Robert E. Howard
The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press
473 p., $45 REHF members, $50 nonmembers
Tales of Weird Menace collects the, what else, weird menace stories of Robert E. Howard. The centerpiece of the volume is Skull-Face. Since I've written at length about that tale,we'll go on to the second.
This is "The Noseless Horror". It's a brief tale, and in the interest of fair warning, I should tell you I'm going to include spoilers in this discussion. The plot is pretty simple. The narrator, called only Slade, and John Gordon are spending the night at the isolated country manor of Sir Thomas Cameron, noted Egyptotologist. Whether this is the same John Gordon who has such a prominent role in Skull-Face isn't clear, but it's highly unlikely. This Gordon is described as a wealthy sportsman, whereas the Gordon of Skull-Face is a government agent. The only other person at the house is the Sikh servant Ganra Singh, who lost his nose to an Afghan sword. There's also a Ganra Singh in Skull-Face, but he's not the one here. The descriptions and backgrounds are too different, plus the Ganra Singh in Skull-Face still has his nose intact.
Much of the conversation revolves around Sir Thomas tricking a rival, Gustavve von Honmann, with a phony map. As a result of following the map, Von Honmann was killed by a tribe in central Africa. According to the one porter who managed to escape, he vowed he would have revenge on Sir Thomas, from this side of the grave or the other. Sir Thomas isn't frightened, and moves the conversation to the real reason he had asked the men to his home.
