Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

He shuffled toward the corner, past a crooked row of brick and limestone buildings with gables and bay windows and dying little shops on their ground floors. The cars along the curb wore blisters of sunlight. The sun burned his scalp through his thick hair. The mask felt as though it had melted to his face. Passersby on the littered street made exaggerated detours around him.

He bought a paper from the corner vendor, sat himself on a curbside bench and, squinting in the sunlight, started paging through the want ads.

A few moments later he was joined on the bench by a scrawny young man in a baggy suit. At first, Louis ignored the young man. But the suit, from the corner of his eye, looked familiar...

The scrawny man rubbed his bald head and winced. “A bump for a bump,” Axel said. “Yes?”

“Where the hell did you come from?” Louis cried. “That motel must be full of cops by now.”

Axel smiled. “I’m a master escape artist.”

“Yeah? Escape from this bench. I’m busy.”

“I’d rather sit and chat.”

“About what?”

“Well, why don’t we start with that mask on your face.”

“What about it?” barked Louis.

“It’s a bomb. It’s made of plastic explosive.”

“Yeah, sure,” Louis sneered.

“No, really. Mimi told you I was planning on blowing up the police station. I was simply going to wait till they caught you, then... well... kaboom, as they say.”

“You’re crazy. So’s your girlfriend. I’m sick of you. Get lost.”

“Very well,” Axel said. He rose stiffly from the bench, as though his bones were coat hangers. “I hope for your sake you elude the police. At least till the glue on that mask wears off.” Axel pulled the remote-control device from a pocket of his baggy pants. He made a minor adjustment with one of the knobs. “You were kind enough to leave this in the room.”

“Go ahead,” said Louis. “Push the button. Nothing’s going to happen. Besides, if I’m caught, you’re the last one I’ll phone.”

“I have eyes everywhere,” Axel said.

“You’re bluffing.”

“We shall see.” Axel pocketed the device. “We shall see. Yes?” He strolled off down the street.

Witch Hunt

by Terry Mullins

In the early fourteenth century, the Christian church began a fierce ban on the pagan practices from which witchcraft derived that was to last three centuries. One outcome of the severe line taken by the ecclesiastical authorities, some say, was that belief in witchcraft spread. Certainly by the time of Mr. Mullins’s story, most Europeans “had been brought up with a lively fear of the black art.” And under the guise of this art, many a wicked man might manipulate his terrified neighbors...

* * *

The witches’ terror fell upon Liege with a suddenness that left the citizens — all but a few — shuddering helplessly. A warm summer passed and the crops were good. Levo the innkeeper got three large casks of beer from Germany and Julien Feys the head weaver sent goods south. Then, just when everything was serene, the witches came.

Alain Schram was among the last to hear of their presence. A handsome young merchant, he had no wife to give him news. Sir John Mandeville, the world traveler who was recuperating in Liege, was perhaps the last person in all of Flanders to learn of the witches. People in Liege listened to him, for he had much wisdom and even greater knowledge; but they seldom had opportunity to tell him much. Had these two received word of the presence of witches earlier, much terror might have been averted.

A murky spring outside the city was called the Spring of Beelzebub. It was on land owned by the Bishop of Liege, but no amount of ecclesiastical activity could cleanse it of its reputation. An earlier bishop had built a small shrine in a grove of trees surrounding the spring. The shrine, never popular with the people, became a gathering place for robbers. When the bishop, with the help of soldiers of the local nobility, acted to clear the robbers out, he destroyed the trees which concealed them. What he found when he came upon the shrine was never openly told, but he had the shrine burned and its ashes cast into the spring.

That spring, then, was where the coven of witches gathered in the year of our Lord 1352.