‘No. It hasn’t to be written down. That’s the beauty of it. It can be memorized in exactly one second. And nobody—except, of course, the super-human detective you intend to create—could possibly guess that it was a cipher. I think I’ll take ten per cent commission on what you get out of your book.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Serrald smiling.

‘All right. Well, when one of your villains wants to communicate with another villain he just sends him a pack of cards. Or perhaps cards out of two or three packs. It depends on the length of the message required. And, of course, other cards might be added after the message was complete in order to ally suspicion in the event of the package going astray.’

‘I don’t quite follow you.’

‘Well, my dear chap, there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and fifty-two cards to a pack. You take them in the order of their value at auction bridge. Thus the Ace of Spades is A, and the Two of Hearts is Z. Then we start again and the Ace of Diamonds becomes A and the Two of Clubs Z. That gives you two of every letter in one pack of cards.

‘When one of your villains wants to tell another to “Beware” he sends him a pack of cards with the cipher ones at the top, in the order in which he will slide them off the pack. If the word were “Beware” the top card would be the King of Spades, then would come the Ten, W would be the Five of Hearts, A the Ace of Spades—or Diamonds if you like’

‘By Jove!’ Serrald exclaimed in genuine admiration.

‘And the best of it is that the man who receives the message can instantly destroy all traces of it by merely shuffling the cards. Similarly anybody who guessed that the cards meant something, and started monkeying with them, would spoil his own chance of deciphering the message as soon as he altered their sequence.’

Serrald nodded. ‘That’s quite a brilliant idea. You go from the top to the bottom of the Spades, and then from the top to the bottom of the Hearts, and that gives you the alphabet. Ace of Hearts would be the fourteenth letter, which is—er—N’

‘Ace of Hearts and Ace of Clubs are both N’s. You go straight down the Spades and then straight down the Hearts. That’s one alphabet of letters. Then straight down the Diamonds and straight down the Clubs, and that’s another. Of course, one pack of cards wouldn’t go far if you wanted a longish message, because so many letters get duplicated so quickly. Your crooks would have to keep about ten packs of cards each, all of the same pattern, to send longish messages to each other without anybody who might casually see the cards suspecting there was a code.’

I’ve got it. Well, I’ve got stacks of cards here, red-backs, and blue-backs, all of the same pattern. I get them from the stores for bridge, you know, and about twice a year I send the old ones to a hospital. I’ll get some out and spell you a message to see if I’ve got it right.’

He went to a drawer and pulled out fourteen or fifteen discarded packs which had been thrust back into their cardboard cases, and poured them all out upon the table, pack after pack, after which he began stirring the heap with his hands.

‘Let’s see,’ he said, ‘I’ll pull out a few cards at random first of all, and see if I can remember which letters they represent. Here’s the Two of Diamonds. What’s that?’

‘M,’ said Masters. ‘Two of Spades and Two of Diamonds are both M’s. What’s that you’ve got there now? King of Hearts? That’s O. Ace of Hearts is an N. Four of Diamonds—that’s K. Hullo, we’ve fluked a word already— Monk. Carry on. That’s an L. Ace of Spades—that’s an A. Not too quick. ’Nother Ace of Hearts is another N. Knave of Diamonds D. That’s funny. Two words come out running—Monk and Land.’

Serrald pushed the cards away from him with an impatient gesture. He had turned suddenly pale and a cold sweat shone on his face.

‘Yes,’ he said, quickly and unsteadily, ‘I understand it now. It’s—yes, it’s devilish clever. Have a drink, will you? No, I don’t want to know any more about it. A child could understand it once he’d been told. Yes, it’s devilish clever—devilish clever.’

Masters stared at his friend with sudden anxiety and a kind of dismay.

‘You’re feeling all right, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘Oh, quite. Quite all right. Why? Whisky for you?’

‘Thanks. But you do look a bit green, you know. I thought perhaps’

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing. Because the cards you pulled out at random happen to spell two words, it looked as if you thought there might be something uncanny about it. They’re not very significant words, and I don’t see how they could be tacked together to start a sentence. I invented the code last night and amused myself in the same way, to help me memorize it, by drawing cards at random and seeing if they’d form words. But I never got anything of more than four letters. Some promising starts at ambitious words, and then gibberish.’

Serrald had risen. He poured out two drinks and swallowed his own quickly.

‘I’m a bit tired,’ he said, ‘that’s all.’ He kept his face averted. ‘Of course, one might go on picking out cards at random forever without finding sequences which would spell words. That’s what makes it so—so excellent as a cipher, when one knows the key. It’s a really excellent idea of yours. I shall certainly use it in my story.’

The two men met frequently, and it was natural after that for Masters, who felt almost a proprietary interest in the detective romance, to inquire after its progress. But, like that of so many would-be authors, Serrald’s enthusiasm seemed to have set sharp upon its rising. He explained that he wasn’t well, and that it was no use making a start on the job until he felt fit to tackle it properly. Indeed, he had taken to looking ill, and to drinking a great deal more than was good for a man with a nervous temperament. Masters regarded him with the dispassionate pity of one who sees disaster looming ahead for another—a disaster for which the spectator is neither responsible nor able to avert.

‘That chap’s in for some sort of a breakdown,’ he thought.

About a month later Masters had occasion one evening to go and pay Serrald a call. Serrald lived on the second floor of a large ‘apartments’ house in Bloomsbury, of which the street door was always kept open until late at night. He mounted the dark stairs and had reached the second-floor landing, when he became aware of a figure moving away from the door of Serrald’s sitting-room. Masters made way for it with a muttered word of apology and watched it descend half a dozen of the stairs before he turned and tapped at Serrald’s door. Something quite inexplicable in the sight of the figure that had passed him filled him with a kind of cold dismay.

The sound of his knuckles on the door provoked loud and startled exclamation from within.

‘Who’s there? Who ‘s there?’

‘It’s only I,’ said Masters, and pushed open the door.

Inside the room Serrald, wild-haired and wild-eyed, had swung round in his chair to face the door. He was sitting before a large central table on which was piled a great muddled heap of playing cards.

‘Hullo,’ said Masters in a level and pleasant voice. ‘Hope you don’t mind my buffing in. I know I didn’t drive your other visitor away, because he’d started to go before I got here.’

Lines grew on Serrald’s white face. For a moment he showed the whites of his eyes.

‘My other visitor?’ he repeated.

‘Army chap.’

Serrald drew breath noisily.

‘Army chap—how do you know?’

‘Wore the uniform of an officer. Sorry, I expect I made a mistake. Thought he was moving away from your door.’

‘Officers don’t wear uniform in peace time, except when they’re on duty,’ Serrald said thickly.

‘I know. But this one was wearing his. I dare say he’s a London Terrier just come from his drill-hall.’

Serrald gulped.

‘What was he like?’ he faltered. ‘Tall?’

‘Tall, yes, and broad. Couldn’t see much what he was like apart from that. But he looked—well, the general impression I got was—that his uniform wasn’t exactly smart enough for the parade ground.’

Serrald leaned over the table, his face between his hands.

‘So it’s true,’ he said drearily, as if to himself, it isn’t that I’m going mad. All this hasn’t been subjective. Sit down, Masters. I know whom you’ve seen. You’re right, too. He was a Territorial officer, and he’s just come from his drill-hall. But his drill-hall’s in hell.’

Masters stared at him and privately reflected that he was going mad.

‘You’re full of happy thoughts to-night,’ he remarked pleasantly. ‘Made a start on that book? No, of course you haven’t! But I see you’re still experimenting with that cipher I invented.’

‘You didn’t invent it!’ Serrald snarled.

‘My dear fellow! Don’t rob me of my only claim to literary fame.’

‘You didn’t invent it. It was put into your head so that you could come and torture me with it. I’ve always avoided spiritualists and clairvoyants, and people who think they get messages from the dead by automatic writing and ouija boards, and—and so forth. And that night, when I pulled out cards at random and applied your beastly code’

Masters interrupted him with a half-angry laugh.

‘Oh, don’t be a fool! You happened when I was there that night to make two inconsequent words’

‘I didn’t!’ Serrald interrupted fiercely, ‘I made one, and that wasn’t inconsequent to me. Monkland is a man’s name, you know.’

Masters stood and stated at him.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you,’ Serrald continued drearily, ’I don’t feel any shame now. I’m in a state of terror, and terror, if you get it badly enough, carries you miles beyond shame. Some fellows got like that in the War. I didn’t, though I was bad enough, Heaven knows!

‘I think you know most of my War history. I didn’t join until pretty late—my department kept me—and when I did, I went to one of those Territorial regiments which had a reputation for being “particular”, and for filling up with professional men and old public schoolboys. And in due time I got drafted out to France, and found myself under Monkland.

‘Monkland had been out almost from the beginning. He’d been wounded twice, and after he’d risen to the rank of sergeant he’d been gazetted. Nobody denied that he was a good soldier, but everybody hated him. He was a swine to the men, and that worst kind of military brute—a martinet with a sneer. But he differed from most sneerers and loud-mouthed parade-ground flunkies. They were nearly always cowards, but he wasn’t. He didn’t know what fear was, and he hadn’t the slightest sympathy with those who did.

‘He took a special delight in bullying me and holding me up to ridicule.

I’d joined late and come out of a Government office, and I suppose I couldn’t help showing how I loathed the filth and the hardship and the danger. He was the bane of my life in the rest-camps, and in the trenches. If ever there were a dirty or a dangerous job going, he put me on to it if he could. One’s life, Heaven knows, was foul enough out there, without having a personal tormentor. I was in for a commission—which meant coming home for further training—but I knew he’d put a stop to that if he had the chance. And I wasn’t the only one who prayed that he’d be killed.

‘For all that he seemed to have a charmed life. He wasn’t one of those officers who were always away on courses whenever there was any dirty work expected—because they weren’t fit to lead their men. He was always on the spot, thoroughly fearless and efficient, and he seemed to love night raids. When he took one out he nearly always detailed me, because he knew how I hated them. I dare say he’s listening to all this, but I don’t care —I’m only telling you the truth. There’s only the stark truth left between him and me now.’

He paused for breath. Masters drew his own breath slowly.

‘Mad,’ he thought, ‘quite mad.’

‘One night when we were in the Arras sector,’ Serrald resumed, ‘Brigade ordered a reconnaissance raid. Wanted to know if the German front line was occupied at night, and if it were they wanted a couple of prisoners— alive, if possible—as samples. Of course, Monkland got the job, and, of course, he chose me for first bayonet man. That was the kind of work I loathed—sneaking over in the dark into Heaven only knew what death-trap to try to kidnap a couple of armed men. Monkland knew how I loathed it, and it gave him a special pleasure to take me with him.

‘Well, not only was the German front line occupied, but we found a machine-gun post as well. It opened out on us suddenly, and we all dodged and scattered all over the place in search of cover. The Germans must have thought that there was more considerable mischief afoot than there really was, for up went an S O S and down came a barrage.

‘I lay in a shell-hole until long after everything was quiet again, not daring to come out, and at last, when I ventured, I couldn’t see any of our people. Then I guessed correctly that those who were left had managed to get back to our line, and I started to try to find my way.

‘It was very easy to make mistakes in the dark in No Man’s Land. I must have wandered a good deal out of my way when I stumbled on a shellhole, and there was Monkland lying in it smoking a cigarette. He was pretty badly hurt and couldn’t move. He told me that he’d tried single-handed to approach the machine-gun post from the flank and bomb it, but that he’d been seen and sniped. He told me to take careful bearings of where he was and send out a stretcher party when I got back. So I left him.

‘I don’t know what you think of me, Masters, and I’ve gone a good way beyond caring. I told myself that it wasn’t fair that two stretcher-bearers should risk their lives for a brute like that. All that the man had done to me clamoured in my blood for vengeance. You can guess what I did, I suppose —or what I didn’t do? When I got back into our trench I didn’t say anything.

‘I knew it was very unlikely that Monkland would be found where he was lying. None of the raiding party seemed to know what had become of him, and the general impression was that he’d been killed or captured. A search party went out, but it only covered the ground we were supposed to have covered. So nobody ever saw Monkland alive again.

‘But afterwards, long afterwards when the War was over, I knew that the cruel soul of that man still existed, that it hated me with the hatred of a devil, that it was trying desperately to make me aware of its close presence to me and its bitter enmity. For that reason I always avoided clairvoyants and people who claim to receive messages from the dead. I knew that I should get a message from Monkland. I’d been trying for years not to receive it.

‘Then you brought me your cipher with the playing-cards and I pulled out some at random, and, according to your code, they spelt “Monkland”. I knew that it was hopeless then. He’d got through to me. And I got bitten by an accursed morbid craving to find out what he wanted to say to me. I’ve hardly been able to leave the cards alone since. I’ve sat here by the hour, shuffling them up and picking them out at random and decoding his malignant messages to me’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ Masters cried, no longer able to restrain himself. ‘This is sheer madness. It’s unthinkable! Your mind’s unhinged, Serrald.’

Serrald uttered one short, bitter laugh.

‘You think so, do you? You see that heap of cards? None of them are marked, are they? Shuffle them as you like. I won’t look. I’ll close my eyes and turn my back. I’ve never been able to do a card-trick in my life. Then I’ll pick out cards one by one at random and you shall see what I get.’

Masters had heard that the best way to cure a madman of his delusions was simply to disprove them to his face.

‘Very well,’ he said; and when Serrald had turned his back he stirred up the great heap of cards. ‘What sort of messages do you generally get?’ he asked unsteadily.

‘The sort you might expect. Threatening, and bitter with irony and hatred. He isn’t happy where he is. He wants me with him so that he can bully and pester me as he used. Are you ready? I’ll close my eyes as I pick out the cards, and you shall name the code letters as I turn them.’

Masters took out a notebook and a pencil, and wrote down the letter for each card as it was turned up. He was quickly aware that actual words were being spelled, and a cold wave of horror engulfed him as soon as he began to space them. The complete message read as follows:

‘Since you did not send for me, I will come for you.’

Masters uttered a sharp cry and recoiled from the table as if the cards were living and evil things.

On his way downstairs Masters met the proprietor of the house, who knew him by sight and greeted him civilly.

‘Good evening, sir. Mr. Serrald is pretty well, I hope?’

‘No—yes,’ said Masters hurriedly.

‘I didn’t think he had been very well lately. He has been keeping indoors a great deal and playing Patience. Is the officer gentleman with him?’

‘What officer gentleman?’ Masters asked through his teeth.

‘The one I am always meeting on the stairs. I made sure it was Mr. Serrald he’s been coming to see.’

Masters said nothing, but staggered past him and out into the night.

Serrald was found dead of heart failure a few mornings later, sitting at the table before a great heap of playing-cards. It seemed that he had suspected that he might die suddenly, for he had left instructions that in such an event none of his belongings was to be touched until Masters had been sent for. The proprietor of the house met Masters in the hall, and addressed him in a hushed voice appropriate to a house of death.

‘Very sudden and very sad, sir. Yes, very, very sad. He must have died sometime last night, for he was quite cold when I found him this morning. You may go up to his sitting-room, if you please, sir. He’s been taken away now, but nothing else has been touched except—well, I did have the floor swept a bit. You see, sir, somebody must have come to see him last night in very muddy boots. My son, who’s been a soldier and done his bit during the War, he said it was just like trench mud all over the room. You know the way up, sir?’

Masters went upstairs carrying a heart which beat harder than he had ever before known it to beat.

The chair in which Serrald had died lay on its back close to the table, on which was spread a great heap of cards lying face downwards. But along the edge of the table a few were turned face upwards in a row. Masters bent over them and shudderingly spelled out the last message which Serrald had received:

‘Tonight at midnight—Monkland.’

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 901

January 12th 2024

The Shadowy Escort by A.M. Burrage

Narrated by Josh Roseman 

Audio Production by Chelsea Davis 

Hosted  by Alasdair Stuart 

 

Welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast and welcome to 2024! Hope you’re settling in okay. This week’s story is par tof our public domain showcase and comes to us from A.m. or Alfred McLelland Burrage.

 

Burrage’s career had two acts. Burrage began writing after his father’s death in 1906, and wrote fiction for boys under the pseudonym Frank Lelland. After his death his ghost stories became even more popular and his work was published in markets like The Grand Magazine, The Novel Magazine, Cassell’s Magazine and The Weekly Tale-Teller. He also wrote a memoir of his service in the First World War and his pseudonym for that, Ex-Private X, was used as the author name for the collections of his ghost stories released in the 1920s. He sits in the same spectrum as M.R. James and H.R. Wakefield so if you like that sort of elegant, pleasing terror, to borrow the term from our friends at Shadows at the Door, we’ve got a treat for you this week. 

 

Your narrator this week is one of the all time greats, the amazing Paul S. Jenkins

 

So deal the cards, see the truth.

 

No Man’s Land is a phrase that resonates through this story like the sound of approaching artillery. There are three types of it I see the hapless protagonists making their way across and the most insidious is the class divide, one presented here in a surprising way. There are two usual ways this sort of story can go; a blue-collar working-class soldier is the victim of a high-class white-collar bully or a blue-collar officer bullies a hapless white-collar recruit. This uniquely English nightmare presents a different, more stratified hell. Serrald’s reference to his department keeping him suggests he was an academic or a businessman of some sort as does the fact he was placed into a regiment of ‘professional men and public schoolboys’. He got, it seems, an easier job than most. As did Monkland. And Monkland’s vicious nature is pointed not at the desire to escape this landscape but to remain upon it.

That brings us of course to No Man’s Land itself. This unmade landscape whose creation unmade an entire generation. It’s not Monkland’s final resting place because he isn’t at rest but it is the clay in which he is un and re made. Monkland, or the thing wearing Monkland’s shape that escape No Man’s Land is exactly what he always seemed to want to be. Brutal. Relentless. Undying. Perfectly violent.

 

That brings us to our final No Man’s Land, the hinterland between life and death that Monkland inhabits. This is where he’s free to become what he truly is; a creature of violent purpose. A man who exists to punish and who doesn’t care if that punishment is just or not. That’s how we know he’s a bully. He just wants to hurt. He’s not bothered by who. In becoming this baseless, shapeless creature of mud and vitriol he also becomes, certainly from our 21st century perspective, the living avatar of the First World War and the scars it left. A man of violence and trench mud, endlessly approaching. A mud-soaked Banquo’s Ghost with blood on its tunic and death in its heart. An omen embodied not in the implied foreboding of the cards but their hard, cold certainty.

Yeah this is a GOOD one.

 

As is always the case, we rely on you to pay our authors, our narrators and our crew, and to cover our costs. We’re entirely donation funded and last year that changed in some very exciting ways with becoming a registered US nonprofit. We ran a great end of year campaign in 2023 to raise awareness about all the new ways you can help us out including the fact that if you pay taxes in the US, you might be able to claim a deduction. Check out the short metacast on escapeartists.net for more ideas, and how to get in touch if you think of something else that’s more meaningful to you.

 

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Not only do you help us out immensely when you subscribe or donate but you get access to a raft of bonus audio.  You help us, we help you and everything becomes just a little easier. Even if you can’t donate financially, please consider spreading the word about us. If you liked an episode then please consider sharing it on social media, or blogging about us or leaving a review it really does all help and thank you once again

 

Join us next week for The Ghost by Catherine Wells and Half-Past Two by Marjorie Bowen, with narration from Louise Hewitt and Tol Poyer-Sleeman. Your host will be the amazing Gemma Amor and Chelsea will be on audio production. Then as now it will be a production of the Escape Artists Foundation and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license. And this week we’re closing with this from poet and war victim Siegfried Sassoon.