Thorp McClusky

“ Loving husband—wife, fine pianist, dies—husband can no longer bear to hear piano music as he had heard it so many times in his home, soft and loud, fragmentary bits, practising, the human side of music that's somehow missing on a record or over the radio. ”

“ It doesn't necessarily follow—that if you, or I, or both of us, hear this—ghost music—tonight, we're consequently demonstrated the reality of Alicia's spirit—and, naturally, of a whole spirit world. For telepathy does exist; we know that—and I can see no way in which we can eliminate beyond doubt the possibility that whatever music we may hear—might not have come to us direct from Pierce's brain at the moment of death. The human brain sends out strange and powerful impulses when it is about to die ”

“ He shivered slightly, glanced fearfully at the banjo clock on the wall, gulped a big swallow of his drink and went on hastily:
"I struck up a sort of friendship with this Pierce right off. I'm an amiable bird anyway, and I couldn't help getting to know him; there're only about twenty-five fellows living here, and most of us take our breakfasts downstairs every morning, and our dinners at night, too, when we've nothing special on; it's like a sort of club, really. ”

“ Not all the time; sometimes she plays only one piece, or just part of a piece, and then stops, as though she's been—called away. Dancing in the Wind, she plays a lot. She had a special arrangement of it. And—nobody else can hear her. Nobody else can hear her playing. Only me.
"'It can't be. Such a thing can't be. There aren't ghosts. There can't be ghosts. But when I get near a piano, sooner or later I hear her ghost playing. The night she died I heard her first, playing on the big grand downstairs in the living room. I went down—but before I got downstairs the music stopped. ”

“ Just the sort of place for a wifeless young man—
Chambers mixed two whiskey-sodas, handed me mine, and sat down tautly on the davenport, across the room from me. He slept, by the way, on that same davenport—though no one would have ever guessed.
"Here's the story, Jerry," he said, sipping at his drink as he talked. "I haven't told you all of it before for fear you'd laugh. I waited, instead, until tonight. Whatever happens tonight—if it does happen or nothing happens at all, I mean; it'll be over in a hurry, and that'll be the end of it. ”

“ Well, you know that the brother demanded that Alicia's body be exhumed, which was done—and they found that sure enough she was saturated with arsenic. Pierce pleaded not guilty on grounds of insanity, but the alienists shot his story full of holes. They examined him and they put him in rooms with pianos, and he tried to fake the malady he said he'd been experiencing all along, and they proved that he was just faking. Then he tried to say that he hadn't heard that ghostly piano-playing any more since the minute he'd confessed, and that only made it worse. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1975, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 47 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
It is imperative that contributors search the renewal databases and ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation. ”

“ One of those jokes of Fate that are always happening and that none of us can foresee or guard against. It happened on a Friday evening, about eleven-thirty; I know it wasn't any later than that because I have to work on Saturday mornings and I was still sitting up, fully dressed, reading—when I heard this awful scream. ”

“ The orchestra was a couple of fiddlers, a pianist and a drummer. They weren't bad; they played round and square dances mostly, with every once in awhile a waltz, and everybody danced, old and young alike.
"'At ten o'clock the orchestra took its intermission, and we all lined up in a row for refreshments—ice cream and cake. I was just reaching out my hand for mine—Pierre was standing directly behind me—when the music started.
"'It came from that old rattletrap on the bandstand. ”

“ Chambers; a man who hates music as much as that isn't normal!'
"I hadn't noticed that Pierce disliked music—though I knew perfectly well that he had peculiarities—and I commented that I'd played the radio in my room lots of times when Pierce was present, and he never seemed upset. Also I mentioned Dowd's banjo playing, down the hall, said that that never seemed to bother Pierce, either. ”