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THE SARACEN&039;S HEAD

"IT was the worst drea She was in the Blue Room with the Director and Grace Ironwood "I was in a dark roo noise Then the light ca tiht I saw a face floating in front of me A face, not a head, if you understand That is, there was a beard and nose and coloured glasses, but there didn&039;t seeot used to the light, I thought the face was a mask tied on to a kind of balloon But it wasn&039;t, exactlyI&039; this badly What it really as a head (the rest of a head) which had had the top part of the skull taken off and thenthenas if soed out from inside as left of the skull Wrapped in some kind of composition stuff, but very thin stuff You could see it twitch I re, &039; Oh, kill it Put it out of its pain&039; But only for a second, because I thought the thing was dead, really It was green looking and the mouth ide open and quite dry And soon I saw that it wasn&039;t floating It was fixed up on so fro below: no shoulders or body Only these hanging things Little rubber tubes and bulbs and ht, Jane, are you?" said Miss Ironwood "Oh yes," said Jane, "as far as that goes Only one somehow doesn&039;t want to tell it Well, quite suddenly, like when an engine is started, there ca sound And then there came another, and it settled down into a sort of rhyth Then caan to dribble Then it began working its etting aorder Then three people came into the rooreat fat man, and another was lanky and bony The third was Mark I knew his walk"

"I am sorry," said the Director

"And then," said Jane, "all three of them stood in front of the Head They bowed to it You couldn&039;t tell if it was looking at thelasses Then it spoke"

"In English?" said Grace Ironwood "No, in French"

"What did it say?"

"Well, h to follow it It spoke in a queer way With no proper expression"

"Did you understand any of as said?"

"NotMark to it It said so to hiht, his French isn&039;t much better than mine"

"What did he say?"

"He said so it in a few days if possible&039;" , -

"Was that all?"

"Very nearly You see Mark couldn&039;t stand it I kneouldn&039;t be able to: I saas going to fall He was sick too Then they got him out of the room" All three were silent for a few seconds "Was that all?" said Miss Ironwood "Yes," said Jane "That&039;s all I remember I think I woke up then"

The Director took a deep breath "Well!" he said, glancing at Miss Ironwood, " it beco Make all arrangements" He paused and turned to Jane "I am afraid this is very bad for you, my dear," he said; "and worse for him"

"You mean for Mark, sir?"

"Yes Don&039;t think hardly of hio doith hione yet We are quite used to trouble about husbands here, you know Poor Ivy&039;s is in jail"

"In jail?"

"Oh yes-for ordinary theft But quite a good fellow He&039;ll be all right again"

Mark woke nextto the consciousness that his head ached all overand then, as one of the poets says, he " discovered in his mind an inflammation swollen and deforhtmare, it must be shoved away, it would vanish away now that he was fully awake It was an absurdity A head without any body underneath A head that could speak when they turned on the air and the artificial saliva with taps in the next room

But he kneas true And he could not, as they say, " take it" He was very ashah ones

Meanti about Jane Apparently he would have to bring her to Belbury His mind had made this decision for hiet her, to save his life They would kill him if he annoyed them; perhaps behead him

Itof noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging His education had been neither scientific nor classical-merely "Modern " The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help hilib exae (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers), and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked hi

He was late for breakfast, but that made little difference, for he could not eat He drank several cups of black coffee and then went into the writing-roo paper This letter to Jane proved almost impossible now that it came to the point

"Hullo, Studdock!" said the voice of Miss Hardcastle "Writing to little wifie, eh?"

"Damn!" said Mark "You&039;ve made me drop my pen" Not since he had been bullied at school had he knohat it was to hate and dread anyone as he now hated and dreaded this woot bad news for you, sonny," she said presently "What is it?"

She did not answer quite at once and he knew she was studying him

"I&039;m worried about little wifie, and that&039;s a fact," she said at last

"What do you mean?"

"I looked her up," said Miss Hardcastle, "all on your account, too I thought Edgestoasn&039;t too healthy a place for her to be at present"

"Can&039;t you tell ?"

"Don&039;t shout, honey It&039;s only-well, I thought she was behaving pretty oddly when I saw her"

Mark well re he left for Belbury A new stab of fear pierced hi the truth?

"What did she say?" he asked

"If there is anything wrong with her in that way," said the Fairy, " take my advice Studdock, and have her over here at once I wouldn&039;t like to have anyone belonging to estow Asyluency powers They&039;ll be using the ordinary patients experin this form I&039;ll run over after lunch and have her here this evening"

"But you haven&039;t givenwith her"

"She kept on talking about soars Then, most unfortunately, she noticed my cheroot, and, if you please, she identified inary persecutor Of course, after that I could do no good"

"Iup

"Don&039;t be a fool, lovey," said Miss Hardcastle "You&039;re in a daerous position already You&039;ll about do yourself in if you&039;re absent without leave now Send n the form That&039;s the sensible way to do it"

"But a o you said she couldn&039;t stand you at any price"

"Oh, that wouldn&039;t make any odds I say, Studdock, you don&039;t think little wifie could be jealous, do you?"

"Jealous? Of you?" said Mark with uncontrollable disgust

"Where are you off to?" said the Fairy sharply

"To see the DD and then home"

"Come back, Studdock," shouted the Fairy "Wait! Don&039;t be a bloody fool"But Mark was already in the hall He put on his hat and coat, ran upstairs and knocked at the door of the Deputy Director&039;s office

There was no answer, but the door was not quite shut He ventured to push it open a little farther, and saw the Deputy Director sitting with his back to the door "Excuse ht I speak to you for a few minutes" There was no answer "Excuse ure neither spoke nor moved Mark went in and walked round to the other side of the desk; but when he turned to look at Wither he caught his breath, for he thought he was looking into the face of a corpse A nised his mistake In the stillness of the roo He was not even asleep, for his eyes were open He was not unconscious, for his eyes restedyour pardon, sir," began Mark, and then stopped The Deputy Director was not listening What looked out of those pale, watery eyes was, in a sense, infinity-the shapeless and the interminable The room was still and cold It was impossible to speak to a face like that

When at -last Mr Wither spoke, his eyes were fixed on some remote point beyond the

"I knoho it is," said Wither "Your name is Studdock You had better have stayed outside Go away"

Mark&039;s nerve suddenly broke All the slowly ether into one fixed deter downstairs three steps at a ti the hall Then he was out, and walking down the drive

He was out of the grounds now: he was crossing the road He stopped suddenly Soure before" hi and hu a little dreary tune; the Deputy Director hione from Mark&039;s mood He turned back He stood in the road; this seemed to him the worst pain that he had ever felt Then, tired, so tired that he felt his legs would hardly carry him, he walked very slowly back into Belbury

Mr MacPhee had a little room at the Manor which he called his office, and in this tidy but dusty apart, having invited her there to give her what he called "a brief, objective outline of the situation "

"I should premise at the outset, Mrs Studdock," he said, " that I have known the Director for a great ist His original name was Ransom"

"Not Ransom&039;s Dialect and Semantics?" said Jane "Aye That&039;s the o, I have all the dates in a wee book there- caone-not a trace of him-for about nine ain in Cao sick And he wouldn&039;t say where he&039;d been except to a few friends"

"Well?" said Jane eagerly

"He said," answered MacPhee, producing his snuff-box and laying great emphasis on the word said, "He said he&039;d been to the planet Mars"

"You mean he said thiswhile he was ill?"

"No, no He says so still Make what you can of it, that&039;s his story"

"I believe it," said Jane MacPhee selected a pinch of snuff

"I&039; you the facts," he said "He told us he&039;d been to Mars, kidnapped, by Professor Weston and Mr Devine- Lord Feverstone as he now is And by his own account he&039;d escaped fro about there alone"

"It&039;s uninhabited, I suppose?"

"We have no evidence except his own story You are aware, Mrs Studdock, that a man in coets into remarkable states of consciousness"

"You s that weren&039;t there?"

"I&039; By his accounts there are all kinds of creatures walking about there; that&039;s erie, but no matter for that But he also says he met one kind of creature there which specially concerns us He called theswell, intelligent? Could they talk?"

"Aye They could talk They were intelligent, which is not always the sa"

"In fact these were the Martians?"

"That&039;s just what they weren&039;t, according to hi there He says they are creatures that live in empty space"

"But there&039;s no air"

"I&039; you his story He says they don&039;t breathe He said also that they don&039;t reproduce their species and don&039;t die"