The Corpse on the Grating – Hugh B. Cave

pulpgrating01Last story of the Pulp Fiction Megapack.  Number XXV of XXV.

Dale and the mysterious M.S. have been summoned to the home of Professor Daimler.  He tells them of his efforts and failure at bringing a dead body back to life.

I assume Daimler will return because that scene was a big fat nothing.  Returning from the Professor’s home, they pass a large dark warehouse, made more frightening by the corpse clinging to the iron door.  He appears to have died of horror.  M.S. fancies himself a reader of dead minds.  He divines that there is something terrible about Room 4167 in the warehouse.  When Dale scoffs, M.S. offers him £100 if he will spend the night in that room — a trope we’ve seen before.

That night, Dale enters the building with M.S.’s assistance and climbs the stairs in search of room 4167.  Once in the dark 4167, he fortuitously finds a flashlight.  He does end up seeing something that horrifies him, and M.S. has an explanation.

Really, though, it is so uninteresting that it deserves to be at the ass-end of a $.99 anthology of 25 stories.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930.  Entire issue available here, but why would ya?
  • Also that month: Pluto discovered.