Selección Terror: Clark Carrados - Rubíes sangrientos

"Bloody Rubies" (*Rubíes Sangrientos*) This Spanish-language terror story, published in Selección Terror #566 (1984), opens with thief Happ Bruckner stealing two large rubies. When discovered by an armed stranger, Bruckner swallows the gems to prevent their theft. The man abducts him, straps him to a table, and—despite Bruckner's offers of compliance—surgically extracts the rubies using chloroform anesthesia. The operation succeeds, but the man discovers the gems are counterfeits, enraging him. Bruckner dies from shock and blood loss. The narrative then shifts to Albert Normand, a young man summoned by his wealthy, acerbic uncle Sir Morgan Lann-Smooth to Farnclough House to evict a tenant named Thea Vilmot, who owes fourteen thousand pounds in unpaid rent and loan debt. Her late father, John Vilmot, was an anthropologist whom Sir Morgan financed for a distant expedition that failed mysteriously. Sir Morgan demands Normand discover what happened to Vilmot and recover the debt, trusting his nephew above all other family members to investigate this matter.