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John Silence Stories

Algernon Blackwood

  • Stories
  • Book language: English
  • 274 pages

John Silence Stories is a collection of supernatural tales by Algernon Blackwood, featuring Dr. John Silence, a physician who investigates occult and psychic mysteries. The stories blend detective fiction with weird fiction, offering atmospheric accounts of strange cases and unseen forces. They are worth listening to for their early twentieth-century supernatural atmosphere and quiet suspense.

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Text source: standardebooks.org · The work is in the public domain.

Opening of the book

То
M. L. W.
The original of John Silence
and
my companion in many adventures

Case I

A PǪΏŕƒƗŕĵƯ Iƿ΄ĵǪƗLjƿ

I

“And what is it makes you think I could be of use in this particular case?” asked Dr. John Silence, looking across somewhat sceptically at the Swedish lady in the chair facing him.

“Your sympathetic heart and your knowledge of occultism —”

“Oh, please —that dreadful word!” he interrupted, holding up a finger with a gesture of impatience.

“Well, then,” she laughed, “your wonderful clairvoyant gift and your trained psychic knowledge of the processes by which a personality may be disintegrated and destroyed —these strange studies you’ve been experimenting with all these years —”

“If it’s only a case of multiple personality I must really cry off,” interrupted the doctor again hastily, a bored expression in his eyes.

“It’s not that; now, please, be serious, for I want your help,” she said; “and if I choose my words poorly you must be patient with my ignorance. The case I know will interest you, and no one else could deal with it so well. In fact, no ordinary professional man could deal with it at all, for I know of no treatment nor medicine that can restore a lost sense of humour!”

“You begin to interest me with your ‘case,’ ” he replied, and made himself comfortable to listen.

Mrs. Sivendson drew a sigh of contentment as she watched him go to the tube and heard him tell the servant he was not to be disturbed.

“I believe you have read my thoughts already,” she said; “your intuitive knowledge of what goes on in other people’s minds is positively uncanny.”

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