Pulp Fiction | The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair by John Oram Read Online Free PDF Page A

crawled up to take another look at Cwm Carrog. It was already half submerged in the mist. He decided zero hour had come.
    The journey down that hillside was to remain forever one of his major nightmares. By day it would have been easy enough but in the near-darkness he had plenty of troubles.
    At first the wall was a guide but when the last of the light had faded it became a menace. Many of the top stones had fallen among the heather. Illya found them every time, and every time he took a dive. Seen on the movies it would have been a riot, but somehow he missed the comic angle. He dared not use his flashlight, and if he got too far from the wall he lost his bearings. And at any minute he expected to hear the whine of a bullet heading in his direction, especially when he got down among the bracken. No matter how cautiously he trod, the stuff crackled like a forest fire with every step. He could only hope that Mr. Hughes's sentries, if he had posted any, would blame the sheep.
    When he was near enough to get the full bouquet of the Cwm Carrog cow pens he called a halt and sat down. He was almost through the bracken, which was now no more than knee-high. Before he started across the paddock he needed a rest.
    A hint of moonrise in the east warned him that he would have to get going again. Already it was light enough for him to see ahead the outline of the farmyard wall, a shed or two, and the great macrocarpas looming black against the sky.
    He slipped off his walking shoes and took the sneakers and flashlight out of his knapsack. He clipped the flashlight to his belt, packed the shoes in the knapsack, slung the bag over his shoulder again.
    As he was lacing the sneakers he got his first jolt. It was a light — a cold greenish light about as big as a fair-sized grapefruit. And it was moving slowly along the base of the farmyard wall. Suddenly it stopped, wavered, changed direction and came uphill toward him. It moved with a queer jerky roll.
    There was only one thing to do. Illya crossed his fingers, said stoutly, "Ghosts are only your father, like Santa Claus," and went to meet it.
    It came on unsteadily, a wobbling disembodied eye, glowing weirdly.
    When it got within reach Illya grabbed.
    His hand blotted out the light. Closed on something hard and smooth. The thing stopped, went dead under his grasp.
    Wriggling closer so that he got it under cover of his body, Illya fumbled with his free hand for the flashlight and pressed the button.
    The beam stabbed briefly, flooding a small tortoise. Some humorist had thought up the idea of painting its shell with phosphorescent paint. Illya let it go and lay still. After a minute or so a puzzled crustacean wobbled off to spread panic and despondency elsewhere.
    Illya pressed on, much heartened. The tete-a-tete had not only put paid to David Davis' fairy tales, it had also proved that whatever funny business was going on at Cwm Carrog, it had human brains behind it. In a way Illya was disappointed. If luminous tortoises were the best the Price Hughes faction could do they didn't come in the same class with some of the gangs he had bucked.
    Between the edge of the bracken and the yard wall there was a short stretch of open turf. Illya covered it very slowly like Napoleon's army. On his belly.
    Once safe in the shadow of the wall he straightened up and felt his way back to where it joined the lane wall. He tucked his knapsack away in the angle, where he could find it again. It was too awkward to lug around on his sleuthing. On the other hand he did not fancy the long hike back to Corwen in sneakers.
    Getting a toehold among the rough stones, he pulled himself up and with a hand cupped over the lens of the flashlight examined the top of the yard wall for possible alarm wires. There was none. A second later he was in the yard.
    By this time the moon was well up. He thanked his stars that the sky was cloudy. A clear night would have been fatal. He hugged the wall for a space, getting his