Old House of Fear

What was happening on Carnglass, that “Heap of Gray Stones” beyond the Outer Islands of the Hebrides? Old Lady MacAskival, the proprietress, had brought in a queer lot of people from England, and the hostility toward outsiders seemed to emanate from the frowning cliffs of Carnglass. Anyone who tried to land, it was rumored, might be fired upon. On a black night at sea, five MacAskivals from the neighboring island of Daldour had seen a pillar of flame rise near Askival Harbor, and had heard something like gunfire. And away in Michigan, old Duncan MacAskival, the retiring head of the MacAskival Iron Works, had encountered but stony silence in his many attempts to communicate with Lady MacAskival concerning his desire to purchase the home of his ancestors.

When Duncan, for all his pains, receives an odd water-stained note in an unsigned, hastily-scrawled female hand, requesting “confidential agents” and “immediate action,” he sends young Hugh Logan, his legal counsel, to investigate. The adventure that unfolds is calculated to transform the most comfortable armchair into a veritable bucket seat of suspense.

In his efforts to reach Carnglass and the Old House, where Lady MacAskival resides, Logan is confronted by the sinister agents of a puzzling conspiracy--a baleful Glasgow “commission agent,” a cashiered British officer, an Irish terrorist on the run, and, behind the stone mass known as the Old House, the chilling man with the Third Eye.

old house of fear

OLD HOUSE OF FEAR

BY RUSSELL KIRK

FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION 230 PARK AVENUE NEW YORK 17, N.Y.

COPYRIGHT © 1961 BY FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION 230 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Protected under International Copyright Convention and the Pan American Copyright Convention

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-7627

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This Gothick tale, in unblushing line of direct descent from The Castle of Otranto, I do inscribe to Abigail Fay.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 11

Chapter 2 26

Chapter 3 42

Chapter 4 58

Chapter 5 78

Chapter 6 95

Chapter 7 111

Chapter 8 136

Chapter 9 153

Chapter 10 173

Chapter 11 187

Chapter 12 201

Chapter 13 218

Chapter 14 230

Chapter 15 248

old house of fear

1

On this shrouded night, five men tossed in a boat off the island of Carnglass, where the sea never is smooth. So thick about them hung the fog that they could not see the great cliffs. Knowing, though, every rock and reef, they sensed where the island lay.

Of a sudden, a tall flame shot up from Carnglass, fierce and unnatural. Across the swell there came to the men in the boat the crash of some explosion. Clinging to their oars, they stared silent toward the land; the oldest man crossed himself. The flame, surging and waving for some minutes, soon sank lower. In a little while they heard faint distant sounds, several of them, like gunshots. The younger men looked to the old helmsman, who pulled hesitantly at his white beard.

Then he signed to them to put the boat about. Glancing fearfully at the distant flame as they heaved, two men hauled at the sail. In a minute they had changed course, and the fire in the night glowed at their backs as they pulled away from the uneasy neighborhood of silent and invisible Carnglass.

* * * * *

Three thousand miles away, two men sat in a handsome office. “That’s our island,” Duncan MacAskival said: “Carnglass.”