The Mystery Megapack

John Copper—were hired to dispatch that devil Charlotte somewhere on the highway from Dublin.”
    “Not my sweet Pinprick,” I whispered.
    “Say you something, Mr. Coppe?”
    * * * *
    Having with a purloined bag of currency made amends to the clans of the two murdered thieves (one of which, ironically, had been John Copper deciding not to make himself present for his Pilchard Manor assignment once released from gaol for that particular duty), Charlotte and I today abide in a comfortable stone cottage hidden in the olden oaks and ash of Gleann na Gruagh. Though my education and my father’s memory may be sullied by my present actions, I could not see the disturbed child assassinated over a condition of mind completely out of her control.
    We do well for ourselves when the affluent travel through this perpetually shadowed woodland. Furthermore, Charlotte has taught me to fashion and fletch crossbow arrows.
    ~ John Coppe, Highwayman
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Skadi meic Beorh is the author of the satirical novel The Pirates of St. Augustine , the short story collection Always After Thieves Watch , and the reader-friendly dictionary Pirate Lingo , all from Wildside Press. His poetry/prose collection Golgotha has been released through Punkin House Press. New Irish Poems is a forthcoming collection, also through Wildside Press. Having lived in California, Maine, Vermont, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Ireland, he now makes his home in Historic St. Augustine with leather-worker Ember Goodacre.

THE RED HERRING, by William Hope Hodgson
    S.S. Calypso
    August 10
    We docked this morning, and the customs gave us the very devil of a turnout; but they found nothing.
    “We shall get you, one of these days, Captain Gault,” the head of the searchers told me. “We’ve gone through you pretty carefully; but I’m not satisfied. We’ve had information that I could swear was sound; but where you’ve hidden the stuff I’ll confess stumps me.”
    “Don’t be so infernally ready to give the dog the bad name, and then add insult to injury by trying to hang him,” I said. “You know you’ve never caught me yet trying to shove stuff through.”
    The head searcher laughed.
    “Don’t rub it in, Captain,” he said. “That’s just it! Take the last little flutter of yours, with the pigeons, and the way you made money both ways, both on the hens and on the diamonds; and all the rest of your devil’s tricks. You’ve got the nerve! You ought to be able to retire by now.”
    “I’m afraid I’m neither so fortunate nor so clever as you seem to think, Mr. Anderson,” I told him. “You had no right to kill my hens, and I made your man apologize for his abominable suggestion about the pigeons!”
    “You did so, Cap’n,” he said. “But we’ll get you yet. And I’ll eat my hat if you get a thing through the gates this time, even if we’ve missed finding it now. We’re bound to get you at last. Good morning, Captain.”
    “Good morning, Mr. Anderson,” I said. And he went ashore.
    There you have the position. I’ve got six thousand dollars’ worth of pearls in a remarkable little hiding place of my own aboard; and somehow word has been passed to the Customs, and it’s going to make the getting of them ashore a deuced diflicult thing, that will take some planning. All my old methods they’re up to. Besides, I never try the same plan twice, if I can help it; for it is altogether too risky.
    And a lot of them are not half so practicable as they appear at first. That carrier-pigeon idea, for instance, was both good and bad; but Mr. Brown and I lost nearly a thousand pounds’ worth of stones through it; for there’s a class of oaf with a gun who would shoot his own mother-in-law, if she passed him on wings. Perhaps he’d not be really to blame in such circumstances; but he is certainly to blame when he looses off at a “carrier.” Any shooting man should be able to recognize them from the common or garden variety. But I fancy the afore-mentioned oaf does the recognizing cheerfully, and shoots promptly. Some of these gentlemen must have made a haul! That was why we never loosed off the pigeons before reaching port. We never meant to trust all that value in the air, except as a last resort.
    Anyway, Mr. Anderson and his lot have got it in for me; and I shall have a job to get the stuff safely into the right hands by the twentieth, which is the date we sail.
    * * * *
    August 11
    I have hit on what I believe is rather a smart