What was happening on Carnglass, that “Heap of Gray Stones” beyond the
Outer Islands of the Hebrides? Old Lady MacAskival, the proprietress,
had brought in a queer lot of people from England, and the hostility
toward outsiders seemed to emanate from the frowning cliffs of
Carnglass. Anyone who tried to land, it was rumored, might be fired
upon. On a black night at sea, five MacAskivals from the neighboring
island of Daldour had seen a pillar of flame rise near Askival Harbor,
and had heard something like gunfire. And away in Michigan, old
Duncan MacAskival, the retiring head of the MacAskival Iron Works,
had encountered but stony silence in his many attempts to communicate
with Lady MacAskival concerning his desire to purchase the home of his
ancestors.
When Duncan, for all his pains, receives an odd water-stained note in
an unsigned, hastily-scrawled female hand, requesting “confidential
agents” and “immediate action,” he sends young Hugh Logan, his legal
counsel, to investigate. The adventure that unfolds is calculated to
transform the most comfortable armchair into a veritable bucket seat of
suspense.
In his efforts to reach Carnglass and the Old House, where Lady
MacAskival resides, Logan is confronted by the sinister agents of a
puzzling conspiracy--a baleful Glasgow “commission agent,” a cashiered
British officer, an Irish terrorist on the run, and, behind the stone
mass known as the Old House, the chilling man with the Third Eye.
old house of fear
OLD
HOUSE
OF
FEAR
BY RUSSELL KIRK
FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION
230 PARK AVENUE
NEW YORK 17, N.Y.
COPYRIGHT © 1961
BY FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION
230 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Protected under International Copyright Convention
and the Pan American Copyright Convention
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-7627
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
This Gothick tale, in unblushing line
of direct descent from _The Castle of
Otranto_, I do inscribe to Abigail Fay.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 _11_