![]() And now, if you’re ready, we’ll make a move.” Fortunately, there were very few people down there at the time, or there might have been a panic. I don’t know who gave the alarm, but whoever it was it was a false one. We had a fire scare down in the Murderers’ Den this evening. “One condition I ‘m afraid I must impose on you,” he remarked. He picked up the receiver of a house telephone, spoke into it and presently replaced it. Then I’ll take you down and show you round.” I’ll give orders for the figures downstairs not to be draped, and let the night people know that you’ll be here. “I think the last of the people have gone. Sufficient in our trade, and the papers don’t like offering their readers unbuttered bread.” “The news editors for whom I’ve worked have always complained that I haven’t any. “But you’re a journalist you must have a strong imagination.” But I don’t think your waxworks will worry me much.” “I have already promised myself an uncomfortable night because your Murderers’ Den is obviously not fitted up as a hotel bedroom. “The way of transgressors- and newspaper men - is hard,” he said. Besides, if he wrote the story well, it might lead to an offer of regular employment. It meant comparative wealth and luxury for a week, and freedom from the worst anxieties for a fortnight. Here was a chance not to be missed - the price of a special story in the Morning Echo, with a five-pound note to add to it. But he had a wife and a family to keep, and for the past month he had been living on paragraphs, eked out by his rapidly dwindling store of savings. His soul sickened at the prospect, even while he smiled casually upon the manager. Hewson had known that from the moment when the idea first occurred to him. The whole atmosphere of the place is unpleasant, and if you are susceptible to atmosphere I warn you that you are in for a very uncomfortable night.” After all, they represent the lowest and most appalling types of humanity, and - although I would not own it publicly - the people who come to see them are not generally charged with the very highest motives. It’s just that I couldn’t sit alone among them all night, with their seeming to stare at me in the way they do. If I did, I should expect them to haunt the scene of their crimes or the spot where the bodies were laid, instead of a cellar, which happens to contain their waxwork effigies. There isn’t any reason, I don’t believe in ghosts. I can walk about in company downstairs as unmoved as if I were walking among so many skittles, but I should hate having to sleep down there alone among them.” I know all about the process of their manufacture. I’ve seen those figures dressed and undressed. I’d like to be quite sure about you, and I’d like you to be quite sure of yourself. Of all, it’s no small ordeal that you’re proposing to undertake. “Get your story printed in the Morning Echo, and there will be a five-pound note waiting for you here when you care to come and call for it. “I shall make it gruesome, of course, gruesome, with just a saving touch of humor.” The other nodded and offered Hewson his cigarette case. Would be my position? But your being a journalist somewhat alters the case.” If I allowed it, and some young idiot lost his senses, what We have nothing to gain and something to lose by letting people spend the night in our Murderers’ Den. “In fact we refuse it to different people-mostly young bloods who have tried to make bets - about three times a week. “There is nothing new in your request,” he said. ![]() He looked what he was, a man gifted somewhat above the ordinary, who was a failure through his lack of self-assertion. He was a small, spare, pale man, with lank, errant brown hair, and though he spoke plausibly and even forcibly, he had the defensive and somewhat furtive air of a man who was used to rebuffs. ![]() His clothes, which had been good when new and which were still carefully brushed and pressed, were beginning to show signs of their owner’s losing battle with the world. He wore his clothes well and contrived to look extremely smart without appearing overdressed. The manager was a youngish man, stout, blond and of medium height. While the uniformed attendants of Marriner’s Waxworks were ushering the last stragglers through the great glass-paneled double doors, the manager sat in his office interviewing Raymond Hewson. The Waxwork is a scary short story by AM Burrage about a journalist who spends the night in a wax museum that contains dummies and mannequins of infamous murderers and serial killers that seem almost alive.
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