The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and there’s suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with...

The shears found his throat this time. He fell down on top of them and was silent.Something dark like mucilage glistened where he lay.She had jumped back – not in remorse, but to keep the...

When she comes down to supper I don’t like her any better; in fact, a hell of a lot less. She’s put on a shiny dress, all fishscales, like this was still India or the...

That was enough dialogue for a few pages – he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.There weren’t any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato,...

I must have roamed dementedly about for a time in the streets. When I at last got back to my own place, Faustine was again there ahead of me, coiled torpid in the bed like...

But it doesn’t happen that way, I keep telling myself knowingly and sadly. Only in our fraternity pledges and masonic inductions, our cowboy movies and magazine stories, not in our real-life lives. For, the seventeenth-century...

Then the long nights, that were also days, in the hospital. And the long blanks, that were also nights. Needles, and angled glass rods to suck water through. Needles, and curious enamel wedges slid under...

An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of...

And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly.I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It...

The sightseers would have been disappointed, as the real thing always makes a poorer show than the fake. (“I’m Dangerous Tonight”)

He handed me something done up in paper. ‘Your mask,’ he said. ‘Don’t put it on until we get past the city-limits.’ It was a frightening-looking thing when I did so. It was not a...

And the blood remembers what the heart has never learned. The approach to kill. (“The Moon Of Montezuma”)

It wasn’t an attack. We’d been together too many times before, made love together too many times before, for it to be that. It was just that fear had suddenly entered, and made us dangerous...

Extreme joy and extreme sorrow are indistinguishable beyond a certain point. (“Jane Brown’s Body”)

Babette looked too good for the place tonight, but then goodness is only relative after all (“Steps Going Up” aka “Guillotine” aka “Men Must Die”)

There is no hard and fast line that can be drawn that says: Up to here there was no love; from here on there is now love. Love is a gradual thing, it may take...

New York. The world’s most dramatic city. Like a permanent short circuit, sputtering and sparking up into the night sky all night long. No place like it for living. And probably no place like it...

It was as simple as that – they met. As simple as only beautiful things can be beautiful, as only life-changing things, turning-point things, can be simple.(“For The Rest Of Her Life”)

He’s prowling back and forth like a lion with distemper now. There’s a shiny streak down one side of his face. “I shouldn’t have let her go ahead – I ought to be hung! Something’s...

Stahl trailed him upstairs, across a mezzanine, and out into the darkness of the sloping balcony. Tom gave the aisle his torch so his guest could see. On the screen below a woman’s head was...

And then finally she came – and the whole world faded out around us and we were just alone on the crowded sidewalk. I’ve heard it called love.(“I Won’t Take a Minute” aka “I’ll Just...

You his brother?”Yes, damn it!’ I burst out. “And all I want is to get my hands on whoever did this to him!”Funny,’ said a dick dryly, ‘but so do we.’I didn’t like him much...

O’Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around...

I rang the bell and she opened the door, dried her hands, and said heartily: ‘Hello, stranger. I was just saying to Cliff only tonight, it’s about time you showed up around here.’I wanted to...

There was nothing the matter out there. It was in here, with me.I decided I’d better go to work, maybe that would exorcise me. I fled from the room almost as though it were haunted....

But that’s the Way, and there is no other. And once his mind’s made up, the trembling and aimless walking stops, and he can look doom in the face without flinching. (“Jane Brown’s Body”)

The big weekend rush is on. The big city emptying itself out at once. Just a skeleton crew left to keep it going until Monday morning. Everybody getting out – everybody but me, everybody but...

Maldonado’s face was ghastly. ‘That’ she said, pointing below the bed where the cat lurked, ‘and that’ – pointing to what lay on the floor – ‘prove it was no dream. Do dreams leave marks...

And he’s alone there, with the unconscious pilot lying a little way off for company, and some other guy he’s never even seen, only spoken to over the radio.He wants to sleep so badly –...

The French doctor – the French, they are a very logical race and make good doctors – says: “M’sieu, they have all been on the wrong track – (“Jane Brown’s Body”)

And I still say it was just a coincidence;’ he muttered pugnaciously. ‘You say it too! Look at me and say it! It was just a coincidence. That happened to be the nearest place on...

It’s six o’clock; my drink is at the three-quarter mark – three-quarters down not three-quarters up – and the night begins.(“New York Blues”)

Evans turned away, did something with his left eyelid for the benefit of the other two. “It’s got him,” he smirked. “He’s tuned-in from now on.”Time started to slow up and act crazy. Minutes took...

That’s a man’s vital spot, the helpless thing he loves. (“Jane Brown’s Body”)

It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O’Shaughnessy’s mouth flattens, his face...

Fear! Fear again, for the first time since his ‘teens. Fear, that he thought he would never know any more. Fear that no weapon, no jeopardy, no natural cataclysm, has ever been able to inspire...

Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether...

The struggle doesn’t last long; it’s too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it’s easy to pry the disabled one from...

I hate the world. Everything comes into it so clean and goes out so dirty. (from COVER CHARGE – currently not listed)

Then without any warning the car stopped. They were there.”The ride’s over,” someone said. “End of the ride.”For a moment nobody got out. They just sat there. The driver cut the ignition, and after that...

After that there was silence for a while, only the sound of the shovel biting into the earth and the hissing splatter of the loose dirt.They stood him up, his back to the well.In the...

Go to Zillicks down the block. It has three booths at the back. Go in the middle one and wait. When you lamp me turning the pages of the directory outside, shove your money in...

It was male, of course; menace is always male. (“Nightmare”)

Being broke didn’t seem so awful as it had yesterday, being broke but being at peace with the world.(“Don’t Wait Up For Me Tonight”)

It seems so long ago that he was last afraid of anything. Seventeen, was he then? Eighteen? Sometimes he thinks he’s missing a lot by being like this – fear gives life a fillip. He...

Well, this is the hardest part to believe; look, you can suspend me if you want to, but it’s the God’s honest truth. This man Tompkins came all the way down to where I was...

It’s hard to say goodbye for good at any time or any place. It’s harder still to say it through a meshed wire. It crisscrossed his face into little diagonals, gave me only little broken-up...

It must be dawn, and the last breath went out of this body on the table – how long before? Irretrievably gone from this world, as dead as though she had lived a thousand years...

…all a guy can do is die once. The big difference is whether he dies clean – or dirty… (“I’m Dangerous Tonight”)

A scattering of pinpoint lights shows up in the blackness ahead. A town or village straddling the highway. The indicator on the speedometer begins to lose ground. The man glances in his mirror at the...