



Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines. Tales of Terror and Mystery


By

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle



Contents

Tales of Terror

  The Horror of the Heights
  The Leather Funnel
  The New Catacomb
  The Case of Lady Sannox
  The Terror of Blue John Gap
  The Brazilian Cat


Tales of Mystery

  The Lost Special
  The Beetle-Hunter
  The Man with the Watches
  The Japanned Box
  The Black Doctor
  The Jew's Breastplate





Tales of Terror



The Horror of the Heights

The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the
Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some
unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humour, has
now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most
macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his
morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic facts which reinforce
the statement. Though the assertions contained in it are amazing and
even monstrous, it is none the less forcing itself upon the general
intelligence that they are true, and that we must readjust our ideas to
the new situation. This world of ours appears to be separated by a
slight and precarious margin of safety from a most singular and
unexpected danger. I will endeavour in this narrative, which
reproduces the original document in its necessarily somewhat
fragmentary form, to lay before the reader the whole of the facts up to
date, prefacing my statement by saying that, if there be any who doubt
the narrative of Joyce-Armstrong, there can be no question at all as to
the facts concerning Lieutenant Myrtle, R. N., and Mr. Hay Connor, who
undoubtedly met their end in the manner described. The Joyce-Armstrong Fragment was found in the field which is called
Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village of
Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the 15th
September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the
employment of Mathew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham,
perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge
in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of broken
binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch, he caught
sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved to be a note-book
with detachable leaves, some of which had come loose and were
fluttering along the base of the hedge. These he collected, but some,
including the first, were never recovered, and leave a deplorable
hiatus in this all-important statement. The note-book was taken by the
labourer to his master, who in turn showed it to Dr. J. H. Atherton, of
Hartfield. This gentleman at once recognized the need for an expert
examination, and the manuscript was forwarded to the Aero Club in
London, where it now lies. The first two pages of the manuscript are missing. There is also one
torn away at the end of the narrative, though none of these affect the
general coherence of the story. It is conjectured that the missing
opening is concerned with the record of Mr. Joyce-Armstrong's
qualifications as an aeronaut, which can be gathered from other sources
and are admitted to be unsurpassed among the air-pilots of England. For many years he has been looked upon as among the most daring and the
most intellectual of flying men, a combination which has enabled him to
both invent and test several new devices, including the common
gyroscopic attachment which is known by his name. The main body of the
manuscript is written neatly in ink, but the last few lines are in
pencil and are so ragged as to be hardly legible--exactly, in fact, as
they might be expected to appear if they were scribbled off hurriedly
from the seat of a moving aeroplane. There are, it may be added,
several stains, both on the last page and on the outside cover which
have been pronounced by the Home Office experts to be blood--probably
human and certainly mammalian. The fact that something closely
resembling the organism of malaria was discovered in this blood, and
that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have suffered from intermittent fever,
is a remarkable example of the new weapons which modern science has
placed in the hands of our detectives. And now a word as to the personality of the author of this epoch-making
statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few friends who really
knew something of the man, was a poet and a dreamer, as well as a
mechanic and an inventor. He was a man of considerable wealth, much of
which he had spent in the pursuit of his aeronautical hobby. He had
four private aeroplanes in his hangars near Devizes, and is said to
have made no fewer than one hundred and seventy ascents in the course
of last year. He was a retiring man with dark moods, in which he would
avoid the society of his fellows. Captain Dangerfield, who knew him
better than anyone, says that there were times when his eccentricity
threatened to develop into something more serious. His habit of
carrying a shot-gun with him in his aeroplane was one manifestation of
it. Another was the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had
upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from
an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to
narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs
preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen,
Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic
smile:  "And where, pray, is Myrtle's head?" On another occasion after dinner, at the mess of the Flying School on
Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most
permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened
to successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty construction, and
over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put
forward his own views, though he gave the impression that they differed
from any advanced by his companions. It is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance it was
found that his private affairs were arranged with a precision which may
show that he had a strong premonition of disaster. With these
essential explanations I will now give the narrative exactly as it
stands, beginning at page three of the blood-soaked note-book:

"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav Raymond I
found that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the
higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in my
thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they had any corresponding
idea they could not have failed to express it. But then they are two
empty, vainglorious fellows with no thought beyond seeing their silly
names in the newspaper. It is interesting to note that neither of them
had ever been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course,
men have been higher than this both in balloons and in the ascent of
mountains.