The Most Frightening Story Ever Told (15 page)
Read The Most Frightening Story Ever Told Online
Authors: Philip Kerr
The very next day, the front page of the
Hitchcock Hard News
carried a picture of the first child who would get to hear the scariest story ever written, and have a chance to win the thousand-dollar prize.
His name was Wilson Dirtbag and he was fifteen years old.
The picture in the newspaper showed a boy standing in front of the Haunted House of Books. He had short straw-colored hair and a pointed, nasty little pixie nose that looked like someone had been at it with a pencil sharpener. But what was really noticeable about Wilson Dirtbag's face was the number of spots on it. There were so many angry-looking zits on his face it looked like some classroom comedian had dotted them on the photograph with a red pen.
Wilson Dirtbag was smiling in the picture but it was not a pleasant smile. For one thing, he was the kind of boy who only smiled when something nasty happenedâlike someone slipping on a banana peel, or falling down a flight of stairsâand so he was out of practice doing it just to seem agreeable, even if it was for the front page of the local newspaper. Also, he hadn't cleaned his teeth in a long time, and as a result, these were a milky coffee color, with bits of food stuck between them.
“Like, I'm not scared of anything, you know?” he had told Mr. Hildebrand, the reporter. “I watch horror movies all the time when I'm at home but none of them frighten me in the least. You know? Not only that, but I don't believe in ghosts or any of that junk, so the chances of some stupid story in an old book scaring me are, like, zero. Those historical kids in that old workhouse, in London? They must have been pretty dumb, if you ask me. 'Sides, kids then would have been scared by pretty much anything we take for granted, you know? Television. Telephones. Chances are they'd have run away if they'd seen an automobile.”
The boy's mother, Fedora Dirtbag, was pictured in front of her trailer home in South Hitchcock with a cigarette in her lipsticked mouth and curlers in her bottle-blond hair.
“We've raised our son not to be scared of anything or anyone,” she had informed the newspaper reporter. “Least of all his teachers, or the police. When he was nine, a judge tried to scare him with some talk of prison but Wilson just laughed in his face. In my opinion? That thousand bucks is as good as ours already.”
“If you win the contest, what will you spend the money on?” Mr. Hildebrand had asked Wilson and his mother.
“There are some unpaid fines I suppose I'd better clear,” the boy had explained. “If there's any dough left after that, I'll probably get myself a decent air pistol. A Delinkwen one seventy-seven, or a Hoolihan magnum with a six-inch barrel.”
Elizabeth Wollstonecraft-Godwin shook her head and handed Mr. Rapscallion the newspaper.
“That is the most ghastly, horrible boy I think I have ever seen,” she said. “A rabid chimpanzee would have more appeal.”
“It's even worse than that,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “This juvenile horror was most probably the ringleader of the so-called children who painted my mummy pink in the Curse of the Pharaohs room last Halloween. At least that's what the police seemed to think.”
“It looks like you're going to get your revenge,” said Billy. “On him, at least. When you read him the story.”
“That would be more than I could hope for,” admitted Mr. Rapscallion. He clenched his fists and his teeth and his toes at the same time. “I'd love to scare this little swine out of his spotty little skin,” he said.
The story in the
Hitchcock Hard News
had two immediate effects.
The first effect was that it brought hundreds more children and/or their parents into the store to buy a book so that they could enter the contest. (This ended up having the effect that F. Chankly Bore's book became a bestseller.)
The second effect was that it brought several more local newspapers and television crews into the Haunted House of Books to interview Mr. Rapscallion. This in turn drew the attention of the whole country to what was happening in Hitchcock. And it wasn't long before important and clever people were going on national television to talk about the scary story contest.
A professor of child psychology, Loren Gytis, went on
The Johnny Gross Show
to say that what Mr. Rapscallion was planning to do was criminally irresponsible and that he should be arrested before he could read the story and “damage young, impressionable minds.” Unfortunately for Professor Gytis, she herself was arrested after driving her Maserati car past an elementary school in Burpbank, California, at ninety miles per hour and crashing it into the back of a school bus. Fortunately, there were no children injured. But the accident left the professor looking like someone who was herself criminally irresponsible. Which was good for Mr. Rapscallion.
The very next day a top scientist, Doctor Werner Voercrime, who worked for the U.S. Army Research Institute of Fantastic New Weapons, suggested that if the scary story did prove to be lethal, as it had done in 1820, it should be treated like any dangerous virus and contained in a special vault at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, until such time as a possible military use for a scary story presented itself. When it was revealed by a leading Washington newspaper that the USARIFNW had been secretly and illegally developing a scary story of its own against the direct orders of the U.N. and the U.S. president, the research institute was closed and Dr. Voercrime was sacked.
Then an entirely hairless man living in London called Colin Careless claimed to a newspaper that he was descended from one of the boys from the workhouse at All Hallows Barking by the Tower who had heard the story in 1820, and subsequently tried to sue Miss Elizabeth Wollstonecraft-Godwin on the grounds that her ancestor had given his ancestor such a scare that he and his descendants had lost all of their hair in perpetuityâwhich is a legal word meaning forever and ever. An English judge dismissed Mr. Careless's claim when it turned out that he had just been released from an insane asylum, where he had spent the last five years claiming he was actually the famously bald actor Yul Brynner.
By the time that Mr. Rapscallion drew the second child's name from the box by the cash register, the story of the forthcoming contest had gripped the entire country and the English-speaking world, which is another way of saying that the French weren't much interested in it.
The second name to come out of the shoebox was that of a rather beefy, muscular boy called Hugh Bicep, and very soon he and his even more muscular, beefy father and mother and his two brothers appeared on local television to talk about themselves. Hugh's father, Arnold Bicep, wore a blue sweater, and his mother, Olympia Bicep, wore a red one. Hugh's two brothers, Harry and Adolf, wore a yellow sweater and a green sweater. Hugh sat between his brothers and wore a black sweater that barely contained his bulk. The Bicep family was so muscular and colorful they looked like the five Olympic rings.
“I've always liked books,” said Hugh. “My room at home is full of them. I like the leather ones with the gold titles on their spines the best. They look really old and important. And when people see them on your shelves, they think you're really clever. Of course, you couldn't actually read any of them, I don't think. I mean, they're much too boring. Mostly I prefer to listen to music when I'm working out. But, you know, I did read a book once. It was about how to build a real washboard stomach. Which really worked, as these days my abs are like a brick wall.” And, so saying, Hugh Bicep tore off his shirt to reveal a torso that resembled the coils of a large rock python.
“What really scares you?” Mr. Hildebrand had then asked Hugh.
“What really scares me? That's an interesting question. Not having enough to eat, I guess. I have to eat five times a day to build muscle, see? Washing my hair. Chicken that hasn't been cooked properly. Switching on the television and finding nothing to watch. Losing my cell phone. Getting a wedgie. Running out of ketchup. Finding that the last candy in the box is a nutty one. Being bored. Lots and lots of homework. The thought that one day I might have to get a real job.”
“Can your son do it?” Mr. Hildebrand asked Hugh's father. “Can Hugh pull it off and win the scary story contest?”
“Can he win?” Mr. Bicep laughed. “Of course he can win. My little boy is the most courageous person I've ever met. Let me tell you how courageous. Nothing scares my little boy. Nothing. You don't believe me? Then listen to this, Mr. Hildebrand. A few years ago we all went on a trip to Brazil, and a crocodile tried to eat him. What do you think of that? It crawled alongside him in the dark, while Hugh was in bed. Anyway, I guess my little boy must have rolled over in his sleep and crushed the croc to death. But was he scared?” Mr. Bicep chuckled loudly. “Not on your life. He just shrugged it off. Then, only last year, Hugh found himself in the sea with a shark. True, the shark was dead after my little boy jumped into the water and landed right on top of the shark's head and killed it, but that's not the point. The point is that being in the water alongside a shark, even a dead one, didn't scare him at all. In my opinion it'd be a pretty foolish ghost that tried to mess with my little boy. And as for a scary story. Well, this is the twenty-first century, not 1820. Besides, I can't see Hugh's bright enough to understand half the words they used back in 1820. You feel me?”
“Forget what I said about that other horrible boy,” said Miss Wollstonecraft-Godwin. “
This
boy is the most ghastly, horrible little boy I think I have ever seen.”
“He's not so little,” observed Mercedes McBatty. “None of them are. The whole Bicep family looks like a truck with five tires.”
Billy laughed. It was true. The Bicep family did look like five tires on a very large truck.
“It's even worse than that,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “This muscle-bound ignoramus was another one of the so-called children who painted my mummy pink in the Curse of the Pharaohs room last Halloween. At least that's what the police seem to think.” He nodded. “This is good, right? This is all part of the plan, right? This is what we wanted, right?”
Billy frowned. “There is one thing you might not care for.”
“What's that?” asked Mr. Rapscallion.
Billy took Mr. Rapscallion, Elizabeth and Mercedes outside. He led them to a large trash can a few yards down from the front door of the Haunted House of Books. The can was full of books, many of them still in the paper bags supplied by the shop.
“There,” he said. “That's what I mean.”
Mr. Rapscallion shook his head. “Why would anyone throw away a new book?” he said, fishing one out and looking at the title. It was a horror novel entitled
Shadows Within Dark Landscapes
by the writer Ken Biro.
“Simple,” explained Billy. “They're buying booksâthe cheaper booksânot to read, but in order to qualify for the draw.”
Mr. Rapscallion let out a weary sort of sigh.
“You try your best for people, Billy,” he said. “But you can always depend on them to let you down. With all the books I've read, you'd think I would know that by now, wouldn't you?” He waved the book in his hand at Billy. “This isn't a great book. It might even be a bad book. But even a bad book demands our respect.”
In spite of what Mr. Rapscallion had told him, Billy found it hard to respect
Uplifting Stories for Boys
and, at the very least, he believed that Mr. Rapscallion had been joking when he had recommended it to him. Far from being in the least bit scary, the book was full of sunny, happy stories about boys getting Christmas presents and going to summer camp with the Boy Scouts and receiving puppies for their birthdays.
“I'm more than halfway through this stupid book,” he complained to Mr. Rapscallion, “and there's nothing remotely scary about it. The book is precisely what it says on the cover. A book full of uplifting stories for boys.”
“Didn't anyone ever tell you?” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Never to judge a book by its cover?”
“Yes. Butâ”
Mr. Rapscallion shook his head. “Keep reading,” he told Billy. “Take my word for it, kid. The book gets better. Much better.”
And so, accepting what Mr. Rapscallion had said about the book, Billy read on; but if anything, the stories seemed to become nicer as he neared the end. And Billy was about to hurl the book aside in disgust when he got to the last story and thought he might as well read it and have done with the book forever, accepting his probable fate as the subject of Mr. Rapscallion's practical joke.
Billy read the last story in the book and it was so creepy that Billy had to read it again just to make certain that he hadn't imagined any of this. Because the last story in the book was completely different from all of the stories preceding it, Billy almost wondered if the editor of the book, who was called Octavian Girdlestone, had made a terrible mistake and included the last story in the wrong book. And he asked Mr. Rapscallion about it.
“I wondered that,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “And then I discovered that before he was a book editor, Octavian Girdlestone was a disgraced schoolmaster at an English boarding school who was obliged to resign when it was discovered that he had gone around the school at night pretending to be a ghost, with the intention of scaring the boys witless. It's my belief that he hated boys because of their persistent misbehavior in his class and sought to be revenged upon them. And I think the book of stories was compiled with much the same motive, this being exactly the kind of book that a mother or a father might easily purchase for their son. You see, the book lulls you into a false sense of security that all is well with the world, and then
bam!
he hits you with the last story, which is a real shocker.”
“Ingenious,” admitted Billy. “So the last story becomes more frightening
because
of the twelve others that are before it.”
“Exactly.”
“What happened to this guy Girdlestone?”
“He won the Spanish lottery and spent the money opening an amusement park in Indianapolis that had the scariest roller-coaster ride in the Midwest,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “Probably the world. The roller coaster was called the Indy 300 because it took three hundred secondsâor about five minutesâto complete. Most rides these days last around ninety seconds. The Indy 300 had two four-hundred-foot drops at a seventy-degree angle where the car actually traveled at more than a hundred miles an hour. And six three-hundred-sixty-degree loops. People on the ride were subject to forces that were almost four times that of gravity.”
“Wow,” said Billy. “Some ride.”
“You bet it was. Apparently it went so fast the riders in the front car used to believe that the car had actually left the track. And people used to scream so loud they couldn't speak for hours after they got off. NASA used to send guys there to see if they were up to joining the space program; it was said that if you could get off the Indy 300 with a smile on your face, you were in. They had to have volunteers from the American Red Cross working full-time beside the ride to deal with all the people who fainted, or barfed.”
“Gee, I'd love to go on a fairground ride like that,” said Billy.
“Too late,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “You see, a family of five all died of a heart attack while riding the Indy 300. And both the park and the ride were closed down, forever.”
Billy winced. “Oooh,” he said. “That's too bad.”
“Girdlestone went bankrupt. And that was the last anyone ever heard of him.”
[Author's Note: Space does not permit the inclusion in this book of all thirteen stories in Octavian Girdlestone's no-longer-in-print book,
Uplifting Stories for Boys;
however, the last story, which is entitled “New Shoes,” is included here so that the reader who wishes to measure his or her bravery against that of Billy may get at least a taste of what he found so unsettling about this particular tale.]
There are few places in the world that possess as many churches as the ancient capital of Scotland and, of these, there are few churches that require such rigorous, unswerving devotion as the Free Church of Edinburgh. In truth, there is little or nothing about this church that is free, for it is a forbidding, granite-built institution of injunction, proscription and prohibition as opposed to one that is truly characterized by liberty of conscience, license and indulgence. Even in Edinburgh, which is not a city known for its good humor, the Free Church is a byword for small-mindedness.
Rare is the Sunday when the members of this strict Presbyterian sect are not rebuked by brick-faced pulpiteers for their worldliness, and sternly reminded of the many temptations in life that the devil has prepared for us and which must be avoided at all costs. Even the children are subject to thunderous, scary sermons on the eternal torments that await anyone who sinsâperhaps them most of all, for in any normal child a natural lust for life outweighs a strict observance of rules and regulations.
Two such children were eleven-year-old Stephen Lang and his sister, Evelyn. They went to church on Sunday twice with their parentsâmorning service at eleven a.m. and evening service at six-thirty p.m.âand once by themselves to Sunday school at three p.m. Consequently, “the prince of the power of the air” and “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience”âwhich was what the church minister, Mr. Redpath, used to call the devilâwas never very far away from their youthful thoughts. And yet these two children were not without their jests and their diversions. They read books. They played games. Once a day, for an hour, they were even allowed to listen to the radio. But they were never allowed to watch television, which was generally perceived as the devil's favorite mouthpiece by all right-thinking members of the Free Church of Edinburgh. On Tuesday nights they went to church for what was called a “prayer meeting”; and on Thursday evenings they went to church again for Bible study. Secretly Stephen and Evelyn disliked going to church so much, but there were two events on the calendar they did enjoy: the Sunday school Christmas party, and the Sunday school summer picnic.
Of these Stephen Lang much preferred the picnic at Carberry Towerâpaid for by one of the church elders, Lord Dullâfor the freedom it afforded him to roam through the many beautiful acres of grounds without interference from his religious-minded parents. Later on there were races and, after prayers and Bible readings, of course, the picnic itself. But it was the races Stephen enjoyed most of all, since there were many prizes to be won. And win them he did. For Stephen Lang was a powerful and determined runner at almost any distance and it was generally held that he had the legs of a gazelle. Every Sunday school picnic, year in and year out, without fail, Stephen won all of the races he entered, and sometimes he would go home with so many prizes that he needed the help of his mother and father to carry the footballs, books, games, puzzlesâthere were even a few cups and medals in his haul of triumph. This did not meet with his father's approval, however, for although Mr. Lang was proud of his son's natural athletic ability, he was also a man who strongly believed in the virtue of humility.
“I think you've won everything that could have been won,” exclaimed his sister as they carried his prizes to the car. “I've never seen so many prizes.”
It was the wrong thing to say at that particular moment.
“ââPride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall,'â” Mr. Lang told his son. “Proverbs, chapter sixteen, verse eighteen.”
“Yes, Father,” said Stephen.
Mr. Lang opened the car trunk and placed the prizes on the neatly folded tartan rug that lived in there. “ââAnd he said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.'â”
As the months went by, the year ended and a new year began and Stephen forgot his father's words. But Mr. Lang did not forget and, the following summer, on the day of the Sunday school picnic, Mr. Lang took Stephen aside in order to speak to him.
Stephen was seldom invited inside his father's study. There was a large roll-top desk with a little wooden lectern on which a heavily underlined Bible lay open; and on the wall there was a fine print of a painting that depicted the temptation of Christ.
Mr. Lang sat down behind the desk and admonished his son solemnly.
“I think you should give one of the other boys a chance of winning something at this year's picnic races,” he said.
“They have as much chance as I have myself,” said Stephen. “We all start from the same position. With that in mind, how can I give them what they don't have, which is the ability to run as fast as I can? It's not my fault if they can't run as fast as me.”
“You don't understand,” said Mr. Lang. “Your winning everything there is to win is beginning to look like greed. It looks as if you are seeking glory on this earth when we both know that real glory can only be had in heaven. You see, Stephen, we must always be on our guard against the devil's earthly temptations that are offered by winning things.”
“But these things are prizes from the church,” said Stephen. “I don't see what on earth the devil can have to do with those.”
“On the face of it, that's true,” admitted his father. “But the devil takes pains to hide or disguise the hoof. It may be that this is some kind of test, as Satan himself tested our Lord when he took him unto a high place in the desert and offered him the whole world if Jesus would kneel down and worship him.” He nodded at the painting on the wall as if to emphasize the point he was making. “Yes, Stephen, even our Lord was tempted. So what I'm saying is that you should let one of the other boys win a race. That you should allow someone else to get a prize this year.”
“But how will I do that?” Stephen asked his father, genuinely puzzled.
“Och, I mean just don't try so hard to win, laddie,” he said, with great severity. “Surely that must be possible.”
“Wouldn't that be dishonest?” objected the boy. “Not to try one's best is surely to deny what the Lord has given me, which is my God-given ability to run faster than anyone else.” He shrugged. “For all you or I know, Father, I run for the glory of God.”
It was a clever argument. His father seemed to reflect upon it for some minutes with an effort of mind.
“Aye, you're right,” he said. “Perhaps it would be dishonest at that. Ecclesiastes nine tells us, âWhatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.' And Colossians three reminds us that âwhatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men.' It would be wrong to throw a race you have entered.
“So, I think it would be best, Stephen, if perhaps you simply did not enter more than half the races you did last year. By all means win the ones you're in, Stephen. But stay out of the others. For remember what the apostle Matthew tells us. That âwhosoever shall exalt himself shall be abused; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.'â”
Stephen was about to make another point in his case, because as well as being a fine runner he was also tenacious in argument, but his father raised his hand and said, “I've said all I will say on this matter. You will do what you're told.”
Stephen blushed with anger and somewhat hung his head, for he had been looking forward to carrying all before him on the sports field that afternoon as usual.
“Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, Father,” said Stephen, and regained his own room in brooding, resentful silence.
Now, for as long as Stephen could remember, it had always been his mother's habit on the morning of the day of the Sunday school picnic to take her son and daughter to the local shoe shop to buy them each a new pair of sandals. Stephen was looking forward to it because he liked the shoe shop. It was on the North Bridge and he loved peering over the bridge parapet at the many steam trains passing underneath in and out of Waverley Station. It looked like an infernal place, full of smoke and noise and far removed from the enforced quiet of home and church. It was like looking into the dark entrails of Edinburgh itself. Better than that, however, the trains went to places he had only ever dreamed of going. Places his parents hardly thought it fit to mention in pious company. Cities like Glasgow and London, which his father often described as “dens of iniquity.” Stephen knew that “iniquity” meant injustice and wickedness, but that only made a place like London seem all the more exciting and attractive.
Stephen was also looking forward to sitting in the little blue wooden toy cars that were inside the shoe shop, where a boy might sit while he was waiting for his sister to have her sandals fitted. But most of all he was looking forward to visiting the shoe shop because he was keen to try out a large wooden cabinet that X-rayed your feet. Stephen had never had an X-ray before and he was anxious to see what the bones of his feet really looked like.
They went inside the shop, where a salesman approached unctuously. He was a small but handsome man with a high forehead and dark hair. He wore a little beard and a mustache that made him resemble a French king of the Renaissance.
“Can I be of assistance, madam?”
Evelyn went first. And while Stephen drove one of the wooden cars spiritedlyâwhich was very unlike the way his father drove the family carâEvelyn's feet were measured, whereupon it was discovered that these had grown a whole size since the year before. A pair of brown leather sandals was produced and Evelyn put them on. Finally the moment came when Evelyn's feet in her new sandals were to be observed, scientifically, and the salesman moved Mrs. Lang and her daughter toward the shoe-fitting machine.
This was made by the Pedoscope Company of St. Albans, England, and in Stephen's eyes it looked more like something that belonged properly on a submarine. There were several knobs and switches and three viewing ports, like binocular cases, where the salesman, the customer and the customer's mother could all view an image of the customer's feet at the same time.
“There are twenty-six bones in the human foot,” said the salesman. “And this machine allows us to make sure that none of them are squeezed by a pair of new shoes. Och, the wonders of science, eh? What could be more modern?”
When his mother had finished viewing Evelyn's feet, Stephen took her place and marveled at the milky green image of his sister's toes wiggling inside her new sandals.
“It's like looking at your skeleton,” he told her. “In fact, I wish I was.”
Evelyn checked that her mother wasn't looking and then stuck her tongue out at him.
At last it was Stephen's turn, and as soon as the black leather sandals were on his feetâblack leather was essential so that he could wear them at schoolâhe mounted the wooden step and shuffled his feet through the shoebox-size aperture on top of the X-ray tube. Excited, he pressed his face onto the viewing port and waited patiently for the salesman to switch on the Pedoscope. For several moments he stared into blackness. It was like looking down into the nether regions of the earth.
The man waffled on a bit to Mrs. Lang about how shoes that fitted well lasted longer and therefore SAVED MONEYâa very Edinburgh conversationâand then switched the Pedoscope on again.
Stephen Lang gasped with horror at the sight that greeted him, for his own feet seemed quite different from those of his sister. Indeed, they couldn't have seemed more different. He could hardly believe his own eyes. For there on the little X-ray screen was a perfect image not of two human feet with twenty-six bones each but of two perfectly shaped cloven hooves. It was as if he was looking at two feet that belonged to a goat or an antelope.
He straightened immediately before, thinking he must have imagined thisâfor his mother and the salesman were talking quite normally, as if they could see nothing unusual about the X-rayâhe bent down to look again into the viewing port.
“Aye, there's plenty of room for growth,” said the salesman. “Maybe an inch in front of the wee boy's big toe.”
Stephen felt a cold sweat prickle on the back of his neck. There was no doubt about it. He was still looking at the feet of some animal.
“You don't think he needs the smaller pair?” Mrs. Lang asked the salesman.
“No, madam. Their feet grow so quickly at this age, what would be the point? After all, money for new shoes doesn't grow on trees, does it?”
“True enough,” said Mrs. Lang.
“This is a joke,” said Stephen. “Isn't it?”
Mrs. Lang frowned at her son. “Whatever do you mean, Stephen?”
“My feet,” he said. “They don't really look like that. Do they?”
“They do,” said the salesman patiently. “They do. What's under the skin may not look that pretty, son, but it's what we are, fundamentally.”
Stephen shook his head. “But my feet aren't at all like my sister's. They lookâ¦horrible. They're hairy and, well, evil-looking. Yes, that's it. They're evil-looking feet.”
“Everyone's feet are different,” insisted the salesman. “That's why the Pedoscope was invented. There would be no need for a machine like this if everyone's feet looked the same.”
But Stephen was hardly convinced. “No, this can't be right,” he said, shifting one hoof and then the other. “Really, it can't. You can't be seeing what I'm seeing. It's monstrous.”
“Of course it is,” said Evelyn. “You're a monster. But every time you look in a mirror you ought to know that.”
“That's enough, Evelyn,” said Mrs. Lang. “And, Stephen, do stand still. You're spoiling the image.”
“It's all right, madam,” said the salesman. “Some people find the X-ray images of their own feet quite unnerving. It reminds some folk of our own mortal frailty. We had a woman from Corstorphine in here last week who fainted at the sight of her own feet. I was obliged to fetch a man from the St. John's Ambulance Service to give assistance.”
