Mediterranean Nights by Dennis Wheatley Read Free Book Online

were, them Romans weren’t no better; they hacked and stabbed with their little short swords, the blood ran ankle-deep down the side-walk; yes, Sirr—they sacked that town good, proper and complete.
    â€˜They beat up every Temple and Palace in the place—looting and killing as they went. I saw one guy with half a dozen ropes of pearls strung over his arm, and his hands cram full of precious gems. The inhabitants were slaughtered wholesale by the light of the burning houses—they didn’t spare the women, either; they ripped off their purple raiment and flung ’em into the flames—they didn’t even spare the kids: they were throwing them off the rooftops and out of the windows for the other guys to trample on in the streets below. I just can’t recount to you the horror of that night in Carthage.’
    .      .      .      .      .
    â€˜What happened to you?’ I asked curiously.
    Benjamin P. Hooker shook his head. ‘I guess I wasn’t killable, somehow. I managed to fight my way back to the ramparts, and I happened on my old nook by the wall. I sat down to take a spell, and my hand fell on that thing I’d hadearlier in the day. As I picked it up the whole place faded out, and I heard the Professor man say:
    â€˜ “You’ll excuse me, Mr. Hooker, but if there’s anything left in that bottle, I’m just a trifle dry.”’
    â€˜You must have passed into some previous existence,’ said the girl with the protruding teeth.
    He nodded. ‘Yep—that’s what the Professor man seemed to think—but it may have been the sun and the Bollinger—Very Dry.’
    â€˜You had hypnotised yourself?’ I suggested.
    â€˜Maybe,’ said Mr. Hooker, ‘but it was a damn sight too realistic for me to wish I’d lived in those days—give me this dull and sordid age of commerce
every time
.’

STORY III
    T HIS little piece was written shortly after the end of the Second World War. Straight murder stories are not really my line; but, as a minor psychological study of a small-time city crook whom circumstances have compelled to live in the country, I think it has its interest.
    THE WORM THAT TURNED
    A RTY S UGDON was a truculent little man with a cocky expression but he was not looking quite so sure of himself as usual, because he was being held by the police in connection with the violent death of his uncle by marriage. The Inspector had said that there were just a few questions they would like to ask him; then at the station they had told him that they were afraid they would have to detain him overnight, and had courteously shown him into a quite comfortably furnished cell. As he sat on the edge of the bed that night before undressing, his reflections were as follows:
    .      .      .      .      .
    â€œI’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ve been far too clever for them. They can’t possibly have anything on me. They’re only keeping me here for the night so that they need lose no time in putting me through another routine check-up when the bloke they are expecting arrives from London. It’s the farm being over eight miles away, and naturally they don’t want to have to go that distance to fetch me again in the morning.
    â€˜There is nothing that Minnie can give away, except havingplanted that haversack; and even if she blabs about that, it wouldn’t incriminate me. She’s far too stupid to suspect that I did the old boy in myself. Her type always takes for gospel anything you tell them. She’s that stupid there have been times in the past three years when I’ve wanted to bash her face in, and she’s lucky to have got off with an occasional cuff over the ear.
    â€˜Our marriage has certainly had its ups and downs. There was the time she caught me out with that