Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [47]
The genesis for this story came from a recent visit to London. I had just flown in from Australia, and one of the first things I did was to have my hair cut at an old barbershop in Mayfair, at least in part just to stay awake and stave off jet lag. While my hair was being cut I wondered who else might have sat in that same chair over the years. As the barbershop has been in business since 1875, my thoughts naturally turned to the late Victorian era, and of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. Following my tonsorial shortening, I walked through the Green Park. It was the wrong time of the year for daffodils, and there were no sinister wielders of silver razors, but from that haircut and a short walk in the park, a story idea was sown.
—GARTH NIX
Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe was born in 1931 and served as a GI in the Korean War. After many years working as an engineer—both a practicing one and an engineering journalist—he turned in 1984 to full-time fiction writing, having already laid the basis for an acclaimed creative career with his early masterpieces, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, and four-volume The Book of the New Sun.
Subsequent works, always extremely ambitious and highly praised, have included The Urth of the New Sun, There Are Doors, The Book of the Long Sun, The Book of the Short Sun, The Wizard Knight, and three linked novels set in Ancient Greece and Egypt: Soldier of the Mist, Soldier of Arete, and Soldier of Sidon. Wolfe’s major story collections are The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, Endangered Species, Storeys from the Old Hotel, Castle of Days, Strange Travelers, Innocents Aboard, Starwater Strains, and The Best of Gene Wolfe. His most recent novels are The Sorcerer’s House and Home Fires.
Gene Wolfe has lived in Barrington, Illinois, for many years, with his wife, Rosemary, and a dog called Bobby.
GENE WOLFE
Why I Was Hanged
[The following account was supplied by a man who owns a great many books but searches fearfully for another, a yellowing pamphlet he may already own. In looking for a quite different title, he stumbled upon this remarkable narrative, which he had never read and could not recall buying. He read it, and says he remembers it almost word for word.]
MY NAME IS James Brooks. I was brought up in service and trained by my father, himself a valet of some distinction. At the age of eighteen I had the good fortune of obtaining a position with an elderly gentleman, of a good Yorkshire family, whose valet had died. I served him faithfully, and as I believe skillfully, for upwards of three years, at which time he himself closed his eyes for the final time, much mourned by his relations. Young as I was and knowing far less than I then believed of the ways of the world, I hoped for a substantial legacy. He would, I thought, have inserted into his final testament some clause bequeathing a considerable sum to one styled by him my faithful valet. Conceive then, of my disappointment when the will was read. The clause I had so hopefully envisioned was indeed to be found there; but its wording cast all my hopes into that darkling pit from which they have never emerged. My master had accorded the not inconsequential sum of one hundred guineas to my faithful servant Samuel Satterfield, this Samuel Satterfield aforesaid having been, as may be supposed, the one whose passing had, as I thought, so greatly benefited me. My master’s testament had been written, it transpired, some ten years before his demise and had lain untouched in his solicitor’s box until the soil had been heaped upon his grave. Samuel Satterfield having predeceased his master, it was ruled that the sum vouchsafed him should go to his widow, an ill-favoured and ill-tempered hag who had begun life, as I have been reliably informed, as a scullery maid. In short, I received not a whit more than the stable boy, which was nothing.
Greatly embittered, I left domestic service and went to sea. My misadventures there I shall pass over in silence;