A beautifully jacketed hardcover selection of 53 darkly witty, whimsical, and macabre short stories by an acknowledged master of the form.

Saki's dazzling tales manage the remarkable feat of being anarchic and urbane at the same time. Studded with Wildean epigrams and featuring well-contrived plots and surprise endings, his stories gleefully skewer the pompous hypocrisies of upper class Edwardian society. But they go beyond mere satire, raising dark humor to extremes of entertaining outrageousness that have rarely since been matched. Saki's elegantly mischievous young heroes sow chaos in their wake without breaking a sweat, and are occasionally joined by werewolves, tigers, eavesdropping house pets, and casually murderous children. This selection includes such famous stories as "Tobermory," "The Open Window," "Sredni Vashtar," "Mrs. Packletide's Tiger," "The Schartz-Metterklume Method," and many more.
from Reginald, 1904
Reginald's Choir Treat
Reginald on Besetting Sins
Reginald's Christmas Revel
 
from Reginald in Russia, 1910
The Reticence of Lady Anne
The Lost Sanjak
Gabriel-Ernest
The Soul of Laploshka
The Bag
The Baker's Dozen

from The Chronicles of Clovis, 1911
The Match-Maker
Tobermory
Mrs. Packletide's Tiger
The Stampeding of Lady Bastable
The Background
Sredni Vashtar
Adrian
The Music on the Hill
The Way to the Dairy
The Talking-Out of Tarrington
The Hounds of Fate

from Beasts and Super-Beasts, 1914
The She-Wolf
The Boar-Pig
The Brogue
The Hen
The Open Window
The Treasure-Ship
The Lull
The Romancers
The Schartz-Metterklume Method
The Seventh Pullet
The Blind Spot
Dusk
Clovis on Parental Responsibilities
A Holiday Task
The Story-Teller
The Lumber Room
Fur
On Approval
 
from The Toys of Peace, 1919
The Toys of Peace
Louise
Tea
The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh
The Wolves of Cernogratz
The Guests
Bertie's Christmas Eve
Mark
The Mappined Life
Fate
The Bull
Shock Tactics
The Seven Cream Jugs
The Occasional Garden

from The Square Egg, 1924
The Square Egg
THE OPEN WINDOW
 
‘My aunt will be down presently, Mr Nuttel,’ said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; ‘in the meantime you must try and put up with me.’
 
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
 
‘I know how it will be,’ his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; ‘you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.’
 
Framton wondered whether Mrs Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.
 
‘Do you know many of the people round here?’ asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.
 
‘Hardly a soul,’ said Framton. ‘My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.’
 
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
 
‘Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?’ pursued the self-possessed young lady.
 
‘Only her name and address,’ admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
 
‘Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,’ said the child; ‘that would be since your sister’s time.’
 
‘Her tragedy?’ asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.
 
‘You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,’ said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.
 
‘It is quite warm for the time of the year,’ said Framton; ‘but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?’
 
‘Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.’ Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. ‘Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing, ‘Berrie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window –’
 
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
 
‘I hope Vera has been amusing you?’ she said.
 
‘She has been very interesting,’ said Framton.
 
‘I hope you don’t mind the open window,’ said Mrs Sappleton briskly; ‘my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn’t it?’
 
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton, it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
 
‘The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,’ announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. ‘On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,’ he continued.
 
‘No?’ said Mrs Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention – but not to what Framton was saying.
 
‘Here they are at last!’ she cried. ‘Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!’
 
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
 
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: ‘‘I said, Bertie, why do you bound?’
 
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the halldoor, the gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
 
‘Here we are, my dear,’ said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window; ‘fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?’
 
‘A most extraordinary man, a Mr Nuttel,’ said Mrs Sappleton; ‘could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.’
 
‘I expect it was the spaniel,’ said the niece calmly; ‘he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make any one lose their nerve.’
 
Romance at short notice was her speciality.
Saki is the pen name of H. H. Munro, born in 1870 in Burma and educated in England. He began his writing career as a journalist and foreign correspondent but later turned to writing fiction—predominantly short stories for which he is best remembered—as well as one history book. He was 43 when World War I started. Although he was beyond the age of conscription, and despite being offered an officer's commission, Saki joined the army as an ordinary trooper. He was killed in 1916 in France by a German sniper. View titles by Saki

About

A beautifully jacketed hardcover selection of 53 darkly witty, whimsical, and macabre short stories by an acknowledged master of the form.

Saki's dazzling tales manage the remarkable feat of being anarchic and urbane at the same time. Studded with Wildean epigrams and featuring well-contrived plots and surprise endings, his stories gleefully skewer the pompous hypocrisies of upper class Edwardian society. But they go beyond mere satire, raising dark humor to extremes of entertaining outrageousness that have rarely since been matched. Saki's elegantly mischievous young heroes sow chaos in their wake without breaking a sweat, and are occasionally joined by werewolves, tigers, eavesdropping house pets, and casually murderous children. This selection includes such famous stories as "Tobermory," "The Open Window," "Sredni Vashtar," "Mrs. Packletide's Tiger," "The Schartz-Metterklume Method," and many more.

Table of Contents

from Reginald, 1904
Reginald's Choir Treat
Reginald on Besetting Sins
Reginald's Christmas Revel
 
from Reginald in Russia, 1910
The Reticence of Lady Anne
The Lost Sanjak
Gabriel-Ernest
The Soul of Laploshka
The Bag
The Baker's Dozen

from The Chronicles of Clovis, 1911
The Match-Maker
Tobermory
Mrs. Packletide's Tiger
The Stampeding of Lady Bastable
The Background
Sredni Vashtar
Adrian
The Music on the Hill
The Way to the Dairy
The Talking-Out of Tarrington
The Hounds of Fate

from Beasts and Super-Beasts, 1914
The She-Wolf
The Boar-Pig
The Brogue
The Hen
The Open Window
The Treasure-Ship
The Lull
The Romancers
The Schartz-Metterklume Method
The Seventh Pullet
The Blind Spot
Dusk
Clovis on Parental Responsibilities
A Holiday Task
The Story-Teller
The Lumber Room
Fur
On Approval
 
from The Toys of Peace, 1919
The Toys of Peace
Louise
Tea
The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh
The Wolves of Cernogratz
The Guests
Bertie's Christmas Eve
Mark
The Mappined Life
Fate
The Bull
Shock Tactics
The Seven Cream Jugs
The Occasional Garden

from The Square Egg, 1924
The Square Egg

Excerpt

THE OPEN WINDOW
 
‘My aunt will be down presently, Mr Nuttel,’ said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; ‘in the meantime you must try and put up with me.’
 
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
 
‘I know how it will be,’ his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; ‘you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.’
 
Framton wondered whether Mrs Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.
 
‘Do you know many of the people round here?’ asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.
 
‘Hardly a soul,’ said Framton. ‘My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.’
 
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
 
‘Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?’ pursued the self-possessed young lady.
 
‘Only her name and address,’ admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
 
‘Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,’ said the child; ‘that would be since your sister’s time.’
 
‘Her tragedy?’ asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.
 
‘You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,’ said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.
 
‘It is quite warm for the time of the year,’ said Framton; ‘but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?’
 
‘Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.’ Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. ‘Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing, ‘Berrie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window –’
 
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
 
‘I hope Vera has been amusing you?’ she said.
 
‘She has been very interesting,’ said Framton.
 
‘I hope you don’t mind the open window,’ said Mrs Sappleton briskly; ‘my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn’t it?’
 
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton, it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
 
‘The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,’ announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. ‘On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,’ he continued.
 
‘No?’ said Mrs Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention – but not to what Framton was saying.
 
‘Here they are at last!’ she cried. ‘Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!’
 
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
 
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: ‘‘I said, Bertie, why do you bound?’
 
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the halldoor, the gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
 
‘Here we are, my dear,’ said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window; ‘fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?’
 
‘A most extraordinary man, a Mr Nuttel,’ said Mrs Sappleton; ‘could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.’
 
‘I expect it was the spaniel,’ said the niece calmly; ‘he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make any one lose their nerve.’
 
Romance at short notice was her speciality.

Author

Saki is the pen name of H. H. Munro, born in 1870 in Burma and educated in England. He began his writing career as a journalist and foreign correspondent but later turned to writing fiction—predominantly short stories for which he is best remembered—as well as one history book. He was 43 when World War I started. Although he was beyond the age of conscription, and despite being offered an officer's commission, Saki joined the army as an ordinary trooper. He was killed in 1916 in France by a German sniper. View titles by Saki