“The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” (1951)

Margaret St. Clair’s very short story should be a reminder to all of us to read more Lord Dunsany. It rivals Dunsany’s original gnoles story from 1912 (“How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles”)—both are in the Weird anthology. Gnoles are jewel-eyed creatures who live in the woods and have no use and little regard for humans. This story features a Rotary Club style of midcentury salesman, Mortensen, who studies Dale Carnegie and other sales literature. Mortensen has decided on setting up trade with gnoles in order to service their “cordage requirements.” The situation is absurd. Very little is known about gnoles other than a general sense they are quite dangerous. But our go-getter is determined to give it a try—he needs to get his sales numbers up. The story is short enough to verge on short-short but there’s no real hard twist to it. We come to it with a good idea of what’s going to happen. “The gnoles had a bad reputation,” it starts. But Mortensen “reasoned, correctly enough, that cordage must be something for which the gnoles had a long unsatisfied want.” Indeed, that’s exactly what proves out. They are happy to purchase rope and pay him with a fabulous emerald the size of a personal watermelon. Mortensen should have quit while he was ahead but thinks it would be taking advantage of them to accept such an enormous gem. For one thing, he thinks he couldn’t possibly make the change for it. Instead, he asks for something he thinks is less valuable. But that item turns out to actually be infinitely precious to the gnoles. Even asking for it so offends them that they promptly issue their lethal response. “Though they fattened Mortensen sedulously, and, later, roasted and sauced him and ate him with real appetite, the gnoles slaughtered him in quite a humane fashion and never once thought of torturing him. That is unusual, for gnoles.” It’s all quite enjoyably ridiculous, much like the original Lord Dunsany. St. Clair has her slightly savage fun with it and she has an admirable facility for moving in and out of grotesque scenes with a deceptively light hand (much like Lord Dunsany). St. Clair was an occultist, a Quaker, a nudist, and a long-time correspondent of Clark Ashton Smith. She published under various names (“Rope” as by “Idris Seabright”) and was known mostly for science fiction. Her voice could be so tart and acerbic that she had problems with readers who thought she was making fun of them—she might have been. Though gnoles only appeared in these two stories, as far as I can tell, they live on now as “gnolls” in the Dungeons & Dragons universe.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories My Mother Never Told Me, ed. Robert Arthur (out of print)
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Read story online.