The Watchman (33 page)

main there in the fierce certainty that the night must have left one soul for their salvation.

High in the washed and watery crystal of autumn night stand the stars. The carved, bright wisp of moon seems hasting in movement when clouds race across it and away; then it seems to stand, halted, as hushed and motionless as the stars themselves when no clouds are near. Staring squint of moon; meadowed scatter of stars across the velvet dark. Is it beyond imagination that the little band might have the souls of these in mind? The old revival tune blows and rises on the wind. Do stars listen?—has the pagan moon an ear for music? And the agnostic wind which intervenes between their carolling and the skies—might it not, at last, repent? Perhaps it is these last-to-go which the chapped-cheeked, earnest little band hopes to convert, blowing and beating in the lonely majesty of night. For surely stars, moon and wind—godless and headstrong by legend—do need saving. It is scarcely beyond the unswerving, steadfast passion of the little band's zeal to fancy this is so, to strive for that, to stubbornly blow and pound and puff for that. For whom else would they stay so late to play? Who else is there to listen? After such a ritualed night, something in each of them drives him to make the druid, mocking tribes of heaven come down and round to earth's angelic ways, at last. Matthew Hood, his bright-belled cornet lifted, his hot, flat hangman's eyes fixed savage on the moon swells out his cheeks like an amorous river frog, as if the very iterance of his sound would woo her loose. The bass drum bombs away at Venus and her harlot handmaidens. The trombone threatens the Pleiades. The cymbals' crashes shake the whispering wind. Moon, wind, stars: penultimate converts before that last to humble and bring down to earth: the thermonuclear, infidelic Sun. The Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band bursts forth in a fresh flurry of bugling, thumping, clashing sound. The wind blows, the moon squints coldly, the stars stay put. Yet still there's hope. For Heaven, it must surely seem to some, seldom—if ever—knows what's best for it.

CRIME FOR THE CONNOISSEUR

Tales for a Rainy Night

Edited by David Alexander

"A luscious mulligatawny of detection, suspense, fantasy, comedy, realism and horror."

— Washington Post w Times Herald

BY

Stanley Ellin

Michael Gilbert

M Allen de Ford

Raymond E. Banks

Donald A. Yates

Nedra Tyre

Maurice Procter

Anthony Boucher

and 1 0 other top suspense writers

**ADVISE YOU GET A COPY OF TALES FOR A RAINY NIGHT TO FILL JUST THAT NEED."

— New York Herald Tribune

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