Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

Tanner had blundered smack into the sinkhole. Within two steps he felt the jelly like ground give under his feet, and he stumbled and fell and all at once he was knee-deep in gooey marl which seemed to suck at his legs like thousands of voracious little mouths.

He dropped the drag hook and snatched at a spindly reed, and it bent and snapped off in his hand. He kicked with his free foot and it swung free, but — as he took another panicky lunge — both his feet sank into the viscous marl which was suddenly as soft as warm mush.

He dropped the carbine and floundered wildly, beating the slimy muck with his hands. He sank — sank — screaming and thrashing as the ghastly, glutinous marl crept up to his crotch, to his waist...

“Ramsay! For gawdsake, Ramsay, help me!”

Ramsay, standing in the tules, looked at the helpless man and nodded. It was already far too late. He couldn’t reach Tanner without blundering into the sinkhole himself. And even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to pit his strength against the combined weight of Tanner and the steel trap and the chain and drag hook.

But a sense of compassion struck him, and that was why he nodded. At least he could make it painless.

He raised the.22 and took careful aim and squeezed the trigger on his one shot. The target pistol went pak with a jolt.

Tanner’s body lunged backward, bowing at the spine, and a thin bright red ribbon ran out of his right eye. Then he settled forward, his face in the brown muck and his arms spread-eagled. The marl oozed up on him, swallowing — swallowing — until only his cloth cap sat complacently on the placid surface.

Ramsay lowered the.22 and turned away. He had to find the airboat and haul the body of his friend back to civilization. He waded on into the marl and tules, searching. All around him now, the swamp was silent.

Murder... Though It Have No Tongue by Maeva Park

Fraility, thy name ain’t necessarily “woman”.

* * *

Two passions remained to Cora Ransome, once the darling of the silent screen — Mon Repos, her boarding house for retired actors and actresses; and the semi-weekly showing of silent films in which she and her aging friends had starred. She lived — they all did — in a sweet, vague no-man’s land, a land which actually had been theirs, when they were young and beautiful and talented and rich, with castle-like homes and yachts and custom-built limousines.

When Conrad Dillingham, like a ghost from the past, arrived at Mon Repos, Cora had her first sense of being jolted into the present, and she did not like the feeling.

She had gone out that night to buy popcorn — her old ladies and gentlemen liked a big bowl of freshly-buttered popcorn to munch as they watched themselves on the screen.

When she arrived home, she perched her shabby little Renault precariously on the steep hill, got out, and stood looking with fondness and admiration at the silvered old mansion, with its gabled roof, its many cupolas and bits of gingerbread. The house seemed to be floating, drifting on air, and the lights of Hollywood, far below, were like stars shining in an upside-down sky.

A tall man was mounting the steps of the house, and Cora recognized that erect carriage, that immensely tall figure, with the outmoded, yet dashing black cloak thrown across his shoulders.

He turned. “Cora Ransome!” he cried. “After all these years — but I’d have known you anywhere.”

She knew that it was true. Her pretty, round face, with the small mouth so typical of the beauties of her day, was unlined, and still had the expectant look of the eternal ingenue. Her fair hair was streaked with grey, but it was soft and plentiful, and her blue eyes were only slightly faded.

“Conrad Dillingham,” she said, somewhat less enthusiastically. “No one has seen you for years.”

“Ah, well,” he said absently, “I’ve been in Europe for a long time.”

He was looking at the neat wooden sign which swung gently in the breeze. “My Repose,” he translated. “That’s a lovely name, Cora, a lovely promise for an old actor like me.”

He was not young, of course; he had been her co-star. Yet there was something of perpetual youth in the flamboyant handsomeness of that face, with its strong, straight nose, its jutting chin. His hair was silver, but otherwise he seemed scarcely changed from the dashing young man who had been one of the famous lovers of the silent days.

He roused her from her thoughts by asking politely, “May I come in?”

She unlocked the front door and led the way down the hall. “We’re viewing movies tonight,” she said. “Walter Williamson — you remember him, of course — is operating the projector. Just go in and have a chair; I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve popped the corn.”