Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

owner to call it off if its sounds hadn't stayed in the undergrowth as Sandy reached the gate.
        Neither Bogart nor Bacall came to greet her as she unlocked her door. They prowled the main room while she examined the notebook, wondering if Graham might have indicated which of his informants he suspected had a copy of the film. Few of the names scattered across Britain and abroad meant anything to her. "Come on if you're so anxious to return to the wild," she said to the pacing cats, and took them out for a walk.
        Perhaps the dog in the woods was a stray. No wonder the cats stayed close to her. She thought she saw its eyes glistening, but they turned out to be weeds blurred by shadows. "I think we're safer at home," she said to the cats, which raced into the house as soon as she opened the door.
        She took the notebook with her while she baby-sat for the young accountants on the ground floor. She was beginning to think Toby had meant the book as a plea to her. She had a busy week ahead, editing a play whose male lead had fallen ill before his reaction shots could be filmed. She had made nothing of Graham's notes before the newspaper reviewer responded to Toby's call.
        She read the paragraph in the lift at Metropolitan, newsprint soiling her hands. "Sorry if any of my faithful readers thought I was getting at Graham Nolan last week. A very close male friend of his rang up to shrill at me for saying Nolan could ever have been wrong, but believe me, the last film Nolan tried to find wouldn't have been worth finding even if it existed. Even Karloff and Lugosi didn't want to own up to it, and anyway someone owns the rights, so if Nolan had really had a copy he would have been breaking the law. I say let him rest in peace now. He earned it."
        Sandy tore the column out of the page and placed it in her handbag before dropping the rest of the newspaper in the bin next to her desk. She felt tense all day, even more so when she let herself into her flat. She had time only to get changed and hurry out again to dinner in Chelsea.
        When conversation at the far end of the table in the conservatory her friends had built onto their apartment turned to Graham, at first she didn't realize that it had. A headmistress with several combs in her hair was saying, "Not that I'd wish it on him, but at least he went before he could infect the world with whatever the film was."
        Sandy wouldn't have listened if their hosts hadn't been trying to hush the woman surreptitiously. "I'm sorry, what was that?" Sandy said.
        The headmistress stared at her as though Sandy had entered her office without knocking. "We were discussing the television fellow, the one who fell off the roof. I was saying that if he didn't want to go that way, perhaps he shouldn't have been so eager to revive horror films. Some of my children watch nothing else."
        Sandy paused to be sure of speaking calmly. "He told me the film was a classic, and I believe him. Thank you very much for dinner," she said to her hosts, "and now if you'll all excuse me, I mean to prove him right." The incident was almost worth it for the way the headmistress was gaping at her, but Sandy was perspiring with rage by the time she came up from the Underground. As soon as she reached home she made the first phone call.
        She caught sight of Roger Stone as she came into Soho Square. He was marching up and down the pavement with his hands in the pockets of his green corduroys, tossing his broad head to throw back an unruly curl of blond hair and whistling snatches of the score of an Errol Flynn movie. He was as tuneless as anyone she'd ever heard. He began to hum a march, occasionally alluding to the melody, as he passed the office of the British Board of Film Censors. She sidled through a gap in a rank of motorcycles under the trees that shaded the grass, and called "Here I am, Roger."
        He choked on whatever note he was about to aim