A Short, Tragic Tale Is
The Statement of Justin Parker
By August W. Derleth
My sole desire in writing this is to place before the public all that I know of the singular facts attending the disappearance of Michael Salisbury, retired, from his home on Salisbury Plain, on the seventeenth day of December last.
Michael Salisbury and I had always been the best of friends since childhood; we were together always, until late in 1916, when he went to the African Veldt to spend over seven years there. He had hardly returned—as a matter of fact, it was on the train that I met him—before I left for the Veldt.
The incident is rather peculiar, and it may aid in a manner to throw light on what followed. I was on board a train leaving London for Liverpool; he had just come in from Liverpool. He came rushing into my compartment, two bags in his hands, looking nervously to right and left. Suddenly he saw me. He stopped, dropped his bags, and came over to sit down beside me.
"My dear Justin, think of seeing you here!" It was obvious to me from the beginning that the man didn't have the least idea what he was saying.
"Just returning from the Veldt, Michael?" I asked. "Aren't you on the wrong train? This one isn't going anywhere near your home."
"Oh, no! Right train, all right. Connections—everything tip-top. Liverpool train, isn't it?"
"Yes," said I. "Didn't you just come from there?"
"To be sure. But I've the right train. I'll fool them."
"'Fool them?'" I repeated, astonished. "Whatever are you talking about?" I began to think that the Veldt had seriously affected Michael Salisbury.
"My valet and housekeeper. Fool them—came in on a different train."
The prevarication was too obvious. All the while he was looking from the car windows and staring up and down the aisles at the people in the car. Besides, his valet had been with him to the Veldt; of course, he might have returned before him. . . there was that possibility.
We talked for some little time; he in the same disconnected manner, with his eyes on everything at once, especially the car windows. The moment the train stopped at the first station outside London he jumped up with his bags, which some well-meaning porter had a time before removed from the aisle. On the platform he turned and shouted.
"Right after all, Justin; it is the wrong train."
I went on to Liverpool, deeply concerned over this strange and unaccountable action on the part of Michael Salisbury. At Liverpool I
took a boat for Calais, and three
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