6 Fantasy Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

night, I made certain preparations for the hunt. This involved drawing various items from the well-stocked disguise kit in the secret closet of my study and tucking them away in a valise. I added a few items of clothing and stowed the valise under the bed, ready for my mission.
    Next morning, I followed my routine as if this were any other day. I woke, got dressed, and ate breakfast with Bess and the children...our girls, Ellie and Annie, both nine years old. After breakfast, I retrieved the valise from the bedroom, hid it under the overcoat draped over my arm, and tapped my way out of the house with the boar's-head cane. Just before I pulled the door shut behind me, I shouted to Bess that I would be working late at the office.
    And so began the hunt.
    *****
    It felt good to be back in action. I'd been six months without travel or combat, and it had seemed like six years. For one such as I, nothing comes close to the thrill of the chase.
    I hailed a cab, and it raced me uptown to my first destination: the Wanderers' Club. In one of the guest apartments upstairs, I changed clothes and applied the elements of my disguise.
    I emerged a changed man...changed so much, in fact, that I passed the ultimate test. When Rogers, the keen-eyed major domo, saw me in the hallway, he ejected me from the premises, believing I was a stranger.
    Out on the street, I stopped in front of a clothiers shop and examined my reflection in the plate glass front window. What a change I saw there!
    My silver goatee was dyed black, as were my eyebrows. A false nose, bulbous and scarlet, covered my true, aristocratically aquiline one. Two enormous warts bulged from my face--one on the left cheekbone, the other on the point of my chin. A bushy black wig concealed the close-cropped silver stubble of my natural hair.
    Instead of a black business coat and trousers, I wore a ragged gray jacket with holes in the elbows and threadbare gray pants. Topping it off, I wore a battered brown cap with a mangled visor.
    I nodded with satisfaction and adjusted my posture, slouching and jutting my chin forward. My camouflage was perfect, ready for the hunt. If I, on another day, had seen me coming, looking like this, I would have thought it was a factory laborer approaching, or a beggar.
    Or a street sweeper. In other words, the master of disguise had created the perfect appearance for the role he had chosen to play.
    Slipping around to the rear entrance of the Wanderers' Club, I retrieved the push broom that Rogers always kept by the door. Grinning, I ran off down the alley, making my escape before Rogers could find me out.
    *****
    This time, as I dared not hail a cab, the trip across town took considerably longer. I knew no cabbie would stop to pick up someone who looked so unlikely to be able to pay his fare.
    Fortunately, as I am always in peak physical condition, the exercise in no way left me winded. I returned to the street outside my home as composed and energetic as I'd been upon setting out that day.
    And so I began my charade. My concealment, as they say, in plain sight.
    Taking care to remain stooped over, I pushed the broom up the street and back down again, sweeping layers of soot into piles at either end. Always, I kept one eye on the front door of my home, waiting for Bess to emerge.
    I felt certain she hadn't come forth yet, as her morning chores and toilette typically occupied several hours. But I presumed she would soon poke her head out of her burrow to sniff the air.
    I waited at least an hour, all the while clearing more soot from the street. Fortunately, no one seemed to take an interest in me. No one seemed to notice this dawdling sweeper taking far too long to clear one solitary block of sooty cobblestones.
    Finally, as I reached one end of my track and turned for another pass, the front door of my house opened, and Bess emerged in the late morning sunlight. She wore a burgundy dress, black gloves, and an exotic black hat adorned with deep green and