Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

“Don’t move. Don’t move or talk.”

It was only about twenty feet from the doorway now, and they realized that it was not becoming clearer and more distinct as it neared them; the thing remained a hazy phosphorescence without detail, shape, form. It was bigger, but no more identifiable. It looked like nothing on earth. And it made no sound at all.

“Fascinating.” Staring, the professor was awed and exultant. “But what the devil is it?”

They saw that it was between five and six feet in height. It seemed to have substance. There was a suggestion, a shadow behind its glowing surface, a shadowy aura of something tangible, something that could be grasped. But they still could not be positive; the thing was much too nebulous, as difficult to pin down as quicksilver.

Mrs. Randall whimpered.

“Stop it,” her husband murmured hoarsely.

Mr. Sebastian’s eyes were following its progress like an avid leech, never relaxing their grip. He was leaning forward in his eagerness to study it, lips drawn back against his teeth.

Suddenly he nodded. His lips loosened and formed a kind of smile. Then he straightened.

“Have you received your money’s worth now, Professor Wilkes?” he asked in that oddly accented voice.

Wilkes looked at him, puzzled. “Yes. Yes, I have.”

Mr. Sebastian’s saturnine features shifted into a smirk of amusement. “You are mistaken, sir. You have not had full value for your three pounds. So far. But you shall, you shall.” His teeth glistened in the dark.

“What are you talking about?” Norton asked Sebastian, obviously irritated.

He paid no attention. The thing was fake, he was sure of it now. And a rather amateurish kind of fake at that. The flashlight signals, phosphorous paint, trained employee inside the black cloth sack, scrupulously tied around the ankles and resulting in those jerky forward movements... Relief swept through him. He was free to take over, this virgin territory was his.

He shook with excitement. No one knew better than he how ferociously selfish the spirits were about big old mansions; they’d forced him out of house after house on three continents, houses he had discovered, only because he preferred to operate as a single. But this wonderful place was so remote and so recently available that it might take years before any of the others found out about it.

Mrs. Randall screamed as Mr. Sebastian dematerialized. They all stood frozen in terror, staring at him for an awful moment longer. Then the group fled down the corridor and out of the house, followed by a clumsy, frantic, hobbling figure inside a black bag.

But the creature that had been called Mr. Sebastian didn’t even notice. It was floating from room to room in quiet ecstasy, inspecting its new quarters.

A Matter of Patience by Norman Daniels

An unfaithful wife, he fold himself, deserves a hard life... an even harder death.

* * *

Leo Damion had smoked his second cigar before the couple emerged from the motel and he saw the man help the woman into the sleek, fire-engine-red sports car which had been parked outside the cabin.

His rage was the quiet kind for the moment, but the most dangerous kind because the woman was his wife and he’d warned her before about this sort of thing.

He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d had an unhappy marriage with him. In their thirteen years together, he’d provided well. As a successful manufacturer, he’d made sufficient money to keep her in mink coat, cape and stole. Her perfumes were imported and her dresses came from only the best couturiers.

He had provided a nine room, three-and-a-half-bath ranch-suburban home which was as nice a place as the whole section boasted of. She had her own car, a by-the-day maid and a laundress. He took her to the best restaurants and night clubs. If they didn’t make first night at the theatre, they were there the second.

All in all, Leo Damion thought he’d done very well for Jean and she showed her appreciation by going out with other men.

She wasn’t getting away with it. The first one — Charlie Hoyt, a young lawyer who’d been struggling to find a couple of clients — she’d been out with him several times, he knew.

Leo had suffered in silence, but no man could be expected to endure that forever, so Leo had done something about it. The way things turned out, he was very proud of the way he’d handled it.

Now he looked as if he were going to be required to go through it all again. He would be careful though, just as careful as he’d been with Charlie. Getting rid of a person wasn’t as difficult or dangerous as he’d believed.

It was merely a matter of patience until the right time, and then speed and strength. Leo bit the tip off a third cigar and smiled. Speed was a matter to be induced at the moment he struck; strength he already had far more than enough of.