The 7th Ghost Story MEGAPACK

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

Welcome to The Seventh Ghost Story MEGAPACK®! Once more we have a wide-ranging assortment of supernatural fiction, with setting across the world—Europe, the Americas, Asia—and across the centuries. You will note that we have a larger than normal number of “Anonymous” stories. No, the authors weren’t embarrassed by their contributions. Victorian-era literary magazines and newspapers often ran fiction without crediting the author, or with only vague names like “By a Lady,” the author’s initials, or humorous pseudonyms (as with the story by “Q.E.D.” in this volume). Authors later collected their stories in books, and that’s when readers discovered who had actually written what. If a story never got reprinted, its author remained a mystery. Modern scholars are still researching these anonymous stories, but many authors will never be properly identified.

Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

ABOUT THE SERIES

Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

TYPOS

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.

BEAUTIFUL DREAMER,

by R.A. Lafferty

Stephen Knight held favorable field position in the game of life. He was inordinately lucky, though he himself said (and with a straight face) that lucky was only another word for logical. Though spared the burden of excessive wealth with its entailments and baggage, yet he had a talent for money, both in the acquisition and spending of it. The world is full of otherwise sound men who lack this talent, and a well-balanced man like Stephen is rare.

He had a healthy digestion, an appetite of wide range, a tolerably clear conscience, and a measure of youth. His mind had a clarity and directness that was disconcerting to one who had fallen into the pattern. And he had an almost automatic gift for coming up with the right answer, in the manner of a cat always landing on its feet.

His life was full of brimming small passions for all the direct and sudden things in the world: the paintings of Tsinnahjinnie and Woody Crumbo (for the logic of the line of the American Indian artists never fails), the music of the Cimmaron Valley Boys and of Victor Herbert (if one possesses these two peaks, let the lesser folks own the dim valley between), Louisiana Rice-Ribby, Indian Barbecue, choc beer (Stephen did not have stomach trouble), jug-fishing (the only effective and therefore the only logical sort), the annual rattlesnake round-up at Okeene (for Stephen was fascinated by this most direct of all creatures with its logic of lightning), Bowling with the Black Knights (his own team), membership in the Engineer’s Club and the Neo-Thomists Society (the only two clubs in town where the philosopher’s key fits the locks), pidgeon flying (the poetry of the proficient), and affiliation with the Brain Busters, a small group of petroleum geologists with a penchant for startling theories. Stephen was interested, interesting, and happy.

And he had Vivian.

At any one time (by the nature of a monogamous world) it is possible for only one man to have the finest wife in the world. That man at that particular time was Stephen Knight. It had been planned: a clear thinking man will stake out the best part for himself and take thought to obtain it, and a logical man will see the logic of having the best wife possible.

There are tools unsuited to certain tasks, and words are inadequate tools to describe Vivian Knight. She made her presence and her comings felt. Other men, friends or strangers, would lift their heads like colts before she was even in sight. She was the heart of any group. When she was gone she left nothing at all tangible; but O the intangibles that surrounded that woman like an aura!

Actually, as Professor Schlauch had told Stephen, she was a rather stupid person with a high vitality, brimming friendliness, and a magnetism that should have flicked instruments on Mars. But Stephen, who analyzed her as he did all things, knew that she was not stupid, knew that intelligence (like icebergs and the mounting of diamonds) should be four-fifths below the surface. With Vivian her intelligence was entirely below the surface, deeply hidden and of subliminal force.

But on the surface she was a scatterbrain, a small intense cyclone with a curious calm at her center. Nobody who really understands such things could doubt that Stephen Knight had the finest wife in the world.

And she was coming now. Stephen could sense it from a distance as any man could sense it; but he could analyze the sensing of it, sorting out the complex of sounds that was her coming, dredging the subliminal up over the limen. He liked to break up sensations into their component parts.

On the two or three evenings a week when they were not together, he was sometimes in bed before she was. Now he was in bed, for in four more hours he must be up and off on a field trip. He was a petroleum geologist with a peculiar flair for seeing below surface indications, five thousand feet below surface indications. His talent for preliminary survey was unequaled; fine logic and sound information can reach very deep.

He was right, as always, as to her coming. Her small car turned in. He saw the sweep of the lights past his window, and heard the car crunch on the soft snow. Vivian, brimful and bubbling!

The bird downstairs broke into excited song; it always became excited when Vivian arrived. And just as her key was in the door its whistled song turned into ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ as she had taught it.

Vivian was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stair (the tone of her footfall at a frequency of 265, just above middle C, compounded with a vagrant, two harmonics, and a mute). Few men could so analyze their wives’ footsteps. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the ‘Dreamer’ as she ascended.

A ringing knife cut across the rustle, a frequency of 313 wedded to a false harmonic 30 vibrations higher. The phone. The extension was on the stairs and she would be right at it. It rang again and the rustle had stopped. But she did not answer it.

“Catch it, Vivian,” he called. But she did not. It rang again and again and he rose grumbling to answer it.

“Knight here.”

“Steady yourself, Mr. Knight. Something has happened to your wife. We will ask you to come down to the main station.”

“My wife is here. She has just arrived.”

“In that case there has been a misidentification, and another woman was carrying her credentials. Are you sure she is there?”

“Yes. Just a minute.”

He left the phone and went to the top of the stairs and switched on the light. He called loudly for Vivian there, and down the hall, and downstairs. He went down, switched on the outside light, and went out on the front porch.

There were no footprints there but his own of an hour before now sifted over with a quarter inch of fresh snow. Her car was not in the drive, nor had any car turned in after his own. He went back in to the waiting phone.

“I was mistaken. She is not here. I will be down at once.”

* * *

Vivian Knight was dead in a brutal and senseless murder. That was the fact that could not be undone. But that was not the fact that seemed primary to Stephen. Indeed, to his friends, he appeared to be a little callous about the whole thing. Such a shock does not affect all men the same, and an interior desolation may be covered by an outward dullness.

Still it was thought that he should have showed a little more emotion.

“It may be, Stephen, that you still do not realize that she is dead,” one friend told him.

“No. I am not absolutely sure of it, but for reasons too formless to even try to voice.”

“You surely do not doubt the identity?”

“Oh no. That is her body. There is no doubt of that. What I feel is something else. I always knew that I would lose her.”

“You did?”

“Yes. She was too good to be true. I never believed that she was real.”

After that people began to think of Stephen Knight as a little odd. He took no interest in the funeral arrangements.

“Oh, put her anywhere. She won’t mind. Wherever she’s gone she already has them charmed.”

Nor was he vengeful nor even particularly curious as to who her killer might be.

“Any man might have done it. There’s an impulse to take any perfect piece apart to see what motivates it, and to mar what is perfect. She hadn’t a flaw in her. If she’d had any fault at all she might not have been killed. Can’t you understand the feeling that nobody has the right to be perfect? I can understand it.”

“Man, that was your wife that was murdered.”

“I know that. I am not as far gone as you imagine. But I also understand that it had to happen; if not by that unknown, then by another; if not now, then at a later time.”

From the funeral Stephen went directly to the doctor. He was not one to keep mysteries bottled up inside himself, and he knew that time is no ally in things like this. He told the whole story, completely and dully.

“Well, I don’t pretend to understand this, Knight,” the doctor told him. “It isn’t a new story to me in its essentials. An old doctor never hears anything new. In literature and lore there are a few hundred cases (none of them really authenticated by their very nature) of death… instant visitations of the Departed to the one closest. Are you sure you were awake?”

“Of course I’m not sure, in the light of what I know to have happened. But I have never been mistaken in my state before. I have no history of hallucinations, and I have always been considered a well-balanced man. I realize that the latter is meaningless, and that there is no such thing.”

“True enough, there is not. But a few come closer to what we believe should be the norm, and you come quite close. In other words you are less crazy than almost anyone I know. You are hardly crazy at all. In a long life in the practice (and I was born to the profession) I have never known a single human who I could call unqualifiedly sane.”

“Vivian was sane. That was the whole strange thing about her.”

“Possibly. The Scatterbrain may be only another name for a wide-ranging intuitive comprehension. Now then, Knight, there is a set of things which you must say to yourself, and say over and over till you come to believe them. I do not know whether they are true, but you must accept them as true.

“On that night, three nights ago, you were asleep. You stirred to a feeling of anticipation, and you lay half-awake waiting. The bird (tuned to the life of you two) caught your anticipation and broke into song, and this served as a feedback to your own sensations, for the bird only whistled the ‘Dreamer’ when it felt that Vivian was nearing. It was a bright night with the snow mantle, and the light on your window might have been a more distant reflection. It was a gusty night, and the rustle that you thought was your wife was only the wind having its way with the wooden house, and her footsteps were likewise. But she was dead, and had been dead for at least a half hour. You are a comparatively sane man, and you must go over that and over it until you believe it implicitly.”

“But we do not know if it is actually true, do we?”

“No, we do not. But we turn that ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ by careful credulity. The world is built on such a system of credulities and we have no wish to pull it down. Now then, this is what happened, and there is no alternative. You may well have fifty years ahead of you, and there is no point in your making problems where there are none.”

“Then you can assure me that she is dead?”

“Yes. And, more important, you must also assure yourself of it. It is closed. You had a wonderful wife and you will have none but wonderful memories of her.”

“I have not slept in the house since that night.”

“Then you must sleep in it tonight. Even if you intend to sell the house and make other arrangements yet you cannot have it hanging over you that you were afraid to go back.”

“Yes, I will stay there tonight.”

* * *

But he did not go there early, and the hours were hard to fill. He thought of shooting a few games of pool, it often relaxed him when he was tense, but it seemed an unfeeling thing for one to do who has just buried his wife. He thought of dropping into one of the clubs for a few drinks, but that seemed not quite right either. He was an incomplete man without Vivian, and he knew it. He drove west through town and out the river road where the snow glistened on the trees and hills.

“Well, I had her for a few years, and nobody else had her at all. There is no one in the world who knows how pleasurable those years were. But also there is nobody who has lost as much as I have just lost.”

He went home and opened the house again after dark. He had an ascetic’s supper of tea and dry toast. The bird needed nothing, nothing that he could do for it. It essayed a few bars of the ‘Dreamer’, but its heart was not in it. Still, it was something, to have the bird. It’s voice was really an extension of that of Vivian.

Stephen played some of the stark dry fragments of Strilke. Stephen played the piano incomparably better than Vivian, yet he was sure that the playing that the piano would remember was that of Vivian and not his own.

He went to bed. He wrote on the bedside pad the figure he would ask for the house. He slept fitfully, and when he woke he marked out that figure and wrote another one two thousand dollars lower. People would not understand that it had been a magic house; and vanished magic is not a marketable commodity.

Then later he woke to the sense of her distant approach.

“If only it could be! If wishing could bring her back, then she would be here. But there is the stumbling block. The doctor said that I was hardly crazy at all, and he meant it for praise. But to a man who is not crazy this can not happen. And I know that it will not happen.”

Her car turned in, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

“But what if I were not a craven? What if I were man enough to so want her back that it would not matter if it were impossible? But I am not that man, and to me such things do not happen.”

He saw the sweep of the lights past his window, and heard the crunch of the car over the soft snow. But he was livid and scared liverless.

“I must be objective. That has always been natural for me. He said that it was only a gusty night and that I mistook the noises. He said that I had to believe it.”

And for a moment he did believe it. Then he went cold and all the juice drained out of his heart.

“I am objective. And tonight is not gusty. Tonight is still.”

The bird downstairs woke and broke into excited song. It always became excited when Vivian arrived.

“Perhaps it is that I do not have an objective bird. That will be a little hard to remedy.”

And just as her key was in the door, the whistled song of the bird turned into ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, clear and fine as she had taught it.

“God, why didn’t I bar the door? She has her key. But no, she does not have her key. It is with the rest of her effects locked in the deposit box. She is dead! I have to remember that she is dead! Let nothing confuse this issue. A sane man can account for every phenomenon. Somehow I will account for this.”

She was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stairs, the tone of them just above middle ‘C’. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the ‘Dreamer’ as she ascended.

“But she is dead! Is it that I am afraid of my own wife? She never harmed anything in her life. But—but—she is not in her life. Am I really afraid of Vivian?”

And for answer he piled chairs and desk and wardrobe in front of the door in frantic terror.

“Objective,” he moaned. “What is more objective than a pile of furniture?”

And she came to the top of the stairs like music, humming the ‘Dreamer’.

“Vivian!! You’re dead! You’ve got to believe that you’re dead. Go back! Go! Go!”

Her hand was on the door. But in all reason her hand could not be on the door, dead or alive. And if she were a ghost it would not matter what furniture was piled there. Still she would come in.

But in logic she could not be and could not come.

But she came through the door.

* * *

“Vivian! No! No! You’re dead! You’ve got to believe—”

FROM THE TOMB,

by Guy De Maupassant

The guests filed slowly into the hotel’s great dining-hall and took their places, the waiters began to serve them leisurely, to give the tardy ones time to arrive and to save themselves the bother of bringing back the courses; and the old bathers, the yearly habitues, with whom the season was far advanced, kept a close watch on the door each time it opened, hoping for the coming of new faces.

New faces! the single distraction of all pleasure resorts. We go to dinner chiefly to canvass the daily arrivals, to wonder who they are, what they do and what they think. A restless desire seems to have taken possession of us, a longing for pleasant adventures, for friendly acquaintances, perhaps, for possible lovers. In this elbow-to-elbow life our unknown neighbors become of paramount importance. Curiosity is piqued, sympathy on the alert and the social instinct doubly active.

We have hatreds for a week, friendships for a month, and view all men with the special eyes of watering-place intimacy. Sometimes during an hour’s chat after dinner, under the trees of the park, where ripples a healing spring, we discover men of superior intellect and surprising merit, and a month later have wholly forgotten these new friends, so charming at first sight.

There, too, more specially than elsewhere, serious and lasting ties are formed. We see each other every day, we learn to know each other very soon, and in the affection that springs up so rapidly between us there is mingled much of the sweet abandon of old and tried intimates. And later on, how tender are the memories cherished of the first hours of this friendship, of the first communion in which the soul came to light, of the first glances that questioned and responded to the secret thoughts and interrogatories the lips have not dared yet to utter, of the first cordial confidence and delicious sensation of opening one’s heart to someone who has seemed to lay bare to you his own! The very dullness of the hours, as it were, the monotony of days all alike, but renders more complete the rapid budding and blooming of friendship’s flower.

That evening, then, as on every evening, we awaited the appearance of unfamiliar faces.

There came only two, but very peculiar ones, those of a man and a woman—father and daughter. They seemed to have stepped from the pages of some weird legend; and yet there was an attraction about them, albeit an unpleasant one, that made me set them down at once as the victims of some fatality.

The father was tall, spare, a little bent, with hair blanched white; too white for his still young countenance, and in his manner and about his person the sedate austerity of carriage that bespeaks the Puritan. The daughter was, possibly, some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was very slight, emaciated, her exceedingly pale countenance bearing a languid, spiritless expression; one of those people whom we sometimes encounter, apparently too weak for the cares and tasks of life, too feeble to move or do the things that we must do every day. Nevertheless the girl was pretty, with the ethereal beauty of an apparition. It was she, undoubtedly, who came for the benefit of the waters.

They chanced to be placed at table immediately opposite to me; and I was not long in noticing that the father, too, had a strange affection, something wrong about the nerves it seemed. Whenever he was going to reach for anything, his hand, with a jerky twitch, described a sort of fluttering zig-zag, before he was able to grasp what he was after. Soon, the motion disturbed me so much, I kept my head turned in order not to see it. But not before I had also observed that the young girl kept her glove on her left hand while she ate.

Dinner ended, I went out as usual for a turn in the grounds belonging to the establishment. A sort of park, I might say, stretching clear to the little station of Auvergne, Chatel-Guyon, nestling in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, from which flowed the sparkling, bubbling springs, hot from the furnace of an ancient volcano. Beyond us there, the domes, small extinct craters—of which Chatel-Guyon is the starting point—raised their serrated heads above the long chain; while beyond the domes came two distinct regions, one of them, needle-like peaks, the other of bold, precipitous mountains.

It was very warm that evening, and I contented myself with pacing to and fro under the rustling trees, gazing at the mountains and listening to the strains of the band, pouring from the Casino, situated on a knoll that overlooked the grounds.

Presently, I perceived the father and daughter coming toward me with slow steps. I bowed to them in that pleasant Continental fashion with which one always salutes his hotel companions. The gentleman halted at once.

“Pardon me, sir,” said he, “but may I ask if you can direct us to a short walk, easy and pretty, if possible?”

“Certainly,” I answered, and offered to lead them myself to the valley through which the swift river flows—a deep, narrow cleft between two great declivities, rocky and wooded.

They accepted, and as we walked, we naturally discussed the virtue of the mineral waters. They had, as I had surmised, come there on his daughter’s account.

“She has a strange malady,” said he, “the seat of which her physicians cannot determine. She suffers from the most inexplicable nervous symptoms. Sometimes they declare her ill of a heart disease; sometimes of a liver complaint; again of a spinal trouble. At present they attribute it to the stomach—that great motor and regulator of the body—this Protean disease of a thousand forms, a thousand modes of attack. It is why we are here. I, myself, think it is her nerves. In any case it is sad.”

This reminded me of his own jerking hand.

“It may be hereditary,” said I, “your own nerves are a little disturbed, are they not?”

“Mine?” he answered, tranquilly. “Not at all, I have always possessed the calmest nerves.” Then, suddenly, as if bethinking himself:

“For this,” touching his hand, “is not nerves, but the result of a shock, a terrible shock that I suffered once. Fancy it, sir, this child of mine has been buried alive!”

I could find nothing to say, I was dumb with surprise.

“Yes,” he continued, “buried alive; but hear the story, it is not long. For some time past Juliette had seemed affected with a disordered action of the heart. We were finally certain that the trouble was organic and feared the worst. One day it came, she was brought in lifeless—dead. She had fallen dead while walking in the garden. Physicians came in haste, but nothing could be done. She was gone. For two days and nights I watched beside her myself, and with my own hands placed her in her coffin, which I followed to the cemetery and saw placed in the family vault. This was in the country, in the province of Lorraine.

“It had been my wish, too, that she should be buried in her jewels, bracelets, necklace and rings, all presents that I had given her, and in her first ball dress. You can imagine, sir, the state of my heart in returning home. She was all that I had left, my wife had been dead for many years. I returned, in truth, half mad, shut myself alone in my room and fell into my chair dazed, unable to move, merely a miserable, breathing wreck.

“Soon my old valet, Prosper, who had helped me place Juliette in her coffin and lay her away for her last sleep, came in noiselessly to see if he could not induce me to eat. I shook my head, answering nothing. He persisted:

“‘Monsieur is wrong; this will make him ill. Will monsieur allow me, then, to put him to bed?’

“‘No, no,’ I answered. ‘Let me alone.’

“He yielded and withdrew.

“How many hours passed I do not know. What a night! What a night! It was very cold; my fire of logs had long since burned out in the great fireplace; and the wind, a wintry blast, charged with an icy frost, howled and screamed about the house and strained at my windows with a curiously sinister sound.

“Long hours, I say, rolled by. I sat still where I had fallen, prostrated, overwhelmed; my eyes wide open, but my body strengthless, dead; my soul drowned in despair. Suddenly the great bell gave a loud peal.

“I gave such a leap that my chair cracked under me. The slow, solemn sound rang through the empty house. I looked at the clock.

“It was two in the morning. Who could be coming at such an hour?

“Twice again the bell pulled sharply. The servants would never answer, perhaps never hear it. I took up a candle and made my way to the door. I was about to demand:

“‘Who is there?’ but, ashamed of the weakness, nerved myself and drew back the bolts. My heart throbbed, my pulse beat, I threw back the panel brusquely and there, in the darkness, saw a shape like a phantom, dressed in white.

“I recoiled, speechless with anguish, stammering:

“‘Who—who are you?’

“A voice answered:

“‘It is I, father.’

“It was my child, Juliette.

“Truly, I thought myself mad. I shuddered, shrinking backward before the specter as it advanced, gesticulating with my hand to ward off the apparition. It is that gesture which has never left me.

“Again the phantom spoke:

“‘Father, father! See, I am not dead. Someone came to rob me of my jewels—they cut off my finger—the—the flowing blood revived me.’

“And I saw then that she was covered with blood. I fell to my knees panting, sobbing, laughing, all in one. As soon as I regained my senses, but still so bewildered I scarcely comprehended the happiness that had come to me, I took her in my arms, carried her to her room, and rang frantically for Prosper to rekindle the fire, bring a warm drink for her, and go for the doctor.

“He came running, entered, gazed a moment at my daughter in the chair—gave a gasp of fright and horror and fell back—dead.

“It was he who had opened the vault, who had wounded and robbed my child, and then abandoned her; for he could not efface all trace of his deed; and he had not even taken the trouble to return the coffin to its niche; sure, besides, of not being suspected by me, who trusted him so fully. We are truly very unfortunate people, monsieur.”

He was silent.

Meanwhile the night had come on, enveloping in the gloom the still and solitary little valley; a sort of mysterious dread seemed to fall upon me in presence of these strange beings—this corpse come to life, and this father with his painful gestures.

“Let us return,” said I, “the night has grown chill.”

And still in silence, we retraced our steps back to the hotel, and I shortly afterward returned to the city. I lost all further knowledge of the two peculiar visitors to my favorite summer resort.

Translated by E. C. Waggener

THE VENGEANCE OF A TREE,

by Eleanor F. Lewis

Through the windows of Jim Daly’s saloon, in the little town of C——, the setting sun streamed in yellow patches, lighting up the glasses scattered on the tables and the faces of several men who were gathered near the bar. Farmers mostly they were, with a sprinkling of shopkeepers, while prominent among them was the village editor, and all were discussing a startling piece of news that had spread through the town and its surroundings. The tidings that Walter Stedman, a laborer on Albert Kelsey’s ranch, had assaulted and murdered his employer’s daughter, had reached them, and had spread universal horror among the people.

A farmer declared that he had seen the deed committed as he walked through a neighboring lane, and, having always been noted for his cowardice, instead of running to the girl’s aid, had hailed a party of miners who were returning from their mid-day meal through a field near by. When they reached the spot, however, where Stedman (as they supposed) had done his black deed, only the girl lay there, in the stillness of death. Her murderer had taken the opportunity to fly. The party had searched the woods of the Kelsey estate, and just as they were nearing the house itself the appearance of Walter Stedman, walking in a strangely unsteady manner toward it, made them quicken their pace.

He was soon in custody, although he had protested his innocence of the crime. He said that he had just seen the body himself on his way to the station, and that when they had found him he was going to the house for help. But they had laughed at his story and had flung him into the tiny, stifling calaboose of the town.

What were their proofs? Walter Stedman, a young fellow of about twenty-six, had come from the city to their quiet town, just when times were at their hardest, in search of work. The most of the men living in the town were honest fellows, doing their work faithfully, when they could get it, and when they had socially asked Stedman to have a drink with them, he had refused in rather a scornful manner. “That infernal city chap,” he was called, and their hate and envy increased in strength when Albert Kelsey had employed him in preference to any of themselves. As time went on, the story of Stedman’s admiration for Margaret Kelsey had gone afloat, with the added information that his employer’s daughter had repulsed him, saying that she would not marry a common laborer. So Stedman, when this news reached his employer’s ears, was discharged, and this, then, was his revenge! For them, these proofs were sufficient to pronounce him guilty.

Yet that afternoon, as Stedman, crouched on the floor of the calaboose, grew hopeless in the knowledge that no one would believe his story, and that his undeserved punishment would be swift and sure, a tramp, boarding a freight car several miles from the town, sped away from the spot where his crime had been committed, and knew that forever its shadow would follow him.

From the tiny window of his prison Walter Stedman could see the red glow of the heavens that betokened the setting of the sun. So the red sun of his life was soon to set, a life that had been innocent of all crime, and that now was to be ended for a deed that he had never committed. Most prominent of all the visions that swept through his mind was that of Margaret Kelsey, lying as he had first found her, fresh from the hands of her murderer. But there was another of a more tender nature. How long he and Margaret had tried to keep their secret, until Walter could be promoted to a higher position, so that he could ask for her hand with no fear of the father’s antagonism! Then came the remembrance of an afternoon meeting between the two in the woods of the Kelsey estate—how, just as they were parting, Walter had heard footsteps near them, and, glancing sharply around, saw an evil, scowling, murderous face peering through the brush. He had started toward it, but the owner of the countenance had taken himself hurriedly off.

The gossiping townspeople had misconstrued this romance, and when Albert Kelsey had heard of this clandestine meeting from the man who was later on to appear as a leader of the mob, and that he had discharged Stedman, they had believed that the young man had formally proposed and had been rejected. But justice had gone wrong, as it had done innumerable times before, and will again. An innocent man was to be hanged, even without the comfort of a trial, while the man who was guilty was free to wander where he would.

That autumn night the darkness came quickly, and only the stars did their best to light the scene. A body of men, all masked, and having as a leader one who had ever since Stedman’s arrival in town, cherished a secret hatred of the young man, dragged Stedman from the calaboose and tramped through the town, defying all, defying even God himself. Along the highway, and into Farmer Brown’s “cross cut,” they went, vigilantly guarding their prisoner, who, with the lanterns lighting up his haggard face, walked among them with the lagging step of utter hopelessness.

“That’s a good tree,” their leader said, presently, stopping and pointing out a spreading oak; when the slipknot was adjusted and Stedman had stepped on the box, he added: “If you’ve got anything to say, you’d better say it now.”

“I am innocent, I swear before God,” the doomed man answered; “I never took the life of Margaret Kelsey.”

“Give us your proof,” jeered the leader, and when Stedman kept a despairing silence, he laughed shortly.

“Ready, men!” he gave the order. The box was kicked aside, and then—only a writhing body swung to and fro in the gloom.

In front of the men stood their leader, watching the contortions of the body with silent glee. “I’ll tell you a secret, boys,” he said suddenly. “I was after that poor murdered girl myself. A damn little chance I had; but, by Hell, he had just as little!”

A pause—then: “He’s shunted this earth. Cut him down, you fellows!”

* * *

“It’s no use, son. I’ll give up the blasted thing as a bad job. There’s something queer about that there tree. Do you see how its branches balance it? We have cut the trunk nearly in two, but it won’t come down. There’s plenty of others around; we’ll take one of them. If I’d a long rope with me I’d get that tree down, and yet the way the thing stands it would be risking a fellow’s life to climb it. It’s got the devil in it, sure.”

So old Farmer Brown shouldered his axe and made for another tree, his son following. They had sawed and chopped and chopped and sawed, and yet the tall white oak, with its branches jutting out almost as regularly as if done by the work of a machine, stood straight and firm.

Farmer Brown, well known for his weak, cowardly spirit, who in beholding the murder of Albert Kelsey’s daughter, had in his fright mistaken the criminal, now in his superstition let the oak stand, because its well-balanced position saved it from falling, when other trees would have been down. And so this tree, the same one to which an innocent man had been hanged, was left—for other work.

It was a bleak, rainy night—such a night as can be found only in central California. The wind howled like a thousand demons, and lashed the trees together in wild embraces. Now and then the weird “hoot, hoot!” of an owl came softly from the distance in the lulls of the storm, while the barking of coyotes woke the echoes of the hills into sounds like fiendish laughter.

In the wind and rain a man fought his path through the bush and into Farmer Brown’s “cross cut,” as the shortest way home. Suddenly he stopped, trembling, as if held by some unseen impulse. Before him rose the white oak, wavering and swaying in the storm.

“Good God! it’s the tree I swung Stedman from!” he cried, and a strange fear thrilled him.

His eyes were fixed on it, held by some undefinable fascination. Yes, there on one of the longest branches a small piece of rope still dangled. And then, to the murderer’s excited vision, this rope seemed to lengthen, to form at the end into a slipknot, a knot that encircled a purple neck, while below it writhed and swayed the body of a man!

“Damn him!” he muttered, starting toward the hanging form, as if about to help the rope in its work of strangulation; “will he forever follow me? And yet he deserved it, the black-hearted villain! He took her life—”

He never finished the sentence. The white oak, towering above him in its strength, seemed to grow like a frenzied, living creature. There was a sudden splitting sound, then came a crash, and under the fallen tree lay Stedman’s murderer, crushed and mangled.

From between the broken trunk and the stump that was left, a gray, dim shape sprang out, and sped past the man’s still form, away into the wild blackness of the night.

YOU CAN’T KILL A GHOST,

by Frank Belknap Long

Originally published in Weird Tales, August 1928.

Perhaps you’ve seen Talbot’s picture in the New York papers—a lean, leisurely young man with wilted collar and bow tie, and a grin reaching from ear to car. His Haitian revelations put him on a journalistic pinnacle where he almost rubbed shoulders with artists. His prose was exceedingly jerky and nervous, but before he had written three articles the yellow journals were roaring for his stuff, and the other papers were making timid bids.

But he gave me his best yarn gratis. You remember, or maybe you don’t, that he kept absurdly quiet about his imprisonment. He wasn’t ashamed of it, but he knew that I would use it in a story and he didn’t want to spill the beans for me. You see, I had given him two or three good cigars and promised him a week’s lodging, and for some reason he had taken a fancy to me. He didn’t have a friend when he arrived in New York, and he was going back to Haiti. I argued him out of it, and now there are seventy thousand words more of good journalism in the public libraries.

We sat smoking panatelas in the men’s compartment at the rear end of an Overland Express train, and Talbot told his story in a whimsically sonorous voice. I urged him to start at the beginning, but he smiled and shrugged eloquently.

“This story has no beginning,” he said. “I was drunk on the night they arrested me. I can’t recall the details, but it seems I borrowed a revolutionist’s uniform and paraded about the streets in it.

“In Haiti revolutions start in the mountains and wind up in Cap Haitien or Port au Prince when the rebels cool off. Nine-tenths of them never get into the press dispatches. On every national holiday the president witnesses the amusing spectacle of two or three dozen ruffians in yellow sashes shouting each other down and shooting into store windows. The president usually ties their hands by denying them official recognition.

“But the president refused to ignore me. I didn’t hurt a soul but I may have made more noise than the others. Or I may have walked under a ladder or broken a mirror. Anyhow, the president took advantage of my idiocy, and I was arrested and put where I couldn’t make a fool of myself.”

It gave Talbot exquisite pleasure to contemplate his degradation. A mischievous smile played about his lips, and his eager eyes sparkled.

“The jail was a ramshackle and disgusting affair, and I shared my cell with two revolutionary generals. A revolutionary general in the Black Republic has absolutely nothing to commend him. He is a low creature and his philosophy of life is terrible. He is a fatalist and he wouldn’t cross the street to avoid being shot at. And he is unthinkably dirty.

“My companions never washed. Their beards were six inches long, and there was no difference in their appearance. They were so ridiculously alike that I frequently got them mixed up.

“At first I naturally despised them, and thought only of getting out. I pounded on the bars, stamped my feet and shouted until I was red in the face.

“Never in my life had I been so angry. When the jailer came I glared at him and I could see that he knew I had something on my mind and that that something meant trouble.

“‘How long do you think you can keep an American citizen in jail?’ I asked.

“The jailer was a small, round-shouldered man between forty and fifty, with puckered, evil eyes and white eyebrows that met above the arch of his nose. His thick lips writhed hack from his dirty yellow teeth in a cynical smile.

“‘You are such a brown American!’ he sneered. ‘Who would believe that you are merely sunburned? You are essentially one of our enemies. The color of your face and uniform combine to make you a rebel.’

“I forgot that bars separated us. I reached for his throat, but he jumped back and grinned. In my disappointment I nearly bit my tongue through without feeling it. ‘You’re too vile to kill,’ I raved, ‘but if I could get my hands on your superiors—’

“The jailer assured me that my wish could not be granted. ‘My superiors are very busy men,’ He said. ‘But I do not blame you for getting angry. It isn’t pleasant to be shot at. But we are obliged to obey orders, and the president hates rebels.’

“He departed, grotesquely sneering.

“I sat on the edge of my cot and rolled a cigarette with white, nervous fingers. I was horribly upset. One of the generals grunted and swore that the jailer was a pig. He expressed no other emotion, but he added a few words of advice in a curiously colorless voice.

“‘Look in the soles of your shoes,’ he suggested. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you crying and begging for mercy. It would make the president too indecently happy.’

“I locked up and for an instant he smiled into my astonished eyes. Then he moved slowly to the other side of the wall. ‘Sometimes yon don’t find the metal,’ his companion volunteered. ‘But if you are wearing a regulation army shoe you are in luck.’

“I wanted very much to believe them. I looked down at my shoes. They were not army shoes, but I didn’t let that discourage me. I wanted to pay the jailer out for his insults. I laughed when I thought how angry and disappointed he would be to find the bars sawed through and the bird flown. The. American bird! I was thinking: ‘Now he’ll laugh out the other side of his face. Did he really think that he could keep an American in his filthy old jail?’

“The generals watched me with tolerant and cynical eyes. They winked at each other and ran their fingers through their brittle black boards. But I knew that there was no use bothering about them. I held the key to my own salvation and it was up to me to make good.

“A sense of something like exultation stole over me. I unlaced my shoes and examined them. There were unquestionably pieces of metal in the soles. I was ready to shout. I worked at the stiff leather, tearing it apart with my fingers and teeth, until the blood pounded in my ears and I very nearly keeled over.

“‘It’s better than being shot,’ one of the generals said, but I scarcely heard him. When I got the metal out I did a voodoo dance on the cell floor.

“One of the generals scowled. It was perfectly apparent that he didn’t like my enthusiasm. He stood there endeavoring to be civil, but there was an expression in his small blue eyes that told me clearer than words how he despised that sort of thing. I brought myself up with a jerk.

“I didn’t intend to go on so,’ I explained. ‘But this thing means a lot to me. I‘m only twenty-two and it isn’t pleasant to be taken out and shot. Leastwise, it’s not pleasant to be shot by mistake. I wouldn’t mind ordinarily—’

“I saw that I had taken the wrong tack. The general’s scowl grew in volume. ‘You shouldn’t anticipate, my friend,’ he said. ‘You have first to saw through the bars, and there’s a guard stationed outside.’

“I saw then what I had let myself in for. My spirits dropped. It would take at least two days to saw the bars through, and I didn’t see how I could conceal my progress from the jailer. I was in a tight place and said so. I’ll never forget the decent way in which the general met my objection.

“‘You mustn’t eat your bread,’ he said. ‘Rub it on the floor when the pig isn’t looking and use it on the bars.’

“But after that he got pretty silent, and I couldn’t persuade him to escape with me. ‘It is very easy to die when ten men shoot at you at the same time,’ he said, and his companion added that life was a very stupid affair.

“Naturally their logic repelled me, but what could I do? I didn’t like the idea of leaving them there to shoulder the blame, but it was no good arguing with them. When a Haitian’s mind is made lip it is made up. I told them to think of their wives, but when they swore at me I gave it up.

“The jailer seemed to suspect something when he brought the bread, but I didn’t give him half a chance to talk to the generals. I hung on to the bars and insulted him until I was blue in the face. He put the bread on the floor and looked inquiringly at the generals. I think that he was amused and a little frightened.

“As soon as he left I seized my portion of bread and rubbed it on the floor until it was blacker than the president’s beard. Then I kneaded it between my fingers. The generals watched me indifferently and I knew that they grimly appreciated the silent comedy of an American endeavoring to escape from a Haitian pig-sty. I made a violent effort to control myself, and went to work on the bars without so much as a groan to let them know what I was suffering. My heart kept coming up in my throat and flopping over. I couldn’t forget the risk I was running, and I began to fear I’d funk the job sure.

“There were five bars, and the window was two feet broad and eighteen inches high. It would be necessary to work against time, but I figured it wouldn’t take me more than two days to get out. I’d forgotten that a man has to eat and sleep. Sawing through bars is the hardest kind of work and no man can stand it more than eight hours on a stretch.

“I worked steadily for six hours, and all the time the generals were snickering and comparing notes behind my back. However, I tried to keep thinking of what I would say to the consul when I got out. I didn’t even stop to drink. My right arm got so devilishly stiff that it almost killed me to move it. But I wasn’t going to weaken before those generals.

“At the end of nine hours I got dizzy and weak. I had a small pocket mirror, and when I looked at myself I found I was yellow under the gills. The water was running in streams down my face and I had sense enough left to quit, after smearing the bars with the sooty bread to conceal what I had done. I had filed completely through one of the bars! But before I’d had time to congratulate myself I found myself on the floor in a heap, and my brain getting cloudy.

“Twelve hours later one of the generals kicked me awake and told me that I’d nearly spoiled my chances.

“The jailer hadn’t been able to discover anything, but my exhaustion had puzzled him. He had poked into corners and questioned the generals, and he had come near to trying the bars. I had a queer, dizzy feeling in my head, but I had no intention of taking a day off.

“I set to work on the bars again, and by the end of the day I had sawed through the second one. My fingers were bleeding and my brain reeled, and the generals didn’t say anything to encourage me. But I felt that my luck wasn’t bad under the circumstances, and maybe I wasn’t happy when I thought of how I would fool the jailer!

“By sundown the next day I had completed the job. The generals stared and shrugged their shoulders and urged me to escape immediately. I rolled a cigarette and puffed it until I had made a halo of blue-gray smoke about my head. I felt like a hero, standing there before those indifferent fools. ‘I’ll get out when it’s dark,’ I said, ‘and not before. I’m not taking unnecessary chances.’

“A couple of hours later I crawled to the bars and waited for the moon to get behind a cloud. The generals started laughing and I thought sure they’d give the game away. I was hopelessly upset, but it was no good being angry with them.

The bars came out easier than children’s first teeth. I simply stood up and pulled and there was an opening large enough to admit two men. In a moment I was halfway through the opening and wishing that I’d been more civil to the generals.

“But I might have known there would be a hitch somewhere. My coat got caught on a nail and I stuck. I wriggled and wriggled, but I couldn’t get my legs over.

“I lay wedged between the bars, and things began to look pretty black. At any moment I might be discovered by the jailer, and the generals wouldn’t be any help to me. And then I did a foolish thing. I struggled until something snapped and a sudden pain gripped my right leg. I groaned aloud, and to make matters worse the moon came out and flooded the clearing with light.

“And then I saw him. He was standing against the wall, swaying absurdly back and forth and drinking out of a neckless bottle. At first he did not notice me, but when his eyes finally rested on my agonized face he removed his great hat and bowed.

“‘Another newspaper man, I presume,’ he said. ‘Our little revolution certainly makes copy. But personally, I don’t think we’re worth it. This is strictly between you and me, you understand.’

“‘Do I look like a newspaper man?’ I snapped. I was in no humor to discuss trivialities with him. I could see that he was absurdly drunk, but it did not occur to me that I might find him useful.

“‘Permit me to introduce myself,’ he continued. ‘I am the president’s right-hand man—some call me his shadow. He couldn’t get along without me. We have too much in common. And yet I am but a pale reflection of his greatness. I am called Henriquez, but to you, who are an American, it shall be Henry. I should not even object to Harry. It seems that we are endeavoring to escape from prison. I can sympathize with the gesture. All human beings desire liberty. I myself have longed for liberty. They would not even permit me to drink the rich, red wine; it was necessary that I set the army a good example. But I fooled them. Today I am as free as the air and I have no responsibilities. I have escaped from my prison. Shall I help you to escape from yours?’

“‘Why should you?’ I roared. ‘Why don’t you call the guards and have them put me back again?’

“He smiled good-humoredly. ‘That would be such a waste of time!’ he said. ‘And besides, the guard might shoot you. I shouldn’t care to see you shot. Is it not strange how I differ from the president? The president hates rebels—and yet I am his shadow. Bui you seem to be having some trouble with those bars.’

“He suddenly became serious, and stepping quickly forward he looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Do you really wish to escape?’ he said.

“I nodded and groaned. ‘With every drop of blood in my body,’ I said, ‘I wish to escape. They have promised to shoot me. I am only twenty-two, and at my age it is not pleasant to be shot.’

“He nodded sympathetically. ‘I think I can help you,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to make any promises, but I think I can help.’

“He stepped forward and seized one of the remaining bars in his hairy hand. I saw the muscles of his enormous arms contract, and a hard, set expression come into his face. Merely to loosen the bar took a tremendous effort, and for a moment I did not think that he could possibly succeed. But slowly the bar gave way and then he literally tore it from its fastenings.

“A sudden sense of unspeakable joy possessed me. I hurled myself forward and nearly succeeded in wriggling free; but I could not quite pass my hips through. Henriquez was not discouraged. He beamed encouragement, and set himself the task of loosening the last bar. He succeeded in tearing the coat from my back, but the bar stuck.

“He backed away, still smiling. He seemed bracing himself for a titanic effort. He advanced again and took the last bar firmly between his two hands. He pulled and pulled. The bar gave way and bent outward; then it came away with a loud retching sound that I feared would bring the jailer on a run. I struggled through the window and collapsed in Henriquez’s arms. I could not stand. I was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and I had evidently sprained my hips, for when I moved it gave me exquisite pain.

“‘I can’t walk, Henry,” I said. ‘What shall I do?’

“‘Have no fear, my lad,” responded Henriquez. ‘I have carried heavier than you. There is an American ship in the bay and if we hurry I can put you on board before dawn. What do you say?’

“I nodded a silent approval. Henriquez laughed and lifted me on his huge shoulders. He made as if he would pick up the discarded bottle, but then he wavered and kicked it aside with the toe of his boot. ‘The president would have been very angry,’ he chuckled.

“With rapid steps he left the courtyard and proceeded cautiously along a white road. No doubt he found me heavy, for he stopped from time to time to mop his brow with his coat-sleeve. ‘The president,’ he kept muttering, ‘would never have understood.’

“‘Stop there!’ A blue-coated sentry stood on a muddy embankment and challenged Henriquez with leveled gun. Henriquez stood very still in the center of the road and whistled. ‘Don’t you know me?’ he vociferated. ‘I’m on official business. Let me pass.’

“The sentry scowled. ‘What have you got on your back?’ he asked.

“I heard Henriquez curse under his breath. ‘Mind your own business, my friend,’ he said, ‘and let me pass. It is evident that you do not who I am!’

“‘You are a traitor to the president,’ said the sentry. ‘You carry upon your back the rebel traitor who calls himself an American.’

“Henriquez suddenly crouched in the road. I felt his body grow taut beneath me. The muscles of his great arms tightened. He hissed through his teeth.

“Cautiously he advanced a few paces toward the embankment. ‘Stop!’ ordered the sentry. But Henriquez did not stop. He dropped me like a leaden weight and sprang forward.

“I rolled into a muddy ditch and lay still. My whole body was one great wound. My teeth were knocking together like billiard balls. I heard a brief gasp, and then a torrent of frightened words issued from beneath the embankment. ‘I thought you were a man! For heaven’s sake pity me! I didn’t know—I didn’t, so help me God! Please don’t! I beg you on my knees to pity me!’

“There followed the sounds of a scuffle, terminating in a prolonged scream : ‘Ah-h-h-h!’

“Another moment and Henriquez was picking me up. ‘It’s all right now, lad,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I had to drop you, but it was the only way!’

“We passed through gray, deserted orchards and along horribly muddy roads. Once a shot rang out behind us. A tremor passed over my friend’s huge form and he whistled through his teeth.

“‘Another guard!’ he muttered. ‘The president was unduly cautious. But I can not blame him. He suspects all rebels, and there are so many attacks upon his life.’

“Henriquez was breathing so heavily that I urged him to rest, but he only grunted and plunged doggedly forward.

“I can assure you that we were welcome on board the American ship. We were toasted and treated like kings, but it took some time to discover that Henriquez had been shot through the chest. He was a sly dog, was Henriquez. And his wound didn’t bleed! Even the captain did not suspect. But he collapsed in the arms of the mate when he attempted to leave the ship.”

“He died?” I asked.

Talbot threw away his cigar and laughed. “Nothing could kill Henriquez—not even a bullet. But I never saw him again. He slipped overboard that night and swam ashore.”

“Did the president forgive him?” I asked.

Talbot grunted. “Henriquez was the president,” he replied.

I stared.

“But that isn’t all of my story,” he continued. “I said nothing could kill him. You can’t kill a ghost. Henriquez was assassinated before I escaped from prison. You may have read about him in the papers.”

“And you mean to say—?” I stammered.

“A rather unusual story, isn’t it?” grinned Talbot. “Of course none of the conventional magazines would take it. They detest the unusual and amazing in fiction. But you can mention my name and perhaps some civilized editor will run it. You know, it’s beastly exhilarating to be carried on the back of a ghost!”

A FIGHT WITH A GHOST,

by Q.E.D.

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

“No, I never believed much in ghosts,” said the doctor. “But I was always rather afraid of them.”

“Have you ever seen one?” asked one of the other men.

The doctor took his cigar out of his mouth and contemplated the ash for a moment or two before replying. “I have had some rather startling experiences,” he said, after a pause, during which the rest of us exchanged glances, for the doctor has seen many things and is not averse to talking about them in congenial company. “Would you care about hearing one of them? It gives me the cold shivers now to speak of it.” We nodded, and the doctor, taking a sip as an antidote to the shivers, began:

“You remember George Carson, who played for the ’Varsity some years ago; big chap, with a light mustache? Well, I saw a good deal of him before he married, while he was reading for the bar in town. It was just after he became engaged to Miss Stonor, who is now Mrs. Carson, that he asked me to go down to a place which his people had taken in the country. Miss Stonor was to be there and he wanted me to meet her. I could not go down for Christmas Day, as I had promised to be with my people. But as I had been working a bit too hard, and wanted a few days’ rest, I decided to run down for a few days about the New Year.

“Woodcote was a pleasant enough place to look at. There were two packs of hounds within easy distance, and it was not far enough from a station to cut you off completely from the morning papers. The Carsons had been lucky, I thought, in coming across such a good house at such a moderate figure. For, as George told me, the owner had been obliged to go abroad for his health, and was anxious not to leave the place empty all the winter. It was an old house, with big gables and preposterous corners all over the place, and you couldn’t walk ten paces along any of the passages without tumbling up or down stairs. But it had been patched from time to time and, among other improvements, a big billiard-room had been built out at the back. A country house in the winter without a billiard-room, when the frost stops hunting, is just—well, not even a gilded prison. The party was a small one; besides George and his father and mother, there were only a couple of Misses Carson, who, being somewhere in the early teens, didn’t count, and Miss Stonor, who, of course, counted a good deal, and, lastly, myself.

“Miss Stonor ought to have been happy, for George Carson, besides being an excellent fellow all around, was by no means a bad match, being an only son with considerable expectations. But, somehow or other, she did not strike me as looking either very well or very happy. She gave me the impression of having something on her mind, which made her alternately nervous and listless. George, I fancied, noticed it, and was puzzled by it, for I caught him several times watching her with an anxious and inquiring look, but, as I was not there as a doctor, of course it was no business of mine, though I discovered the reason before I left Woodcote.

“The second night after my arrival—we had been playing, I remember, a family pool; the rest had gone upstairs to bed—George and I adjourned to a sort of study, which he had arranged upstairs, for a final smoke and a chat before turning in. The study was next to his bedroom, and parted off from it by curtains. As we were settling down I missed my pipe, and remembered that I had laid it down in the billiard-room. On principle I never smoke another man’s pipe, so I lit a candle, the house being in darkness, and started away in search of my own. The house looked awfully weird by the flickering light of a solitary candle, and the stairs creaked in a particularly gruesome way behind me, just for all the world as though someone were following at my heels. I found my pipe where I had expected in the billiard-room, and came back in perhaps a little more hurry than was absolutely necessary. Which, perhaps, explains why I stumbled in the uncertain light over a couple of unforeseen stairs, and dropped my candle. Of course it went out, but after a little groping I found it. Having no matches with me I was obliged to feel my way along the banisters, for it was so dark that I could not see my hand in front of me. And as I slowly advanced, sliding my hand along the broad balustrade at my side, it suddenly slid over something cold and clammy, which was not balustrade at all; for, stopping dead, and closing my fingers round it for an instant, I felt that I was holding another hand, a skinny, bony hand, which writhed itself slowly from my grasp. And though I could hear nothing and see nothing, I was yet conscious that something was brushing past me and going up the stairs.

“‘Hi—what’s that? Who are you?’ I called.

“There was no answer.

“I admit that I was in a regular funk. I must have shown it in my face.

“‘What’s the matter?’ asked George, as I blundered into his study.

“‘Oh, nothing,’ I answered; ‘dropped my candle and lost the way.’

“‘But who were you talking to?’

“‘I was only swearing at the candle,’ I replied.

“‘Oh! I thought perhaps you had seen—somebody,’ replied George.

“Somehow I did not like to tell him the truth, for fear he would laugh at my nervousness. But I determined to keep an eye on my liver, and take a couple of weeks’ complete rest. That night I woke up several times with the feeling of that confounded hand under my own—a clammy hand which writhed as my fingers closed upon it.

“The next morning after breakfast I was in the billiard-room practicing strokes while Carson was over at the stables. Presently the door opened, and Miss Stonor looked in.

“‘Come in,’ I said; ‘George will be back from the stables in a few minutes. Meanwhile we can have fifty up.’

“‘I wanted to speak to you,’ she said.

“She was looking very tired and ill, and I began to think I should not have an uninterrupted holiday after all.

“‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked, having closed the door and come up to the table, where she stood leaning with both her hands upon it.

“‘No,’ I replied, missing an easy carrom as I remembered my experience of last night, ‘but I believe in fancy.’

“‘And, supposing then that a person fancied he saw things, is there any remedy?’

“‘What do you mean, Miss Stonor?’ I replied, looking at her in some surprise. ‘Do you mean that you fancy—’

“I stopped, for Miss Stonor turned away, sat down on one of the easy-chairs by the wall, and burst into tears.

“‘Oh! please help me’ she sobbed; ‘I believe I am going mad.’

“I laid down my cue and went over to her.

“‘Look here, Miss Stonor,’ I said, taking her hand, which was hot and feverish, ‘I am a doctor, and a friend of George. Now tell me all about it, and I’ll do my best to set it right.’

“She was in a more or less hysterical condition, and her words were freely punctuated by sobs. But gradually I managed to elicit from her that nearly every night since she came to Woodcote she had been awakened in some mysterious way, and had seen a horrible face looking at her from over the top of a screen which stood by the door of her bedroom. As soon as she moved the face disappeared, which convinced her that the apparition existed only in her imagination. That seemed to distress her even more than if she had believed it to be a genuine ghost, for she thought her brain was giving way.

“I told her that she was only suffering from a very common symptom of nervous disorder, as indeed it was, and promised to send a groom into the village to get a prescription made up for her. And, having made me promise to breathe no word to anyone on the subject, more especially to George, she went away relieved. Nevertheless, I was not quite certain that I had made a correct diagnosis of the case. You see I had been rather upset myself not many hours before. George was longer than I expected at the stable, and I was just going to find him when at the door I met Mrs. Carson.

“‘Can you spare me one moment?’ she said, as I held open the door for her. ‘I wanted to find you alone.’

“‘Certainly, Mrs. Carson, with pleasure; an hour, if you wish,’ I replied.

“‘It is so convenient, you know, to have a doctor in the house,’ she said, with a nervous laugh. ‘Now I want you to prescribe me a sleeping draught. My nerves are rather out of order, and—I don’t sleep as I should.’

“‘Ah,’ I said, ‘do you see faces—and such like things when you wake?’

“‘How do you know?’ she asked quickly.

“‘Oh, I inferred from the other symptoms. We doctors have to observe all kinds of little things.’

“‘Well, of course, I know it is only fancy; but it is just as bad as if it were real. I assure you it is making me quite ill; and I didn’t like to mention it to Mr. Carson or to George. They would think I was losing my head.’

“I gave Mrs. Carson the same prescription as I had written for Miss Stonor, though by that time the conviction had grown upon me that there was something wrong which could not be cured by medicine. However, I decided to say nothing to George about the matter at present. For I could hardly utilize the confidence which had been placed in me by Miss Stonor and Mrs. Carson. And my own experience of the night before would scarcely have appeared convincing to him. But I determined that on the next day—which was Sunday—I would invent an excuse for staying at home from church and make some explorations in the house. There was obviously some mystery at work which wanted clearing up.

“We all sat up rather late that night. There seemed to be a general disinclination to go to bed. We stayed all together in the billiard-room until nearly midnight, and then loitered about in the hall, talking in an aimless sort of fashion. But at last Mrs. Carson said good-night, with a confidential nod to me, and Miss Stonor murmured, ‘So many thanks; I’ve got it,’ and they both went upstairs. George and I parted in the corridor above. Our rooms were opposite each other.

“I did not begin undressing at once, but sat down and tried to piece together some theory to account for the uncanniness of things. But the more I thought, the more perplexing it became. There was no doubt whatever that I had put my hand on something extremely alive and extremely unpleasant the night before. The bare recollection of it made me shudder. What living thing could possibly be creeping about the house in the dark? It was a man’s hand. Of that I was certain from the size of it. George Carson was out of the question, for he was in his room all the time. Nor was it likely that Mr. Carson, senior, would steal about his own house in his socks and refuse to answer when spoken to. The only other man in the house was an eminently respectable-looking butler; and his hand, as I had noted particularly when he poured out my wine at dinner, was plump and soft, whereas the mysterious hand on the balustrade was thin and bony. And then, what was the real explanation of the face which had appeared to the two ladies? Indigestion might have explained either singly. Extraordinary coincidences do sometimes occur, but it seemed too extraordinary that a couple of ladies—one old and one young—should suffer from the same indigestion in the same house, at the same time, and with the same symptoms. On the whole, I did not feel at all comfortable, and looked carefully in all the cupboards and recesses, as well as under the bed, before starting to undress. Then I went to the door, intending to lock it. Just as my hand was upon the key, I heard a soft step in the corridor outside, accompanied by a sound which was something between a sigh and a groan. Very faint, but quite unmistakable, and, under the circumstances, discomposing. It might, of course, be George. Anyhow, I decided to look and see. I turned the handle gently and opened the door. There was nothing to be seen in the corridor. But on the opposite side I could see a door open, and George’s head peeping round the corner.

“‘Hullo!’ he said.

“‘Hullo!’ I replied.

“‘Was that you walking up the passage?’ he asked.

“‘No,’ I answered, ‘I thought it might be you.’

“‘Then who the devil was it?’ he said. ‘I’ll swear I heard someone.’

“There was silence for a few moments. I was wondering whether I had better tell him of the fright I had already had, when he spoke again:

“‘I say, just come here for a bit, old fellow; I want to speak to you.’

“I stepped across the passage, and we went together into the little study which adjoined his bedroom.

“‘Look here,’ he said, poking up the fire, which was burning low, ‘doesn’t it strike you that there is something very odd about this house?’

“‘You mean—’

“‘Well, I wouldn’t say anything about it to the master or Miss Stonor for fear of frightening them. All the same, scarcely a night passes but I hear curious footsteps on the stairs. You’ve heard them yourself, haven’t you?’

“‘Now you mention it,’ I said, ‘I confess I have.’

“‘And, what is more,’ he continued, ‘I was sitting here two nights ago half asleep, and—it seems ridiculous, I know, but it’s a fact—I suddenly saw a horrible face glaring at me from between those curtains behind you. It was gone in a moment, but I saw it as plainly as I see you.’

“I moved my seat uneasily.

“‘Did you look in your bedroom or in the passage?’ I asked.

“‘Yes—at once,’ he replied. ‘There was nothing to be seen; but twice again that night I heard footsteps passing—good God!’

“He started up in his chair, staring straight over my shoulder. I turned quickly and saw the curtains which parted off the bedroom swing together.

“‘What is it?’ I asked, breathlessly.

“‘I saw it again—the same face—between the curtains.’

“I tore the hangings aside, and rushed into the next room. It was empty. The lamp was burning upon a side table, and the door was open, just as George had left it. In the passage outside all was quiet. I came back into the study and found George running his fingers through his hair in perplexity.

“‘There is clearly one person too many in the house,’ I said. ‘I think we ought to draw the place and find out who it is.’

“‘All right,’ said he, picking up the poker from the fireplace; ‘if it’s anything made of flesh and blood this will be useful, and if not—’

“He stopped short, for at that instant the most awful shriek of horror rang through the house—a shriek of wild, uncontrollable terror, such as I had never heard before and I never hope to hear again. One moment we stood staring at each other, dumbfounded. The next George Carson had dashed out of the room and down the corridor to the stairs. I followed close behind him. For we both knew that none but a woman in mortal fear would shriek like that, and that that woman was Miss Stonor.

“Down the stairs we tumbled pell-mell in the darkness. But before I reached the landing below, where Miss Stonor’s room was, I felt, as I had felt the evening before, something brush swiftly past me. As I ran I turned and caught at it in the dark. But my hand gripped only empty air. I was just about to turn back and follow it, when a cry from George arrested me, and, looking down, I saw him standing over the prostrate form of Miss Stonor. The door of her room was open, and by the moonlight which streamed into the room I could see her lying in her white nightdress across the threshold. What followed in the next few minutes I can scarcely recall with accuracy. The whole house was aroused by the poor girl’s awful shriek. She was quite unconscious when we came upon her, but she revived more or less as soon as Mrs. Carson and one of the terrified servants had lifted her into bed again. Nothing intelligible could be gathered from her, however, as to the cause of her fright; she only repeated, hysterically, again and again:

“‘Oh, the face; the face!’

“When I saw I could do her no further good for the present, I took George by the arm and led him out of the room.

“‘Look here, George,’ I said, ‘we must find out the reason of this at once. I am certain I felt something go by me as I came downstairs. Now does that staircase lead anywhere but to our rooms?’

“George considered for a moment.

“‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘there is a door at the end of the passage which leads up into a sort of lumber room.’

“‘Then we’ll explore it,’ I said. ‘For my part I can’t go to sleep until I’ve got to the bottom of this. Get the man to bring a lantern along.’

“The butler looked as though he didn’t half like the enterprise, and, to tell the truth, no more did I. It was the uncanniest job I ever undertook. However, we started, the three of us. First of all we searched the rooms on the floor above, where George and I slept. Everything was just as we had left it. Then I pushed open the door at the end of the corridor. A crazy-looking staircase led up into darkness. We went cautiously up, I first with a candle, then George, and last of all the butler with a lantern. At the top we stepped into a big, rather low room, with beams across the ceiling, and a rough, uneven floor. Our lights threw strange shadows into the corners, and more than once I started at what looked like a crouching human figure. We searched every corner. There was nothing to be seen but a few old boxes, a roll or two of matting, and some broken chairs. But in the far corner George pointed out to me a rickety ladder which ended at a closed trap-door. Just then I distinctly heard the curious, half groaning, half sighing sound which had already puzzled me in the corridor below. We stood still and looked at one another. We all heard the sound.

“‘Whatever it is, it’s up there,’ I said. ‘The question is, who is going up?’

“George put his candle down upon the floor and stepped upon the ladder. It cracked beneath his weight. He stopped.

“‘Come down; it won’t bear you,’ I said. ‘I shall have to go.’

“I don’t know that I was ever in such a queer funk as I was while I slowly mounted that ladder, and pushed open the trap-door. I had formed no clear idea of what I expected to find there. Certainly I was not prepared for what happened. For no sooner was the trap-door fully open than there fell—literally fell—upon me from the darkness above a thing in human shape, which kicked and spat and tore at me as I stood clinging to the ladder. It lasted but a moment or so, but in that moment I lived a lifetime of terror. The ladder swayed and cracked beneath me, and I fell to the floor with the thing gripping my throat like a vise. The next instant George had stunned it with a blow from the poker and dragged it off me. It lay upon its back on the floor—a ragged, hideous, loathsome shape. And the mystery was solved.”

“But you haven’t told us what it really was,” said one of the listeners.

The doctor smiled.

“It was the owner of the house,” he replied. “He had not gone abroad. He had gone to a private lunatic asylum with homicidal mania upon him. About a fortnight before this he had managed to escape; and, having made his way to his former home, had concealed himself, with a cunning often shown by lunatics, in the loft. I suppose he had found enough to eat in his nightly rambles about the house. The only wonder is that he didn’t kill someone before he was caught.”

A CRY ACROSS THE BLACK WATER,

by S. R. Crockett

Originally published in The Pall Mall Magazine, May 1894.

It was at the waterfoot of the Ken, and the time of the year was June.

“Boat ahoy!”

The loud, bold cry was carried far through the still morning air. The rain had washed down all that was in the sky during the night, so that the hail echoed through a world blue and empty.

Gregory Jeffray, a noble figure of a youth, stood leaning on his mare’s neck, quieting the nervous tremors of Eulalie, that very dainty lady. His tall, alert figure, tight-reined and manly, was brought out by his riding dress, and his pose against the neck of the beautiful beast, from which a moment before he had swung himself, was that of Hadrian’s young Antinous.

“Boat ahoy!”

Gregory Jeffray, growing a little impatient, made a trumpet of his hands, and sent the powerful voice, with which he meant to thrill the listening senate, sounding athwart the dancing ripples of the loch.

On the farther shore was a flat white ferry-boat, looking, as it lay motionless in the river, like a great white table chained in the water with its legs in the air. The chain along which it moved plunged into the shallows beside him, and he could see it descending till he lost it in the great dusky pool across which the ferry plied. To the north Loch Kenmore ran in glistening levels and island-studded reaches to the base of Cairnsmuir.

“Boat ahoy!”

A figure, like a white mark of exclamation moving over green paper, came out of the little low whitewashed cottage opposite, and stood a moment looking across the ferry, with one hand resting on its side and the other held level with its eyes. Then the observer disappeared behind a hedge, to be seen immediately coming down the narrow, deep-rutted lane towards the ferry-boat. As the figure came again in sight of Gregory Jeffray, he had no difficulty in seeing that it was a girl, clad in white, who came sedately towards him.

When she arrived at the white boat which floated so stilly on the morning glitter of the water, just stirred by a breeze from the south, she stepped at once on board. Gregory could see her as she took from the corner of the flat, where it stood erect along with other boating gear, something which looked like a short iron hoe. With this she walked to the end of the boat nearest him. She laid the hoe end of the instrument against a chain that ran breast-high along one side of the boat, and at the end plunged diagonally into the water. His mare lifted her foot impatiently, as though the shoreward end of the chain had brought a thrill across the loch from the ferry boat. Turning her back to him, the girl bent her slim young body in an effort, and, as though by the gentlest magic, the ferry-boat drew nearer to him. It did not seem to move; but gradually the space of blue water between it and the shore on which the whitewashed cottage stood widened. He could hear the gentle clatter of the wavelets against the lip of the landing drop as the boat came nearer. His mare tossed her head and snuffed at this strange thing that came towards them.

Gregory, who loved all women, watched with interest the sway and poise of the girlish figure. He heard the click and rattle of the chain as she deftly disengaged her gripper-iron at the farther end, and, turning, walked the deck’s length towards him.

She seemed but a young thing to move so large a boat. He forgot to be angry at being kept so long waiting, for of all women, he told himself, he most admired tall girls in simple dresses. His interest arose from the fact that he had never seen one manage a ferry-boat before.

As he stood on the shore, and the great flat boat moved towards him, he saw that the end of it nearest him was pulled up a couple of feet clear of the water. Still the boat moved noiselessly forward, till he heard it ground gently as the graceful pilot bore her weight upon the bar to stay its progress. Gregory specially admired the flex of her arms bent outwardly as she did so. Then she went to the end of the boat, and let down the tilted gangway upon the pebbles at his feet.

Gregory Jeffray instinctively took off his hat as he said to this girl, “Good morning! Can I get to the village of Dullarg by this ferry?”

“This is the way to the Dullarg,” said the girl, simply and naturally, leaning as she spoke upon her dripping gripper-iron.

Her eyes took in the goodliness of the youth while his attention was for the moment given to his mare.

“Gently, gently, lass!” he said, patting the mare on the neck as she felt the hollow boards beneath her feet. But she came obediently enough on deck, arching her fore feet high and throwing them out in an uncertain and tentative manner.

Then the girl, with a quiet and matter-of-fact acceptance of her duties, placed her iron once more upon the chain, and bent herself to the task with a well-accustomed effort of her slender body.

The heart of the young man was stirred. Yet he could have seen fifty field-wenches breaking their backs among the harvest sheaves without a pang. This, however, was very different.

“Let me help you,” he said.

“It is better that you stand by your mare,” she said.

Gregory Jeffray looked disappointed.

“Is it not too hard work for you?” he said.

“No,” said the girl. “Ye see, sir, I leeve wi’ my mother’s twa sisters i’ the boat-hoose. They are very kind to me. They brocht me up, that had neither faither nor mither. An’ what’s bringin’ the boat ower a time or twa?”

Her ready and easy movements told the tale for her. She needed no pity, and asked for none, for which Gregory was rather sorry. He liked to pity people, and then to right their grievances, if it were not very difficult. Of what use otherwise was it to be, what he was called in Galloway, the “Boy Fiscal”? Besides, he was taking a morning ride from the Great House of the Barr, and upon his return to breakfast he desired to have a tale to tell that would rivet attention upon himself.

“And do you do nothing all day but only take the boat to and fro across the loch?” he asked.

He saw the way now, he thought, to matter for an interesting episode—the basis of which would be the delight of a beautiful girl in spending her life in carrying desirable young men, riding upon horses, over the shining morning water. They would all look with eyes of wonder upon her; but she, the cold Diana of the loch side, would never look in return at any of them, except perhaps upon Gregory Jeffray. Gregory went about the world finding pictures and making romances for himself. He meant to be a statesman, and, with this purpose in view, it was necessary for him to study the people, and especially, he might have added, the young women of the people. Hitherto he had done this chiefly in his imagination, but here certainly was material to his hand.

“Do you do nothing else?” he repeated, for the girl was uncomplimentarily intent upon her gripper-iron. How deftly she lifted it just at the right moment, when it was in danger of being caught upon the revolving wheel! How exactly she exerted just the right amount of strength to keep the chain running sweetly upon its cogs! How daintily she stepped back, avoiding the dripping of the water from the linked iron which rose from the bed of the loch, passed under her hand and dipped diagonally down again into the deeps! Gregory had never seen anything like it, he told himself.

It was not until he had put his question the third time that the girl answered, “Whiles I tak’ the boat ower to the waterfoot when there’s a cry across the Black Water.”

The young man was mystified.

“A cry across the Black Water! What is that?” he said.

The girl looked at him directly almost for the first time. Was he making fun of her, she thought. His face seemed earnest enough, and handsome. It was not possible, she thought.

“Ye’ll be a stranger in these parts?” she answered interrogatively, because she was a Scottish girl.

Gregory Jeffray was about to declare his names, titles and expectations, but he looked at the girl again, and saw something that withheld him.

“Yes,” he said, “I am staying for a week or two over at Barr.”

The boat grounded on the pebbles, and the girl went to let down the hinged end. It seemed a very brief passage to Gregory Jeffray. He stood still by his mare, as though he had much more to say.

The girl placed her cleek in the corner, and moved to leave the boat. It piqued the young man to find her so unresponsive. “Tell me what you mean by ‘a cry across the Black Water,’” he said.

The girl pointed to the strip of sullen blackness that lay under the willows upon the southern shore.

“That is the Black Water o’ Dee,” she said simply, “and that green point amang the trees is the Rhonefoot. Whiles there’s a cry frae there. Then I gae ower i’ the boat an’ set them across.”

“Not in this boat,” he said, looking at the great upturned table swinging upon its iron chain.

She smiled at his ignorance.

“That is the boat that goes across the Black Water o’ Dee,” she said, pointing to a small boat which lay under the bank on the left.

“And do you never go anywhere else?” he asked, wondering how she came by her beauty and her manners.

“Only to the kirk on the Sabbaths,” she said, “when I can get some one to watch the boat for me.”

“I will watch the boat for you!” he said impulsively.

The girl looked distressed. This great gentleman was making fun of her, assuredly. She did not answer. Would he never go away?

“This is your way,” she said, pointing along the track in front. Indeed, there was only one way, and the information was superfluous.

The end of the white, rose-smothered boathouse was towards them. A tall, bowed woman’s figure passed quickly round the gable.

“Is that your aunt?” he asked.

“That is my Aunt Annie,” said the girl; “my aunt Barbara is confined to her bed.”

“And what is your name, if I may ask?”

The girl glanced at him. He was certainly not making fun of her now.

“My name is Grace Allen,” she said.

They paced together up the path. The bridle rein slipped from his arm, but his hand instinctively caught it, and Eulalie cropped crisply at the grasses on the bank, unregarded of her master.

They did not shake hands when they parted, but their eyes followed each other a long way.

* * *

“Where is the money?” said Aunt Barbara from her bed as Grace Allen came in at the open door.

“Dear me!” said the girl, frightened: “I have forgotten to ask him for it!”

“Did I ever see sic’ a lassie? Rin after him an get it; haste ye fast.”

But Gregory was far out of reach by the time Grace got to the door. The sound of hoofs came from high up the wooded heights.

* * *

Gregory Jeffray reached the Barr in time for late breakfast. There was a large company. The men were prowling discontentedly about, looking under covers or cutting slices from dishes on the sideboard; but the ladies were bright, and eagerly welcomed Gregory. He at least did not rise with a sore head and a bad temper every morning. They desired an account of his morning’s ride. On the way home he had changed his mind about telling of his adventure. He said that he had had a pleasant ride. It had been a beautiful morning.

“But have you nothing whatever to tell us?” they asked; for, indeed, they had a right to expect something.

Gregory had nothing. This was not usual, for at other times when he had nothing to tell it did not cost him much to make something up.

“You are very dull this morning, Fiscal,” said the youngest daughter of the house, who, being the baby and pretty, was pettishly privileged in speech.

But within him Gregory was saying, “What a blessing I forgot to pay the ferry!”

When he got outside he said to his host, “Is there such a place hereabouts as the Rhonefoot?”

“Why, yes, there is,” said Laird Cunningham of Barr. “But why do you ask? I thought a Fiscal should know everything without asking—even an ornamental one on his way to the Premiership.”

“Oh, I heard the name,” said Gregory. “It struck me as curious.”

* * *

That evening there came over the river from the Waterfoot of the Rhone the sound of a voice calling. Grace Allen sat thoughtfully looking out of the rose-hung window. Her face was an oval of perfect curve, crowned with a great mass of light brown hair, in which were red lights when the sun shone directly upon it. Her skin was clear, pale ivory, and even exertion hardly brought the latent under-flush of red to the surface.

“There’s somebody at the waterfit. Gang, lassie, an’ dinna be lettin’ them aff withoot their tippens (two pence) this time!” said her aunt Barbara from her bed. Annie Allen was accustomed to say nothing, and she did it now.

The boat to the Rhonefoot was seldom needed, and the oars were not in it. They leaned against the end of the cottage, and Grace Allen took them on her shoulder as she went down. She carried them as easily as another girl would carry a parasol.

Again there came the cry from the Rhonefoot.

Standing well back in the boat, so as to throw up the bow, she pushed off. The water was deep where the boat lay, and it had just been drawn half up on the bank. As Grace dipped her oars into the silent water the pool was so black that the blade of the oar was lost in the gloom before it got half-way down. Above there was a light wind moaning and rustling in the trees, but it did not stir even a ripple on the dark surface of the great pool of the Black Water of Dee.

Grace bent to her oars with a springing verve and force which made the tubby little boat draw towards the shore, with the whispering laps of water gliding under its sides. Three lines of wake were marked behind—a vague white turbulence in the middle and two winking lines of bubbles on either side where the oars had dipped.

When she reached the waterfoot, and the boat touched the shore, Grace Allen looked up to see Gregory Jeffray standing alone on the little copse-enclosed triangle of grass. He smiled pleasantly. She had not time to be surprised.

“What did you think of me this morning, running away without paying my fare?” he asked.

It seemed very natural that he should come. She was glad that he had not his horse.

“I thought you would come back again,” said Grace Allen, standing up, with one oar over the side ready to pull in or push off.

Gregory extended his hand as though to ask for hers to steady him as he came into the boat. Grace was surprised. No one ever did that at the Rhonefoot, but she thought it might be that he was a stranger and did not understand about boats. She held out her hand. Gregory leapt in beside her in a moment, but did not at once release her hand. She tried to pull it away.

“It is too little a hand to do so much hard work,” he said.

Instantly Grace became conscious that it was rough and hard with rowing. She had not thought of this before. He stooped and kissed it.

“Now,” he said, “let me row across for you, and sit in front of me where I can see you. You made me forget all about everything this morning, and now I must make up for it.”

It was a long way across, and evidently Gregory Jeffray was not a good oarsman, for it was dark when Grace Allen went indoors to her aunts. Her heart was bounding within her, and her bosom rose and fell as she breathed quickly and silently through her parted red lips. There was a new thing in her eye.

* * *

Every evening thereafter through all that glorious height of midsummer there was a cry at the waterfoot, and every evening Grace Allen went over to the edge of the Rhone wood to answer it. There the boat lay moored to a great stone upon the turf, while Gregory and she walked upon the flowery forest carpet, and the dry leaves clashed and muttered above them as the gloaming fell. These were days of rapture, each like a doorway into a yet fuller joy.

Over at the waterfoot the copses grew close; the green turf was velvet underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet him over the Black Water.

She rowed back alone, the simple soul that was in her forwandered and amazed with excess of joy. As she set the boat to the shore and came up the bank bearing the oars which were her wings into the world of love under the green alders, the light in the west, lingering clear and pure and cold, seemed to promise the dawn of yet brighter days.

But Aunt Annie watched her with silent pain. Barbara from her bed spoke sharp and cruel words which Grace Allen listened to not at all.

Then, when the morning shone bright over the hills and shimmered up the sparkling ripples of the loch, she looked across the Black Water to the hidden ways where in the evening her love should meet her.

As she went her daily rounds and the gripper-iron slipped on the wet chain and grew hot in the sun, as she heard the clack of the wheel and the soft, slow grind of the flat boat’s broad lip on the pebbles, Grace Allen said over and over to herself, “It is so long, only so long, till he will come.”

So all the day she waited in a sweet content Barbara reproached her; Aunt Annie perilled her soul by lying to shield her; but Grace herself was shut out from shame or fear, from things past or things to come, by faith and joy that at last she had found one whom her soul loved.

And overhead the dry poplar leaves clashed and rustled, telling out to one another that love was a vain thing, and the thrush cried thrice, “Beware.” But Grace Allen would not have believed had one risen to her from the dead.

So the great wasteful summer days went by, the glory of the passionate nights of July, the crisper blonde luxuriance of August. Every night there was a calling from the green plot across the Black Water; every night Aunt Annie wandered, a withered grey ghost, along the hither side of the inky pool, looking for what she could not see and listening for what she could not hear. Then she would go in to lie gratuitously to Barbara, who told her to her face that she did not believe her.

But in the first chill of mid-September, swift as the dividing of the blue-black thundercloud by the winking flame, fell the sword of God, smiting and shattering. It seemed hard that it should fall on the weaker and the more innocent. But then God has plenty of time.

One gloaming there was no calling at the Rhonefoot. Nevertheless Grace rowed over and waited, imagining that all evil had befallen her lover. Within her aunt Barbara fretted and murmured at her absence, driving her silent sister into involved refuges of lies to shield Grace Allen.

The next day passed, as the night had passed, with an awful constriction about her heart and a numbness over all her body, yet Grace did her work as one who dares not stop.

Two men crossed in the ferry-boat, talking over the country news as men do when they meet.

“Did ye hear aboot young Jeffray?” asked the herd from the Mains.

“Whatna Jeffray?” asked, without much show of interest, the ploughman from Drumglass.

“Wi’, man, the young lad that has been here helpin’ his uncle MacDiarmid the Fiscal.”

“I didna ken he was here,” said the Mains, with a purely perfunctory surprise.

“Ou, ay, he has been a feck ower by at the Barr. They say he’s gaun to get marriet to the youngest dochter: she’s hae a gye fat stockin’-fit, I’se warrant.”

“Ye may say sae, or a lawyer wadna hae her,” returned him from Drumglass as the boat reached the farther side.

“Guide’en to ye, Grace,” said they both as they put their pennies down on the little tin plate in the corner.

“She’s an awesome still lassie, that,” said the Mains as he took the road down to Parton Raw, where he had trysted with a maid of another sort. “Did ye notice she never said a word to us, neyther ‘Thank ye’ nor ‘Guid-day’? Her een were fair stelled i’ her heid.”

“Na, I didna observe,” said Drumglass cotman indifferently.

“Some fowk are like swine: they notice nocht that’s no pitten intil the trough afore them!” said the Mains indignantly.

So they parted, each on his own errand.

* * *

Day swayed and swirled into a strange night of shooting stars and intensest darkness. The soul of Grace Allen wandered in blackest night. Sometimes the earth seemed to open and swallow her up; sometimes she seemed to be wandering by the side of the great pool of the Black Water with her hands full of flowers. There were roses blush-red, like what he had said her cheeks were sometimes; there were velvety pansies, and flowers of strange intoxicating perfume, the like of which she had never seen. But at every few yards she must fling them all into the black water, and go forth into the darkness and gather more.

Then from her bed she would start up, hearing the hail of a dear voice calling to her from the Rhonefoot. Once she put on her clothes in haste and would have gone forth, but her aunt Annie, waking and startled, a tall, gaunt apparition, came to her.

“Grace Allen,” she said, “where are you gaun at this time o’ the nicht?”

“There’s somebody at the boat,” she said, “waiting. Let me gang, Aunt Annie: they want me.”

“Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass,” said her aunt gently. “There’s naebody there.”

“Or gin there be,” said Aunt Barbara from her bed, “e’en let them cry. Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin’ aboot?”

So the morning came, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and dip of oar.

Late on in the gloaming of the day following, Aunt Annie went down to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water’s edge. Something black was knocking against it.

Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the shore or going in out of the chill wind to endure Barbara’s bitter tongue.

The black thing that knocked was the small boat broken loose from her moorings and floating helplessly. Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled it to the shore. Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there was nothing and no one inside.

But the world spun round, and the stars went out when the finder saw the flowers.

When Aunt Annie Allen came to herself, she found the water had risen. It was up to her ankles. She went indoors and asked for Grace.

“Save us, Ann!” said Barbara; “I thocht she was wi’ you. Where hae ye been till this time o’ nicht? An’ yer feet’s dreepin’ wat. Haud aff the clean floor!”

“But Gracie! Poor lassie Gracie! What’s come o’ Gracie?” wailed the elder woman.

At that instant there came so thrilling a cry from over the dark waters out of the night that both the women turned to each other and instinctively caught one another by the hands.

“I maun gang,” said Aunt Annie. “That’s surely Grace.”

Her sister gripped her tight.

“Let me gang—let me gang; she’s my ain lassie, no yours,” Annie said fiercely, endeavoring to thrust off Barbara’s hands as they clutched her like talons from the bed.

“Help me to get up,” said Barbara; “I canna be left here. I’ll come wi’ ye.”

So she that had been sick arose, like a ghost from the tomb, and with her sister went out to seek for the girl they had lost. They found their way to the boat, reeling together like drunken men. Annie almost lifted her sister in, and then fell herself among the drenched and waterlogged flowers.

With the instinct of old habit, they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing the better and the stronger. They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising beneath them, and knew that there had been a great rain upon the hills.

“The Lord save us!” cried Barbara suddenly. “Look!”

She pointed up the great pool of the Black Water.

What she saw no man knows, for Aunt Annie had fainted, and Barbara was never herself after that hour.

Aunt Annie lay like a log across her thwart. But, with the strength of another world, Barbara detached the oar of her sister, and slipped it upon the thole-pin opposite to her own; then she turned the head of the boat up the great pool of the Black Water. Something white floated dancingly alongside, upborne for a moment on the boiling swirls of the rising water. Barbara dropped her oars, and snatched at it. She held on to some light wet fabric by one hand; with the other she shook her sister.

“Here’s oor wee Grade,” she said: “help me hame wi’ her!”

So they brought her home, and laid her all in dripping white upon her white bed. Barbara sat at the bed-head and crooned, having lost her wits. Aunt Annie moved all in a piece, as though she were about to fall headlong.

“White floo’ers for the angels, where Grade’s ga’en to! Annie, woman, dinna ye see them by her body—fower great angels, at ilka corner yin?”

Barbara’s voice rose and fell, wayward and sharp. There was no other sound in the house but the water sobbing against the edge of the ferry-boat.

“And the first is like a lion,” she went on, in a more even recitative, “and the second is like an ox, and the third has a face like a man, and the fourth is like a flying eagle. An’ they’re sittin’ on ilka bedpost; and they hae sax wings, that meet owrer my Gracie, an’ they cry withoot ceasing, ‘Holy! holy! holy! Woe unto him that causeth one of these little ones to perish! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged aboot his neck, and he were cast into the depths o’ the Black Water!’”

But the neighbours paid no attention to her, for, of course, she was mad.

Then the wise folk came and explained how it had all happened. Here she had been gathering flowers; here she had slipped; and here, again, she had fallen. Nothing could be clearer. There were the flowers; there was the great pool on the Black Water; and there was the dead body of Grace Allen, a young thing dead in the flower of her days.

“I see them! I see them!” cried Barbara, fixing her eyes on the bed, her voice like a shriek. “They are full of eyes, behind and before, and they see into the heart of man. Their faces are full of anger, and their mouths are open to devour—”

“Wheesh, wheesh, woman! Here’s the young Fiscal come to tak’ evidence.”

And Barbara Allen was silent as Gregory Jeffray came in.

To do him justice, when he wrote her the letter that killed—concerning the necessities of his position and career—he had tried to do it gently. How should he know all that she knew? It was clearly an ill turn that fate had played him. Indeed, he felt ill-used. So he took evidence, and in due course departed.

But within an inner pocket he had a letter that was not filed in the documents, which might have shed clearer light upon how and why Grace Allen slipped and fell, when she was gathering flowers at night above the great pool of the Black Water.

“There shall be set up a throne in the heavens,” chanted mad Barbara Allen as Gregory went out, “and Yin that sits upon it—and my Gracie’s there, clothed in white robes an’ a palm in her hand; an’ you’ll be there, young man,” she cried after him, “and I’ll be there. There’s a cry comin’ ower the Black Water for you, like the yin that raised me oot o’ my bed yestreen; an’ ye’ll hear it—ye’ll hear it, an’ rise up and answer.”

But they paid no heed to her, for, of course, she was mad. Neither did Gregory Jeffray hear aught as he went out but the water lapping against the little boat that was still half full of flowers.

The days went by, and when added together, one at a time, they made the years. And the years grew into one decade, and lengthened out towards another.

Aunt Annie was long dead, and a white stone over her; but there was no stone over Grace Allen.

Sir Gregory Jeffray came that way. He was a great law officer of the Crown, and first heir to the next vacant judgeship. This, however, he was thinking of refusing.

He had come to shoot at the Barr, and his baggage was at Barmark station. How strange it would be to see the old places again in the gloom of a September evening! Gregory still loved a new sensation. All was so long past. The old boathouse passed into other hands, and railways came to carry the traffic beyond the ferry.

As Sir Gregory Jeffray walked down from the late train which had deposited him at the station, he felt curiously at peace. The times of Long Ago came back not all unpleasantly to his mind. There had been much pleasure in them. He even thought kindly of the girl with whom he had walked in the glory of a forgotten summer along the hidden ways of the woods. Her last letter, long since destroyed, was not disagreeable to him when he thought of the secret which had been laid to rest so quietly in the long pool of the Black Water.

He came to the water’s edge. He sent his voice, stronger now than of yore, but without the old ring of boyish hopefulness, across the loch. A moment’s silence, and then from the gloom of the farther side there came an answering hail—low, clear and penetrating.

“I am in luck to find them out of bed,” said Gregory Jeffray to himself.

He waited and listened. The wind blew chill from the south athwart the ferry. He shivered, and drew his great fur-lined travelling coat about him. He could hear the water lapping against the mighty piers of the railway viaduct which, with its great iron spans, like bows bent to send arrows into the heavens, dimly towered between him and the skies.

“It is not so pleasant now as it used to be,” he said, with a slight thrill of disappointment. “Ah, some one is at the boat now,” he said, listening.

He could hear the oars planted in the iron pins, the push off the shore, and then the measured dip of oars coming towards him.

“How do they know, I wonder, that I want to be taken to the Rhonefoot? They are bringing the small boat.”

The skiff shot out of the gloom. It was a woman who was rowing. He stood transfixed, thrown cold in a moment by a memory. But he was far beyond all superstitious and sentimental considerations. It was always women who looked after ferry-boats in Galloway.

The boat grounded stern on. Gregory Jeffray stepped in and settled himself on the seat.

“What rubbish is this?” he said angrily, clearing a great armful of flowers off the seat and throwing them among his feet.

The oars dipped, and without sound the boat glided out upon the lapping waves of the loch towards the Black Water, on whose oily depths the oars fall silently, and where the water does not lap about the prow. The night grew suddenly very cold. Somewhere in the darkness over the Black Water Gregory Jeffray heard someone call his name.

* * *

It was noted as a strange thing that, on the same night on which Sir Gregory Jeffray was lost, the last of the Allens of the old ferry-house died in the Crichton Asylum. Barbara Allen was mad to the end, for the burden of her latest cry was, “He kens noo! He kens noo! The Lord our God is a jealous God. Now let Thy servant depart in peace.”

But Gregory Jeffray was never seen again by water or on shore. He had heard the cry from over the Black Water.

A FRIENDLY EXORCISE,

by Talmage Powell

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1968.

I was putting up the traverse rods for the living room draperies when Judy let out a screech. She sounded like a woman who’d had the world’s biggest mouse scurry between her feet.

The sound lifted me off the hassock where I’d been standing to add height to my somewhat bony six-one. I jetted toward the source of the sound, skidding off the hallway into the empty bedroom.

Judy, the delectable, hadn’t been frightened by a mouse. Instead, the culprit was a sweatsock. That’s right, an ordinary white woolen sweatsock, misshapen and slightly bedraggled from having been laundered many times. It lay in the middle of the bare floor, and it had to be the source of her trouble. Besides Judy there was nothing else in the room. She stood pressed against the wall, elfin face pale, blue eyes round. Pointing at the sock, she tried to talk, getting hung up on the “J” in my name.

“J-J-J-Jim, that darn thing floated out of the closet and g-g-g-gave me a hug across the face!”

She was making no sense whatever to me. I gawked at her, and the expression on my face bugged some of the fright out of her. Her eyes began to flash.

“Don’t you care that an old sweatsock floats out of a closet, halfway across an empty room, and nuzzles up to your bride, Jim Thornton?”

“Well, I…uh… Sure I care! But how could it have happened?”

“You tell me. You’re the brain. All I know is what happened. When I’d finished putting things away in the bedroom, I came in here. I was thinking how we’d fix this room for a nursery some day. Then that sock…” She shuddered. “I wouldn’t let my baby take a twenty minute nap in this room.”

I detoured the sock, grinning at her. “Baby? Judy, you’re pregnant already!”

She shook off my clutching hands. “Don’t be silly! We’ve been married less than a month. I haven’t had time to know if I’m pregnant or not. But when we do have a baby, James Arnold Thornton, you’d better have an explanation for anti-gravity sweat socks, if we stay in this house.”

I turned and sank to one knee beside the sock. I poked it with a finger. Nothing supernatural occurred. The sock was as commonplace and ordinary as…well, as old sweat socks.

“When the Bicklefords moved out,” I pronounced, “the sock was overlooked. It was probably in a dark corner of the closet shelf.”

“Brilliant,” said Judy, putting her sunny blonde head next to my drab brown thatch. “Of course it was overlooked by their movers.”

“And a breeze happened to blow it across your face.”

“Breeze?”

“Capricious breeze.”

She tilted her head and gave me a look. “Capricious breeze in an empty room with the windows closed.”

Her matter of fact tone was worse than sarcasm. My male ego recoiled. “Naturally,” I said with a certain hauteur, “the first home I finagle with a mortgage company for my wife has to be fouled up with a poltergeist!”

She gingerly picked up the sock, stood, held the sock dangling at arm’s length. “Now you’re a little closer to the beam.”

I stood up beside her, dusting my hands. “Come on, you can’t be serious. You don’t believe in zombies or voices from beyond the grave.”

“Nope,” she said, “but this sock is real as life. And poltergeists are too well authenticated to deny that something every now and then acts up in somebody’s house. There have been any number of cases in England. And how about those people in Massachusetts whose house made the newspapers? And the house on Long Island—or was it in the Bronx—that was shown on the television newscast? Crockery flying all over the place in that one—and a team of tough New York cops staked out the joint and saw some of it happen! You going to fly in the face of hard-bitten, super-realistic New York cops?”

“Not me,” I said helplessly.

“So there,” Judy said. She had riveted her gaze on the sock all this while. Now a strange mood seemed to have overtaken all of her initial fright. “You know, I really don’t think he was trying to frighten me. The touch of the sock was ever so gentle, a caress. I think he was trying to say hello and make friends. Still,” she glanced about, “I’m not sure we should plan a nursery in here.”

That’s where the subject rested for the moment. I wandered back to work, more concerned than I cared to show. In our recent college days, Judy and I had both been as far from the LSD crowd as you could polarize. Just a couple of the hard-studying non-jets that made up ninety-five percent of the student body, sans publicity, and floating sweat socks didn’t fit into our pattern of living at all.

I finished hanging the living-room draperies, heard Judy safely rattling pots, pans, and crockery from their packing crates in the kitchen, and ambled quietly out the front door.

If it hadn’t been for that sweat-sock, the day would have been perfect. Even if secondhand, the house was a cozy picture of antique brick and redwood. Judy and I hadn’t dared hope to start off so well. It had been pure luck that we’d picked up the house for practically nothing down and payments no higher than rent on a decent apartment. Wedding gifts and credit provided enough furniture to keep us from sleeping on the floor as a starter. Great luck, I’d thought. Now I was having second thoughts. Frankly, I was wondering why that Bickleford fellow had been so anxious to get out.

The house next door, to the west of us, was as quietly white collar as the rest of the neighborhood. The nameplate over the bell button said, “Tate Curzon.”

I used the button, and chimes sounded inside. The door opened a few inches and stopped.

“Yes?” he said. He had a voice like a loose violin string being stroked with a scratchy bow.

“Mr. Tate Curzon?”

“So what if I am?”

The door offered no further welcome, remaining just slightly open. From what I could see of him, he was a wiry, narrow shouldered little guy in his late forties or early fifties. He had a long red neck rising out of his starched white collar, a narrow and cruel looking face, and a pinched-up bald pate that was so freckled it looked bloody. It was easy to behold the snappish visage and imagine a vulture’s head.

I shuffled a bit uncomfortably. “Just thought I’d say hello. We’re your new neighbors, James and Judy Thorton.”

He looked me up and down, without approval. “I don’t loan tools, carpet sweepers, fuse plugs or lawn mowers.”

“No, sir.” I jammed my hands into my slacks pockets. “I didn’t want to borrow anything.”

“Then you’re not disappointed. You got any kids?”

“Not yet, Mr. Curzon.”

“Good thing. I hate brats. Always breaking down my rose arbor and throwing trash in my fish pond.”

“Yes, well… I guess the Bicklefords had kids?”

“One. Stupid oaf. Boy. Eighteen. Always roaring in and out of the driveway in that stupid sports car of his.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, agreeable as butter. “I guess all boys are that way with their first car.”

“His first and last,” Mr. Tate Curzon said on a note of malice.

“You mean—he smashed it up?”

“And himself with it. Skidded one rainy night and went over the cliffs south of town. They picked up Andrew Bickleford—and his sports car—in little pieces.”

“Gee, that’s too bad!”

Mr. Curzon’s eyes beaded. “You should care. Andy’s mother had a nervous breakdown, and that nincompoop father couldn’t put the house on the market fast enough.” The inference that I’d profited by a young stranger’s death caused the heat to rise. I felt red from cheek to jowl. I let my eyes give Mr. Curzon’s gimlet gaze tit for tat, and said stiffly, “Good day.”

He slammed the door.

When I carried my burn back into my own premises I heard a couple of female voices in the kitchen. Judy and a blowsy and slightly brassy redhead of middle age were dunking teabags in Judy’s new cups.

“Oh, hi, Jim. This is our neighbor, came over to say hello.”

“Mrs. Curzon?” I asked, moving out of the doorway toward the kitchen table.

“Heavens, no,” the woman laughed. “I’m Mabel Gosness. I live on the other side of you.”

She chatted through the ritual of sipping tea and departed with the remark that it was wonderful to have young people in the neighborhood.

Judy carried the cups to the sink and began washing them. “We had real talk before the male presence befell us.”

“Did you now?”

“She seemed terribly lonely, eager for someone to talk with. She lives alone—her husband ran away with another woman nearly a year ago.”

“Maybe one who talked less.”

Judy looked over her shoulder long enough to stick out her tongue. “And guess what else?”

“I give. What?”

“On the other side of us is a mean little man named Tate Curzon. He hates everybody. Had four wives, no less, children by one of them. But even his own kids—they’re grown up now—never go near him. Mrs. Gosness says we’re to have nothing to do with him.”

“Thanks for the advice, but I’ve met the gentleman.”

“Honest?”

“Sure,” I said, taking the cups and saucers from her to dry. “Went over and said hello. Wondered if he could tell me why Bickleford was so anxious to sell this house.”

Judy practically wriggled. “And did you find out?”

I hesitated, balanced on the point of a fib, then realized she would find out from Mrs. Gosness anyway. So I told her about young Andy Bickleford who’d been picked up in pieces and a mother whose mind hadn’t been able to take it and a father-husband to whom the end of the world had come.

“I’ll bet that sock was Andy’s. The room must have been his.” A suspicion of tears touched Judy’s eyes.

By bedtime, our first day of settling into our new home had got our minds off the tragic Bicklefords. They were, after all, strangers, and the present was much too vivid. I lounged in the master bedroom in shorts, my sleeping apparel, nonchalantly pretending to read with the pillow stuffed behind my head. Actually I had the dressing room doorway framed in my vision over the edge of the book; and then the door opened and Judy stepped into the soft bedroom lighting wearing a nylon nightgown that was next to nothing. My civilized veneer barely stifled a roar of pleasure.

Hair brushed about her shoulders and a little smile of mystery playing across her mouth, she seemed to glide toward me. A remark on my pulse rate would be needless.

Then as she passed the bureau, a strange thing happened. A ten by twelve inch picture of me which Judy had framed suddenly rose, hurled itself across the room and smashed against the wall.

The picture fell to the floor. There was a moment of dead silence, then a whispered tinkle as a bit of glass settled in the wreckage.

I sat up with the dream movements of a man swimming through molasses. Judy and I knelt beside the picture, neither wanting to touch it.

“Your gown must have brushed against it,” I mumbled.

“And knocked it all the way across the room?” Judy said with fearful logic.

I gathered the bits of broken glass, piled them on the picture, and carried the wreckage to the bureau. Judy watched me, wide-eyed and steeped in her own thoughts.

As I turned from the bureau, the murder mystery I’d been pretending to read jumped up and down on the bedside table. The edge of the book cover jarred against the lampshade. The lamp teetered, fell with a crash. Darkness flooded the room.

I wasn’t sure whether Judy or I moved first, but in an instant we were standing in shivery embrace.

“Maybe we should check into a motel for the night,” I suggested through chattering teeth.

Judy’s warmth stirred in my arms. “Nope,” she said, “I’m not being chased so easily out of our own house. Anyway, our poltergeist doesn’t want to hurt us.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He hasn’t thrown anything at us or on us,” she said with supreme female logic. “He could have socked you with the picture frame if he were antagonistic.”

“He’s a sadist,” I said, “who’d rather scare people to death a little at a time.”

“Or a lonely fellow who’s trying to tell us something,” Judy mused. “He’s certainly picking out a variety of items to toss around, which means he has method and purpose. If we could just get the message, I’m sure he’d go away and rest in peace.”

Red-eyed and haggard, I muddled through my junior accountant’s job the next day. I was worried about Judy’s almost natural acceptance of the existence of a poltergeist. In the warm light of day, I just didn’t believe what I had seen for myself. There had to be an explanation, like the juxtaposition of magnetic forces at the spot where our house stood.

I would have welcomed some advice, but could think of no source. My hard-headed, realistic boss was definitely out. If I went to the cops, the newspapers would pick it off the public record.

We’d be subjected to the same glare of publicity that had roasted every other family so rash as to reveal acquaintance with a poltergeist. I wondered how many, like myself, had preferred to suffer the inexplicable in silence.

The house looked as normal as peaches and cream when I hurried up the front walk. A bouncy and smiling Judy had a not-very-dry martini waiting, the kind I like. She’d also fractured her grocery budget with a two-inch-thick T-bone steak, but I applauded her.

“No flying crockery today?” I asked as she slipped the steak under the broiler.

“Not even a saucer,” she said.

“Maybe the strain proved too much for him,” I said hopefully, munching the olive marinated in vermouth and gin.

We dined elegantly by candlelight, the table graced with snowy linen that had been a wedding present from my Aunt Ellen.

I’d had no appetite for lunch, but I worked like a scavenger on the steak. Judy served coffee, and we eyed each other across the table in affectionate silence.

The steak bone made like a Mexican jumping bean all of a sudden, rapping against the plate.

Judy blinked. I jumped. My chair tipped over backward. I grabbed the edge of the table and hung there, watching the bone jump up and down at eye level.

The bone made no threatening motions, but it was a desecration of our privacy. “Enough is enough,” I snarled. I rose, cupped my hands, and pounced on the bone. It offered no resistance as I smacked it against the plate. I raised my fingers one at a time, and was a little miffed when the bone just lay there after it was freed.

I sneaked a glance at Judy.

“You did see that, too, didn’t you?”

Judy nodded an affirmative, her eyes glinting. “I wonder what he meant?”

“Maybe that he’s hungry,” I growled. “Maybe you should brew him up a spot of newt’s eyes over some sulphur and brimstone.”

“Don’t be facetious, Jim!”

“Facetious? I’m not even rational any longer.”

While Judy washed the dishes and tidied up after dinner, I did a sneaky search of the house from attic to basement. I didn’t find any wires, magnets, or other device remotely resembling the tools of a screwball practical joker.

When I went upstairs from the basement, Judy was curled in our new wing chair before the television set.

“You might have saved your time,” she said with wifely forbearance. “I covered every nook and crack myself today. Not that I needed any more proof that we really have a poltergeist.”

“I favor selling,” I said. “I could put the place on the market by phoning the real estate agent at his home right now.”

She sat up. “Don’t you dare, Jim Thornton! This poor fellow got stuck here, and when he gets unstuck he will go away and leave us alone.”

“Oh, yeah? And I suppose you still think he’s trying to deliver a message?”

“More than ever. That rattling bone meant something…if I could just figure out what. Why’d he wait all day until he had the bone to rattle, if he wasn’t trying to tell us something?”

I eased to a sitting position on the hassock before her. “Judy,” I said gently, “I think I’d better get you out of here before we spend another night in this place.”

“Don’t be sil! It’s a perfectly lovely house.”

“But all this talk…”

“He’s a perfectly nice poltergeist—and I’m not going to leave.” She smiled, leaned forward to pat my cheek. “Be a darling and flip the tuner to channel twelve. There’s an hour-long comedy special coming up in about five minutes.”

I not only switched the TV, I went and made myself a double-barreled martini, very dry this time. I sipped it and also its big brother while the hour-long was on. Six ounces of nearly straight gin later I settled back in the recliner, a wedding gift of Judy’s cousin Ned. I clasped my hands across my midriff comfortably and prepared to think it out.

The TV music faded. The draperies seemed to waver and shake as my heavy lids blotted them out.

Lousy draperies, I thought vaguely, with their floral pattern of red roses. Just like Judy’s Uncle Horace to give them to us…

I awoke with a muscular jerk that popped a crick out of my neck. I dropped the recliner to sitting position, running my tongue around the inside of my gin-wool mouth. A late newscast was on the television. A crashing mortar attack by guerrillas against an American base overseas seemed to have awakened me.

“Judy?” I said.

She was nowhere in the living-room, bedroom, or kitchen. I made the circuit, beginning to sweat hard by the time I’d come full circle.

The emptiness and silence of the house (except for the insistent TV) began to smother me. I turned off the set with a vicious flip of fingers that were trembling.

“Easy,” I ordered myself. “If anything had happened, you’d have heard the ruckus.”

Maybe she’d stepped next door to chin a little with Mrs. Gosness and break the boredom of listening to a husband’s snore.

I hurried to the east window, pulled the drapery aside; no lights over there. Mrs. Gosness was already off to dreamland, not sipping tea with a next-door neighbor.

I took jerky steps back to the middle of the room. My skin was turning icy and exuding a steam of sweat at one and the same time. If the house hadn’t been haunted before, it certainly felt so now. The empty wing chair where Judy had been sitting seemed to throb in my vision. Then I saw that something new had been added. On the hassock before the chair, she’d laid a piece of paper, a pencil, and the magazine she’d used for a backing as she’d written.

I snatched up the paper. She hadn’t left me a note. Instead, it was a record of her thoughts while I’d slept. Around the margin were curlicues where she’d doodled between words, sentences, phrases.

She’d written:

“The hints…sock…smashed picture…mystery novel…broken lamp…rattling bone…agitated rose-patterned drapes.”

So the drapes had really shaken. I steadied the paper and kept reading.

“Sock…friendly…friendly Andy Bickleford…but picture smashed with a great deal of violence…picture of Jim…Jim’s a male…only picture of male in house…male smashed by violence! Friendly Andy trying to say he was smashed violently? Not killed accidentally at all! Slugged, put in sports car, pushed over cliffs!…Why? Because of something he’d done?…done bone…bone did…bone does…darn you, bone!…Well, let’s see…If Andy didn’t do anything, maybe he was undone because of something he’d witnessed…see bone…bone from T-bone steak, useless…except to a doggie…doggie would go out and bury bone…BURIED BONE…hidden weapon?…Buried weapon that killed Andy before he was stuffed in sports car and driven to those dreadful cliffs?…Buried where…Next hint, final clue, quaking draperies…draped for burial…nope…bedroom draperies weren’t chosen…specific draperies…those in the living-room with roses…buried with roses…buried under roses…weapon buried under only rose arbor in neighborhood!”

I dropped the paper. The gimlet eyes and the scratchy violin-string voice flashed through my mind “…hate brats. Always throwing trash in my fish pond and breaking my rose arbor.”

The night coolness washed across my face before I even realized I’d run outside. A pale moon bathed our backyards, ours and Mr. Tate Curzon’s. I slipped through the shadows cast by our house, my eyes seeking and searching.

Then I heard a muffled cry and jerked my attention from the rose arbor next door. I saw the struggling shadows near Mr. Curzon’s basement door. He heard my pounding footsteps, and as my presence loomed over him, Curzon shoved Judy sprawling and laid a hard little fist in my kisser.

My knees buckled and my nose dug a furrow. He kicked me hard in the ribs. Breath whoofed out, but as he spun and started to run away, my grabbing hand found an ankle. I yanked, and this time Mr. Curzon fell. He writhed around and started lashing me with his fists. I disliked picking on such a little fellow, but he ignored my orders to lie still, so I grabbed him by his thin neck and popped his head against the hard ground. It proved to be an anesthetizing measure. He would remain unconscious for several minutes at least.

Judy grabbed my arms, helped me to my feet. Then she put her arms around me and collapsed against my chest.

“Oh, Jim! I was peeping about his rose arbor and suddenly he was there. He grabbed me, and I screamed just once before he—”

I tipped her face up and kissed her. She began to sob with relief.

I picked her up and my shoulder was a very nice cradle for her head.

“I think we’d better call the police,” I said.

We thought it discreet to omit mention of the poltergeist, inferring to the police that Mr. Curzon had been acting strangely around his roses and launched his murderous attack when Judy’s curiosity got the better of her.

It turned out that the police had previously questioned Mr. Curzon in the disappearance of one of his wives. Their probe of the rose arbor turned up the remains of the fourth Mrs. Curzon. Perhaps it was suspicion or evidence of this that led to Andy Bickleford’s untimely demise.

We can’t know for sure. The poltergeist hasn’t been around since that fateful night, and if the subject came up, Judy and I would be first to agree that nobody in his right mind could believe in poltergeists. Like all the silent others who’ve shared similar experiences, we don’t want our friends thinking we are soft in the head.

I do, however, feel the poltergeist should have assisted a bit longer. An army of cops and insurance investigators are going nuts trying to find out what happened to Mrs. Curzons, numbers one, two, three.

MRS. DAVENPORT’S GHOST,

by Frederick P. Schrader

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

Dear readers, do you agree with Hamlet? Do you believe that there is more between heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy? Does it seem possible to you that Eliphas Levy conjured up the shade of Apollonius of Tyana, the prophet of the Magii, in a London hotel, and that the great sage, William Crookes, drank his tea at breakfast several days a week, for months in succession, in the society of the materialized spirit of a young lady, attired in white linen, with a feather turban on her head?

Do not laugh! Panic would seize you in the presence even of a turbaned spirit, and the grotesque spectacle would but intensify your terror. As for me, I did not laugh last night on reading an account in a New York newspaper of a criminal trial that will probably terminate in the death penalty of the accused.

It is a sad case. I shudder as I transcribe the records of the trial from the testimony of the hotel waiter, who heard the conversation of the two confederates through a keyhole, and of forty thoroughly credible witnesses, who testified to the same facts. What would be my feelings if I had seen the beautiful victim with the gaping wound in her breast, into which she dipped her finger to mark the brow of her murderer?

I.

About three o’clock on the afternoon of February 3, Professor Davenport and Miss Ida Soutchotte, a very pale and delicate young girl, who had submitted to the tests of Professor Davenport for a number of years, were finishing their dinner in their room in the second story of a New York hotel. Professor Benjamin Davenport was a celebrity, but it was said that he owed his fame to somewhat questionable means. The leading spiritualists did not repose the confidence in him that manifestly marked their regard for William Crookes or Daniel Douglas Home.

“Greedy and unscrupulous mediums,” the author of Spiritualism in America thinks, “are to blame for the most bitter attacks to which our cause has been exposed. When the materializations do not take place as quickly as circumstances require, they resort to trickery and fraud to extricate themselves from a dilemma.”

Professor Benjamin Davenport belonged to these “versatile” mediums. Aside from this, queer stories were afloat about him. He was secretly accused of highway robbery in South America, cheating at cards in the gambling houses of San Francisco, and the overhasty use of firearms toward persons who had never offended him. It was said almost openly, that the professor’s wife had died from abuse and grief at his infidelity. But in spite of these annoying rumors, Mr. Davenport, by virtue of his skill as a fraud and fakir, continued to exercise a great deal of influence upon certain plain and simple-minded folks, whom it was impossible to convince that they had not touched the materialized spirits of their brothers, mothers, or sisters through the agency of his wonderful power. His professional success received material accession from his swarthy, Mephisto-like countenance, his deep, fiery eyes, his large curved nose, the cynical expression of his mouth, and the lofty, almost prophetic tone of his words.

When the waiter had made his last visit—he did not go far—the following conversation took place in the room:

“There is to be a seance this evening at the residence of Mrs. Harding,” began the medium. “Quite a number of influential people will be there, and two or three millionaires. Conceal under your skirt the blonde woman’s wig and the white material in which the spirits usually make their appearance.”

“Very well,” replied Ida Soutchotte, in a resigned tone.

The waiter heard her pace the room. After a pause, she asked:

“Whose spirit are you going to control this evening, Benjamin?”

The waiter heard a loud, brutal laugh and the chair groaning beneath the weight of the demonstrative professor.

“Guess.”

“How should I know?” she asked.

“I am going to conjure up the spirit of my dead wife.”

And another burst of laughter issued from the room, full of sinister levity. A cry of terror burst from Ida’s lips. A muffled sound indicated to the eavesdropper at the door that she was dragging herself to the feet of the professor.

“Benjamin, Benjamin! don’t do it,” she sobbed.

“Why not? They say I broke Mrs. Davenport’s heart. The story is damaging my reputation, but it will be forgotten if her spirit should address me in terms of endearment from the other shore in the presence of numerous witnesses. For you will speak to me tenderly, will you not, Ida?”

“No, no. You shall not do it; you shall not think of it. Listen to me, for God’s sake. During the four years that I have been with you I have obeyed you faithfully and suffered patiently. I have lied and deceived, like you; I learned to imitate the sleep and symptoms of clairvoyants. Tell me, did I ever refuse to serve you, or utter a word of complaint, even when my shoulders bent with the weight of my burden, when you pierced the flesh of my arms with knitting needles? Worse than all this, I imitated distant voices behind curtains, and made mothers and wives believe that their sons and husbands had come from a better world to communicate with them. How often have I performed the most dangerous feats in parlors with the lamps turned low? Clothed in a shroud or white muslin I essayed to represent supernatural forms, whom tear-dimmed eyes recognized as those of departed dear ones. You do not know what I suffered at this unhallowed work. You scoff at the mysteries of eternity. I suffer the torments of an impending retribution. My God! if some time the dead whom I counterfeit should rise up before me with uplifted arms and dreadful imprecations! This constant terror has injured my heart—it will kill me. I am consumed by fever. Look how emaciated, how worn-out and downcast I am. But I am under your control. Do as you like with me; I am in your power, and I want it to be so. Have I ever complained? But do not force me to do this thing, Benjamin. Have pity on me for what I have done for you in the past, for what I am suffering. Do not attempt this mummery; do not compel me to play the role of your dead wife, who was so tender and beautiful. Oh, what put that thought into your mind? Spare me, Benjamin, I implore you!”

The professor did not laugh again. Amid the confusion of upturned articles of furniture the eavesdropper distinguished the sound of a skull striking the floor. He concluded that Professor Davenport had knocked Miss Ida down with a blow of his fist, or had kicked her as she approached him. But the waiter did not enter the room, as no one rang for him.

II.

That evening forty persons were assembled in Mrs. Joanne Harding’s parlor, staring at the curtain where a spirit form was in process of materializing. One dark lantern in a corner of the room contributed the light that emphasized the darkness rather than relieved it. The room was pervaded by profound silence, save the quickened, suppressed breathing of the spectators. The fire in the grate cast mysterious rays of light, resembling fugitive spirits, upon the objects around, almost indistinguishable in the semi-gloom.

Professor Davenport was at his best this evening. The spirit world obeyed him without hesitation, like their lawful master. He was the mighty prince of souls. Hands that had no arms were seen picking flowers from the vases; the touch of an invisible spirit conjured sweet melodies from the keys of the piano; the furniture responded by intelligent rappings to the most unanticipated questions. The professor himself elevated his form in symbolical distortions from the floor to an altitude of three feet, indicated by Mrs. Harding, and remained suspended in the air for a quarter of an hour, holding live coals in his hands.

III.

But the most interesting, as well as the most conclusive, test was to be the materialization of the spirit of Mrs. Arabella Davenport, which the professor had promised at the beginning of the seance.

“The hour has come,” exclaimed the medium.

And while the hearts of all throbbed with anxious suspense, and their eyes distended with painful expectancy of the promised materialization, Benjamin Davenport stood before the curtain. In the twilight the tall man with the disheveled hair and demon look, was really terrible and handsome.

“Appear, Arabella!” he exclaimed, in a commanding voice, with gestures of the Nazarene at the sepulcher of Lazarus.

All are waiting—

Suddenly a cry burst from behind the curtain—a piercing, shuddering, horrible shriek, the shriek of an expiring soul.

The spectators trembled. Mrs. Harding almost fainted. The medium himself appeared surprised.

But Benjamin recovered his composure on seeing the curtain move and admit the spirit.

The apparition was that of a young woman with long blonde tresses; she was beautiful and pale, clad in some light, whitish material. Her breast was bare, and on the left side appeared a bleeding wound, in which trembled a knife.

The spectators arose and retreated, pushing their chairs to the wall. Those who chanced to look at the medium noticed that a deathly pallor had overspread his face, and that he was cowering and trembling.

But the young woman, Mrs. Arabella, the real one, whom he so well remembered, she had come in response to his summons, and advanced in a direct line toward Benjamin, who in terror covered his eyes to shut out the ghastly sight, and with a cry fled behind the furniture. But she dipped the finger of her thin hand into the blood from her wound and traced it across the brow of the unconscious medium, the while repeating, in a slow, monotonous tone that sounded like the echo of a wail, again and again:

“You are my murderer! You are my murderer!”

And while he was rolling and tossing in deadly terror on the floor they turned up the lights.

The spirit had vanished. But in the communicating room, behind the curtain, they found the body of poor Miss Ida Soutchotte with horribly distorted features. A physician who was present pronounced it heart stroke.

And that is the reason that Prof. Benjamin Davenport appeared alone in a New York courtroom to answer to the charge of having murdered his wife four years ago in San Francisco.

COUSIN KELLY,

by Fletcher Flora

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1967.

She had an intimate little liturgy which she repeated every morning when she wakened, as if it were somehow essential, by the repetition, to orient herself anew to an ancient and confusing world in which, otherwise, she might easily become lost: I am Teresa Standish. I am eight years old, and I live at the Eastland Arms in Apartment 515. Today I am going to…

From there on the liturgy varied, of course, according to what she had planned yesterday to do today. She did not include the tedious details of what had been planned for her, or what, in the nature of things as they were, she would do simply because it had been ordained that she must. She included only the item or items on the day’s agenda which offered the promise of being exceptional and exciting and of saving the day from the burden of expectations that did not. Sometimes the promise was fulfilled and sometimes it wasn’t, for life is loaded with disappointments, but on Saturdays and Sundays it was always fulfilled, and Saturdays and Sundays were, therefore, the very best days of the week.

When she awakened in the morning of those days, the liturgy was invariably completed: Today I am going to see Cousin Kelly.

This particular day to which she wakened was Saturday, and between it and the preceding Sunday there had been six long days of broken promises, of hope and expectations unfulfilled. After repeating the liturgy, which was like an incantation to the shining sun that spilled its golden light through her window and across her bed, she lay quietly for a while in the warm and secure assurance of what the day surely held, and then she got up and began to dress.

Because it was the beginning of a bright and golden day, she put on a pale yellow jumper with a crisp white blouse. She would meet Cousin Kelly, she decided, in the park across the boulevard from the apartment building. Last Sunday had been a gray and sunless day, expiring interminably to the tearful sound of persistent rain, and Cousin Kelly had come to the apartment, right up to her room where she now was, and they had listened to some music on her phonograph and had talked about what had happened during the week and had played a long and delightful game of Monopoly, which she had won. It had been a good day, that part of it in the afternoon when Cousin Kelly was here, but it had not been as good by half as this one would be on the bright green grass of the park under the warm sun. They would sit on a bench and walk along the path under the trees and laugh with delight at their distorted reflections in the pool of clear water around the fountain. Cousin Kelly was actually old, over twenty, but he didn’t look or act old, and he was more fun to be with than anyone else in all the world.

It was odd that Mother didn’t like him. After all, he was really Mother’s cousin, the son of her father’s sister. Of course, lots of people didn’t necessarily like their cousins, because there was no law saying you had to or anything, but Teresa couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t like Cousin Kelly, cousin or not. But Mother didn’t. Neither did Father. Teresa could tell from the way their eyes went blank whenever she, Teresa, happened to mention seeing Cousin Kelly, and from the way, immediately after the mentioning, they deliberately tried to change the subject. Cousin Kelly knew, too. He knew, but he never talked about it. Maybe something had happened once in the family. Maybe something dreadful had happened to change everything from the way everything had been, and to make enemies of people who should have been friends.

Teresa didn’t care. At first she had, but not any longer. Whatever the trouble, she liked Cousin Kelly better than anyone else. She loved Cousin Kelly. She wished and wished that he could come to live with them in the apartment. She loved him far more, to tell the truth, than she loved Mother and Father. In fact, she didn’t love Mother and Father at all, although she didn’t, on the contrary, hate them, either. She was merely indifferent to them. In the beginning it had made her feel guilty and unhappy, the secret knowledge of her indifference, but now it was just something that she lived with every day and hardly ever thought about.

Dressed in her pale yellow jumper and white blouse, she went out of the room and onto a gallery that ran along the wall above the deep pit of the living room. She descended the stairs at one end of the gallery and turned back from there through a dining room to the kitchen, where Hannah was. Hannah came in every day from nine to six to cook and clean. Sometimes, when Mother and Father entertained, she stayed later. She was fat and jolly and ages old, and Teresa liked her.

“Good-morning, missy,” Hannah said. “You’re mighty prettied up this morning, I must say.”

“This afternoon,” said Teresa, “I’m going to the park to meet a friend.”

“That’s nice. Meanwhile, what would you like for breakfast?”

“A poached egg, please, with two strips of bacon. And one slice of toast.”

“Simple enough. You just sit down there and keep Hannah company while she’s fixing it.”

Teresa sat at the kitchen table and watched while Hannah broke the egg in the funny little poaching pan and put two strips of bacon on the grill. The bacon began to sizzle, and the water began to boil in the little pan under the cup the egg was in. Teresa liked to sit in the kitchen and watch Hannah cook her breakfast. Hannah always said it kept her company, and it was true, although they talked very little while Hannah worked, or not at all. That was one of the nice things about Hannah. You could sit with her and say nothing and still feel comfortably that you were keeping company. It was different with Mother. When you sat with Mother and said nothing for a long time, you always felt uneasily that something should be said, and after a while you tried to say it, and it always came out wrong and awkward, and then you wished you hadn’t tried.

Teresa ate her egg and bacon and toast at the kitchen table, and then, leaving Hannah to her work, went back into the living room and wondered how she could spend the time, which was almost forever, until it was afternoon. She thought about going down in the elevator and outside to talk to the doorman and stroll up and down the sidewalk, but she didn’t want to do that because there was the day out there, warm and golden and waiting, and she wanted to enter it for the first time, fresh and exciting with nothing worn off, when she went out to meet Cousin Kelly. So, saving the day for a special hour, she looked at magazines in the living room until it was after eleven and she could go up to see Mother, who was now probably awake.

Sure enough, she was. Mother was sitting up in bed, braced against the headboard, and in one hand was a saucer, and in the other, momentarily stopped halfway between the saucer and her mouth, was a cup of coffee, which had been served by Hannah and from which Mother had just taken a sip. A second bed near Mother’s was rumpled and empty. This bed was Father’s, of course, and it was apparent that Father had risen early and gone away somewhere, probably downtown to his office. Father did not usually go to his office on Saturdays, but once in a while he went when he had an appointment that promised to be profitable, and you could always tell by Father’s humor when he got home if things had gone well or not. If things had gone well, he was expansive and tolerant. If things had gone ill, he was cross and critical and could hardly wait for five o’clock, when he allowed himself his first cocktail of the day.

Mother’s cup rattled in her saucer, and she spoke to Teresa with a cheerfulness that was forced and bright and artificial. Mother, in fact, looked as if she needed a cocktail already, although it was not yet noon; or perhaps she only needed a little longer to recover from those she had had the night before. The flesh was smudged beneath her eyes, and her face, cleaned of makeup, looked drawn and tired and older than it was.

“Good morning, darling.” Mother said. “Have you been up long?

“Oh, yes,” Teresa said. “It’s almost noon.”

“That late? Did Hannah give you your breakfast?”

“Yes. I had an egg and two strips of bacon.”

Mother reacted as if the words were painful to her. Her mouth turned down, becoming for a moment really ugly, and she set her cup and saucer carefully aside on the table between her bed and Father’s.

“What have you been doing?”

“Nothing much. I looked at some magazines.” Teresa hesitated, feeling within her the sudden singing exhilaration of her anticipation. “This afternoon I would like to go across to the park. May I, please?”

“I think it would be all right if you are careful crossing the boulevard. Why do you want to go to the park?”

“I’m going to meet Cousin Kelly there.”

There it was again, that strange blankness in Mother’s eyes, the curious cold hardening of her face.

“I hope you are not going to be difficult, Teresa,” Mother said.

The remark seemed so irrational, so utterly unrelated to anything that had been said or to any intention that Teresa had, that it was quite hopeless to try to respond to it. Teresa in her hopelessness was silent, and after a moment Mother’s shoulders moved slightly in a gesture that was not big enough to be a shrug.

“Well, you have a nice time in the park, darling, and be sure you have your lunch before you go.”

This was clearly a dismissal, and Teresa, relieved, went downstairs and out to the kitchen to keep Hannah company. At one o’clock, Hannah gave her lunch, tomato soup and crackers spread with soft cheese and a green salad and milk. After she had eaten her lunch it was almost one-thirty, and Teresa returned to the living room and sat down on the edge of a chair and deliberately waited and waited while her anticipation of the afternoon grew and grew and became so intense that it could no longer be borne, and then, at last, she left the apartment and went downstairs and out into the golden, sunbathed street. At the curb she paused and looked left for traffic, and then she ran across to a medial strip that divided the boulevard, there pausing again and this time looking right. Safely all the way across, she entered the park, passing between stone pillars, and followed a concrete walk as far as a green wooden bench within sight of the fountain, which tossed into the air a glittering shower that fell, the upward force of the fountain spent, back into the surrounding pool with a sound of summer rain. Sitting there on the bench, watching the fountain, she waited.

Waiting, she tried to remember where and when she had first seen Cousin Kelly, and she couldn’t. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t for the life of her. He had just suddenly come into her life, that was all, and her life, which had been lonely, was filled thereafter with love requited and promises kept. It did not matter where and when he had come. It only mattered that he had come somewhere and sometime, and that he was, having approached quietly in the midst of her pondering, there at this instant.

He stood a step away on the concrete walk and smiled down at her. His hair was thick and pale blond; he never wore a hat, winter or summer, and the sunlight touched the hair and turned it to silver. His eyes were blue, brimming with grave and secret laughter, and below one of the eyes, running down at an angle across his cheek, was the lingering trace of an old scar. “Hello, Tess,” he said.

He was the only one who called her that. Hannah called her missy or Teresa, and Mother called her Teresa or darling, and Father called her Teresa or child, but Cousin Kelly always called her by the warm diminutive, and it was something special between them, another secret shared. Rising, she held out a hand, and he took it and kept it in his.

“Hello, Cousin Kelly. I’ve been waiting: for you.”

“Am I late?”

“Oh, no. I was early.”

“I’m flattered. Shall we walk over to the fountain?”

“I’d like that. And then perhaps we can walk under the trees.”

So they went over to the fountain and laughed at their distorted reflections in the pool, and Cousin Kelly told her about the foolish Grecian boy who had fallen in love with himself when looking at his reflection in another pool long ago. She had heard the story before, but it seemed new and much more exciting the way Cousin Kelly told it. Afterward they began walking on the grass beneath the trees, trying to identify each tree by the size and shape of its leaves, and they held hands all the while. There was only one tiny blemish on the nearly perfect afternoon.

That was when they met Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter lived in the apartment building on the fourth floor, and she was walking her poodle in the park on a leash. Teresa and Cousin Kelly had come across the grass, and Mrs. Carter was strolling along the walk, pausing now and again to let the poodle sniff at things and do his duty, and they all just happened to reach a certain point from different directions at the same time. Teresa spoke politely to Mrs. Carter, who pulled up the poodle and stopped to exchange a few words with Teresa, and this was all right except that Mrs. Carter paid absolutely no attention to Cousin Kelly, although he was standing there holding Teresa by the hand all the while. For all the recognition Mrs. Carter gave him, Cousin Kelly might as well have been somewhere else, and Teresa thought it was very rude of Mrs. Carter. Afterward she told Cousin Kelly how rude she thought Mrs. Carter had been, but Cousin Kelly only laughed and said it didn’t matter, and actually, considering all the rest of the wonderful afternoon, it didn’t.

Eventually they came back to the bench from which they had started. They sat down together to rest and talk, and Teresa was beginning to feel sad because it was getting late, almost five o’clock, and soon she would have to leave.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Teresa asked.

“If you wish.”

“Where shall I meet your”

“If it’s another nice day, we can meet here. Otherwise, wait for me in your room, like last Sunday, and I’ll slip up.”

It had gotten a little cooler, and the shadows of everything lay longer to the east on the grass, and Teresa’s sense of sadness was growing stronger.

“It’s so long from Sunday to Saturday,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “it is.”

“I wish you could come and live with me all the time.”

“Do you. Tess? So do I.”

“Why don’t Mother and Father like you?”

“It’s an old story, but never mind. You could make them like me if you tried.”

“How could I?”

Fie reached into a pocket of his jacket and brought out a sealed white envelope with something in it. His voice was light, and the grave laughter was in his eyes.

“By putting some of this in something they drink,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a love potion.”

“You mean like in fairy stories?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that was only make-believe.”

“Oh, no. There is more truth than you imagine in fairy stories. When your mother and father drink something with some of this powder in it, they will immediately like me, just as you do, and then they will ask me to come and stay with you all the time.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Try it and see.”

He extended the envelope, and she took it and put it in the pocket of her yellow jumper.

“I will,” she said.

Then it was time to go. Father would surely be home from the office, and Mother would be getting cross and anxious, and pretty soon, if Teresa didn’t hurry, would be sending Hannah across the boulevard to fetch her. Parting from Cousin Kelly was not so hard on Saturdays as it was on Sundays, anyhow, because the time between parting and meeting was so much shorter. So, saying good-bye, she hurried off down the walk toward the stone gate. Once she stopped and turned and waved, and Cousin Kelly, waiting and watching by the bench, waved back, then turned and went away himself in the opposite direction.

In the apartment. Mother and Father were sitting together in the living room. It was immediately apparent to Teresa from Father’s expression that his day had not gone well, and the atmosphere in the living room was oppressive, but there was, fortunately, imminent hope of relief, for it was time for cocktails. Teresa said hello politely to Father, who grunted, and Mother looked as she invariably did when she was about to be moderately severe about something.

“Where have you been all this time, Teresa?” Mother asked.

“I told you where I was going. Mother. I went to the park. You gave me permission.”

“I didn’t give you permission to stay indefinitely.”

“I’m sorry. It was such a nice afternoon, and I was with Cousin Kelly.”

Father looked up angrily and slapped the arm of his chair with the flat of his hand.

“Cousin Kelly again! However did the child get started on this thing? When did she ever even hear of Kelly?”

Mother must have heard Father’s outburst, but she gave no sign of it. Her expression had changed suddenly to the cold and stony one which warned that she had at last had all of something that she could stand, and had determined to resolve a problem, no matter how unpleasant the resolving might be. Her voice, as if in compensation, was softly fraught with dreadful reasonableness.

“You did not see Cousin Kelly,” she said. “You did not see Cousin Kelly this afternoon or any other afternoon, because Cousin Kelly is dead. He was dead and buried, Teresa, before you were born.” Teresa heard the words, of course, but they had no higher meaning. They did not prick her intelligence or elicit an emotional reaction. How could Cousin Kelly be dead when she had just parted from him in the park?

“I saw him this afternoon,” she said, “and I’ll sec him again tomorrow. I see him every Saturday and Sunday.”

“The child has a morbid imagination, that’s all,” Father said. “She needs professional attention. Tell me, Teresa, what docs Cousin Kelly look like? Describe him for me.”

“He is about as tall as you,” Teresa said, “but much thinner. He has very light hair that looks silver in the sun, and he has blue eyes that laugh. On one cheek he has a scar that sometimes you can hardly see.”

Father looked stunned for a moment, and Mother caught her breath with a sharp gasp.

“She’s seen a picture somewhere,” Father said. “She’s surely seen a picture.”

“This must stop!” Mother’s voice still held that dreadful reasonableness, her face the expression of grim decision. “Listen to me, Teresa. Cousin Kelly is dead. He is dead because I killed him. It was an accident, a tragic accident, and it happened years ago. We had taken an outing in the country, Kelly and I and our parents. We had gone to a place high on a bluff above a river. Kelly and I had quarreled. I was furious with him. I wanted to be alone, and I walked away from the others to the edge of the bluff, but Kelly followed. He came up beside me and took me by the arm and started to say something. I turned and jerked my arm free. I don’t know what happened exactly. I must have pushed him without thinking or meaning to.” Mother’s voice was silent, the horror of that remote moment invoked again by the telling, and then it went on quietly and quickly, as if to be done as soon as could be. “He was standing at the edge of the bluff, and he fell over. He was killed. He was dead when my father and my uncle reached him. They always blamed me, my aunt and uncle—Kelly’s mother and father. They still do. They thought I pushed him deliberately in a fit of anger. But it was an accident. That’s all it was, Teresa. It was a terrible accident, and Cousin Kelly is dead.”

Teresa turned and walked away to the far end of the living room. Turning again, she looked back at Mother and Father.

“Cousin Kelly is alive,” she said, “and he is coming soon to live with us here.”

She went on into the dining room, passing from view. Ahead of her, beyond the louvered swinging door to the kitchen, she heard Hannah at work. She pushed through the door and saw that Hannah had deserted her cleaning paraphernalia long enough to prepare cocktails. The silver shaker was on a tray on the cabinet, and beside the shaker were two fragile, long-stemmed glasses. Hannah looked hurried and harassed. It was after five, and she was obviously anxious to be away by six.

“Let me take the tray, Hannah,” Teresa said.

“I’m sure I’d be grateful to you for saving me the steps.” Hannah said. “Mind you don’t spill it, missy. Watch where you’re going.” Teresa took the tray and pushed back through the louvered door into the dining room. In the pocket of her yellow jumper, the love potion felt as heavy as gold dust.

It was all over, everything done that needed doing, and everyone gone who had been there except a worn and rather seedy little man and Teresa and Hannah. The man spoke with gentle weariness in a tone of futility.

“Now, Teresa,” he said, “tell me again exactly where you got the pois—the ‘love potion’.”

“Cousin Kelly gave it to me. We were in the park.”

“Why did Cousin Kelly give it to you?”

“It was supposed to make Mother and Father love him. Then he could come and live with us here.”

“Your mother and father didn’t love Cousin Kelly?”

“No.” She paused, a shadow passing across her eyes, as if she were struck for a moment by a presentiment of wonder. “Mother said that Cousin Kelly was dead.”

“I know.”

“She said he died years ago. He fell off a cliff. But he wasn’t. Dead, I mean. I was in the park with him this afternoon.”

“And you met your neighbor there? What is her name?”

“Mrs. Carter. She was rude to Cousin Kelly. He was standing right there, holding my hand, and she ignored him.”

“Are you sure she saw him?”

“How could she have helped? He was standing right there.”

“Mrs. Carter told me that you were alone when she saw you. There was no one with you at all.”

“I don’t understand it.” Again the shadow passed over her eyes. “He was holding my hand, and later he gave me the love potion.”

“All right.” The little policeman stirred uneasily. He was feeling, for some reason, a chill in his bones. “Last Sunday it rained. You couldn’t go to the park, and so Cousin Kelly visited you here. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes. He came right up to my room. He was there all afternoon.”

“Poor little dear.” Hannah reached an arm toward Teresa as if to brush from the child the gathering shadows of evil. “She has been alone too much. She lives in fantasy.”

“You are certain that no one came last Sunday?”

“There was no one here but the family and me. No one. The hall door is kept locked on the inside. No one could have entered without being admitted.”

“Do you think that Mrs. Carter would deliberately lie about not seeing Cousin Kelly in the park?”

“No.”

“Do you think your mother would have lied about his being dead?”

“No.”

“Do you think Hannah would have lied about his not being here last Sunday?”

“No.”

“There you are, then.” Leaning forward, he spoke slowly with a kind of dreadful reasonableness, and every tired syllable was an echo of his dread and a measure of his futility. “Listen to me, Teresa. You must tell me exactly where you got the love potion. It’s very important.”

And she met his dreadful reasonableness, as he had known she would, with dreadful innocence.

“Cousin Kelly gave it to me. In the park. He was there.”

GHOST OF BUCKSTOWN INN,

by Arnold M. Anderson

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

Several travel-worn drummers sat in the lobby exchanging yarns. It was Rodney Green’s turn, and he looked wise and began his tale.

“I don’t claim, by any means, that the belief in ghosts is a general thing in Arkansas, but I do say that I had an experience out there a few years ago.

“It was late in the fall, and I happened to be in the village of Buckstown, which desecrates a very limited portion of the State. The town is about as small and dirty a place as ever I saw, and the Buckstown Inn is not much above the general character of the place. The region is inhabited by natives who still cling to all sorts of foolish superstitions. The inn, in the ante-bellum days, was kept by one who was said to be the meanest and most crabbed of mortals. The old demon was as miserly as he was mean, and all his narrow life he hoarded his filthy lucre with fiendish greed. Report had it also that he had even murdered his patrons in their beds for their money. What the facts actually were I don’t know, but even to this day the old inn is held in suspicion. A lingering effect of former horrors still clouds its memory.

“The present proprietor, Bunk Watson—his real name is Bunker, I believe—is an altogether different sort of chap—a Southern type, in fact—one of those shiftless, heedless, happy-go-lucky mortals who loves strong whiskey and who chews an enormous quid of black tobacco and smokes a corncob pipe at the same time.

“When the former keeper ‘shuffled off,’ his property fell to a distant relative, the present keeper, who, with his family, immediately moved in from a neighboring hamlet and took possession. It was well known that the old proprietor had accumulated considerable wealth during his sojourn among the living, but all efforts to discover any treasure upon the premises had failed, and now the idea of ever finding it was practically given up. As far as Bunk was concerned, the matter troubled him little. He had a hard-working wife who ran things the best she could under the circumstances, and saw that his meals were forthcoming at their respective intervals. What more could he wish? Why should he care if there was a treasure buried upon his place? Indeed, it would have been a sore puzzle for him to know what to do with a fortune unless perhaps his wife came to his aid.

“Among the stories that hovered in the history of the Buckstown Inn was one which involved a ghost. In the room where the former keeper had died peculiar noises were heard at unearthly hours: sighing, moaning, and, in fact, all the other indications which point to the existence of ghosts, were said to be present. On account of this the chamber had long since been abandoned.

“I listened with keen interest to the wonderful tales about the haunted room, and then suddenly resolved to investigate—to sleep in that chamber that very night and see for myself all that was to be seen. I told Buck of my purpose. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, but instead of warning me and offering a flood of protests, as I expected, he merely took his pipe from his mouth, let fly a quart or so of yellowish juice from between a pair of brown-stained lips, and, opening one corner of his wide mouth, lazily called out: ‘Jane.’ His wife appeared, and he intimated that I should settle the matter with the ‘old woman.’ The prospect of a fee persuaded the wife, and off she went to arrange for my bed in that ill-fated room.

“At nine o’clock that evening I bid the family good-night, took my candle, ascended the rickety stairs and entered the chamber of horrors. The atmosphere was heavy and had a peculiar odor that was not at all pleasing. However, I latched the door and was soon in bed. Having propped myself up with pillows, I was prepared to await the coming of the ghost.

“Overhead the dusty rafters, which once had experienced the sensation of being whitewashed, but which were now a dirty, yellowish color, were hung with a fantastic array of cobwebs. The flickering light of the candle reflected upon the walls and against the ceiling a pyramid of grotesque shapes, and with this effect being continually disturbed by the swaying cobwebs, the whole caused the room to appear rather ghostly after all, and especially so to an imaginative mind.

“I waited and waited for hours, it seemed, but still no ghost. Perhaps it was afraid of my candle light, so I blew it out. No sooner had I done this and settled back in bed again than a white hand appeared through the door, then a whole figure—at last the ghost had come, a white and sheeted ghost!

“It had come right through the door, although it was locked, and now it advanced toward the bed. Raising its long, white arm, it pointed a bony finger at me, and then commanded: ‘Come with me!’ Thereupon it turned to the door, while instantly I jumped out of bed to follow. Some unseen power compelled me to obey. The door flew open and the ghost led me down the stairs, through long halls into the cellar, through mysterious underground corridors, upstairs again, in and out rooms which I never dreamed were to be found in that old rambling inn. Finally, through a small door in the rear, we left the house. I was in my sleeping garments, but no matter, I had to follow.

“The white form, with a slow and measured tread and as silent as death, led the way into the orchard. There, under a tree at the farther end, it pointed to the ground, and in the same ghostly tones before used, said:

“‘Here you will find a great treasure buried.’

“The ghost then disappeared, and I saw it no more. I stood dazed and trembling. Upon recovering my wits I started to dig, but the chill of the night air and the scantiness of my night robes made such labor impracticable. So I decided to leave some mark to identify the place and come around again at daybreak. I reached up and broke off a limb. Overcome with my night’s exertions I slept the next morning until a loud rapping on my door and a croaking voice warned me that it was noon.

“I had intended to leave Buckstown Inn that day, but, prompted by curiosity and anxious to investigate, I unpacked my gripsack for a comfortable stay.

“You must understand that this was my first experience with a ghost, and I feared I might never see another.

“At breakfast my landlady waited on me in silence, though once I detected her eyes following me with a peculiar expression. She wanted to ask me how I enjoyed the night, but I would not gratify her by volunteering a word.

“My host was more outspoken.

“‘Reckon ye didn’t get much sleep,’ said he, with a queer smile.

“‘Did you hear anything?’ I asked.

“‘Well, I did—ye-es,’ he said, with a drawl. ‘But ye didn’t disturb me any. I knew ye’d hev trouble when ye went in thet room ter sleep.’

“That afternoon I slipped out to the tree. But to my amazement I found that the twig I had broken from the branches was gone. Finally I found under the lower trunk of an apple tree an open place from which a small branch had evidently been wrested. But on looking further, I discovered that every apple tree in the orchard had been similarly disfigured.

“‘More mysterious than ever,’ I said; ‘but tonight shall decide.’

“That night I pleaded weariness, which no one seemed inclined to question, and sought my couch earlier.

“‘Goin’ ter try it again?’ asked my host.

“‘Yes; and I’ll stay all winter but what I’ll get even with that ghost,’ I said.

“That night I kept the candle burning until midnight, when I blew it out.

“Instantly the room was flooded with a soft light, and at the foot of the bed stood my ghost, the identical ghost of last night.

“Again the bony finger beckoned and a sepulchral voice whispered, ‘Follow me!’ I sprang from the bed, but the figure darted ahead of me. It flew through the doorway and down the stairs, and I after it. At the foot of the staircase an unseen hand reached forward and caught my foot and I fell sprawling headlong.

“But in a second I was on my feet and pursuing the ghost. It had gained on me a few yards, but I was quicker, and just as we reached the outside door I nearly touched its robes. They sent a chill through my frame, and I nearly gave up the pursuit.

“As it passed through the doorway it turned and gave me one look, and I caught the same malignant light in its eyes that I remembered from the night before.

“In the open orchard I felt sure I could catch it.

“But my ghost had no intention of allowing me any such opportunity. To my disgust, it darted backward and into the house, slamming the door in my face.

“In my frenzy of fear and chagrin I threw myself against the oaken door with such force that its rusty old hinges yielded and I landed in the big front room of the inn just in time to see the white skirts of the ghost flit up the stairs.

“Upstairs I flew after it, and into an old chamber. There, huddled in a corner, I saw it. In the minute’s delay it had secured a lighted candle and, as I entered, it advanced to daunt me with bony arm upraised to a great height.

“‘Caught!’ I cried, throwing my arms around the figure. And I had made the acquaintance of a real live ghost.

“The white robes fell, and I saw revealed my hostess of Buckstown Inn.

“Next morning, when I threatened to call the police, she confessed to me that she masqueraded as a ghost to draw visitors to the out-of-the-way old place, and that she found its tale of being haunted highly profitable to her.”

THE HUNGRY GHOST,

by Emil Petaja

Originally published in Weird Tales, March, 1950.

Gordon whimpered when Nurse Rawlins came into his private room with his dinner. Nurse Rawlins was a brisk well-scrubbed little dynamo. That smile of hers seemed to be forever saying, We’re going to stop all this nonsense, aren’t we, Mr. Keel? We’re going to stop it today.

“Good evening!” she chirped, setting down his tray on the bedstand. “Shall we get ready for our dinner now, Mr. Keel?”

He managed a weak smile. She plumped up his pillows briskly and cranked up the hospital bed. He thought, she means well, damn her. She unfolded the tray legs and set it across him on the bed.

“You’re looking ever so much better today, Mr. Keel,” she said briskly.

“I look like hell and you know it!” Gordon cried. “I’m skin and bones. Take a good look at my face. I look like death. I’m as good as dead right now and you know it!” His effort sent him shuddering back against the pillows with a strangled sob. He shut his eyes savagely.

Nurse Rawlins took a few seconds to look hurt, then she became brisk and efficient again. She smiled. “Nonsense!” She lifted the aluminum heat jacket off his entree dish. “Now if you will just try a bite of this veal scaloppini. Cook’s wonderful at veal scaloppini. He made it for you because it’s your favorite dish.”

Gordon’s eyes flicked open in spite of himself. The aroma of the tender, succulent pieces of meat swimming in the rich sauce was torment. He looked at the side dish of creamed asparagus, also a favorite, at the mound of mashed potatoes into which a liberal square of yellow butter had been thrust, at the tossed salad, each green fragment of which sparkled with carefully blended French dressing. There were condiments, too, and a silver pot of coffee.

Everything was chosen to tempt the most picayunish appetite, down to the freshly baked rolls. Everything was exactly as Gordon might have ordered it at his favorite restaurant.

Nurse Rawlins sniffed and couldn’t help mentioning the thin lamb chop she had just finished downstairs. “It was all right, but not veal scaloppini! Cook went to special pains, Mr. Keel. Dr. Green said spare no expense. The meat was hand-picked at Schwartz’s and you know how expensive they are. The chef at Tivoli’s made the salad dressing and rushed it over to the hospital by special messen—”

“Shut up!” Gordon groaned. “Will you shut up!”

“Certainly, Mr. Keel,” Nurse Rawlins said cheerfully. “I know you’re anxious to eat your wonderful dinner.” She hummed and stepped to the window, where she pretended to be engrossed in the summer sunset.

“Go away!” Gordon cried weakly.

“I was supposed to stay until you ate every—”

“Take it away!” Gordon sobbed. “Take it out of my sight before I throw it at you!”

Nurse Rawlins whirled anxiously.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Keel? Don’t you like veal scaloppini any more? According to your case records you used to be very fond—”

Gordon swallowed hard. His stomach felt as if someone with hands like steel was wringing it. “Please take it away!” he sobbed harshly.

His tears brought all of Nurse Rawlins’ dormant pity to the fore, she had to force herself to remember that this was only a phobia Patient Keel had, a psychotic delusion regarding food of any kind. But he had to eat! Dr. Green said he’d die if he didn’t. The glucose injections didn’t seem to help. Patient Keel’s system had developed a curious immunity to artificial feeding.

“Won’t you just eat something, Mr. Keel?”

“No!”

“Suppose I feed you.” She stepped around the bed.

“No!” Gordon flung out his hands so violently that he spilled sauce across the white tray napkin. He wrenched around and buried his sobs in the pillows. “Go away! Take it away!”

“All right, I’ll go,” Nurse Rawlins sighed. “But I’ll just leave the tray here on the stand where you can reach it.” At the door she turned. “I’ll have to tell Dr. Green you wouldn’t eat your dinner again, Mr. Keel.”

* * *

After a while Gordon opened his gaunt, hungry eyes and stared at the white ceiling. He wouldn’t look at that tray. He wouldn’t! Why in hell hadn’t she taken it away like he told her? Why did they torture him like this?

She thought that he wasn’t hungry. My God!

How long had it been? How long was it since he’d eaten a decent uninterrupted, meal? How long? A week, a month, a year? No. It couldn’t be a year. He’d be dead by now. A year ago he was in Denver. Cousin Grey Ellis hadn’t been dead a year. It was actually only a few weeks since Esther brought him to Dr, Green’s hospital for treatment. They’d just got back from Honolulu, from their honeymoon. Honeymoon! Esther had been so regular about everything. Not that she understood what was really wrong. How could he tell her? If he told her anything at all, then he would have to tell her everything. And then she would shrink away from him, the soft love-light in her clear blue eyes would harden into hatred. He did it for Esther, so they could be married, so Esther could have all the things she should have. But Esther was sweet and good. The fact remained that he had done it and she could no longer love him if she knew.

Another thing was ironic. That was Gordon’s fetishistic attitude toward food. Ever since he was a child Gordon had revered food. Not that he was a glutton. It was merely a delicious over-emphasis on the pleasures of the table. He loved to eat, to talk about food, to read about it.

His mind flitted back to his childhood in Grantyille, a little mining town in southern Colorado. His father couldn’t work, having contracted tuberculosis from long years spent underground. His mother took in washing. They were hideously poor, so poor that hamburger was a luxury. Every once in a while, between racking coughs, his father would mention Cousin Grey Ellis out in California. His voice used to be pinched and bitter.

As a child Gordon had never had much or the best of anything. Maybe that’s what did it. He worked hard in school and after school, picking up and delivering heavy sacks of laundry. There was nothing extraordinary about Gordon. He had fair looks, a fair mind. But he wasn’t brilliant in any department. He had to work and he did work, hard, to climb up from that pit of poverty.

He was in charge of men’s dry goods at Tilson’s Mercantile in Denver when he met Esther Craig. He had worked his way up from stock boy, and was now next to Mr. Chambers, the floor walker. Mr. Chambers liked Gordon because he was decently subservient; it was whispered around Tilson’s that one day Gordon might be floor walker. All this paled into insignificance when he met Esther. His hunger for food was nothing compared to his hunger for Esther. But Esther Craig lived with an uncle and a grandmother, both of whom enjoyed wealth and social position. Esther was femininely fragile and sweet, he was sure money didn’t matter to her. But it did to her uncle and her grandmother. They would never consent to Esther marrying a store clerk—well, department head—and Esther was too feminine to defy them.

Gordon spent many sleepless nights brooding, over his unfortunate position before that letter came—the letter telling him Cousin Grey Ellis in California had died.

“Well, Mr. Keel!”

Gordon leaped out of his memories to find Dr. Green by his bed. Dr. Green was a tall brisk man, even brisker than Nurse Rawlins. Tonight Dr. Green had brought another doctor with him, a solemn little man with penetrating eyes. Nurse Rawlins hovered behind them, her brisk little cough said, see what I told you, Doctor?

“You haven’t touched your dinner, Mr. Keel,” Dr. Green chided. His reproachful smile identified Gordon with a spoiled child.

Gordon’s eyes leaped to the food tray.

He retched. He longed to tell them to get out, all of them, as he had Nurse Rawlins.

But if he did they might take drastic measures. They might send him to an institution for the insane, and he was not insane.

The little man with the penetrating eyes touched Dr. Green’s arm. He gestured Nurse Rawlins to take the tray and herself out of the room. She obeyed with awe, and that told Gordon that the little man was important.

Dr. Green confirmed this. “Mr. Keel, this Dr, Ramsey Folliger. Do you know who Dr. Folliger is, Mr. Keel?”

Gordon scowled at the little man. “He’s a psycho doctor. But I’m not crazy, Doctor! I’m not!”

Dr. Folliger brushed Dr. Green behind him. He shook his head and smiled at Gordon. “We don’t think that at all, Mr. Keel.

But frankly, we do think that there is something, some mental block, at the bottom of this obsession of yours.”

Gordon laughed and sobbed at the same time. “You can’t help me, Dr. Folliger.”

“All the same,” and the little man fixed him with his penetrating eyes, “I intend to try.”

* * *

In the end Gordon told Dr. Folliger everything. Dr. Folliger was that kind of a man. Maybe it was his eyes. When he looked at Gordon and asked questions, he had to answer them truthfully. He had to tell Dr. Folliger just what went on in his mind. Oh, he was clever. Within two hours after Dr. Green stepped back out of Gordon’s room, Dr. Folliger had the whole story…

That letter about Cousin Grey Ellis had changed Gordon’s life. It put wealth within his grasp. It had traveled quite a bit before it reached him. If only it never had! He might have been happy. After awhile that hungry ache in his heart for Esther would have gradually faded away, he would have become floor walker at Tilson’s and more than likely have married Cora Anderson, who made sheep’s eyes at him from behind the ribbon counter.

Cousin Grey Ellis had that letter written just before he died. In it he willed Gordon something. No, not his money. He willed Gordon his Cousin Aubrey Ellis. Aubrey was Grey’s son and it seemed that he—

In telling Dr. Folliger about it, Gordon relived the whole thing. These memories were all too vivid, etched on his mind with inexorable acid. He remembered hiking down the wet dirt road off the highway, from the cut-off where the Greyhound bus dumped him and his three suitcases. It was evening. It had rained. So it did rain in California! He remembered his first sight of that big brown house, half-hidden behind those curiously warted palms with their funny drooping fronds. He had noticed how the brown paint had peeled off the rococo veranda in great patches, how the shingles were loose on that little tower leaning across the lead-gray sky. How the concrete sidewalk was crumbling in places so that tufts of new spring grass thrust through the cracks. Cousin Grey Ellis had money, lots of money. Yet he persisted in living in this big old country house, which he didn’t even keep up.

Then—Cousin Aubrey.

He was sitting at the dining room table in an arm chair. The arm chair had a strap across it, so he wouldn’t fall out. He sat there drooling over a plate of fricasseed chicken. His gaping mouth was sloppy with white gravy and bits of chicken, his vacant eyes gawked up at Gordon with idiotic disinterest. He made little puppy noises at the large woman who had set down his spoon to welcome Gordon.

“Can’t he even feed himself?” Gordon stared at seventeen-year-old Cousin Aubrey with sharp repugnance. Gordon had great respect for fricassee of chicken, to see it slopped over like that repelled him.

“Nope.” The big woman adjusted a hairpin in her graying knot, and then started putting on her cloth coat, which was handy on a chair by the oval dining room table. “Can’t eat, nor talk, nor walk. Can’t do nothin’ for himself.” She eyed Gordon sharply. “Case you want to know who I am, I’m Nellie Fawcett. I’ve been Grey Ellis’s nearest neighbor for twelve years. I do his cleaning, and help out. I been takin’ care of Aubrey since Grey died.” She pierced a long pin through her dowdy black hat with emphasis. “Am I glad to see you. I’ve got my own kids to feed. Aubrey!” She shook the lackwit’s shoulder. “This is your Cousin Gordon. He’s come all the way from Denver to take care of you. Won’t that be nice?” She turned back to Gordon with a shrug. “He don’t understand, but I think he likes to be talked to. After you’ve fed him, take his clothes off and bathe him, and put him to bed. Oh, yeah, there’s a twin baby buggy in the parlor. He likes to be took for a ride in it every afternoon. You’ll find out what else there is to do for yourself. Anything comes up, give me a buzz. The number’s tacked up on the almanac calendar by the phone. Phone’s in the hall, by the cellar door.”

She gave Aubrey a last look. “Goodbye, Aubrey. Be a good boy.”

Gordon soon lost his own delicate taste for food, feeding Aubrey, watching him slobber over every spoonful, wiping the drool off his chin. Whatever sympathy for him existing in Gordon’s emotions was soon dissipated as weeks went by, as he watched Aubrey whine greedily when his food was brought in, when he washed and toweled that limp white body or wheeled it down the road in that strong, oversize baby buggy and cleaned up the messes resulting from feeding.

Cousin Grey Ellis’s will was studiedly tantalizing. It hinted of a rosy future for Gordon after Cousin Aubrey passed on. Until such time the purse strings were held in check by the local bank. Only enough money was doled out to provide for their immediate needs and, according to the terms of the will, Gordon could not foist Aubrey off on some paid attendant, either. No, he had to take care of him personally.

Esther’s letters alone kept Gordon at his task. The thought that someday Aubrey would die, and then they could be married and live happily ever after helped. But Aubrey was just seventeen. His doctor informed Gordon he might live a long, long time. By then the money wouldn’t matter.

Feeding Aubrey was the worst. Gordon approached each succeeding meal with reluctance and horror. Let Aubrey whine. Let him starve…

Why not?

Why not assist Aubrey out of his futile existence? He was no good to himself, no good to anyone—alive. He was a repulsive burden. Dead he would render Gordon a beautiful service, he would make it possible for Gordon to marry Esther and live happily ever after.

It was easy. Gordon didn’t even have to change his routine. He simply chose the day after the grocery truck delivered the week’s provisions to get himself locked in the cellar. Nobody visited the Ellis house except Nellie Fawcett, and she only occasionally. The old fashioned cellar with the big refrigerator in it had a stout oak door, and on this door was a heavy snap-lock. If someone forgot to unsnap the lock when they went down the wind from the hall window might easily blow the door shut and lock that someone in the cellar. There was only one window, high up, and it was barred against roving animals and burglars. There were no cutting tools in the cellar, they were kept in the old carriage house.

Gordon was very careless that day. He went down in the cellar to fetch some fruit to tempt Aubrey’s appetite and he forgot to unsnap the lock. The door blew shut. Gordon was locked in the cellar for five whole days. There was plenty for him to eat down there, but when Nellie Fawcett let him out they found Cousin Aubrey still sitting by the oval dining room table where Gordon had left him; with a plate of five-day-old beef casserole in front of him, quite dead.

Gordon performed beautifully at the inquest. He was the object of much commiseration, not to mention well-concealed envy on his good fortune. Gordon promptly went back to Denver and married Esther. They were in Honolulu, on their honeymoon, when—

It came like a shadow, it leaped down like a super-imposition on a projected slide. They were dining fashionably late on the hotel terrace. Everything had been ordered with the utmost care, and the waiter was given to understand that Gordon was a very particular diner. The breast of guinea hen would go back if it wasn’t just right.

The hotel orchestra was playing a sugary waltz. Gordon lingered a moment before applying his knife and fork. He was lifting a succulent morsel of guinea hen to his lips and smiling across the table at Esther as if the food were nothing.

The shadow came down.

Gordon blinked and set down his fork. Why, for a minute Esther wasn’t Esther. She was—

“What is it, darling?” Esther’s voice lilted reassuringly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Gordon made his lips form a smile. “Because I love you so much,” he said gallantly.

He picked up his fork and was touching his lips with it when the shadow came down again. It wasn’t Esther sitting there across from him. It was Aubrey, Cousin Aubrey. He was drooling, begging for his dinner.

* * *

“From that moment on,” Gordon told Dr. Folliger, “my life has been a living hell.” I can’t eat, Doctor! Every time I start to take even one mouthful I see Cousin Aubrey, staring at my food and mouthing. Don’t you see? When he was alive the only thing that he responded to was—food. I starved him to death, Doctor! He’s come back! He won’t let me eat because I starved him!”

“I see.” Dr. Folliger paced the room and stroked his bald spot. He turned. “You must realize, Mr. Keel, that this apparition exists only in your mind. You blame yourself for what happened. Oh, perhaps,” he waved his pudgy hand, “perhaps subconsciously there were moments when you wished him dead. It’s understandable. It’s perfectly human in such circumstances. But you must not blame yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault. The wind blew the cellar door shut. You couldn’t get out. There was nothing down there you could use to batter the door down. It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Keel!”

“Cousin Aubrey thinks so,” Gordon whimpered. “He won’t let me eat because he’s still hungry.”

Dr. Folliger shook his head. Then he went to work on Gordon’s mind. Within three weeks his daily sessions with Gordon reproved his wizardry at hypnotic suggestion. Gordon ate again. He ate like a horse.

Soon Gordon stepped on the bus with a contented stomach and the slightly drunken joy which the realization that he was on his way to resume his interrupted honeymoon produced. He was glad now that he hadn’t allowed Esther to visit him at the hospital. He hadn’t wanted her to see him all skin and bones. After all, they were hardly man and wife in actuality. He took out her letter and reread it.

“Darling, I know you wanted me to go back to Denver until you got well, but I had a better idea. You know how we talked of fixing up Cousin Grey Ellis’s country house? Well, I’ve done it, darling! Wait until you see it now. You won’t know the old place!”

Gordon sighed at the idea of spending his honeymoon in that house. And yet, why not? Even Dr. Folliger thought it might be good for him. It would cast out his mental delusions forever. To reassure himself he recited the little ritual Dr. Folliger had taught him, jokingly referring to it as a litany of exorcism.

It wasn’t my fault. The wind blew the door shut. I only thought I did it because once in a while I wished Cousin Aubrey dead. My guilt complex made me think I planned it, but it wasn’t my fault!

What Esther said about him not knowing the old place was true. This couldn’t be! Stepping through a rose-trellised gate, Gordon blinked at the delightfully rambling house with the red roof and didn’t know it. Gone was the baroque veranda and the slanted tower. A cobblestone path led up to a modern porch and a white door with a shiny brass knocker on it. Halfway down the path the door burst open and Esther ran into his arms.

“I’ve fixed a wonderful dinner for you, darling!” Esther crooned from the kitchen, “I thought it would be nice to be all alone our first night. Comfortable, darling?”

“Wonderful, wonderful.” He yawned and looked around the room. Every thing was new and shining. Then Esther began setting the table.

“I just love these old-fashioned oval tables, don’t you, darling?” she chattered. “It doesn’t quite fit in but I couldn’t bear to part with it. Or these wonderful old dishes.”

Gordon looked at the table and at the dishes. A faint twinge made his shoulders quiver under the port dressing gown Esther had given him as a home-coming gift, along with the slippers. It was as if someone were pinching his spinal cord with a fine pair of tweezers.

“Yes, dear,” he said.

He looked at the dinner plate with the blue turkey design on it and burst with a sudden desire to retch. But he forced a tepid smile and wrenched his eyes away from the table and the plates. Everything was to be so perfect tonight. He told himself grimly that he would eat off one of those turkey plates if it killed him.

Just before she served the beef casserole Esther clapped her hands in feminine glee. “I’ve got something to show you, darling! The most wonderful thing I found!”

Gordon smiled indulgently as she ran out of the room. He was famished after his long bus ride, but he could wait. Esther got so excited about these little surprises. She was so sweetly feminine.

His smile died when Esther wheeled in the baby buggy, the oversize baby buggy.

“Of course I had to have it repainted, and a new cover put on,” she prattled proudly, “Isn’t it divine? It’s so well made. Don’t look so shocked, darling! I told you I want to have children, and I’ve always adored the idea of having twins. I just know that our first—”

“Take it away!”

“Why, darling! Don’t be so provincial!”

“Take it away!” Gordon strangled.

“All right. Oh, I know why you’re so touchy. You’re hungry, poor darling.” She wheeled the buggy out in the hall. “I’ll hurry, dear. Dinner’s coming right up. It’s something very special, just for you!”

Gordon took his place at the table and tried to act like a new, happy husband. That the buggy was out of his sight helped. But here he was sitting at the same oval table, with those same round turkey plates staring him in the face. As she served Esther chattered on about her fondness for old dishes and silver. She held up a fork with an ornate handle. One of its tines was bent. Gordon stared.

“Isn’t it lovely, darling?”

Gordon shivered. That bent tine. It was Cousin Aubrey’s fork. He remembered the day it happened. He watched Esther put it in her mouth and shuddered.

“You haven’t touched your dinner, darling!” Esther chided. “And I spent all afternoon cooking it, just for you.”

Gordon looked down. “What—”

“Beef casserole, dear.”

The plate of tender, spiced meat swam before his eyes. Under the drifting wisps of steam the pieces of beef seemed to dry and rot, like—

He shut his eyes and recited Dr. Folliger’s litany of exorcism. It wasn’t my fault. The wind blew the door shut. I only thought I did it because…

“Silly me!” Esther exclaimed. “No wonder you’re not eating. You never eat beef casserole without horse radish. You must have told me that a dozen times. I’ll run right down and get it. I won’t be a moment, darling.”

Deep in his ghost-laying litany, Gordon didn’t even hear her. His eyes were closed tightly, he muttered the words over and over. Then he opened his eyes. He looked across the table at Esther.

He screamed.

Esther heard, him scream and slammed the refrigerator door shut hastily. Horse radish bottle in hand, she ran up the cellar steps. The door was shut. She turned the handle but it wouldn’t open. It was snap-locked from the other side.

* * *

Nellie Fawcett knew all about the honeymooners, and she thought it prudent to wait a couple days before she brought over some of her nice home-made strawberry jam for their breakfast. She poked her head in the open kitchen window when no one answered her knock.

“Woo-woo!” she called.

A thudding sound from the hall was her answer. Nellie Fawcett frowned and cocked her head. It came again. It was like before, like somebody beating on the cellar door. Nellie Fawcett pursed her lips and hiked her bulk over the sill. She waddled down the hill. Funny. Funny how Cousin Aubrey’s buggy had rolled down the hall and pushed the cellar door shut. She shoved it aside and opened the cellar door. Esther Keel fell into her arms, screaming, “Gordon! Gordon!”

They went in the dining room to find him. Why hadn’t he answered? She had screamed and screamed. He must have heard her. Esther’s fingers were torn, and the clotted blood on them matched the red streaks in the cellar door.

Why hadn’t Gordon heard her, and let her out? Why?

He was sitting at the table. After two days, he was still sitting there.

“Gordon!” she cried.

He looked up at her with lackluster eyes, then he looked back down at the plate of beef casserole in front of him. Then he started to babble and drool hopefully. Gordon was hungry.

GRAND-DAME’S GHOST STORY,

by C.D.

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

I don’t know whether you ever tell your children ghost stories or not; some mothers don’t, but our mother, though of German descent, was strong-minded on the ghost subject, and early taught all of her children to be fearless mentally as well as physically, and, though dearly fond of hearing ghost stories, especially if they were real true ghosts, we were sadly skeptical as to their being anything of the kind that could harm. We were quite learned in ghostly lore, knew all about “doppelgangers,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “blue lights,” etc., and we could not have a greater treat for good behavior than for our mother to draw on her store of supernatural tales for our entertainment. The story I am about to relate she told us one stormy night, when, gathered round her chair in her own cozy sanctum, before a cheerful fire, we ate nuts and apples, and listened while she recited “an o’er true tale,” told her by her grandmother, who herself witnessed the vision:

It was a fearful night, the wind sobbed and wailed round the house like lost spirits mourning their doom; the rain beat upon the casements, and the trees, writhing in the torture of the fierce blast, groaned and swayed until their tops almost swept the earth; bright flashes of lightning pierced even through the closed shutters and heavy curtains, and the thunder had a sullen, threatening roar that made your blood creep. It was a night to make one seek to shut out all sound, draw the curtains close, stir the fire and nestle deep in the arm-chair before it, with feet upon the fender, and have something cheerful to think or talk about. But I was all alone; none in the house with me but the servants, and the servants’ wing was detached from the main part of the building, for I do not care to have menials near me, and I had no loved ones near.

It was just such a night that Nancy Black died. “What a fearful night for the soul to leave its earthly home and go out into the vast, unknown future!” I spoke aloud, as, rousing from a train of thought, I drew my heavy mantle closer round me, wheeled my arm-chair nearer the fire, and cuddled down in it, burying my feet in the foot-cushion to warm them, for I felt strangely cold. I was in the library; it was my usual sitting-room, for I seldom used the parlors. What was the use? My books were my friends, and I loved best to be with them. My children dead, or married and away, the cold, grand parlors always seemed gloomy and sad; the ghosts of departed pleasures haunted them, and I cared not to enter them.

It was a long, wide room across the hall from the parlors, running the whole length of the house, and was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. My husband’s father had been a bibliomaniac, and my husband had had a leaning that way also, and the shelves held many an old rare work that was worth its weight in gold. The fire, though burning brightly, did not illume one-half the room of which, sitting in the chimney corner, I commanded a full view, and had been looking at the shadows playing on the furniture and shelves, as the flame shot up, and after flickering a moment, would die out, leaving a gloom which would break away into fantastic shadows as the firelight would again shoot up.

While watching the gleams of light and darkling shades, unconsciously the wailing of the storm outside attracted my attention, there seemed to be odd noises of tapping on the windows, and sobs and sighs, as though someone was entreating entrance from the fierce tumult; and as I sat there, again I thought of Nancy Black, the old schoolgirl friend who had loved me so dearly, and the night when she went forth to meet the doom appointed her; resting my head upon my hand, I sat gazing in the fire, thinking over her strange life, and still stranger death, and wondering what could have become of the money and jewels that I knew she had once possessed.

While sitting thus, a queer sensation crept over me; it was not fear, but a feeling as though if I’d look up I’d see something frightful; a shiver, not like that of cold, ran from my head to my feet, and a sensation as though someone was breathing icy cold breath upon my forehead, the same feeling you would cause by holding a piece of ice to your cheek; it fluttered over my face and finally settled round my lips, as though the unseen one was caressing me, thrilling me with horror. But I am not fearful, nervous nor imaginative, and resolutely throwing off the dread that fell upon me, I turned round and looked up, and there, so close by my side that my hand, involuntarily thrown out, passed through her seeming form, stood Nancy Black. It was Nancy Black, and yet not Nancy Black; her whole body had a semi-transparent appearance, just as your hand looks when you hold it between yourself and a strong light; her clothing, apparently the same as worn in life, had a wavy, seething, flickering look, like flames have, and yet did not seem to burn.

“In the name of God, Nancy Black, what brought you here, and whence came you?” I exclaimed.

A hollow whisper followed:

“Thank you, my old friend, for speaking to me, and, oh, how deeply I thank you for thinking of me tonight—I shall have rest.”

Rest! I heard echoed, and a jeering laugh rang through the room that made her quiver at its sound.

“I have been near you often; but always failed to find you in a condition when you would be en rapport before tonight. What I came for I will tell you; whence I come, you need not know; suffice it to say, that were I happy I would not be here on such an errand, nor on such a night—it is only when the elements are in a tumult, and the winds wail and moan, that we come forth. When you hear these sounds it is souls of the lost you hear mourning their doom—’tis then they wander up and down, to and fro, their only release from their fearful home of torture and undying pain.

“I have come to tell you that you must go over to the old house, and in the back room I always kept locked, have the carpet taken up from toward the fireplace. You will see a plank with a knot-hole in it. Remove that, and you will find what caused me to lose my soul—have prayers said for me, for ’tis well to pray for the dead. The money and jewels give in charity; bury in holy ground the others you find, and pray for them and me. Ah! Jeannette, you thought your old friend, though strange and odd, pure and innocent. It is a bitter part of my punishment that I must change your thought of me. Farewell! Do not fail me, and I shall trouble you no more. But whenever you hear that wind howl and sweep round the house as it does tonight, know that the lost are near. It is their swift flight through space—fleeing before the scourge of memory and conscience—that causes that sound.

“That tomorrow you may not think you are dreaming, here is a token,” and she touched the palm of my hand with her finger-tips, and as you see, my child, to this day, there are three crimson spots in the palm of my hand that nothing will eradicate.

“Do not fail me, and pray for us, Jeannette, pray,” and with a longing, wistful gaze, and a deep, sobbing sigh, Nancy Black faded from my sight.

“Am I dreaming?” I exclaimed, as I rose from my chair and rang the bell. When the servant entered, I bade him attend to the fire and light the lamps, and I went through the room to see if any unusual arrangement of the furniture could have caused the appearance, but nothing was apparent, and I bade him send my maid to attend me in my chamber, for I could not help feeling unwilling to remain in the library any longer that evening.

While making my toilet for the night my maid said:

“Have you burned your hand, madam?”

Glancing hastily down, I saw three dark crimson spots upon the palm of my left hand. They had an odd look, seared as though touched by a red-hot iron, yet the flesh was soft, not burned and not painful. Making some excuse for it, I did not allude to it again, and dismissed her speedily, that I might reflect undisturbed over the singular occurrence. There were the marks upon my hand; I could not remove them, and they did not fade. In fact, their deep red made the rest of the palm lose its pinkish hue and look pale from the strong contrast. Could I have been asleep and dreamed it all, and by any means have done this to myself? I thought, but finally concluded that on the morrow I’d go over to Nancy Black’s old residence and settle the question; and with that conclusion had to content myself until the morrow came.

Nancy Black was an old friend from my girlhood, who had owned large property in the town, and lived all alone in a spacious stone house directly opposite my home, and who, when dying, had left me the sole legatee of her property.

When morning came I took the keys, and, with my maid, went over to Nancy’s house. It had never been disturbed since her death, which was sudden and somewhat singular, and the furniture remained just as she left it when taken to her last resting place. We went to the room Nancy had directed. I bade Sarah take up the carpet, and, sure enough, there was a plank with a knot-hole in it; so I sent her from the room, and lifted the plank myself, and there, between the two joints, rested a long box, the lid not fastened. Opening it, I was horrified to see two skeletons—those of an infant and of a woman, small in stature and delicate frame. In a moment it flashed before me that I saw all that remained of Nancy Black’s young sister, a girl of seventeen, who had left home somewhat mysteriously years ago, and had died while absent—at least, that was the version Nancy had given of her absence, and no one had dreamed of doubting it, her tale was so naturally told.

Left orphans when Lucy was only two years and Nancy eighteen, she had devoted her life to the care of this young girl, and when she found her sister had fallen, she, in her pride of name and position, had destroyed mother and child, that her shame might not be known, and had lived all those dreary years in that house with her fearful secret.

Round the box, heaped up on every side, were money and jewels, and a parchment scroll among them had written on it: “Lucy’s share of our father’s estate.” I carried out Nancy’s wishes to the letter, for I now firmly believed that she had come to me herself that night. To avoid scandal resting on the dead, I took our clergyman into my confidence, and with his assistance had the remains buried quietly in consecrated ground. The money and jewels were given to the poor, and the old building I turned into a home for destitute females; and morning and night, as I kneel in prayer, I pray forgiveness to rest upon Nancy Black and peace to her troubled soul.

THE STONE CHAMBER OF TAVERNDALE MANOR HOUSE,

by Lady Mabel Howard

Originally published in Pall Mall Magazine, June 1896.

I have been asked by so many friends to write down the following story that I have, under pressure, consented to do so. I therefore place the facts before my readers. I tell it exactly as it took place, and I leave it to you to decide as to its reason. The results, as you will see, were real and tangible; but the question will no doubt arise: “Did I dream what I saw?—or was it the spirit power, which, unable to rest, used me as its medium?—or did my imagination, aided and excited by my crystal-gazing, lead me to do as I did?”

Where do dreams and imagination end? And where does the real spirit power commence? And is it possible that we are mediums, good and bad, of another world? This is for you, not for me to decide. I will only tell you what happened.

In the early summer of 1893, in the month of June, I found myself (a widow of eight-and-twenty, with small means and no occupation) on a tourist steamer bound for a three-weeks’ trip to the fjords of Norway, in search of health and fresh air, after many months spent in a small and airless house in London. Among our many passengers, who included all sorts and conditions of men, women, and children, were a lady and gentleman—Lord and Lady Glencoine. They were middle-aged, pleasant, and inclined to be companionable. We were mutually attracted, and within a few days became quite friendly, and even intimate. It is wonderful on board ship how soon one gets to know people well; there is so little to do, and the life lends itself to companionship and conversation. We were lucky, too, in our weather, which no doubt aided our friendly instincts; and when we parted, at the end of three weeks, it was with mutual regrets, hopes of a speedy meeting, and a warm invitation from the Glencoines that I should visit them in their beautiful old Tudor house in Gloucestershire.

I returned to my little house in Chester Street; the weeks and months passed, and I had almost forgotten our trip and the invitation, when one morning in September, amongst other letters, one in a strange handwriting ran as follows:

Taverndale House, Gloucester.

Dear Mrs. Haywood,

I hope you have not forgotten your promise to pay us a visit. I am writing a line to say we shall be at home from the middle of October for a month, and do hope you will find it convenient to come during that time. Glencoine is longing to show you this house, knowing how you appreciate old buildings, and if only the frost will keep off, the garden may still be looking quite pretty.

Yours very sincerely,

Janet Glencoine.

I consulted my almanac; found, curiously enough, that I was engaged to pay another visit in Gloucestershire about that time, and that I could fit in a Friday till Tuesday at Taverndale with great pleasure and convenience to myself. So I wrote to Lady Glencoine proposing this time, and in two days received an answer warmly accepting my proposal, but regretting the shortness of my visit. On my arrival at their station, about half-past four in the afternoon, I found the carriage waiting, and was told by the coachman that it was a drive of two miles. We passed through a lodge, and up a large and beautiful avenue of elm trees, which were scattering their golden leaves with great rapidity; and as we suddenly swung round a sharp corner and the house came into view, I was lost in admiration. One of those early Tudor houses, with its gabled roofs and high windows and chimneys, branching out at the end into two wings, almost untouched by modern hands, except where, here and there, there was absolute need of restoration. I had hardly time to take it in before we stopped at the door, and I stepped through the vestibule into the hall, and again my eyes had a feast. The dark wainscoting of oak, with which it was entirely panelled, and the picturesque high windows, the shields and armour hanging from the wainscoting, all made a lovely picture in the setting sun which was pouring through the mullioned window.

The footman led me into another room, also all panelled, which I afterwards discovered was called “My lady’s parlour,” where the party were assembled for tea. Lady Glencoine rose and greeted me warmly; explained to me that Lord Glencoine was out shooting, and introduced me to several of the guests, among whom, much to my astonishment, I found some cousins of my own—a Mr. and Mrs. Broughton. She also informed me that, being the end of the week, several guests had gone that day, but that we were still a party of ten: a Sir Patrick and Lady Grantham; a brother and sister, Captain and Lady Mary Shelvey; and my cousins, making up the party, with Lord and Lady Glencoine and their son, a young man of twenty-four who had just left Oxford. We sat talking and drinking tea for some time, waiting for the shooters to return; but finally she rose and proposed taking me to my room. We passed up the wide staircase, hung with family portraits of many generations, and then into a long low passage, from which we emerged into the gallery, which seemed to occupy almost all one side of the house, being about eighty feet long. Here again the wainscoting of dark oak reached to the beautiful white cornice. The furniture was inlaid, unique of its kind; and the windows a beauty in themselves, with their bows and deep recesses. The daylight was dying away, and the whole place looked weird and ghostly, but very beautiful.

Lady Glencoine was, I think, quite amused by my enthusiasm, and said her husband would not forgive her for showing it to me without him, but she could not do otherwise, as it was the only means of approaching my room; and as she said this she threw open a door in the panelling, and ushered me into a large, bow-windowed room hung with tapestry, looking out, as did the gallery, on a broad terrace walled with a yew hedge, beyond which was an old-fashioned garden still bright with hollyhocks, dahlias, and gladioli. As soon as she had left me, I rushed to the window and sat revelling in the beauties before me, and I came to the conclusion that they were indeed lucky people to be possessed of such a house and surroundings.

Being tired with my journey, I accepted Lady Glencoine’s suggestion, and rested till I was roused by a dressing gong and my maid’s appearance. She, too, was much impressed by the magnificence of all she had seen, but also rather fearful at the size and apparent loneliness of my room, and expressed a wonder that I should venture to spend the night there. Fortunately for me, my nerves were not moulded in the same shape as my maid’s; and I congratulated myself that I was a person possessed of certainly average courage.

The dinner-bell rang, and I left my room, again traversing the long gallery, which was now lit. I met a footman at the far end, who was evidently deputed to conduct me to the drawing-room, where I was almost, if not quite, the last to appear.

I found myself taken in to dinner by Captain Shelvey, a young man who evidently had a good opinion of himself and no hesitation in displaying it. A place was left for me on one side of Lord Glencoine, and dinner commenced.

My neighbour kept me in close conversation; and Lady Mary, who occupied the right-hand seat opposite to me, also talked to our host without intermission, and it was not till dinner was half over that there was a pause, which enabled him to address me.

“Well, Mrs. Haywood,” he said, in his cheery tones, “and what, so far, do you think of my old house? Did l exaggerate its beauty when I romanced about it to you on the ship last summer?”

“Oh, no,” I exclaimed warmly; “of course I haven’t half seen it as yet, but it seems to me that nothing could be more beautiful, and that words are not half good enough to describe it.”

He smiled at my enthusiasm. “It’s very lucky you were able to come, because I am afraid this will be your first and last chance of seeing it.”

“Why?” I asked curiously, thinking what a very odd thing it was for him to say.

“Because,” he answered, smiling rather sadly, “I am afraid I shall have to sell it I have struggled on a long time in the hopes of better things, but bad times and rents going down as they have done, almost to nothing, make it impossible, and much as it grieves me, I am afraid it will have to go. Charlie and I cut off the entail some time ago, and it is already advertised.”

“It is too sad!” I exclaimed. “It does seem such a grievous pity that an old family place like this should go away into the hands of strangers.”

“Yes, it’s not exactly nice,” he answered, “and it was a long time before I could make up my mind to it; but it is what a great many people have come to, and nothing short of a miracle will save landed property in England now. And,” he continued, “the maddening part of this place is, that we believe somewhere here, either in the house or grounds, there are jewels and treasure hidden, and we can’t find them.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, with astonishment.

“Well,” said Lord Glencoine, “about fifty years ago my grandfather was turning out old boxes and safes, and he found a record, or rather diary, of an ancestress of ours, a Lady Glencoine in her own right, who was the owner of this house at the time when Cromwell was making havoc in all the English places. She had kept this diary for years; and the last record in it is an account of Cromwell having arrived at Gloucester, and a report of an intended raid on this house, and she writes that she is, at that moment, about to hide what she calls her ‘priceless jewels’ in a place only known to herself, so that they may be safe. Whether she did or did not was never known, and the only other entry in the diary is a few lines, written evidently by the maid, who tells of the soldiers’ invasion that night, and that ‘my lady’ disappeared, and was never seen again; so whether she and the jewels were carried off by Cromwell’s men, or whether she was murdered for the sake of them, remains a mystery; only my grandmother was so bent on trying to find them, that she sent for several architects and archaeologists from London, who searched all over the house, and did succeed in discovering two secret staircases, but there was nothing in them, and no one ever found anything.”

“How very, very extraordinary!” I exclaimed, “and how deeply interesting! But were none of the jewels ever found again?”

“Nothing,” he answered—“in fact, till my grandfather bought a few there were no ornaments in the family of any sort; and that there were plenty in the old days is a certainty, because all the ladies whose pictures I will show you tomorrow have extraordinarily beautiful jewels on their heads and necks up to the time I told you of, and since then all those whose portraits have been painted have been noticeably without any.”

“One feels inclined to go and have a search,” I said, laughing, as we all rose to leave the dining-room.

“I know,” he answered, “as boys, we used to be forever looking and hoping, but we were always disappointed, and gave it up in despair at last.”

We passed out of the dining-room into the drawing-room, which was hung with old English tapestry, in wonderful preservation. We clustered round the large wood fire, for it was a chilly evening late in October, with a slight frost.

“Didn’t I hear Glencoine telling you about the lost jewels?” asked Lady Glencoine, as she knelt on the rug, and threw another log on to the already blazing fire.

“Yes,” I answered, “and I was immensely interested. It sounded such a wonderful tale—rather like a fairy story, I think.”

“I cannot help believing,” she answered, “that they are somewhere here, and that some day they will be found; only I am afraid it will be too late for us,” she added sadly. Then suddenly she turned to me: “Mrs. Haywood, do you believe in ghosts?”

Before I could answer, my cousin, Hilda Broughton, broke in:

“Oh yes: didn’t you know, Lady Glencoine, that Beatrice is a great medium? She can write automatically, and sees all sorts of strange things in a crystal ball. She’s a wonderful person!”

“Do you really?” said Lady Glencoine, rising from the rug. “My dear Mrs. Haywood, how exciting! I am so deeply interested in these things. Why did you never tell me about it?”

“I don’t know,” I answered shyly. “I do it sometimes. I have been a member of the Psychical Research Society for some time, and I took to it then, more or less; but I have not done it for a long time now.”

“But you know, Beatrice,” said Hilda, “you have done some wonderful things with your crystal.”

“Well,” I admitted, “I did see some rather curious things, and I made a few prophecies that came true.”

“Have you got it here?” asked Lady Mary eagerly. “Do show it to us.”

“What are you all so excited about?” asked Lord Glencoine, coming into the room at this moment.

“Oh, Herbert,” cried his wife, “Mrs. Haywood does all sorts of extraordinary things: she writes automatically, and has a crystal in which she sees things, and we are dying to see her do it.”

“I will go and get it,” I answered, seeing that nothing else would satisfy them; and I left the room, and made my way upstairs. The moon was just rising and pouring into the gallery windows, which, in spite of the artificial light with which it was lit, gave it a ghostly look, and I shivered slightly as I hurried through. Though I was not a nervous nor imaginative person, still I had felt, each of the three times I had walked down this gallery, a consciousness that someone or something walked with me. There were no steps—there was no sound—but there was something, and this time it seemed to be even more defined and more conscious.

I picked up my crystal, and, as quickly as I could, made my way downstairs. As I entered the drawing-room I was greeted with innumerable questions—where would I sit? Must the room be darkened? Should they all hold my hand and wish?—in fact, questions for which no one waited for an answer were poured into my ears.

As soon as there was a lull, I spoke:

“You can leave the room exactly as it is. I must sit where I get no reflection on the crystal, and I do not want any one to touch me.”

Lord Glencoine gave me a chair, and I moved it about till I got into what I considered a suitable light.

“Now,” I said, “is there any one who wants particularly to ask something? Of course I can’t promise that I shall see what they wish, or in fact anything; but I can try.”

“Oh, I know!” cried Charlie Glencoine: “I say, father, let’s ask about the jewels.”

“Yes, do,” said Lord Glencoine: “ask if you can see where the jewels are hidden—if they are hidden,” he added, in a lower tone.

“Very well. Now, please, don’t all stop talking; as long as you don’t talk to me it does not matter, and when I begin to see anything I will tell it to you. It may be very slow, and it may not come at all, but please don’t interrupt me till I take my eyes off the crystal again.

So they all seated themselves, and conversation went on in an undertone.

I concentrated all my sight on the crystal ball I had in my hand, and presently—after two or three minutes—I saw—what is always the first thing one does see—a kind of thickness in the glass; then that faded away, and I began to speak.

“I see,” I said, in a slow, dreamy way, “what appears to be a small stone vaulted chamber; there is no window in it, but apparently some light from inside; in the middle of the room a lady is standing”—here I paused, as her figure was not yet very clear—“a lady who seems to be very fair, with ringlets clustering on her forehead, dressed in a stiff white satin dress with lace; and she is radiant with jewels”—here I heard, amidst the almost dead silence, a muttered, “Ah,” from Lord Glencoine. “It looks like a diadem of rubies and diamonds on her head, and ropes of pearls hang from her neck and over the body of her dress; and she has a diamond girdle clasped round her waist. But what seems more than anything else to attract my attention is a ring she is wearing—a ring that almost covers the second finger of her left hand: it is quite the biggest I have ever seen, and it seems to be a magnificent square ruby in the middle, and two large diamonds at each side; and with this finger she is beckoning—she is looking full at me as if to entreat me to follow her, and her expression is very weary and anxious. She does not appear to move at all, and it is a face I have never seen before.”

“Mrs. Haywood,” said my host’s voice, trembling with excitement, “describe to me please once more her dress.”

I did so, telling him also that it struck me the dress was of the period of Sir Peter Lely’s pictures, or perhaps a little earlier than that; and then, my eyes beginning to ache with the continued strain, I lifted them from the crystal, and met the astonished and excited gaze of my audience.

“Do you know,” said Lord Glencoine, coming up to me and speaking in a low voice, “that you have described exactly the ancestress I told you of—the Lady Glencoine who disappeared with the jewels.”

“What do you mean? How do you know?” I asked eagerly.

“Because,” he said, “in my study, where you have not yet been, there is a life-sized picture of that Lady Glencoine; and the most extraordinary thing is that the jewels she is wearing answer exactly to your description, and above all that strange ring is on her second finger.”

I felt myself turning quite pale with my own discoveries. What did it all mean? And why was it given to me to see this strange picture?

Lady Glencoine came up. “You look so exhausted I am going to carry you off to bed, Mrs. Haywood. I have never been so much interested in my life as I have been tonight, but I think it has been too much for you—you look so pale and tired.”

I owned to feeling fatigued, and shortly afterwards we proceeded upstairs to bed.

My hostess accompanied me to my room, and, having lit my candles, wished me good-night. I could see she was much excited, but that she would not say more, thinking I had had enough and was tired.

I undressed, dismissed my maid, and, going to the window, drew up the blinds, letting the full moon pour into the room. The whole terrace below me was lit up with it, making long and ghostly shadows, and one could almost imagine one saw the human phantoms of the past flitting up and down.

I got into bed, still leaving the moon looking into my windows, and fell asleep very shortly.

How long after I cannot tell—but the room was still in moonlight, when I was awaked by that nameless consciousness that I was not alone. Turning my head to the door, I saw what made my heart stand still and my blood run cold within me.

There, bathed in the rays of the moon, stood the lady of my crystal—the same face, gown, jewels, and with that strange and wonderful ring on her second finger, the stones of which sparkled in the light. With that finger she was beckoning to me. Too terrified to move or even to scream, I watched her, fascinated; and then my voice—was it my voice?—found itself in a frightened whisper:

“Who are you? What are you? And why do you come here?” I whispered: “Go, go—you terrify me!” and, almost before I had finished, the face and figure grew indistinct and disappeared: there was no sound, there was no movement. The place where she had stood was still in brilliant moonlight, but she was gone. Thank Heaven she was gone! My teeth were chattering with fear, my hands were cold and clammy, and I was almost beside myself with terror. With trembling hands I lit my candle—two—three candles—and I got out of bed and walked round the entire room; and there was nothing, nothing anywhere, and I began to doubt myself. Had I dreamt it? Or was it a creation of my brain, overwrought with my “crystal” effort? I had gone to sleep with my mind full of this apparition, and doubtless I had dreamt it. I nearly persuaded myself that this was the case, anything else seemed so impossible, and with this determination I at last fell asleep.

Morning broke—one of those lovely autumn days, after a night of frost, which hastens on the winter, and reminds the lingering blossoms that their days are well nigh done—and as I got up and dressed myself I almost persuaded myself that it had been a dream, and that my imagination had run riot with me. Still it had been very real, and even as I walked down the gallery on my way to the breakfast-room, with the broad prosaic sunlight shining in through the windows, I again had that same conviction, if possible more strongly than before, that I was not alone, and I began to feel quite glad that my visit was to be a short one.

After breakfast I reminded Lord Glencoine of his promise to show me the house, and specially the picture. He readily consented; and Lady Mary, being also a new corner, begged to accompany us, and we left the breakfast-room.

We followed our host along a small passage which led straight from the dining-room, and throwing open a door almost opposite, he ushered us into his sitting-room, which was a large and spacious apartment, more or less hung (like the drawing-room) with old English tapestry, with the exception of one side of the room, and that had one large oak panel which reached from the window at one end to the tapestry at the other, and into which was let a life-sized picture of Eleanor, Lady Glencoine. The likeness was so startling, the face so exactly what I had seen both in the crystal and in my room, that I was quite staggered for a moment, and caught hold of a chair for support.

“There,” said Lord Glencoine, “is the lady you described last night, do you see: is it not exact, Mrs. Haywood?”

“Yes,” I answered slowly, recovering myself with an effort—“the same, the very same, only several years younger.”

“Isn’t it most extraordinary,” he continued in an excited voice, turning to Lady Mary, who also seemed like me, quite fascinated by the picture, “that Mrs. Haywood had never seen it?—never been here before, had you?” to me.

“Never,” I answered; “never—it is the most curious thing I have ever known.” But I thought to myself he did not know how curious.

I remained gazing at the picture. The details, the hands, the dress, that wonderful ring—everything was as I had seen it: what did it mean? Was there more to come? And something within me—or did it pass by?—told me there was more still to come, and with this consciousness my heart sank within me. We passed on to the other rooms; at another time I should have enjoyed seeing them, but now all interest had suddenly left me. I was either worn out physically, or troubled mentally; and though I tried hard to shake it off and rouse myself, still all that day it was with me—driving, walking, eating—I lived in a sort of dream, seeing nothing but that one lady, hearing nothing but that indefinable sound, which yet was not a sound, but only a feeling: it absorbed me, while it troubled me, and I think, if I had not been ashamed to do so, I should have gone away that afternoon. Also, my mind was in a whirl: if she came again that night and beckoned to me, should I go, should I face what she had to show me, and would my courage last? Then I smiled at my folly, and remembered my decision that it was only a dream, and nothing supernatural—no message from the spirit world.

The night was approaching, and we were at dinner again. Every one but myself seemed to be even gayer than the night before. When it was over, and we were in the drawing-room, all alike clamoured for more crystal-gazing; but here I was firm in a refusal, and luckily for me Lady Glencoine came to my rescue. She was an observant woman, and, I think, had noticed my preoccupation and depression; and when they had settled down to whist and music she came up to me, and, remarking my tired appearance, begged me not to sit up, but to slip out of the room with her. I was really thankful to accede to her request, and together we went upstairs and entered the gallery.

“How beautiful!” she exclaimed, pausing for a moment to look out of the window on to the moonlit terrace below, “but how weird! Are you sure, my dear, you do not mind sleeping alone in this part of the house? You looked, this morning, as if you had not slept, and I know so many people are nervous.”

Just for a moment—only for a moment—my courage completely left me, and it was on my lips to say I was nervous, and would she allow me to change my room, but something stopped me: was it that feeling again of some one standing beside me, that froze the words on my lips, and left me standing looking at Lady Glencoine, who was, I think, beginning to wonder at my silence?

“Oh no, thank you,” I said hurriedly. “I really like that room, it is so pretty; and it would be quite wrong to make a change, I think,” and I laughed nervously.

She looked at me for a moment, and seemed as if she were about to say something more; but evidently changed her mind, for, taking me to my room, she said good-night, and left me, and I heard her steps growing fainter and fainter in the distance.

I hastily rang for my maid, and, to give myself an excuse for detaining her, I insisted upon having my hair thoroughly washed and brushed. But, keep her as long as I could, the time went slowly, and it was not yet midnight when she left me, and I knew now I was alone for the night, to face it as best I could.

I noticed the blinds had been left up, and the curtains were not drawn—the housemaid, I suppose, having thought I liked this; and I left it so, preferring even the ghostly moonlight to the utter loneliness of darkness. I determined to keep awake, to listen and to watch; but gradually my eyelids drooped over my tired eyes, and sleep stole over me, and being, I suppose, exhausted by the events of the night before, I fell into a troubled, restless slumber. Again I was awaked, and I opened my eyes. I knew what they would fall on. For a moment the room was in slight shadow, caused by a cloud passing over the moon; but as it cleared away, and left it in brilliant light again, it revealed the figure of Eleanor, Lady Glencoine, standing there with the same dress, jewels, and expression of the night before, still with her finger upraised, beckoning, almost entreating. There was no doubt in my mind as to what I should do: an irresistible force compelled me to follow her. Did we open the door, or did we go through it? I never knew, but in a moment we were in the gallery. Here, even in spite of the terror which possessed me, I could not help noticing the strange beauty of the scene.

The gallery was flooded almost from one end to the other with the moonlight, imparting to the pictures a lifelike appearance, making them into a living audience watching us as we flitted by; I with my strange guide always going on, sometimes passing into the deep shadows that were cast here and there, and then emerging again into the light which lit up the radiant jewels she was wearing, and I felt as if I were in a dream that had no awakening, or maybe had passed into another world of silence and spirits.

Quite at the far end she paused, and I noticed her hand with the ring on it felt up and down the last panel but one, and then she pushed back what seemed a bolt, it looked so easy, and I felt sure I had seen how she did it: the panel opened, and she went through a small stone archway, I still following, into a vaulted passage, and then for a moment I lost sight of her, but only for a moment, and as I turned what seemed to be a corner, I came upon a room, a small vaulted chamber, and as I looked into it, the certainty flashed across me that it was the room I had seen in my crystal. I held my breath: the lady was on her knees, almost tearing off her jewels, and throwing them into what seemed to be an aperture in the floor. When she had done, she took a stone which was lying by, and covered them with it; and then she stood for a moment wringing her hands over the spot, and I saw the ring, the only ornament that she had not divested herself of, slip off her finger on to the floor, and then, without appearing to notice it, she left the room. I stooped for one second, picked up the ring, and followed her.

As we came, so we returned—along the passage, through the still open panel, which closed behind me—into the gallery. I saw her face for one moment after this, and then throwing up her arms she vanished—vanished completely, as if she had never been there. I went to the window: nothing, nothing to be seen but the moon looking down in full beauty on the terrace garden, and no sound but the gentle moaning of the wind, which had risen during the night. Trembling in every limb, I stumbled back into my room, but more I cannot tell: I suppose I fainted; but the next thing I was conscious of was finding myself lying on my bed, the room in darkness, and still tightly grasped in my hand was the ring. I lit the candles, and kept them burning by me till the morning, when I fell into a sleep, and did not open my eyes till my maid stood by my bedside, and told me it was nearly breakfast time; “And, ma’am, you do look bad!” was her sympathetic remark.

I dismissed her, and, jumping from my bed, ran to the looking-glass. I really think I expected my hair was grey—but it was still its own natural brown, I was thankful to see; but there were great black rings under my eyes, and my lips and face had lost all their colour. I opened the drawer, and there, lying in all its beauty, was the ring. I think the stones were the most wonderful I had ever seen; and as I slipped it on to my finger it covered quite three parts of it. I hastily dressed, and, opening the door, passed downstairs. It is a curious fact, but that consciousness of another presence had gone, completely gone, and I realised this with a sense of freedom and release as I hurried on. I opened the dining-room door: I was evidently very late, and all eyes were turned upon me.

“Good gracious, Mrs. Haywood!” exclaimed Lord Glencoine, “what has happened to you? You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

I did not answer; I walked across the room to where he was standing, and in a voice trembling so that I could hardly frame my words, I handed him the ring. “Lord Glencoine,” I said, “is this the ring?”

He took it, and he too looked as if he had seen a ghost. Silence fell on them all for a moment, while they remained looking at me.

“Good Heavens!” he said at last, “where have you been to find this? Am I mad, or is it real?”

Here they all crowded round him. Lady Glencoine became quite pale, and I thought she would have fainted; and I could see they all shrank a little from me, as if they thought I had been too near the supernatural world.

“I have been,” I answered, sinking into a chair, “into the room my crystal showed me; I have seen your jewels there massed, heaped into a hole in the stone floor.”

And then, slowly and with many pauses, I told them word for word what had happened—where I had been and what I had seen. I think if it had not been for the ring, which lay on the table a tangible proof of my story, they would one and all have declared me mad. But even Captain Shelvey, who had treated the crystal-gazing with contempt and ridicule, sat silenced. No more breakfast was eaten; nothing else was thought of: one and all declared that I must go and take them there at once. Here Lady Glencoine interposed. Excited as she was, she would not have me do this now. Seeing my state of mental and physical exhaustion, she insisted upon my lying down in her sitting-room and plying me with beef tea and brandy.

Although it was Sunday, all idea of church was abandoned, and an air of excitement and mystery pervaded the entire household.

However, after an hour’s rest and some food, I declared myself fit to go; and the whole party, led by me, proceeded upstairs. It struck me forcibly, as we passed along the gallery, the wonderful contrast of myself and my phantom guide of last night flitting along in the moonlight, in silence, with the dead of many years looking at us from the walls—and now ten chattering human beings tumbling over one another in their eagerness each to be the first to make the discovery. I walked straight to the panel—the last but one; and then I paused—paused, because suddenly and completely the knowledge and power of opening it had passed from me. My hands dropped to my sides, and I turned round and faced the anxious and expectant people.

“I have forgotten it,” I cried; “it has suddenly gone from me; I cannot tell you how to open it.”

“What do you mean?” said Lord Glencoine anxiously: “you told me it slid. Push it—let us try.”

He approached the panel, and he tried—we all tried—but nothing would do. For more than an hour we went on pushing, feeling for a bolt, trying by every means we could think of to effect an opening, but all in vain; at last we gave it up in despair, and went downstairs bitterly disappointed, and I sat hour after hour in the drawing-room, going through last night’s scene again—trying to recall the lady’s movements as she passed her hand along it: all in vain—the knowledge had gone from me, and it was useless. I could see, too, Lord and Lady Glencoine were terribly disappointed, though they did their best not to let me see it, and talked of having the panelling broken open the next day.

In the afternoon several of the party went for a walk, but Lady Glencoine and I remained by the fire, carrying on a spasmodic conversation. Suddenly a thought came to me, and I rose hastily and hurried to my room.

When there, I took the crystal from the drawer, and sitting down with it in my hand, I gazed into it, breathless with excitement. Should I, or should I not, see what I wished? I watched the usual mist rising in it; and then—yes—the lady again appeared; this time, though, her hand was not upraised, she was standing there. I longed, I almost prayed, that she might open the panel to me; and then, to my intense delight, I saw her hand slowly move towards the wall behind her, and, placing the back of her hand on the panel, she let her fingernails just pass under the framework, and it sprang open.

I waited for a moment till the picture faded away, and then, throwing down the crystal, I ran downstairs, almost falling down the steps in my haste. Into the drawing-room I flew, where my hostess was still sitting dreaming idly before the fire in the fading light.

“Come, come,” I cried, “I have found how to open it”. And startled, and I imagine rather thinking I had gone mad, Lady Glencoine followed me, calling to her husband, as she saw him passing through the hall, to come with us. I again went into the gallery and approached the panel. Trembling with excitement, my knees shaking beneath me, I placed the back of my hand on it, passing my finger-nails under the framework, and immediately it flew open. Almost faint with my discovery, I leant against the wall, and Lord and Lady Glencoine and their son remained staring at the open doorway.

I was the first to recover myself.

“A light—a light!” I cried; and ran to my room, returning with a candle and a box of matches.

“Lady Glencoine,” I said, lighting them, “either you or your son must wait here, as we cannot risk the door being shut upon us. Come, who will stay?”

“I had better do so,” she answered, “as I shall be of no use, and I am not quite sure I should like to venture into it.”

“But first,” I said (so certain was I that we should discover the jewels), “first we must get a crowbar, or something, which will remove the stone; because, although it is loose, it is a large one, and would be too heavy for our hands, I think.”

We touched the gallery bell; and the butler, who had lived many years in the family, answered it, and I think he was nearly overcome when he saw the open door, but he too was filled with excitement, and hurried off for an implement.

Then we started. I have often wondered since that we had the courage. I led the way, followed by Lord Glencoine, his son, and the butler.

“How very extraordinary we should have never found this passage!” exclaimed my host; “and no steps too—so curious—just a level passage.”

In a moment, when we got into the room, we gazed in silence and awe. Lord Glencoine took the candle from me, and kneeling down on the floor examined it. There, scattered about, were bits of old stuff—rags, they might be called—and amongst them was a skull and some bones.

“It is what I suspected,” he said, in a low, hushed tone: “bones—human bones. It means that that poor lady must have come here to hide the jewels, and the door must have been shut upon her, and she died an awful death. Even after these hundreds of years, how terrible it seems!”

The horror of what he said was upon us, and for a moment we stood solemnly gazing at the human tragedy of many years ago. Then, recovering himself, he turned to the butler.

“Come,” he said—“the crowbar.”

I pointed to the stone, and in a moment they had lifted it; and there, lying in scattered and careless profusion, were the celebrated jewels of Eleanor, Lady Glencoine, for the sake of which she had gone to meet this terrible death.

In silence we lifted them out—diamonds, rubies, the pearls, the girdle of the picture—none were missing; together with heaps of smaller necklaces and other ornaments. We carried them into the daylight and the gallery, where Lady Glencoine was anxiously awaiting us.

“Far beyond our wildest hopes,” said her husband, in a low voice. “Taverndale is saved, and to you,” turning to me, “we are indebted for this.”

I shook my head. It was not I. I was only the instrument—the medium. But it was no use saying this now, and I had had enough. Mind and body alike both craved for rest, and I left them and went to my room. That night I slept without a waking thought. If the Phantom Lady came to me, my sleep was far too deep to be disturbed; but I think her work was done, and that she too was taking her rest.

My story is over.

Perhaps some will like to hear that the Glencoines, saved by the many thousands their jewels realised, still live on at Taverndale.

The day after the discovery they reverently gathered up the remains of Eleanor, Lady Glencoine, and placed them in a corner of the churchyard; and, often as I have been to Taverndale since that time, and inhabited again and again that same room, I have never once felt that strange presence. My own belief is, that her weary steps will nevermore tread that long gallery, and that she has gone to her rest, for which she had sought so long.

But the mysteries, to us, of these things always remain. The spirit world is so near us, and we are mostly so unconscious of it, so slow to believe it; and, although bordering on it, we have so little faith and so little insight. Many break their hearts or go mad in seeking to unravel it. Some day, somehow, it will come to us, and we shall know it. Till then, let us wait—wait—wait.

THE WATER GHOST OF HARROWBY HALL,

by John Kendrick Bangs

Originally published in Harper’s Weekly Magazine, June 27th 1891.

The trouble with Harrowby Hall was that it was haunted, and, what was worse, the ghost did not merely appear at the bedside of a person, but remained there for one mortal hour before it disappeared.

It never appeared except on Christmas Eve, and then as the clock was striking twelve. The owners of Harrowby Hall had tried their hardest to rid themselves of the damp and dewy lady who rose up out of the best bedroom floor at midnight, but they had failed. They had tried stopping the clock, so that the ghost would not know when it was midnight; but she made her appearance just the same, and there she would stand until everything about her was thoroughly soaked.

Then the owners of Harrowby Hall closed up every crack in the floor with hemp, and over this were placed layers of tar and canvas; the walls were made waterproof, and the doors and windows likewise, in the hope that the lady would find it difficult to leak into the room, but even this did no good.

The following Christmas Eve she appeared as promptly as before, and frightened the guest of the room quite out of his senses by sitting down beside him, and gazing with her cavernous blue eyes into his. In her long, bony fingers bits of dripping seaweed were entwined, the ends hanging down, and these ends she drew across his forehead until he fainted away. He was found unconscious in his bed the next morning, simply saturated with seawater and fright.

The next year the master of Harrowby Hall decided not to have the best spare bedroom opened at all, but the ghost appeared as usual in the room—that is, it was supposed she did, for the hangings were dripping wet the next morning. Finding no-one there, she immediately set out to haunt the owner of Harrowby himself. She found him in his own cozy room, congratulating himself upon having outwitted her.

All of a sudden the curl went out of his hair, and he was as wet as if he had fallen into a rain barrel. When he saw before him the lady of the cavernous eyes and seaweed fingers he too fainted, but immediately came to, because the vast amount of water in his hair, trickling down over his face, revived him.

Now it so happened that the master of Harrowby was a brave man. He intended to find out a few things he felt he had a right to know. He would have liked to put on a dry suit of clothes first, but the ghost refused to leave him for an instant until her hour was up. In an effort to warm himself up he turned to the fire; it was an unfortunate move, because it brought the ghost directly over the fire, which immediately was extinguished.

At this he turned angrily to her, and said: “Far be it from me to be impolite to a woman, madam, but I wish you’d stop your infernal visits to this house. Go sit out on the lake, if you like that sort of thing; soak the rain barrel, if you wish; but do not come into a gentleman’s house and soak him and his possessions in this way, I beg of you!”

“Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe,” said the ghost, in a gurgling voice, “you don’t know what you are talking about. You do not know that I am compelled to haunt this place year after year by my terrible fate. It is no pleasure for me to enter this house, and ruin everything I touch. I never aspired to be a shower bath, but it is my doom. Do you know who I am?”

“No, I don’t,” returned the master of Harrowby. “I should say you were the Lady of the Lake!”

“No, I am the Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall, and I have held this highly unpleasant office for two hundred years tonight.”

“How the deuce did you ever come to get elected?” asked the master.

“Through a mistake,” replied the specter. “I am the ghost of that fair maiden whose picture hangs over the mantelpiece in the drawing-room.”

“But what made you get the house into such a spot?”

“I was not to blame, sir,” returned the lady. “It was my father’s fault. He built Harrowby Hall, and the room I haunt was to have been mine. My father had it furnished in pink and yellow, knowing well that blue and gray was the only combination of colors I could bear. He did it to spite me, and I refused to live in the room. Then my father said that I could live there or on the lawn, he didn’t care which. That night I ran from the house and jumped over the cliff into the sea.”

“That was foolish,” said the master of Harrowby.

“So I’ve heard,” returned the ghost, “but I really never realized what I was doing until after I was drowned. I had been drowned a week when a sea nymph came to me. She informed me that I was to be one of her followers, and that my doom was to haunt Harrowby Hall for one hour every Christmas Eve throughout the rest of eternity. I was to haunt that room on such Christmas Eves as I found it occupied; and if it should turn out not to be occupied, I was to spend that hour with the head of the house.”

“I’ll sell the place.”

“That you cannot do, for then I must appear to any purchaser, and reveal to him the awful secret of the house.”

“Do you mean to tell me that on every Christmas Eve that I don’t happen to have somebody in that guest-chamber, you are going to haunt me wherever I may be, taking all the curl out of my hair, putting out my fire, and soaking me through to the skin?” demanded the master.

“Yes, Oglethorpe. And what is more,” said the water ghost, “it doesn’t make the slightest difference where you are. If I find that room empty, wherever you may be I shall douse you with my spectral pres…”

Here the clock struck one, and immediately the ghost faded away. It was perhaps more a trickle than a fading, but as a disappearance it was complete.

“By St. George and his Dragon!” cried the master of Harrowby, “I swear that next Christmas there’ll be someone in the spare room, or I spend the night in a bathtub.”

But when Christmas Eve came again the master of Harrowby was in his grave. He never recovered from the cold he caught that awful night. Harrowby Hall was closed, and the heir to the estate was in London. And there to him in his apartment came the water ghost at the appointed hour. Being younger and stronger, however, he survived the shock. Everything in his rooms was ruined—his clocks were rusted; a fine collection of watercolor drawings was entirely washed out. And because the apartments below his were drenched with water soaking through the floors, he was asked by his landlady to leave the apartment immediately.

The story of his family’s ghost had gone about; no one would invite him to any party except afternoon teas and receptions, and fathers of daughters refused to allow him to remain in their houses later than eight o’clock at night.

So the heir of Harrowby Hall determined that something must be done.

The thought came to him to have the fireplace in the room enlarged, so that the ghost would evaporate at its first appearance. But he remembered his father’s experience with the fire. Then he thought of steam pipes. These, he remembered, could lie hundreds of feet deep in water, and still be hot enough to drive the water away in vapor. So the haunted room was heated by steam to a withering degree.

The scheme was only partially successful. The water ghost appeared at the specified time, but hot as the room was, it shortened her visit by no more than five minutes in the hour. And during this time the young master was a nervous wreck, and the room itself was terribly cracked and warped. And worse than this, as the last drop of the water ghost was slowly sizzling itself out on the floor, she whispered that there was still plenty of water where she came from, and that next year would find her as exasperatingly saturating as ever.

It was then that, going from one extreme to the other, the heir of Harrowby hit upon the means by which the water ghost was ultimately conquered, and happiness came once more to the house of Oglethorpe.

The heir provided himself with a warm suit of fur underclothing. Wearing this with the furry side in, he placed over it a tight-fitting rubber garment like a jersey. On top of this he drew on another set of woolen underclothing, and over this was a second rubber garment like the first. Upon his head he wore a light and comfortable diving helmet; and so clad, on the following Christmas Eve he awaited the coming of his tormentor.

It was a bitterly cold night that brought to a close this twenty-fourth day of December. The air outside was still, but the temperature was below zero. Within all was quiet; the servants of Harrowby Hall awaited with beating hearts the outcome of their master’s campaign against his supernatural visitor.

The master himself was lying on the bed in the haunted room, dressed as he had planned and then…

The clock clanged out the hour of twelve.

There was a sudden banging of doors. A blast of cold air swept through the halls. The door leading into the haunted chamber flew open, a splash was heard, and the water ghost was seen standing at the side of the heir of Harrowby. Immediately from his clothing there streamed rivulets of water, but deep down under the various garments he wore he was as dry and warm as he could have wished. “Ha!” said the young master of Harrowby, “I’m glad to see you.”

“You are the most original man I’ve met, if that is true,” returned the ghost. “May I ask where did you get that hat?”

“Certainly, madam,” returned the master, courteously. “It is a little portable observatory I had made for just such emergencies as this. But tell me, is it true that you are doomed to follow me about for one mortal hour—to stand where I stand, to sit where I sit?”

“That is my happy fate,” returned the lady.

“We’ll go out on the lake,” said the master, starting up.

“You can’t get rid of me that way,” returned the ghost. “The water won’t swallow me up; in fact, it will just add to my present bulk.”

“Nevertheless,” said the master, “we will go out on the lake.”

“But my dear sir,” returned the ghost, “it is fearfully cold out there. You will be frozen hard before you’ve been out ten minutes.”

“Oh, no, I’ll not,” replied the master. “I am very warmly dressed. Come!” This last in a tone of command that made the ghost ripple.

And they started.

They had not gone far before the water ghost showed signs of distress.

“You walk too slowly,” she said. “I am nearly frozen. I beg you, hurry!”

“I should like to oblige a lady,” returned the master courteously, “but my clothes are rather heavy, and a hundred yards an hour is about my speed. Indeed, I think we had better sit down on this snowdrift, and talk matters over.”

“Do not! Do not do so, I beg!” cried the ghost. “Let us move on. I feel myself growing rigid as it is. If we stop here, I shall be frozen stiff.”

“That, madam,” said the master slowly, seating himself on an ice cake… “that is why I have brought you here. We have been on this spot just ten minutes; we have fifty more. Take your time about it, madam, but freeze. That is all I ask of you.”

“I cannot move my right leg now,” cried the ghost, in despair, “and my overskirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a fire, and let me go free from these icy fetters.”

“Never, madam. It cannot be. I have you at last.”

“Alas!” cried the ghost, a tear trickling down her frozen cheek. “Help me, I beg, I congeal!”

“Congeal, madam, congeal!” returned Oglethorpe coldly. “You are drenched and have drenched me for two hundred and three years, madam. Tonight, you have had your last drench.”

“Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then you’ll see. Instead of the comfortably warm, genial ghost I have been in the past, sir, I shall be ice water,” cried the lady, threateningly.

“No, you won’t either,” returned Oglethorpe; “for when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there shall you remain an icy work of art forever more.”

“But warehouses burn.”

“So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fireproof walls, and within those walls the temperature is now and shall be 416 degrees below the zero point; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world—or the next,” the master added, with a chuckle.

“For the last time I beseech you. I would go on my knees to you, Oglethorpe, if they were not already frozen. I beg of you do not doo…”

Here even the words froze on the water ghost’s lips and the clock struck one. There was a momentary tremor throughout the icebound form, and the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the rigid figure of a beautiful woman sculptured in clear, transparent ice. There stood the ghost of Harrowby Hall, conquered by the cold, a prisoner of all time.

The heir of Harrowby had won at last, and today in a large storage house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe and sea-water.

THE PARLOR-CAR GHOST,

by A Lady

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

All draped with blue denim—the seaside cottage of my friend, Sara Pyne. She asked me to go there with her when she opened it to have it set in order for the summer. She confessed that she felt a trifle nervous at the idea of entering it alone. And I am always ready for an excursion. So much blue denim rather surprised me, because blue is not complimentary to Sara’s complexion—she always wears some shade of red, by preference. She perceived my wonder; she is very near-sighted, and therefore sees everything by some sort of sixth sense.

“You do not like my portieres and curtains and table-covers,” said she. “Neither do I. But I did it to accommodate. And now he rests well in his grave, I hope.”

“Whose grave, for pity’s sake?”

“Mr. J. Billington Price’s.”

“And who is he? He doesn’t sound interesting.”

“Then I will tell you about him,” said Sara, taking a seat directly in front of one of those curtains. “Last autumn I was leaving this place for New York, traveling on the fast express train known as the Flying Yankee. Of course, I thought of the Flying Dutchman and Wagner’s musical setting of the uncanny legend, and how different things are in these days of steam, etc. Then I looked out of the window at the landscape, the horizon that seemed to wheel in a great curve as the train sped on. Every now and then I had an impression at the ‘tail of the eye’ that a man was sitting in a chair three or four numbers in front of me on the opposite side of the car. Each time that I saw this shape I looked at the chair and ascertained that it was unoccupied. But it was an odd trick of vision. I raised my lorgnette, and the chair showed emptier than before. There was nobody in it, certainly. But the more I knew that it was vacant the more plainly I saw the man. Always with the corner of my eye. It made me nervous. When passengers entered the car I dreaded lest they might take that seat. What would happen if they should? A bag was put in the chair—that made me uncomfortable. The bag was removed at the next station. Then a baby was placed in the seat. It began to laugh as though someone had gently tickled it. There was something odd about that chair—thirteen was its number. When I looked away from it the impression was strong upon me that some person sitting there was watching me.

“Really, it would not do to humor such fancies. So I touched the electric button, asked the porter to bring me a table, and taking from my bag a pack of cards, proceeded to divert myself with a game of patience. I was puzzling where to put a seven of spades. ‘Where can it go?’ I murmured to myself. A voice behind me prompted: ‘Play the four of diamonds on the five, and you can do it.’ I started. The only occupants of the car, besides me, were a bridal couple, a mother with three little children, and a typical preacher of one of the straitest sects. Who had spoken? ‘Play up the four, madam,’ repeated this voice.

“I looked fearfully over my shoulder. At first I saw a bluish cloud, like cigar smoke, but inodorous. Then the vision cleared, and I saw a young man whom I knew by a subtle intuition to be the occupant, seen and not seen, of chair number thirteen. Evidently he was a traveling salesman—and a ghost. Of course, a drummer’s ghost sounds ridiculous—they’re so extremely alive! Or else you would expect a dead drummer to be particularly dead and not ‘walk.’ This was a most commonplace-looking ghost, cordial, pushing, businesslike. At the same time, his face had an expression of utter despair and horror which made him still more preposterous. Of course it is not nice to let a stranger speak to one, even on so impersonal a topic as a four of diamonds. But a ghost—there can’t be any rule of etiquette about talking with a ghost! My dear, it was dreadful! That forward creature showed me how to play all the cards, and then begged me to lay them out again, in order that he might give me some clever points. I was too much amazed and disturbed to speak. I could only place the cards at his suggestion. This I did so as not to appear to be listening to the empty air, and be supposed to be a crazy woman. Presently the ghost spoke again, and told me his story.

“‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I have been riding back and forth on this car ever since February 22, 189—. Seven months and eleven days. All this time I have not exchanged a word with anyone. For a drummer, that is pretty hard, you may believe! You know the story of the Flying Dutchman? Well, that is very nearly my case. A curse is upon me and will not be removed until some kind soul—. But I’m getting ahead of my text. That day there were four of us, traveling for different houses. One of the boys was in wool, one in baking powder, one in boots and shoes, and myself in cotton goods. We met on the road, took seats together and fell into talking shop.

“‘Those fellows told big lies about their sales, Washington’s Birthday though it was. The baking powder man raised the amount of the bills of goods which he had sold better than a whole can of his stuff could have done. I admitted the straight truth, that I had not yet been able to make a sale. And then I swore—not in a light-minded, chipper style of verbal trimmings, but a great, round, heaven-defying oath—that I would sell a case of blue denims on that trip if it took me forever. We became dry with talk, and when the train stopped at Rivermouth, we went out to have some beer. It is good there, you know—pardon me, I forgot that I was speaking to a lady. Well, we had to run to get aboard. I missed my footing, fell under the wheels, and the next thing that I knew they were holding an inquest over my remains; while I, disemboweled, was sitting on a corner of the undertaker’s table, wondering which of the coroner’s jury was likely to want a case of blue denims.

“‘Then I remembered my wicked oath, and understood that I was a soul doomed to wander until I could succeed in selling that bill of goods. I spoke once or twice, offering the denims under value, but nobody noticed me. Verdict: accidental death; negligence of deceased; railroad corporation not to blame; deceased got out for beer at his own risk. The other drummers took charge of the remains, and wrote a beautiful letter to my relatives about my social qualities and my impressive conversation. I wish it had been less impressive that time! I might have lied about my sales, or I might have said that I hoped for better luck. But after that oath there was nothing for it. Back and forth, back and forth, on this road, in chair number thirteen, to all eternity. Nobody suspects my presence. They sit on my knees—I’m playing in luck when it is a nice baby as it was this afternoon! They pile wraps, bags, even railway literature on me. They play cards under my nose—and what duffers some of them are! You, madam, are the first person who has perceived me; and therefore I ventured to speak to you, meaning no offense. I can see that you are sorry for me. Now, if you recall the story of the Flying Dutchman, he was saved by the charity of a good woman. In fact, Senta married him. Now I’m not asking anything of that size. I see that you wear a wedding ring, and no doubt you make some man’s happiness. I wasn’t a marrying man myself, and, naturally, am not a marrying ghost. And that has nothing to do with the matter anyway. But if you could—I don’t suppose you would have any use for them—but if you were disposed to do a turn of good, solid, Christian charity—I should be everlastingly grateful, and you may have that case of denims at $72.50. And that quality is quoted today at $80. Does it go, madam?’

“The speech of the poor ghost was not very eloquent, but his eyes had an intense, eager glare, which was terrible. Something—pity, fear, I do not know what—compelled me. I decided to do without that white and gold evening cloak. Instead, I gave $72.50 to the ghost and took from him a receipt for the sum, signed J. Billington Price. Then he smiled contentedly, thanked me with emotion, and returned to chair number thirteen. Several times on the journey, although I did not perceive him again, I felt dazed. When the train arrived at New York, and I, with the other passengers, dismounted, it seemed to me that a strong hand passed under my elbow, steadying me down the steps. As I walked the length of the station my bag—not heavy at any time—appeared to become weightless. I believe that the parlor-car ghost walked beside me, carrying the bag, whose handle still remained in my other hand. Indeed, once or twice I thought I felt the touch of cold fingers against mine. Since then I have no reason to suppose that the poor ghost is not at rest. I hope he is.

“But I never expected nor wished for the blue denims. The next day, however, a dray belonging to a great wholesale house backed up to our door and delivered a case of denims, with a receipted bill for the same. What was I to do? I could not go about selling blue denims; I could not give them away without exciting comment. So I furnished the cottage with them—and you know the effect on my complexion. Pity me, dear! And credit me, frivolous woman as I am, with having saved a soul at the expense of my own vanity. My story is told. What do you think about it?”

THE THIRTEENTH BOAT,

by George J. Rawlins

Originally published in Strange Stories, April 1940.

I’ve never seen a ghost—properly speaking. As I take it, a ghost is a disembodied spirit, or maybe an animated corpse, or perhaps a Zombie, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen either. But you have to believe in a lot of things you don’t really see—like the wind in that jib sail, say. You don’t see the wind, yet you know it’s there. If you knew nothing about wind, and saw its effect only once in a lifetime, you’d call it supernatural!

Maybe it was something like that with Jesse Autrey and Anabelle Tate. Never heard of anybody meeting up with the ghost of either of them. They’re both dead and properly buried by now, over on the mainland, and I reckon they’ll stay that way! But there was a time when Anabelle— Well, what I mean to say is that when fifteen or twenty men all see the same thing at the same time, and there’s no reasonable way to account for what they see, it sort of gets you to wondering.

It was this way—to begin at the beginning. Less than a dozen families lived on Pelican Key, and in a little settlement like that everybody knows everybody else’s business. So it wasn’t any secret that Jesse was going to marry Anabelle as soon as he could buy a boat of his own.

Jesse operated a little ketch which somebody let him have on shares, and you don’t get rich fishing when you have to divide the profits. It was a small, seaworthy boat, name Kingfisher, but the auxiliary had gone haywire and couldn’t be depended on. Jesse relied mostly on his sails.

We didn’t have any strict organization on Pelican Key. By common consent, old Cap’n Ludberry sort of managed things. We pooled our catch, and he bargained with the run-boats that brought us ice down from Miami and bought our fish.

We fished beyond the outer reef in the edge of the Gulf Stream, and generally stayed in sight of each other. In the afternoon we’d all come in together. If Jesse’s motor quit on him—which it usually did—he’d be left behind and get in after dark.

When that happened, especially if the weather was squally, Anabelle would cross the mangroves to the beach on the ocean side of the island, and swing a lantern to guide Jesse in! It wasn’t at all necessary, but she liked to do it and he got a big kick out of it. Of course we kidded him a lot, and got to calling her the “Lantern Girl.”

Then came that hurricane of two summers ago. We knew about it several days before, but the fish were running and the price was right, so we went out every day. It certainly seemed safe enough! The radio reported on the storm every three hours. We could follow its path on the chart and were ready to run if it turned our way.

The morning of the day that the strange thing happened that nobody could explain—though they saw them with their own eyes—the weather looked fine and the barometer stood at 29.90. The hurricane had worked up through the Bahamas to a point east of us. Everybody predicted it would keep on going northward and miss us entirely. We felt as safe as we’d ever felt when we left Pelican Key that morning.

The fishing was the best I’ve ever seen and we were making a real haul. We kept following the schools farther and farther out into the Stream. About noon, the wind dropped, but by the middle of the afternoon it began to blow a little out of the northwest.

I stopped hauling in fish long enough to look around me, and saw Cap’n Ludberry’s boat high-tailing it for shore with the old man’s shirt flying from the masthead. One glance at the sky was enough! I pulled my lines and followed him with my six cylinders wide-open.

We rounded Pelican Key and ran into the lagoon just as it began to blow in dead earnest. For the next half-hour everybody worked like mad putting out hurricane moorings and tightening down everything aboard. At last my boat was snug, and I crawled into my cabin. Not until then did I have time to wonder about Jesse, and if he’d made it to the key with the Kingfisher.

That’s all I could do—wonder. For after a hurricane strikes there’s nothing much you can do but stay put. That is, if the thing you’re holding onto doesn’t get up and leave you! So I rode it out aboard my boat.

The hurricane had suddenly moved shoreward. The center passed to the north of us, so we caught the west wind in the southern half of it, blowing straight out to sea.…

Not until the wind died the next morning could we get out to check up on the damage. It was plenty!

Then we discovered that Jesse hadn’t made it! He and the Kingfisher were missing—had never reached the lagoon!

When I went ashore, Anabelle’s folks were carrying her in from the beach. They’d forbidden her to go out in such weather, but she slipped from the house after dark. With the wind behind her she had crossed the Key to the beach on the ocean side, in an effort to show her lantern and guide Jesse in! An impossible job!

The lantern got smashed and she lost it. She couldn’t get back home against that wind, and got pretty badly banged up! How she managed to live through it, out there all night in the open with tree limbs flying through the air, is by me!

Well, we notified the Coast Guard about Jesse. They searched the area with planes and asked ships in the vicinity to look for him. It seemed almost useless for us to go looking for him, too, but we did. That offshore wind might have blown him clear to the Bahamas, if the Kingfisher hadn’t gone down, so we covered the sea as best we could all the way to Andros Island. All we found was part of a cabin roof which we thought belonged to the Kingfisher!

As time went on, hope for Jesse died. A fishing ketch can ride out most any squall, but a hurricane’s a different thing! There wasn’t a chance in a hundred that his boat hadn’t swamped. Still, he might have been picked up by some ship without radio, bound for the Lord knows where.

By the time Anabelle recovered from that night on the beach, people began saying her mind was affected. A lot of gossip among the women, I thought. But it wasn’t! She knew Jesse was dead, yet wouldn’t admit it even to herself!

She would talk to you about Jesse like he’d come back any day, and tell you all the things they were going to do. Then if you mentioned any other subject she would just stare off into space and didn’t even hear you.

As soon as she was able, she started going back to the beach every evening with a lantern. Her folks tried to talk her out of it, but it wasn’t any use. I tell you it was pitiful—her waiting and longing, and waving that lantern for Jesse, dead sure he would come back to her.

Whenever we’d come in after dark we’d see her lantern swinging along the beach. It got to be right spooky! Gave you kind of a creepy feeling! Boats from other keys saw it, too, and pretty soon everybody knew about the “Lantern Girl.” The name we had given her in that laughing way wasn’t funny anymore.

It was so pitiful it kind of squeezed your heart. Then one night Anabelle didn’t come home.

They found her sitting on the beach leaning against a palm stump, her new lantern beside her. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her eyes were wide-open staring out to sea—where Jesse had gone! She was stone dead! She’d been dead quite a while.… But her lantern still burned!

They buried Anabelle on the mainland. Maybe I oughtn’t say it, but I found it quite a relief not to see her lantern swinging to and fro on the black shoreline every time you brought your boat in after dark!

That was in the late fall. Winter tourists began to arrive. The Keys are pretty busy in tourist season, what with sports fishermen coming down and millionaires’ luxury yachts basking in our winter sunshine. As usual, some of us painted up our boats and left Pelican Key. We shaved every day, put on yacht uniforms and went into charterboat service for the winter months.

In the spring, as tourist business went slack we drifted back to commercial fishing, and old Cap’n Ludberry welcomed us again to Pelican Key.

By then, Anabelle had become just a legend to most of us.

That was a trying summer. Hot and still, with lots of nasty weather between times. And then something happened that was eerie enough in itself, even if you wasn’t squeamish. But it wasn’t a patch on what was coming.

I forget now who first saw the thing but it happened on an afternoon when we ran in ahead of a stiff squall. One of the fellows had motor trouble, and came in after dark, looking kind of pale around the gills. He was pretty mad, too, of two minds whether to have the shivers about what he’d seen, or to jump whoever had been playing a pretty gruesome joke on him.

“Who waved that lantern down on the beach?” was the first thing he asked.

Nobody, as far as we knew, and it was some time before he would believe it. Then finally he admitted it looked awfully like Anabelle’s lantern.

Well, sir, we kidded him high about that. Told him a lightning bug had scared him. But if we’d had any slightest idea of what was coming our laughs might have been more like the soundless ones of grinning skulls.

The same thing happened again several times that summer. Always to different people, and always during bad weather. A few of us still laughed about it, and the rest just tried to. Things like that have a way of sticking in your mind, and a man doesn’t spend his life on the open sea where he’s pretty close to the stars and the wide ocean that just seems to go on and on without coming to think a lot of things might happen that plenty of folks would never believe could happen.

It must have been close to a year since Jesse had been lost in the Kingfisher, that my boat went on the ways with a broken rudder. While waiting shipment of parts, I helped Cap’n Ludberry on his boat. We were fishing farther out than usual when a big squall began making up. Ludberry signaled the other boats and we started for shore.

“Course this ain’t no hurricane,” he said to me, “but the weather looks just like it did a year ago when we lost Jesse.”

Funny! Neither of us had mentioned Jesse, but I’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

That squall came up in no time. The wind hit us long before we reached the reef. Inside the reef is shallow water, and three miles of narrow channel with coral bottom on either side. No place to be in a blow, when you can’t see twenty yards through the rain.

The wind had risen to a gale in no time. Ludberry saw the rain would catch us in the channel if we kept on our course, so he circled back out to sea, all the other boats following, and headed into the storm. Better to ride it out in deep water than risk ripping a bottom on the coral.

That was some blow! The wind came straight out of the east, and lasted until after dark.

Then it was over as suddenly as it started. Squalls are like that down here.

We had already run up our lights, and when the rain stopped I spotted the lights of several of our boats. When we crossed the reef and entered the channel it looked like the whole fleet was following us.

“Count ’em up,” said Cap’n Ludberry. “Ought to be twelve boats, counting us.”

I counted as we rounded an elbow in the channel. “Thirteen,” I said.

“Can’t be,” said Ludberry, and he named them off. “Take the wheel while I count ’em.”

“Thirteen’s right!” he said, after a while.

There was something in his voice that made you shiver as hard as knowing there was thirteen boats—and deep down inside you knowing who was steering that extra boat. Though you wouldn’t have said a word about that to save your life. You just knew somehow. That was enough. And it made your tongue stick tight to the roof of your mouth, and feel like you didn’t have anything but water in your veins. It was that spooky.

“Must have picked up a stranger somewheres,” Ludberry said, calmly, but you could tell easy he didn’t feel so calm.

We said no more about it then, for Pelican Key loomed black ahead of us.

Then something caught my eye and I just about stopped breathing. It filled in with this other thing that already had my skin crawling and my heart in my mouth.

First time I’d seen the thing! Along the shore of Pelican Key a light was moving. A light like somebody waving a lantern! Anabelle’s lantern?

I’d laughed at the other fellows for getting scared of a speck of light a mile away. I didn’t laugh now! I had a feeling like a trickle of ice water was running down my back. When Ludberry spoke, right at my elbow, I’d of jumped out of my shoes if I hadn’t been barefooted!

“Do you see what I do?” he asked, and I’d never heard Ludberry’s voice sound so shaky and uncertain, ever before.

I swallowed hard. “Cap’n, it—it’s Anabelle’s light.”

“It’s some darn fool playing a trick on us,” said the old man. He was trying to convince himself—I could see that—but wasn’t making such a good job of it. For from the looks of his eyes, if ever a man was seeing ghosts, Cap’n Ludberry was.

I hoped he was right, though, and said so. Ludberry swallowed hard.

“I’m going to find out who it is,” Ludberry said, kinda tight and anxious, though, “and wring his neck.”

He knew who was holding that lantern just as well as I did—but neither one of us would admit that it was Anabelle. Why, she was lying quiet in her grave over the mainland, and how could she—

As we rounded Pelican Key, the light still waved. I watched it till the mangrove trees on the point of the island hid the beach from sight, and I got an idea that sure enough there was something about that light that sure wasn’t like any light that ever was in this world.

* * *

We slipped into the lagoon and tied up in a hurry. The other boats came in close behind us. I counted them again. In fact, I counted them several times. Twelve! Only twelve! Had another boat come in with the fleet, and then somehow disappeared? Because there wasn’t a chance in the world that Cap’n Ludberry and I hadn’t seen and counted thirteen boats outside!

Everybody was talking at once about Anabelle’s light. No laughing now! They had all seen it. Every man in every boat!

“Quick, some of you fellows,” Cap’n Ludberry shouted in the darkness. “Grab flashlights and come with me. We’re going over to the beach and look into this!”

It took some doing, and I’ll admit my own knees were shaking, but anyhow all of us went.

Well, sir, nobody was playing a joke on us! That is, I’m as sure as I ever was of anything in my life that nobody was. We didn’t find anybody on the beach. Or properly speaking, what I mean to say is we didn’t find any living person there!

What we did find was the weather-beaten wreck of a boat. Her paint was peeling. Both masts had been broken off short. The low, forward cabin had its roof blown away. Obviously an old derelict washed ashore in the squall—yet there was something very familiar about the lines of her. Was this the thirteenth boat?

Across the stern we could still make out the name—you guessed it—Kingfisher!

In the open cockpit, half covered by sun-bleached clothing which the birds had torn to ribbons, lay the chalk-white skeleton of Jesse Autrey!

A few yards back on the beach—not buried in the sand, but laying like someone had dropped it there—we found a battered and rusty old lantern. The lantern Anabelle had lost the night of the hurricane!

We buried all that was left of Jesse in a grave beside Anabelle.

* * *

A good many months have passed, but no one since then has seen a ghostly light waving on stormy nights along the beach of Pelican Key. I’m pretty certain nobody ever will see it again!

No, I’ve never seen a ghost. Unless a dancing light that might be a firefly could be called a ghost. But as I said before, you’ve got to believe in a lot of things you don’t really see!

THE RETURN OF YEN-TCHIN-KING,

by Lafcadio Hearn

Before me ran, as a herald runneth, the Leader of the Moon;

And the Spirit of the Wind followed after me,—quickening his flight.

—Li-Sao

Taken from Some Chinese Ghosts (1886).

In the thirty-eighth chapter of the holy book, Kan-ing-p’ien, wherein the Recompense of Immortality is considered, may be found the legend of Yen-Tchin-King. A thousand years have passed since the passing of the good Tchin-King; for it was in the period of the greatness of Thang that he lived and died.

Now, in those days when Yen-Tchin-King was Supreme Judge of one of the Six August Tribunals, one Li-hi-lié, a soldier mighty for evil, lifted the black banner of revolt, and drew after him, as a tide of destruction, the millions of the northern provinces. And learning of these things, and knowing also that Hi-lié was the most ferocious of men, who respected nothing on earth save fearlessness, the Son of Heaven commanded Tchin-King that he should visit Hi-lié and strive to recall the rebel to duty, and read unto the people who followed after him in revolt the Emperor’s letter of reproof and warning. For Tchin-King was famed throughout the provinces for his wisdom, his rectitude, and his fearlessness; and the Son of Heaven believed that if Hi-lié would listen to the words of any living man steadfast in loyalty and virtue, he would listen to the words of Tchin-King. So Tchin-King arrayed himself in his robes of office, and set his house in order; and, having embraced his wife and his children, mounted his horse and rode away alone to the roaring camp of the rebels, bearing the Emperor’s letter in his bosom. “I shall return; fear not!” were his last words to the gray servant who watched him from the terrace as he rode.

* * *

And Tchin-King at last descended from his horse, and entered into the rebel camp, and, passing through that huge gathering of war, stood in the presence of Hi-lié. High sat the rebel among his chiefs, encircled by the wave-lightning of swords and the thunders of ten thousand gongs: above him undulated the silken folds of the Black Dragon, while a vast fire rose bickering before him. Also Tchin-King saw that the tongues of that fire were licking human bones, and that skulls of men lay blackening among the ashes. Yet he was not afraid to look upon the fire, nor into the eyes of Hi-lié; but drawing from his bosom the roll of perfumed yellow silk upon which the words of the Emperor were written, and kissing it, he made ready to read, while the multitude became silent. Then, in a strong, clear voice he began:

“The words of the Celestial and August, the Son of Heaven, the Divine Ko-Tsu-Tchin-Yao-ti, unto the rebel Li-Hi-lié and those that follow him.”

And a roar went up like the roar of the sea,—a roar of rage, and the hideous battle-moan, like the moan of a forest in storm,—“Hoo! hoo-oo-oo-oo!”—and the sword-lightnings brake loose, and the thunder of the gongs moved the ground beneath the messenger’s feet. But Hi-lié waved his gilded wand, and again there was silence. “Nay!” spake the rebel chief; “let the dog bark!” So Tchin-King spake on:

“Knowest thou not, O most rash and foolish of men, that thou leadest the people only into the mouth of the Dragon of Destruction? Knowest thou not, also, that the people of my kingdom are the first-born of the Master of Heaven? So it hath been written that he who doth needlessly subject the people to wounds and death shall not be suffered by Heaven to live! Thou who wouldst subvert those laws founded by the wise,—those laws in obedience to which may happiness and prosperity alone be found,—thou art committing the greatest of all crimes,—the crime that is never forgiven!

“O my people, think not that I your Emperor, I your Father, seek your destruction. I desire only your happiness, your prosperity, your greatness; let not your folly provoke the severity of your Celestial Parent. Follow not after madness and blind rage; hearken rather to the wise words of my messenger.”

“Hoo! hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo!” roared the people, gathering fury. “Hoo! hoo-oo-oo-oo!”—till the mountains rolled back the cry like the rolling of a typhoon; and once more the pealing of the gongs paralyzed voice and hearing. Then Tchin-King, looking at Hi-lié, saw that he laughed, and that the words of the letter would not again be listened to. Therefore he read on to the end without looking about him, resolved to perform his mission in so far as lay in his power. And having read all, he would have given the letter to Hi-lié; but Hi-lié would not extend his hand to take it. Therefore Tchin-King replaced it in his bosom, and folding his arms, looked Hi-lié calmly in the face, and waited. Again Hi-lié waved his gilded wand; and the roaring ceased, and the booming of the gongs, until nothing save the fluttering of the Dragon-banner could be heard. Then spake Hi-lié, with an evil smile,—

“Tchin-King, O son of a dog! if thou dost not now take the oath of fealty, and bow thyself before me, and salute me with the salutation of Emperors,—even with the luh-kao, the triple prostration,—into that fire thou shalt be thrown.”

But Tchin-King, turning his back upon the usurper, bowed himself a moment in worship to Heaven and Earth; and then rising suddenly, ere any man could lay hand upon him, he leaped into the towering flame, and stood there, with folded arms, like a God.

Then Hi-lié leaped to his feet in amazement, and shouted to his men; and they snatched Tchin-King from the fire, and wrung the flames from his robes with their naked hands, and extolled him, and praised him to his face. And even Hi-lié himself descended from his seat, and spoke fair words to him, saying: “O Tchin-King, I see thou art indeed a brave man and true, and worthy of all honor; be seated among us, I pray thee, and partake of whatever it is in our power to bestow!”

But Tchin-King, looking upon him unswervingly, replied in a voice clear as the voice of a great bell,—

“Never, O Hi-lié, shall I accept aught from thy hand, save death, so long as thou shalt continue in the path of wrath and folly. And never shall it be said that Tchin-King sat him down among rebels and traitors, among murderers and robbers.”

Then Hi-lié in sudden fury, smote him with his sword; and Tchin-King fell to the earth and died, striving even in his death to bow his head toward the South,—toward the place of the Emperor’s palace,—toward the presence of his beloved Master.

* * *

Even at the same hour the Son of Heaven, alone in the inner chamber of his palace, became aware of a Shape prostrate before his feet; and when he spake, the Shape arose and stood before him, and he saw that it was Tchin-King. And the Emperor would have questioned him; yet ere he could question, the familiar voice spake, saying:

“Son of Heaven, the mission confided to me I have performed; and thy command hath been accomplished to the extent of thy humble servant’s feeble power. But even now must I depart, that I may enter the service of another Master.”

And looking, the Emperor perceived that the Golden Tigers upon the wall were visible through the form of Tchin-King; and a strange coldness, like a winter wind, passed through the chamber; and the figure faded out. Then the Emperor knew that the Master of whom his faithful servant had spoken was none other than the Master of Heaven.

Also at the same hour the gray servant of Tchin-King’s house beheld him passing through the apartments, smiling as he was wont to smile when he saw that all things were as he desired. “Is it well with thee, my lord?” questioned the aged man. And a voice answered him: “It is well”; but the presence of Tchin-King had passed away before the answer came.

* * *

So the armies of the Son of Heaven strove with the rebels. But the land was soaked with blood and blackened with fire; and the corpses of whole populations were carried by the rivers to feed the fishes of the sea; and still the war prevailed through many a long red year. Then came to aid the Son of Heaven the hordes that dwell in the desolations of the West and North,—horsemen born, a nation of wild archers, each mighty to bend a two-hundred-pound bow until the ears should meet. And as a whirlwind they came against rebellion, raining raven-feathered arrows in a storm of death; and they prevailed against Hi-lié and his people. Then those that survived destruction and defeat submitted, and promised allegiance; and once more was the law of righteousness restored. But Tchin-King had been dead for many summers.

And the Son of Heaven sent word to his victorious generals that they should bring back with them the bones of his faithful servant, to be laid with honor in a mausoleum erected by imperial decree. So the generals of the Celestial and August sought after the nameless grave and found it, and had the earth taken up, and made ready to remove the coffin.

But the coffin crumbled into dust before their eyes; for the worms had gnawed it, and the hungry earth had devoured its substance, leaving only a phantom shell that vanished at touch of the light. And lo! as it vanished, all beheld lying there the perfect form and features of the good Tchin-King. Corruption had not touched him, nor had the worms disturbed his rest, nor had the bloom of life departed from his face. And he seemed to dream only,—comely to see as upon the morning of his bridal, and smiling as the holy images smile, with eyelids closed, in the twilight of the great pagodas.

Then spoke a priest, standing by the grave: “O my children, this is indeed a Sign from the Master of Heaven; in such wise do the Powers Celestial preserve them that are chosen to be numbered with the Immortals. Death may not prevail over them, neither may corruption come nigh them. Verily the blessed Tchin-King hath taken his place among the divinities of Heaven!”

Then they bore Tchin-King back to his native place, and laid him with highest honors in the mausoleum which the Emperor had commanded; and there he sleeps, incorruptible forever, arrayed in his robes of state. Upon his tomb are sculptured the emblems of his greatness and his wisdom and his virtue, and the signs of his office, and the Four Precious Things: and the monsters which are holy symbols mount giant guard in stone about it; and the weird Dogs of Fo keep watch before it, as before the temples of the gods.

THE SPECTRE OF TAPPINGTON,

by Thomas Ingoldsby

Originally published in Ingoldsby’s Legends (1840).

“It is very odd, though; what can have become of them?” said Charles Seaforth, as he peeped under the valance of an old-fashioned bedstead, in an old-fashioned apartment of a still more old-fashioned manor-house; “’tis confoundedly odd, and I can’t make it out at all. Why, Barney, where are they?—and where the devil are you?”

No answer was returned to this appeal; and the lieutenant, who was, in the main, a reasonable person,—at least as reasonable a person as any young gentleman of twenty-two in “the service” can fairly be expected to be,—cooled when he reflected that his servant could scarcely reply extempore to a summons which it was impossible he should hear.

An application to the bell was the considerate result; and the footsteps of as tight a lad as ever put pipe-clay to belt sounded along the gallery.

“Come in!” said his master.—An ineffectual attempt upon the door reminded Mr Seaforth that he had locked himself in.—“By Heaven! this is the oddest thing of all,” said he, as he turned the key and admitted Mr Maguire into his dormitory.

“Barney, where are my pantaloons?”

“Is it the breeches?” asked the valet, casting an inquiring eye round the apartment;—“is it the breeches, sir?”

“Yes; what have you done with them?”

“Sure then your honour had them on when you went to bed, and it’s hereabout they’ll be, I’ll be bail;” and Barney lifted a fashionable tunic from a cane-backed arm-chair, proceeding in his examination. But the search was vain: there was the tunic aforesaid,—there was a smart-looking kerseymere waistcoat; but the most important article of all in a gentleman’s wardrobe was still wanting.

“Where can they be?” asked the master, with a strong accent on the auxiliary verb.

“Sorrow a know I knows,” said the man.

“It must have been the devil, then, after all, who has been here and carried them off!” cried-Seaforth, staring full into Barney’s face.

Mr Maguire was not devoid of the superstition of his countrymen, still he looked as if he did not quite subscribe to the sequitur.

His master read incredulity in his countenance. “Why, I tell you, Barney, I put them there, on that arm-chair, when I got into bed; and, by Heaven! I distinctly saw the ghost of the old fellow they told me of, come in at midnight, put on my pantaloons, and walk away with them.

“May be so,” was the cautious reply.

“I thought, of course, it was a dream; but then,—where the devil are the breeches?”

The question was more easily asked than answered. Barney renewed his search, while the lieutenant folded his arms, and, leaning against the toilet, sunk into a reverie.

“After all, it must be some trick of my laughter-loving cousins,” said Seaforth.

“Ah! then, the ladies!” chimed in Mr Maguire, though the observation was not addressed to him; “and will it be Miss Caroline, or Miss Fanny, that’s stole your honour’s things?”

“I hardly know what to think of it,” pursued the bereaved lieutenant, still speaking in soliloquy, with his eye resting dubiously on the chamber-door. “I locked myself in, that’s certain; and—but there must be some other entrance to the room—pooh! I remember—the private staircase; how could I be such a fool?” and he crossed the chamber to where a low oaken doorcase was dimly visible in a distant corner. He paused before it. Nothing now interfered to screen it from observation; but it bore tokens of having been at some earlier period concealed by tapestry, remains of which yet clothed the walls on either side the portal.

“This way they must have:come,” said Seaforth; “I wish with all my heart I had caught them!”

“Och! the kittens!” sighed Mr Barney Maguire.

But the mystery was yet as far from being solved as before. True, there was the “other door;” but then that, too, on examination, was even more firmly-secured than the one which opened on the gallery,—two heavy bolts on the inside effectually prevented any coup de main on the lieutenant’s bivouac from that quarter. He was more puzzled than ever; nor did the minutest inspection of the walls and floor throw any light upon the subject! one thing only was clear,—the breeches were gone! “It is very singular,” said the lieutenant.

* * *

Tappington (generally called Tapton) Everard is an antiquated but commodious manor-house in the eastern division of the county of Kent. A former proprietor had been High-sheriff in the days of Elizabeth, and many a dark and dismal tradition was yet extant of the licentiousness of his life, and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper’s daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly as of yore; while an ineradicable bloodstain on the oaken stair yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is with one particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is said to be connected. A stranger guest—so runs the legend—arrived unexpectedly at the mansion of the “Bad Sir Giles.” They met in apparent friendship; but the ill-concealed scowl on their master’s brow told the domestics that the visit was not a welcome one; the banquet, however, was not spared; the wine-cup circulated freely,—too freely, perhaps,—for sounds of discord at length reached the ears of even the excluded serving-men as they were doing their best to imitate their betters in the lower hall. Alarmed, some of them ventured to approach the parlour; one, an old and favoured retainer of the house, went so far as to break in upon his master’s privacy. Sir Giles, already high in oath, fiercely enjoined his absence, and he retired; not, however, before he had distinctly heard from the stranger’s lips a menace that “There was that within his pocket which could disprove the knight’s right to issue that or any other command within the walls of Tapton.”

The intrusion, though momentary, seemed to have produced a beneficial effect; the voices of the disputants fell, and the conversation was carried on thenceforth in a more subdued tone, till, as evening closed in, the domestics, when summoned to attend with lights, found not only cordiality restored, but that a still deeper carouse was meditated. Fresh stoups, and from the choicest bins, were produced; nor was it till at a late, or rather early hour, that the revellers sought their chambers.

The one allotted to the stranger occupied the first floor of the eastern angle of the building, and had once been the favourite apartment of Sir Giles himself. Scandal-ascribed this preference to the facility which a private staircase, communicating with the grounds, had afforded him, in the old knight’s time, of following his wicked courses unchecked by parental observation; a consideration which ceased to be of weight when the death of his father left him uncontrolled master of his estate and actions. From that period Sir Giles had established himself in what were called the “state apartments;” and the “oaken chamber” was rarely tenanted, save on occasions of extraordinary festivity, or when the yule log drew an unusually large accession of guests around the Christmas hearth.

On this eventful night it was prepared for the unknown visitor, who sought his couch heated and inflamed from his midnight orgies, and in the morning was found in his bed a swollen and blackened corpse. No marks of violence appeared upon the body; but the livid hue of the lips, and certain dark-coloured spots visible on the skin, aroused suspicions which those who entertained them were too timid to express. Apoplexy, induced by the excesses of the preceding night, Sir Giles’s confidential leech pronounced to be the cause of his sudden dissolution; the body was buried in peace; and though some shook their heads as they witnessed the haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of the retainers; men’s minds became occupied by the stirring politics of the day, while the near approach of that formidable armada, so vainly arrogating to itself a title which the very elements joined with human valour to disprove, soon interfered to weaken, if not obliterate, all remembrance of the nameless stranger who had died within the walls of Tapton Everard.

Years rolled on: the “Bad Sir Giles” had—himself long since gone to his account, the last, as it was believed, of his immediate line; though a few of the older tenants were sometimes heard to speak of an elder brother, who had disappeared in early life, and never inherited the estate. Rumours, too, of his having left a son in foreign lands were at one time rife: but they died away, nothing occurring to support them: the property passed unchallenged to a collateral branch of the family, and the secret, if secret there were, was buried in Denton churchyard, in the lonely grave of the mysterious stranger. One circumstance alone occurred, after a long-intervening period, to revive the memory of these transactions. Some workmen employed in grubbing an old plantation, for the purpose of raising on it site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the execution of their task, the mill-dewed remnants of what seemed to have been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of silken slashes and a coarse embroidery to identify the relics as having once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned rustics conveyed to the then owner of the estate.

Whether the squire was more successful in deciphering them was never known; he certainly never alluded to their contents; and little would have been thought of the matter but for the inconvenient memory of one old woman, who declared she heard her grandfather say that when the “stranger guest” was poisoned, though all the rest of his clothes were there, his breeches, the supposed repository of the supposed documents, could never be found. The master of Tapton Everard smiled when he heard Dame Jones’s hint of deeds which might impeach the validity of his own title in favour of some unknown descendant of some unknown heir; and the story was rarely alluded to, save by one or two miracle-mongers, who had heard that others had seen the ghost of old Sir Giles, in his night-cap, issue from the postern, enter the adjoining copse, and wring his shadowy hands in agony, as he seemed to search vainly for something hidden among the evergreens. The stranger’s death-room had, of course, been occasionally haunted from the time of his decease; but the periods of visitation had latterly became very rare,—even Mrs Botherby, the house-keeper, being forced to admit that, during her long sojourn at the manor, she had never “met with anything worse than herself;” though, as the old lady afterwards added upon more mature reflection, “I must say I think I saw the devil once.”

Such was the legend attached to Tapton Everard, and such the story which the lively Caroline Ingoldsby detailed to her equally mercurial cousin Charles Seaforth, lieutenant in the Hon. East India Company’s second regiment of Bombay Fencibles, as arm-in-arm they promenaded a gallery decked with some dozen grim-looking ancestral portraits, and, among others, with that of the redoubted Sir Giles himself. The gallant commander had that very morning paid his first visit to the house of his maternal uncle, after an absence of several years passed with his regiment on the arid plains of Hindostan, whence he was now returned on a three years’ furlough. He had gone out a boy, he—returned a man, but the impression made upon his youthful fancy by his favourite cousin remained unimpaired, and to Tapton he directed his steps, even before he sought the home of his widowed mother,—comforting himself in this breach of filial decorum by the reflection that, as the manor was so little out of his way, it would be unkind to pass, as it were, the door of his relatives without just looking in for a few hours.

But he found his uncle as hospitable and his cousin more charming than ever, and the looks of one, and the requests of the other, soon precluded the possibility of refusing to lengthen the “few hours” into a few days, though the house was at the moment full of visitors.

The Peterses were there from Ramsgate; and Mr, Mrs, and the two Miss Simpkinsons, from Bath, had come to pass a month with the family; and Tom Ingoldsby had brought down his college friend the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin, with his groom and pointers, to take a fortnight’s shooting. And then there was Mrs Ogleton, the rich young widow, with her large black eyes, who, people did say, was setting her cap at the young squire, though Mrs Botherby did not believe it; and, above all, here was Mademoiselle Pauline, her femme de chambre, who “mon Dieu’d” everything and everybody, and cried, Quel horreur!” at Mrs Botherby’s cap. In short, to use the last-named and much-respected lady’s own expression, the house was “choke-full” to the very attics,—all, save the “oaken chamber,” which, as the lieutenant expressed a most magnanimous disregard of ghosts, was forthwith appropriated to his particular accommodation. Mr Maguire meanwhile was fain to share the apartment of Oliver Dobbs, the squire’s own man: a jocular proposal of joint occupancy having been first indignantly rejected by “Mademoiselle,” though preferred with the “laste taste in life” of Mr Barney’s most insinuating brogue.

* * *

“Come, Charles, the urn is absolutely getting cold; your breakfast will be quite spoiled: what can have made you so idle?” Such was the morning salutation of Miss Ingoldsby to the militaire as he entered the breakfast-room half an hour after the latest of the party.

“A pretty gentleman, truly, to make an appointment with,” chimed in Miss Frances. “What is become of our ramble to the rocks before breakfast?”

“Oh! the young men never think of keeping a promise now,” said Mrs Peters, a little ferret-faced woman with underdone eyes.

“When I was a young man,” said Mr Peters, “I remember I always made a point of—”

“Pray how long ago was that?” asked Mr Simpkinson from Bath.

“Why, sir, when I married Mrs Peters, I was—let me see—I was—”

“Do pray hold your tongue, P., and eat your breakfast!” interrupted his better half, who had a mortal horror of chronological references; it’s very rude to tease people with your family-affairs.”

The lieutenant had by this time taken his seat in silence—a good-humoured nod, and a glance, half-smiling, half-inquisitive, being the extent of his salutation. Smitten as he was, and in the immediate presence of her who had made so large a hole in his heart, his manner was evidently distrait, which the fair Caroline in her secret soul attributed to his being solely occupied by her agrémens,—how would she have bridled had she known that they only shared his meditations with a pair of breeches!

Charles drank his coffee and spiked some half-dozen eggs, darting occasionally a penetrating glance at the ladies, in hope of detecting the supposed waggery by the evidence of some furtive smile or conscious look. But in vain; not dimple moved indicative of roguery, nor did the slightest elevation of eyebrow rise confirmative of his suspicions. Hints and insinuations passed unheeded,—more particular inquiries were out of the question—the subject was unapproachable.

In the meantime, “patent cords” were just the thing for a morning’s ride; and, breakfast ended, away cantered the party over the downs, till, every faculty absorbed by the beauties, animate and inanimate, which surrounded him, Lieutenant Seaforth of the Bombay Fencibles bestowed no more thought upon his breeches than if he had been born the top of Ben Lomond.

Another night had passed away; the sun rose brilliantly, forming with his level beams a splendid rainbow in the far off west, whither the heavy cloud, which for the last two hours had been pouring its waters on the earth, was now flying before him.

“Ah! then, and it’s little good it’ll be the claning of ye,” apostrophised Mr Barney Maguire, as he deposited, in front of his master’s toilet, a pair of “bran-new” jockey boots, one of Hoby’s primeest fits, which the lieutenant had purchased in his way through town. On that very morning had they come for the first time under the valet’s depuriating hand, so little soiled, indeed, from the turfy ride of the preceding day, that a less scrupulous domestic might, perhaps, have considered the application of “Warren’s Matchless,” or oxalic acid, altogether superfluous. Not so Barney: with the nicest care had he removed the slightest impurity from each polished surface and there they stood, rejoicing in their sable radiance. No wonder a pang shot across Mr Maguire’s breast, as he thought on the work now cut out for them, so different from the light labours of the day before, no wonder he murmured with a sigh, as the scarce-dried window-panes disclosed a road now inch-deep in mud, “Ah! then, it’s little good the claning of ye!”—for well had he learned in the hall below that eight miles of a stiff clay soil lay between the Manor and Bolsover Abbey, whose picturesque ruins,

“Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay,”

the party had determined to explore. The master-had already commenced dressing, and the man was fitting straps upon a light pair of crane-necked spurs, when his hand was arrested by the old question, “Barney, where are the breeches?”

They were nowhere to be found!

* * *

Mr Seaforth descended that morning, whip in hand, and equipped in a handsome green riding-frock, but no “breeches and boots to match” were there: loose jean trowsers, surmounting a pair of diminutive Wellingtons, embraced, somewhat incongruously, his nether man, vice the “patent cords,” returned, like yesterday’s pantaloons, absent without leave. The “top-boots” had a holiday.

“A fine morning after the rain,” said Mr Simpkinson from Bath.

“Just the thing for the ’ops,” said Mr Peters. “I remember when I was a boy—”

“Do hold your tongue, P.,” said Mrs Peters, advice which that exemplary matron was in the constant habit of administering to “her P.,” as she called him, whenever he prepared to vent his reminiscences. Her precise reason for this it would be difficult to determine, unless, indeed, the story be true which a little bird had whispered into Mrs Botherby’s ear,—Mr Peters, though now a wealthy man, had received a liberal education at a charity-school and was apt to recur to the days of his muffin cap and leathers. As usual, he took his wife’s hint in good part, and “paused in his reply.”

“A glorious day for the ruins!” said young Ingoldsby. “But, Charles, what the deuce are you about?—you don’t mean to ride through our lanes in such toggey as that?”

“Lassy me!” said Miss Julia Simpkinson, “won’t you be very wet?”

“You had better take Tom’s cab,” quoth the squire.

But this proposition was at once overruled; Mrs Ogleton had already nailed the cab, a vehicle of all others the best adapted for a snug flirtation.

“Or drive Miss Julia in the phaeton?” No; that was the post of Mr Peters, who, indifferent as an equestrian, had acquired some fame as a whip while travelling through the midland counties for the firm of Bagshaw, Snivelby, and Ghrimes.

“Thank you, I shall ride with my cousins,” said Charles, with as much nonchalance as he could assume,—and he did so; Mr Ingoldsby, Mrs Peters, Mr Simpkinson from Bath, and his eldest daughter with her album, following in the family coach. The gentleman-commoner “voted the affair damned slow, and declined the party altogether in favour of the gamekeeper and a cigar. “There was ‘no fun’ in looking at old houses!” Mrs Simpkinson preferred a short séjour in the still-room with Mrs Botherby, who had promised to initiate her in that grand arcanum, the transmutation of gooseberry jam into Guava jelly.

* * *

“Did you ever see an old abbey before, Mr Peters?”

“Yes, miss, a French one; we have got one at Ramsgate; he teaches the Miss Joneses to parley-voo, and is turned of sixty.”

Miss Simpkinson closed her album with an air of ineffable disdain.

Mr Simpkinson from Bath was a professed antiquary and one of the first water; he was master of Gwillim’s Heraldry, and Milles’s History of the Crusades; knew every plate the Monasticon; had written an essay on the origin and dignity of the office of overseer, and settled the date of a Queen Anne’s farthing. An influential member of the Antiquarian Society, to whose “Beauties of Bagnigge Wells” he had been a liberal subscriber, procured him a seat at the board of that learned body, since which happy epoch Sylvanus Urban had not a more indefatigable correspondent. His inaugural essay on the President’s cocked hat was considered a miracle of erudition: and his account of the earliest application of gilding to gingerbread, a masterpiece of antiquarian research. His eldest daughter was of a kindred spirit: if her father’s mantle had not fallen upon her, it was only because he had not thrown it off himself; she had caught hold of its tail, however, while it yet hung upon his honoured shoulders. To souls so congenial, what a sight was the magnificent ruin of Bolsover! its broken arches, its mouldering pinnacles, and the airy tracery of its half-demolished windows. The party were in raptures; Mr Simpkinson began to meditate an essay, and his daughter an ode: even Seaforth, as he gazed on these lonely relics of the olden time, was betrayed into a momentary forgetfulness of his love and losses; the widow’s eye-glass turned from her cicisbeo’s whiskers to the mantling ivy: Mrs Peters wiped her spectacles; and “her P.” supposed the central tower “had once been the county jail.” The squire was a philosopher, and had been there often before, so he ordered out the cold tongue and chickens.

“Bolsover Priory,” said Mr Simpkinson, with the air of a connoisseur,—“Bolsover Priory was founded in the reign of Henry the Sixth, about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition undertaken by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was enfeoffed in the lands and manor, to which he gave his own name of Bowlsover, or Bee-owls-over (by corruption Bolsover),—a Bee in chief, over three Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne by this distinguished crusader at the siege of Acre.”

“Ah! that was Sir Sidney Smith,” said Mr Peters; “I’ve heard tell of him, and all about Mrs Partington, and—”

“P., be quiet, and don’t expose yourself!” sharply interrupted his lady. P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout.

“These lands,” continued the antiquary, “were held in grand serjeantry by the presentation of three white owls and a pot of honey—”

“Lassy me! how nice!” said Miss Julia. Mr Peters licked his lips.

“Pray give me leave, my dear—owls and honey, whenever the king should come a rat-catching into this part of the country.”

“Rat-catching!” ejaculated the squire, pausing abruptly in the mastication of a drumstick.

“To be sure, my dear sir: don’t you remember that rats once came under the forest law—a minor species of venison? ‘Rats and mice, and such small deer,’ eh?—Shakspear, you know. Our ancestors ate rats (“The nasty fellows!” shuddered Miss Julia in a parenthesis); and owls, you now, are capital mousers—”

“I’ve seen a howl,” said Mr Peters; “there’s one in the Sohological Gardens,—a little hook-nosed chap in a wig,—only its feathers and—”

Poor P. was destined never to finish a speech.

“Do be quiet!” cried the authoritative voice, and the would-be naturalist shrank into his shell, like a snail in the “Sohological Gardens.”

“You should read Blount’s ‘Jocular Tenures,’ Mr Ingoldsby,” pursued Simpkinson. “A learned man was Blount! Why, sir, his Royal Highness the Duke of York once paid a silver horse-shoe to Lord Ferrers—”

“I’ve heard of him,” broke in the incorrigible Peters; “he was hanged at the old Bailey in a silk rope for shooting Dr Johnson.”

The antiquary vouchsafed no notice of the interruption; but, taking a pinch of snuff, continued his harangue.

“A silver horse-shoe, sir, which is due from every scion of royalty who rides across one of his manors; and if you look into the penny county histories, now publishing by an eminent friend of mine, you will find that Langhale in Co. Norf. was held by one Baldwin per saltum sufflatum, et pettem; that is, he was to come every Christmas into Westminster Hall, there to take a leap, cry hem! and—”

“Mr Simpkinson, a glass of sherry?” cried Tom Ingoldsby, hastily.

“Not any, thank you, sir. This Baldwin, surnamed Le—”

“Mrs Ogleton challenges you, sir; she insists upon it,” said Tom, still more rapidly; at the same time filling a glass, and forcing it on the sçavant, who, thus arrested in the very crisis of his narrative, received and swallowed the potation as if it had been physic.

“What on earth has Miss Simpkinson discovered there?” continued Tom; “something of interest. See how fast she is writing.”

The diversion was effectual: every one looked towards Miss Simpkinson, who, far too ethereal for “creature comforts,” was seated apart on the dilapidated remains of an altar-tomb, committing eagerly to paper something that had strongly impressed her: the air,—the eye “in a fine frenzy rolling,”—all betokened that the divine afflatus was come. Her father rose, and stole silently towards her.

“What an old boar!” muttered young Ingoldsby; alluding, perhaps, to a slice of brawn which he had just begun to operate upon, but which, from the celerity with which it disappeared, did not seem so very difficult of mastication.

But what had become of Seaforth and his fair Caroline all this while? Why, it so happened that they had been simultaneously stricken with the picturesque appearance of one of those high and pointed arches, which that eminent antiquary, Mr Horseley Curties, has described in his “Ancient Records” as “a Gothic window of the Saxon order;”—and then the ivy clustered so thickly and so beautifully on the other side, that they went round to look at that;—and then their proximity deprived it of half its effect, and so they walked across to a little knoll, a hundred yards off, and in crossing a small ravine, they came to what in Ireland they call a “bad step,” and Charles had to carry his cousin over it,—and then, when they had to come back, she would not give him the trouble again for the world, so they followed a better but more circuitous route and there were hedges and ditches in the way, and stiles to get over, and gates to get through; so that an hour or more had elapsed before they were able to rejoin the party.

“Lassy me!” said Miss Julia Simpkinson, “how long you have been gone!”

And so they had. The remark was a very just as well as a very natural one. They were gone a long while, and a nice cosey chat they had; and what do you think it was all about, my dear miss?

“O, lassy me! love, no doubt, and the moon, and eyes, and nightingales, and—”

Stay, stay, my sweet young lady; do not let the fervour of your feelings run away with you! I do not pretend to say, indeed, that one or more of these pretty subjects might not have been introduced; but the most important and leading topic of the conference was—Lieutenant Seaforth’s breeches.

“Caroline,” said Charles, “I have had some very odd dreams since I have been at Tappington.”

“Dreams, have you?” smiled the young lady, arching her taper neck like a swan in pluming. “Dreams, have you?”

“Ay, dreams,—or dream, perhaps, I should say; for, though repeated, it was still the same. And what do you imagine was its subject?”

“It is impossible for me to divine,” said the tongue;—“I have not the least difficulty in guessing,” said the eye, as plainly as ever eye spoke.

“I dreamt—of your great grandfather!”

There was a change in the glance—“My great grandfather?”

“Yes, the old Sir Giles, or Sir John, you told me about the other day: he walked into my bedroom in his short, cloak of murrey-coloured velvet, his long rapier, and his Raleigh-looking hat and feather, just as the picture represents him: but with one exception.”

“And what was that?”

“Why, his lower extremities, which were visible, were—those of a skeleton.”

“Well.”

“Well, after taking a turn or two about the room, and looking round him with a wistful air, he came to the bed’s foot, stared at me in a manner impossible to describe,—and then he—he laid hold of my pantaloons; whipped his long bony legs into them in a twinkling; and strutting up to the glass, seemed to view himself in it with great complacency. I tried to speak, but in vain. The effort, however, seemed to excite his attention; for, wheeling about, he showed me the grimmest-looking death’s head you can well imagine, and with an indescribable grin strutted out of the room.”

“Absurd! Charles. How can you talk such nonsense?”

“But, Caroline,—the breeches are really gone.”

* * *

On the following morning, contrary to his usual custom, Seaforth was the first person in the breakfast parlour. As no one else was present, he did precisely what nine young men out of ten so situated would have done; he walked up to the mantel-piece, established himself upon the rug, and subducting his coat-tails one under each arm, turned towards the fire that portion of the human frame which it is considered equally indecorous to present to a friend or enemy. A serious, not to say anxious, expression was visible upon his good-humoured countenance, and his mouth was fast buttoning itself up for an incipient whistle when little Flo, a tiny spaniel of the Blenheim breed,—the-: pet object of Miss Julia Simpkinson’s affections, bounced from beneath a sofa, and began to bark at—his pantaloons.

They were cleverly “built,” of a light grey mixture, a broad stripe of the most vivid scarlet traversing each seam in a perpendicular direction from hip to ankle,—in short, the regimental costume of the Royal Bombay Fencibles. The animal, educated in the country, had never seen such a pair of breeches in her life—Omne ignotum pro magnifico! The scarlet streak, inflamed as it was by the reflection of the fire, seemed to act on Flora’s nerves as the same colour does on those of bulls and turkeys; she advanced at the pas de charge, and her vociferation, like her amazement, was unbounded. A sound kick from the disgusted officer changed its character, and induced a retreat at the very moment when the mistress of the pugnacious quadruped entered to the rescue.

“Lassy me! Flo! what is the matter?” cried the sympathising lady, with a scrutinising glance levelled at the gentleman.

It might as well have lighted on a feather bed.—His air of imperturbable unconsciousness defied examination; and as he would not, and Flora could not expound, that injured individual was compelled to pocket up her wrongs. Others of the household soon dropped in, and clustered round the board dedicated to the most sociable of meals; the urn was paraded “hissing hot,” and the cups which “cheer, but not inebriate,” steamed redolent of hyson and pekoe; muffins and marmalade, newspapers and Finnon haddies, left little room for observation on the character of Charles’s warlike “turn-out.” At length a look from Caroline, followed by a smile that nearly ripened to a titter, caused him to turn abruptly and address his neighbour. It was Miss Simpkinson, who, deeply engaged in sipping her tea and turning over her album, seemed, like a female Chrononotonthologos, “immersed in cogibundity of cogitation.” An interrogatory on the subject of her studies drew from her the confession that she was at that moment employed in putting the finishing touches to a poem inspired by the romantic shades of Bolsover. The entreaties of the company were of course urgent. Mr Peters, “who liked verses,” was especially persevering, and Sappho at length compliant. After a preparatory hem! and a glance at the mirror to ascertain that her look was sufficiently sentimental, the poetess began:

“There is a calm, a holy feeling,

Vulgar minds can never know,

O’er the bosom softly stealing—

“Chasten’d grief, delicious woe!

Oh! how sweet at eve regaining

Yon lone tower’s sequester’d shade—

Sadly mute and uncomplaining—”

Yow!—yeough!—yeough!—yow!—yow! yelled a hapless sufferer from beneath the table.—It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if “every dog will have his day,” he could not have selected a more unpropitious one than this. Mrs Ogleton, too, had a pet,—a favourite pug,—whose squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow! continued the brute,—a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to say, pug had more reason to express his dissatisfaction than was given him by the muse of Simpkinson; the other only barked for company. Scarcely had the poetess got through her first stanza, when Tom Ingoldsby, in the enthusiasm of the moment, became so lost in the material world, that, in his abstraction, he unwarily laid his hand on the cock of the urn. Quivering with emotion, he gave it such an unlucky twist, that the full stream of its scalding contents descended on the gingerbread hide of the unlucky Cupid.—The confusion was complete;—the whole economy of the table disarranged;—the company broke up most admired disorder;—and “Vulgar minds will never know” anything more of Miss Simpkinson’s ode till they peruse it in some forthcoming Annual.

Seaforth profited by the confusion to take the delinquent who had caused this “stramash” by the arm, and to lead him to the lawn, where he had a word or two for his private ear. The conference between the young gentlemen was neither brief in its duration nor unimportant in its result. The subject was what the lawyers call tripartite, embracing the information that Charles Seaforth was over head and ears in love with Tom Ingoldsby’s sister; secondly, that the lady had referred him to “papa” for his sanction; thirdly and lastly, his nightly visitations, and consequent bereavement. At the two first items Tom smiled auspiciously; at the last he burst out into an absolute “guffaw.”

“Steal your breeches!—Miss Bailey over again, by Jove,” shouted Ingoldsby. “But a gentleman, you say,—and Sir Giles too.—I am not sure, Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honour of the family.”

“Laugh as you will, Tom,—be as incredulous as you please. One fact is incontestible,—the breeches are gone! Look here—I am reduced to my regimentals, and if these go, tomorrow I must borrow of you!”

Rochefoucault says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us—assuredly we can, most of us, laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them. Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity, as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within hearing, might have cost him five shillings.

“There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say, have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick, and, ten to one, your servant has a hand in it. By the way, I heard something yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in the plot.”

It now struck the lieutenant at once, that the usually buoyant spirits of his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually rung his bell several times that very morning before he could procure his attendance. Mr Maguire was forthwith summoned, and underwent a close examination. The “bobbery” was easily-explained. Mr Oliver Dobbs hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying on between the gentleman from Minster and the lady from the Rue St Honoré. Mademoiselle had boxed Mr Maguire’s ears, and Mr Maguire had pulled Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady had not cried Mon Dieu! And Mr Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong; and Mrs Botherby said it was “scandalous,” and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen; and Mr Maguire had got hold of the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin’s powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best double Dartford into Mr Dobbs’s tobacco-box;—and Mr Dobbs’s pipe had exploded, and set fire to Mrs Botherby’s Sunday cap;—and Mr Maguire had put it out with the slop-basin, “barring the wig”;—and then they were all so “cantankerous,” that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then—then Mr Barney had seen a ghost!

“A what? you blockhead!” asked Tom Ingoldsby.

“Sure then, and it’s meself will tell your honour the rights of it,” said the ghost-seer. “Meself and Miss Pauline, sir, or Miss Pauline and meself, for the ladies comes first anyhow, we got tired of the hobstroppylous skrimmaging among the ould servants, that didn’t know a joke when they seen one: and we went out to look at the comet,—that’s the rory-bory-alehouse, they calls him in this country,—and we walked upon the lawn—and divil of any alehouse there was there at all; and Miss Pauline said it was because of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn’t we see it better beyonst the trees?—and so we went to the trees, but sorrow a comet did meself see there, barring a big ghost instead of it.”

“A ghost? And what sort of a ghost, Barney?”

“Och, then, divil a lie I’ll tell your honour. A tall ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch in his fist,—though what he wanted with that it’s meself can’t tell, for his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn’t there at all,—and ‘Barney,’ says he to me,—’cause why he knew me,—‘Barney,’ says he, ‘what is it you’re doing with the colleen there, Barney?’—Divil a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched, and cried murther in French, and ran off with herself; and of course meself was in a mighty hurry after the lady, and had no time to stop palavering with him any way; so I dispersed at once, and the ghost vanished in a flame of fire!”

Mr Maguire’s account was received with avowed incredulity by both gentlemen; but Barney stuck to his text with unflinching pertinacity. A reference to Mademoiselle was suggested, but abandoned, as neither party had a taste for delicate investigations.

“I’ll tell you what, Seaforth,” said Ingoldsby, after Barney had received his dismissal, “that there is a trick here, is evident; and Barney’s vision may possibly be a part of it. Whether he is most knave or fool, you best know. At all events, I will sit up with you tonight and see if I can convert my ancestor into a visiting acquaintance. Meanwhile your finger on your lip!”

“’Twas now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead.”

Gladly would I grace my tale with decent horror, and therefore I do beseech the “gentle reader” to believe, that if all the succedanea to this mysterious narrative are not in strict keeping, he will ascribe it only to the disgraceful innovations of modern degeneracy upon the sober and dignified habits of our ancestors. I can introduce him, it is true, into an old and high-roofed chamber, its walls covered on three sides with black oak wainscotting, adorned with carvings of fruit and flowers long anterior to those of Grinling Gibbons; the fourth side is clothed with a curious remnant of dingy tapestry, once elucidatory of some Scriptural history, but of which not even Mrs Botherby could determine. Mr Simpkinson, who had examined it carefully, inclined to believe the principal figure to be either Bathsheba, or Daniel in the lions’ den; while Tom Ingoldsby decided in favour of the King of Bashan. All, however, was conjecture, tradition being silent on the subject.—A lofty arched portal led into, and a little arched portal led out of, this apartment; they were opposite each other, and each possessed the security of massy bolts on its interior. The bedstead, too, was not one of yesterday, but manifestly coeval with days ere Seddons was, and, when a good four-post “article” was deemed worthy of being a royal bequest. The bed itself, with all the appurtenances of palliasse, mattresses, etc., was of far later date, and looked most incongruously comfortable; the casements, too, with their little diamond-shaped panes and iron binding, had given way to the modern heterodoxy of the sash-window. Nor was this all that conspired to ruin the costume, and render the room a meet haunt for such “mixed spirits” only as could condescend to don at the same time an Elizabethan doublet and Bond Street inexpressibles.

With their green morocco slippers on a modern fender in front of a disgracefully modern grate, sat two young gentlemen, clad in “shawl pattern” dressing gowns and black silk stocks, much at variance with the high cane-backed chairs which supported them. A bunch of abomination, called a cigar, reeked in the left-hand corner of the mouth of one, and in the right-hand corner of the mouth of the other;—an arrangement happily adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the chimney, without that unmerciful “funking” each other, which a less scientific disposition of the weed would have induced. A small pembroke table filled up the intervening space between them, sustaining at each extremity, an elbow and a glass of toddy;—thus in “lonely pensive contemplation” were the two worthies occupied, when the “iron tongue of midnight had tolled twelve.”

“Ghost-time’s come!” said Ingoldsby, taking from his waistcoat pocket a watch like a gold half-crown, and consulting it as though he suspected the turret-clock over the stables of mendacity.

“Hush!” said Charles; “did I not hear a footstep?”

There was a pause—there was a footstep—it sounded distinctly—it reached the door—it hesitated, stopped, and Tom darted across the room, threw open the door, and became aware of Mrs Botherby toddling to her chamber, at the other end of the gallery, after dosing one of the housemaids with an approved, julep from the Countess of Kent’s “Choice Manual.”

“Good night, sir!” said Mrs Botherby.

“Go to the devil!” said the disappointed ghost-hunter.

An hour—two—rolled on, and still no spectral visitation; nor did aught intervene to make night hideous; and when the turret-clock sounded at length the hour of three, Ingoldsby, whose patience and grog were alike exhausted, sprang from his chair, saying,—

“This is all infernal nonsense, my good fellow. Deuce of any ghost shall we see tonight; it’s long past the canonical hour. I’m off to bed; and as to your breeches, I’ll insure them for the next twenty-four hours at least, at the price of the buckram.”

“Certainly.—Oh! thankee;—to be sure!” stammered Charles, rousing himself from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.

“Good-night, my boy! Bolt the door behind me; and defy the Pope, the Devil and the Pretender!—”

Seaforth followed his friend’s advice, and the next morning came down to breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the seams were yet in rerum naturâ, and adorned the person of their lawful proprietor.

Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against self-gratulation before we are quite “out of the wood.”—Seaforth was yet within its verge.

* * *

A rap at Tom Ingoldsby’s door the following morning startled him as he was shaving—he cut his chin.

“Come in, and be damned to you!” said the martyr, pressing his thumb on the scarified epidermis. —The door opened, and exhibited Mr Barney Maguire.

“Well, Barney, what is it?” quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular of his visitant.

“The master, sir—”

“Well, what does he want?”

“The loanst of a breeches, plase your honour.”

“Why, you don’t mean to tell me— By Heaven, this is too good!” shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Why, Barney, you don’t mean to say the ghost has got them again!”

Mr Maguire did not respond to the young squire’s risibility; the cast of his countenance was decidedly serious.

“Faith, then, it’s gone they are, sure enough! Hasn’t meself been looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter of that, and divil a ha’p’orth of breeches is there to the fore at all—I’m bothered entirely!”

“Hark’ee! Mr Barney,” said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and letting a crimson stream “incarnadine the multitudinous” lather that plastered his throat,—“this may be all very well with your master, but you don’t humbug me, sir—tell me instantly what have you done with the clothes?”

This abrupt transition from “lively to severe” certainly took Maguire by surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman’s gentleman.

“Me? is it meself, then, that’s the ghost to your honour’s thinking?” said he, after a moment’s pause, and with a slight shade of indignation in his tones: “is it I would stale the master’s things?—and what would I do with them?”

“That you best know—what your purpose is I can’t guess, for I don’t think you mean to ‘stale’ them, as you call it; but that you are concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this blood!—give me a towel, Barney.”

Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. “As I’ve a sowl, your honour,” said he solemnly, “little it is meself knows of the matter: and after what I seen—”

“What you’ve seen! Why, what have you seen?—Barney, I don’t want to enquire into your flirtations; but don’t suppose you can palm off your saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!”

“Then, as sure as your honour’s standing there I saw him: and why wouldn’t I, when Miss Pauline was to the fore as well as meself, and—”

“Get along with your nonsense, leave the room, sir!”

“But the master?” said Barney imploringly; “and without a breeches?—sure he’ll be catching cowld!—”

“Take that, rascal!” replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons at, rather than to, him: “but don’t suppose, sir, you shall carry on your tricks here with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a tread-mill, and that my father is a county magistrate.”

Barney’s eye flashed fire,—he stood erect, and was about to speak; but, mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.

* * *

“Ingoldsby;” said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, “this is now past a joke; today is the last of my stay; for, notwithstanding the ties which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress left. On his answer will my return depend! In the meantime tell me candidly,—I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend,—am I not a dupe to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in—”

“No, by heaven I Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honour, I am as much mystified as yourself: and if your servant—”

“Not he—if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it.”

“If there be a trick? Why, Charles, do you think—”

“I know not what to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers, nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow.”

“Seaforth!” said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, “I will— But hush! here are the girls and my father.— I will carry off the females, and leave you a clear field with the governor: carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards.”

Tom’s diversion was successful; he carried off the ladies en masse to look at a remarkable specimen of the class Dodecandria Monogynia,—which they could not find—while Seaforth marched boldly up to the encounter, and carried “the governor’s” outworks by a coup de main. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack: suffice it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of Caroline, whom a vain endeavour to spell out the Linnæan name of a daffy-down-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in his own.

“What was the world to them,

Its noise, its nonsense, and its ‘breeches’ all?”

Seaforth was in the seventh heaven; he retired to his room that night as happy as if no such thing as a goblin had ever been heard of, and personal chattels were as well fenced in by law as real property. Not so Tom Ingoldsby: the mystery,—for mystery there evidently was,—had not only piqued his curiosity, but ruffled his temper. The watch of the previous night had been unsuccessful, probably because it was undisguised. Tonight he would “ensconce himself,”—not indeed “behind the arras,”—for the little that remained was, as we have seen, nailed to the wall,—but in a small closet which opened from one corner of the room, and, by leaving the door ajar, would give to its occupant a view of all that might pass in the apartment. Here did the young ghost-hunter take up a position with a good stout sapling under his arm, a full half-hour before Seaforth retired for the night. Not even his friend did he let into his confidence, fully determined that if his plan did not succeed, the failure should be attributed to himself alone.

At the usual hour of separation for the night, Tom saw, from his concealment, the lieutenant enter his room, and after taking a few turns in it, with an expression so joyous as to betoken that his thoughts were mainly occupied by his approaching happiness, proceed slowly to disrobe himself. The coat, the waistcoat, the black silk stock, were gradually discarded. The green morocco slippers were kicked off, and then—ay, and then—his countenance grew grave; it seemed to occur to him all at once that this was his last stake,—nay, that very breeches he had on were not his own,—that tomorrow morning was his last, and that if he lost them— A glance showed that his mind was made up: he replaced the single button he had just subducted, and threw himself upon the bed in a state of transition—half chrysalis, half grub.

Wearily did Tom Ingoldsby watch the sleeper by the flickering light of the night-lamp, till the clock, striking one, induced him to increase the narrow opening which he had left for the purpose of observation. The motion, slight as it was, seemed to attract Charles’s attention; for he raised himself suddenly to a sitting posture, listened for a moment, and then stood upright upon the floor. Ingoldsby was on the point of discovering himself, when, the light, flashing full upon his friend’s countenance, he perceived that, though his eyes were open, “their sense was shut,”—that he was yet under the influence of sleep. Seaforth advanced slowly to the toilet, lit his candle at the lamp that stood on it, then, going back to the bed’s foot, appeared to search eagerly for something which he could not find. —For a few moments he seemed restless and uneasy, walking round the apartment and examining the chairs, till, coming fully in front of a large swing-glass that flanked the dressing-table, he paused, as if contemplating his figure in it. He now returned towards the bed; put on his slippers; and, with cautious and stealthy steps, proceeded towards the little arched doorway that opened on the private staircase.

As he drew the bolt, Tom Ingoldsby emerged from his hiding-place; but the sleep-walker heard him not; he proceeded softly down stairs, followed at a due distance by his friend; opened the door which led out upon the gardens; and stood at once among the thickest of the scrubs, which here clustered round the base of a corner turret, and screened the postern from common observation. At this moment Ingoldsby had nearly spoiled all by making a false step: the sound attracted Seaforth’s attention,—he paused and turned: and as the full moon shed her light directly upon his pale and troubled features, Tom marked, almost with dismay, the fixed and rayless appearance of his eyes:

“There was no speculation in those orbs

That he did glare withal.”

The perfect stillness preserved by his follower seemed to reassure him; he turned aside; and from the midst of a thickset laurustinus, drew forth a gardener’s spade, shouldering which he proceeded with great rapidity into the midst of the shrubbery. Arrived at a certain point where the earth seemed to have been recently disturbed, he set himself heartily to the task of digging, till, having thrown up several shovelfuls of mould, he stopped, flung down his tool, and very composedly began to disencumber himself of his pantaloons.

Up to this moment Tom had watched him with a wary eye: he now advanced cautiously, and, as his friend was busily engaged in disentangling himself from his garment, made himself master of the spade. Seaforth, meanwhile, had accomplished his purpose: he stood for a moment with

“His streamers waving in the wind,”

occupied in carefully rolling up the small-clothes into as compact a form as possible, and all heedless of the breath of heaven, which might certainly be supposed, at such a moment, and in such a plight, to “visit his frame too roughly.”

He was in the act of stooping low to deposit the pantaloons in the grave which he had been digging for them, when Tom Ingoldsby came close behind him, and with the flat side of the spade—

* * *

The shock was effectual,—never again was Lieutenant Seaforth known to act the part of a somnambulist. One by one, his breeches,—his trousers,—his pantaloons,—his silk-net tights,—his patent cords,—his showy greys with the broad red stripe of the Bombay Fencibles were brought to light,—rescued from the grave in which they had been buried, like the strata of a Christmas pie; and, after having been well aired by Mrs Botherby, became once again effective.

The family, the ladies especially, laughed;—the Peterses laughed;—the Simpkinsons laughed;—Barney Maguire cried “Botheration!” and Ma’mselle Pauline,”Ma’mselle Pauline “Mon Dieu!”

Charles Seaforth, unable to face the quizzing which awaited him on all sides, started off two hours earlier than he had proposed—he soon returned, however; and having, at his father-in-law’s request, given up the occupation of Rajah-hunting and shooting Nabobs, led his blushing bride to the altar.

Mr Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged at the Grand Junction Meeting of Sçavans, then congregating from all parts of the known world in the city of Dublin. His essay, demonstrating that the globe is a great custard, whipped into coagulation by whirlwinds, and cooked by electricity,—a little too much baked in the Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the Bog of Allen,—was highly spoken of, and narrowly escaped obtaining a Bridgewater prize.

Miss Simpkinson and her sister acted as bridesmaids on the occasion; the former wrote an epithalamium, and the latter cried “Lassy me!” at the clergyman’s wig.—Some years have since rolled on; the union has been crowned with two or three tidy little offshoots from the family tree of whom Master Neddy is “grandpapa’s darling,” and Mary-Anne mamma’s particular “Sock.” I shall only add that Mr and Mrs Seaforth are living together quite as happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered bodies, very fond, of each other, can possibly do: and, that since the day of his marriage Charles has shown no disposition to jump out of bed, or ramble out of doors o’ nights,—though, from his entire devotion to every wish and whim of his young wife, Tom insinuates that the fair Caroline does still occasionally take advantage of it so far as to “slip on the breeches.”

I HAD A HUNCH, AND…,

by Talmage Powell

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1959.

After a strangely timeless interval, Janet realized she was dead.

She experienced only a little shock, and no fear. Perhaps this was because of the carefree way she had conducted her past life.

She had never felt so free. A thought wave her propulsion, she zipped about the great house, then outside, toward the great, clean, open sky. Above, the stars were ever so bright and beautiful. Below, the lights of the suburban estate where she had been born and reared shone as if to answer the stars.

Janet was delighted with the whole experience. It confirmed some of the beliefs she had held, and it is always nice for one to have one’s beliefs confirmed. It also excited the vivacious curiosity which had always been one of her major traits. And now there were ever so many more things about which to be curious.

She returned to the foyer of the house and looked at her lifeless physical self lying at the base of the wide sweeping stairway.

Whillikers, I was a very good looking hunk of female, she decided. Really I was.

The body at the foot of the stairway was slender, clad in a simple black dinner dress. The wavy mass of black hair had spilled to rest fanwise on the carpet. The soft lovely face was calm—as in innocent dreamless sleep.

Only the awkward twist and weird angle of the slim neck revealed the true nature of the sleep.

A quick ache smote Janet. I must accept things. This—this is really so wonderful, but I do wish I—she—could have had just a little more time…

The great house was silent. Lights blazing on death, on stillness.

* * *

Janet remembered. She had returned unexpectedly to change shoes.

Getting out of the car at the country club, she had snagged the heel of her left shoe and loosened it.

“I’ll only be a little while,” she had promised Cricket and Tom and Blake.

“We’ll wait dinner,” Blake had said, after she’d waved aside his insistence that he drive her home.

At home again, she had reached the head of the stairs when she heard someone in her bedroom.

She’d always possessed a cool nerve. She’d eased down the hallway. He’d been in there. Murgy. Dear old Murgy. Life hadn’t begun without the memory of Murgy. He was ageless. He had worked for the family forever. Murgatroyd had been as much a part of Janet’s life as the house, the giant oaks on the lawn, the car in the garage, over which Murgy lived in his little apartment.

She simply hadn’t understood at first. Crouched in the hallway and peering through the crack of the partially-opened door, she had seen a brand new Murgy. This one had a chill face, but eyes that burned with determination. This one moved with much more deftness and decisiveness than the Murgy she’d always known.

He was stealing her jewelry. He was taking it from the small wall safe and replacing paste replicas. They were excellent replicas. They must have cost Murgy a great deal of money. But whatever the cost, it was pennies compared to the fortune he was slipping under his jacket.

She saw him compare a fake diamond bracelet with the real thing. The fakes were so good, she might have gone for years without knowing a large portion of her inheritance had been replaced by them.

As she saw the genuine diamond bracelet disappear into his pocket, she had gasped his name.

He had responded like a man jerking from a jolt of electricity. Frightened, she had turned, run. He had caught her at the head of the stairs.

She had tried to tell him how much his years of service meant, that she would have given him a chance to explain, a chance to straighten the thing out.

But he had given her no chance. He had pushed savagely at her with both arms. She had fallen, crying out, trying to grab something to break the fall.

She had struck hard. There had been one blinding flash, mingled with pain.

Murgy had followed her down. He had stood looking at her, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. He had listened, and heard no sound.

She had come alone. Everything was all right. Even the heel of her left shoe had come off during her fall.

Murgy’s decision was plain in his face. He would go to his quarters. Let her be discovered. Let her death be considered an accident.

Janet broke away from the study of what had once been her body.

Murgy, you really shouldn’t have done it. There is a balance in the order of things and you have upset it. There is only one way you can restore the balance, Murgy. You must pay for what you have done. Besides, my freedom won’t be complete until you do.

Janet was aware of a presence in the foyer.

Cricket had entered. Cricket and Tom and Blake, wondering why she hadn’t returned, beginning to worry, deciding to see what was keeping her.

A willowy blonde girl, not too intelligent but kind and eager to please, Cricket saw the body at the base of the stairway. She put her fists to her temples and opened her mouth wide.

Janet rushed to her side. In her world of silence, she couldn’t hear Cricket screaming, but she knew that was what she was doing. Cricket’s merry blue eyes were not merry now. They strained against their sockets with a terrible intensity.

Poor Cricket. I’m not in pain, Cricket.

She tried to touch Cricket with the touch of compassion.

Cricket wasn’t aware of this effort, Janet knew instantly. She wasn’t here, as far as Cricket was concerned. She would never again be here for Cricket, or for any of the others.

Blake and Tom were beside Cricket now. Tom was helping her to a deep couch. Blake was taking slow, halting steps toward the body at the foot of the stairs.

Blake kneeled beside the young, dead body. He reached as if he would touch it. Then his hands fell to his sides. He rose, his dark, handsome face pained.

He turned, stumbled to Tom and Cricket. Cricket had subsided into broken sobs. Tom sat with his arms about her shoulders. Shock and fright made the freckles on Tom’s lean, pale face stand out sharply.

They were discussing the discovery. Janet could feel their horror, their sorrow. She could sense it, almost touch it. It was as if she could almost reach the edges of their essence, of their being, with her own essence and being.

Blake was picking up the telephone now. This would be for the doctor.

Before the doctor arrived, Murgy came in. Janet strained toward him. Then she recoiled, as from a thing dark and slimy.

He was speaking. Saying he had heard a scream, no doubt.

Then Blake stepped from in front of Murgy. And Murgy looked toward the stairs.

Cosmic pulsations passed through Janet as she slipped along with Murgy to the body at the stairway.

She could feel the fine control deep within him, the crouching of the dark, slimy thing as, in its wanton determination to survive, it braced the flesh and ordered the brain and arranged the emotions.

The emotions were in such a storm that Janet drew back.

Murgy went to his knees beside the body and wept openly. There was Blake now, helping Murgy to a chair. Everything was so dreadfully out of balance.

She tried to get through to Blake. She strained with the effort. She succeeded only in causing Blake to look at Murgy a little strangely, as if something in Murgy’s grief struck a small discord in Blake.

Blake went to fetch Murgy a glass of water. Janet turned her attention to Cricket and Tom. Tom’s mind was resilient and strong. She battered at the edges of it, but it was too full of other things. Memories. Janet could vaguely sense them. Memories that somehow concerned her and the good times their young crowd had had.

Cricket was simply blank. Shocked beyond thinking.

Janet perched over the front doorway and beheld the scene in its entirety.

Look, people. He did it. Murgy’s a murderer. He mustn’t be allowed to get away with it.

Doctor Roberts came into the house. He spoke briefly with the living and turned toward the dead. He stood motionless for a moment. His grief spread like a black aura all about him. It spread until it had covered the whole room. He had delivered Janet, prescribed for her sniffles, set the arm she’d broken trying to jump a skittish horse during a summer vacation from college. He had sat by her all night the night he’d broken the news to her that her parents had been killed in a plane crash, that now she would have to live in the great house with Murgy and a housekeeper to look after her wants.

She flew to Doctor Roberts, remembering the way the big, square face and white goatee had always symbolized strength and intelligence to her.

You must understand, doctor. It was Murgy. He was ever so lucky; everything worked devilishly for him, my arrival alone, the broken shoe heel.

Then she fell back, appalled. It was as if she had bruisingly struck a solid black wall, the walls of a crypt where Doctor Roberts had shut away a part of himself. She would never reach him, because he didn’t believe. When a man died, he died as a dog or a monkey died. That’s what Doctor Roberts maintained.

Janet moved to a table holding an assortment of potted plants. She studied the activities before her.

She saw Doctor Roberts complete his examination. He talked with Blake. He looked at the broken shoe heel and nodded.

He put a professional eye on Cricket. He reopened his bag, took out a needle, and gave her a shot. Then he spoke with Tom, and Tom took Cricket out.

The doctor was explaining something to Blake. At last, Blake nodded his consent.

Janet felt herself perk up.

Of course, they’ll phone the police. It’s a routine, have-to measure when something like this happens.

She felt the dark, slimy thing in Murgy gather and strengthen itself, felt its evil smugness and confidence.

This was her last chance, Janet knew. The balance simply had to be restored. Otherwise, she was liable to be earth-bound until Murgy, finally, died and a higher justice thus restored the cosmic balance.

But what if they send someone like Doctor Roberts?

The policeman came at last.

He was a big man, had sandy hair and gray eyes and a jaw that looked as if it had been hacked from seasoned oak. His nose had been broken sometime in the past and reposed flagrantly misshapen on his face.

Janet hovered over him.

Look at Murgy!

For Pete’s sake, one second there, when you walked in, it was naked in Murgy’s eyes!

Intent on his job, the policeman walked to the stilled form at the foot of the stairway. He looked at the left shoe, then up the stairs.

After a moment, he walked up the stairs, examined the carpet, the railing. He measured the length of the stairs with his eyes.

Then he came slowly down the stairs.

He paused and looked at the beautiful girlish body.

His compassion came flooding out into the room. Janet felt as if she could ride the edges of it like a buoy.

It was a quiet; unguarded moment for him. Janet threw her will into the effort.

It was Murgy. Look at Murgy, the murderer!

He glanced at Murgy. But then, he glanced at the others too.

He began talking with Doctor Roberts.

Janet stayed close to the policeman.

If she could have met him in life, she knew they would have enjoyed a silent understanding.

I met a lot of people like that. Everybody meets people whom they like or distrust just by a meeting of the eyes.

You re feeling them out forming opinions right now, by looking into their eyes, talking with them, letting the edges of your senses reach out and explore the edges of theirs.

I feel your respect for the doctor.

I feel you recoil now as you talk with Murgy. The dark, slimy thing is deep down, well hidden, but somehow you sense it.

But for Pete’s sake, feeling it isn’t enough. You must pass beyond feeling to realization.

Murgy killed me.

The balance simply has to be restored.

The policeman broke off his talk with Murgy. More official people had arrived. They took photographs. Two of them in white finally carried the body away on a stretcher.

Except for the policeman, the official people went away.

Blake went out. The doctor departed. Murgy was standing with tears in his eyes. The policeman touched Murgy’s shoulder, spoke.

Janet was in the doorway, barring it. But Murgy didn’t know she was there. He went across the lawn, to his apartment over the garage.

Only the policeman was left. He stood with his hat in his hands looking at the spot at the base of the stairs with eyes heavy with sadness.

He was really younger than the rough face and broken nose made him appear.

Young and sad because he had seen beauty dead. Young and sad, and sensitive.

Janet pressed close to him. It’s all right, for me. You understand? There’s no pain. It’s beautiful here—except for the imbalance of Murgy’s act.

It wasn’t an accident. You mustn’t believe that. Murgy did it. You didn’t like him. You sensed something about him.

Think of him! Think only of Murgy!

Don’t leave yet. Ask yourself, are you giving up too easily. Shouldn’t you look further?

He passed his hand through his hair. He seemed to be asking himself a question. He measured the stairway with his eyes.

She could sense the quiet, firm discipline that was in him, the result of training, of years of experience. The result of never ceasing to question, never stopping the mental probe for the unlikely, the one detail out of place.

Yes, yes! You feel something isn’t quite right.

The shoe—if a girl came home to change it, would she go all the way upstairs and then start down again without changing it?

Oh, the question is clear and nettlesome in your mind.

It’s a fine question.

Don’t let it go. Follow it. Think about it.

He stood scratching his jaw. He walked all the way upstairs. Down the hallway. He looked in a couple of rooms, found hers.

In her room, he opened the closet. He looked at the shoes.

He stood troubled. Then he went back to the head of the stairs. Again he measured them with his eyes.

But finally, he shook his head and walked out of the house.

Come back! You must come back!

She couldn’t reach him. She knew he wasn’t coming back. So she perched on the roof of his speeding car as it turned a corner a block away.

He went downtown. He stopped the car in the parking lot at headquarters. He went into the building and entered his office.

Another man was there, an older man. The two talked together for a moment. The older man went out.

The policeman sat down at his desk. He picked up a pen and drew a printed form toward him.

Janet hovered over the desk.

You mustn’t make out the form. You must not write it off as an accident.

Murgy did it.

He started writing.

It was murder.

He wrote a few lines and stopped.

Go get Murgy. He was the only one on the estate when it happened. Can’t you see it had to be Murgy?

He nibbled at the end of the pen.

Think of the shoe. I went up, but I didn’t change shoes.

He ran his finger down his crooked nose. He started writing again.

Okay, bub, if that’s the way you want it, go ahead and finish the report. Call it an accident. But I’m not giving up. I’m sticking with you. I’ll throw Murgy’s name at you so many times you’ll think you’re suffering combat fatigue from being a cop too long.

Ready? Here we go, endlessly, my friend, endlessly. Murgy, Murgy; Murgy Murgymurgymurgy…

He drove home. He showered. He got in bed. He turned the light off.

After a time, he rolled over and punched the pillow. After another interval, he threw back the covers with an angry gesture, turned on the light, sat on the edge of the bed, and smoked a cigarette.

There was a telephone beside the bed and on the phone stand a pad of paper.

While he smoked, he doodled. He drew a spiked heel. He drew the outlines of a house. He wasn’t a very good artist. He looked at the drawing of the house and under it he wrote: “No sign of forced entry. Only that servant around…”

He drew a pair of owlish eyes, and ringed them in black. He added some sharp lines for a face.

Then he ripped off the sheet of paper, wadded it and threw it toward the waste basket. He snubbed out his cigarette, turned off the light for a second time, punched his pillow with a gesture betokening finality, and threw his head against it.

He reached the curtain of sleep. He started through it. Cells relaxing, the barriers began to waver, weaken.

She pressed in close.

MurgymurgymurgyMURGY!

He tossed and pulled the covers snug about his shoulders. Then he threw them off, got out of bed, and snapped on the light.

He was still agitated as he dressed and went out.

* * *

He sat in the dark car for many long minutes, before starting it. He drove aimlessly for a couple of blocks, his mind a pair of millstones grating against themselves. He stopped before a bar and went in.

He sat down at the end of the bar, alone. He had one, two, three drinks. His face was still troubled by nagging questions.

Two more drinks. They didn’t help. The creases deepened in his cheeks.

Janet balanced atop a cognac bottle. Better give Murgy a little more thought. Why not follow him, shadow him? He isn’t resting easy. He’ll want to get rid of those jewels in a shady deal now and be ready to run if the fakes are spotted.

The policeman raised his gaze and looked at the television set over the bar. He stopped thinking about the long stairway, the broken heel, Murgy, and various possibilities. His mind snapped to what he was seeing on the TV set.

A local newscaster with doleful face was talking about her, her death. He was only a two dimensional image and she could sense nothing about him from this point. He was taking considerable time, and she could only guess that he was talking about her background, her family. There were some old newspaper pictures, one taken when she’d been helping raise money for the crippled children’s hospital. She hadn’t wanted any publicity for that, and she wished the newscast were less thorough.

There was a sudden disturbance down the bar. A fat man with a bald head and drink-flushed face was giving the TV set the Bronx cheer.

Janet felt quick displeasure. Really, I was never the rich, degenerated hussy you’re making me out, mister.

The force of the mental explosion back down the bar caused Janet to rise to the ceiling. She saw that the fat man’s exhibition had also disturbed her young policeman. He slammed out of the bar. And he was so mad he started across the street without looking.

Janet became a silent scream.

He looked up just in time to see the taxi hurtle around the corner. He tried to get out of the way. He’d had a drink too many.

Instantaneously, he became an empty shell of flesh and blood, shortly destined to become dust, lying broken in the middle of the street. A terrified but innocent cabbie was emerging from his taxi, and a small crowd was pouring out of the bar to join him.

This was defeat, Janet knew. Never had a defeat of the flesh been so agonizing. The stars could have been hers. Now the stars would have to wait, for a long, long time. For as long as Murgy lived. It wasn’t the waiting that would be so hard. It was this entrapment in incompleteness, this torture, this unspeakable pain of being inescapably enmeshed in cosmic injustice.

She took her misery to the darkest shadow she could find and lurked there awhile, until the scene in the street had run its course, from arrival to departure of the police.

A bitter thought wave her propulsion, she returned to the estate. She filtered through the roof and hovered in the foyer.

While there had been hope, the foyer’s full capacity for torture had not reached her. Now she felt it.

“Hello, Beautiful.”

Where had the thought come from? She swirled like a miniature nebula.

“Take it easy I’m right here.”

He swirled beside her. Her policeman.

“You!”

“Sure. I was so amazed at where I found myself I didn’t get to you while you were hiding near the accident. You know, you feel even more beautiful than you looked.”

“Why, thanks for the compliment. And your own homeliness, fellow, was all of the flesh. But don’t you concern yourself with me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m stuck here. You didn’t catch Murgy.”

“I had a hunch about that guy…”

“Hunch? Hah! It was me trying to get the guilt of the old boy across to you.”

“Really? Well, I was going to keep an eye on him.”

“I was after you to do that, too. See, I caught him stealing my jewels.”

“I had to go and ruin everything!”

“But you didn’t mean to barge in front of that cab.”

“Just the same, I’ll spend eternity being sorry. Sure you can’t come with me?”

“Nope. Just go quickly.”

He was gone. She felt his unwilling departure. It was the final straw of torture.

“Look, honey, my name’s Joe.”

He was back.

“I got this idea. It’s worth a try at least.”

It was so good having him back.

“My superior officer, Lieutenant Hal Dineen. He’s the sharpest, most tenacious cop ever to carry a badge. That report of mine, to start with, is going to raise a question in his mind. The same facts you were trying to get over to me are there for him to find. I just bounced over to headquarters and back. Just a look told me my fray with that taxi has knocked his mental guards to smithereens. He was at his desk, reading that last report of mine. If you alone could do what you did, consider what the two of us trying real hard can do if we hit Dineen, in his present state, with full thought force.”

Janet bounced to the rooftop. Joe was beside her.

“Janet, Dineen is razor sharp at playing hunches. He believes in them. All set to hit him with the grandfather of all hunches, the results of which he’ll talk about for a lifetime?”

“Let’s.” Let’s, darling.

* * *

Lieutenant Hal Dineen was talking to a fellow officer, “I dunno. Just one of those things. Comes from being a cop, I guess, from having the old subconscious recognize and classify information the eyes, ears, and hands miss. Just a hunch I had about this old family retainer. We all get em—these hunches. Me, especially, I’m a great one for em. And this one I couldn’t shake and so I figured…”

THE BURGLAR’S GHOST,

by Anonymous

Originally published in Chamber’s Journal, July 4, 1891.

I am not an imaginative man, and no one who knows me can say that I have ever indulged in sentimental ideas upon any subject. I am rather predisposed, in fact, to look at everything from a purely practical standpoint, and this quality has been further developed in me by the fact that for twenty years I have been an active member of the detective police force at Westford, a large town in one of our most important manufacturing districts. A policeman, as most people will readily believe, has to deal with so much practical life that he has small opportunity for developing other than practical qualities, and he is more apt to believe in tangible things than in ideas of a somewhat superstitious nature. However, I was once under the firm conviction that I had been largely helped up the ladder of life by the ghost of a once well-known burglar. I have told the story to many, and have heard it commented upon in various fashions. Whether the comments were satirical or practical, it made no difference to me; I had a firm faith at that time in the truth of my tale.

Eighteen years ago I was a plain clothes officer at Westford. I was then twenty-three years of age, and very anxious about two matters. First and foremost I desired promotion; second, I wished to be married. Of course I was more eager about the second than the first, because my sweetheart, Alice Moore, was one of the prettiest and cleverest girls in the town; but I put promotion first for the simple reason that with me promotion must come before marriage. Knowing this, I was always on the lookout for a chance of distinguishing myself, and I paid such attention to my duties that my superiors began to notice me, and foretold a successful career for me in the future.

One evening in the last week of September, 1873, I was sitting in my lodgings wondering what I could do to earn the promotion which I so earnestly wished for. Things were quiet just then in Westford, and I am afraid I half wished that something dreadful might occur if I only could have a share in it. I was pursuing this train of thought when I suddenly heard a voice say, “Good evening, officer.”

I turned sharply around. It was almost dusk and my lamp was not lighted. For all that, I could see clearly enough a man who was sitting by a chest of drawers that stood between the door and the window. His chair stood between the drawers and the door, and I concluded that he had quietly entered my room and seated himself before addressing me.

“Good evening!” I replied. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

He laughed when I said that—a low, chuckling, rather sly laugh. “No,” he said, “I dessay not, officer. I’m a very quiet sort of person. You might say, in fact, noiseless. Just so.”

I looked at him narrowly, feeling considerably surprised and astonished at his presence. He was a thickly built man, with a square face and heavy chin. His nose was small, but aggressive; his eyes were little and overshadowed by heavy eyebrows; I could see them twinkle when he spoke. As for his dress, it was in keeping with his face.

He wore a rough suit of woolen or frieze; a thick, gayly colored Belcher neckerchief encircled his bull-like throat, and in his big hands he continually twirled and twisted a fur cap, made apparently out of the skin of some favorite dog. As he sat there smiling at me and saying nothing, it made me feel uncomfortable.

“What do you want with me?” I asked.

“Just a little matter o’ business,” he answered.

“You should have gone to the office,” I said. “We’re not supposed to do business at home.”

“Right you are, guv’nor,” he replied; “but I wanted to see you. It’s you that’s got to do my job. If I’d ha’ seen the superintendent he might ha’ put somebody else on to it. That wouldn’t ha’ suited me. You see, officer, you’re young, and nat’rally eager-like for promotion. Eh?”

“What is it you want?” I inquired again.

“Ain’t you eager to be promoted?” he reiterated. “Ain’t you now, officer?”

I saw no reason why I should conceal the fact, even from this strange visitor. I admitted that I was eager for promotion.

“Ah!” he said, with a satisfied smile; “I’m glad o’ that. It’ll make you all the keener. Now, officer, you listen to me. I’m a-goin’ to put you on to a nice little job. Ah! I dessay you’ll be a sergeant before long, you will. You’ll be complimented and praised for your clever conduck in this ’ere affair. Mark my words if you ain’t.”

“Out with it,” I said, fancying I saw through the man’s meaning. “You’re going to split on some of your pals, I suppose, and you’ll want a reward.”

He shook his head. “A reward,” he said, “wouldn’t be no use to me at all—no, not if it was a thousand pounds. No, it ain’t nothing to do with reward. But now, officer, did you ever hear of Light Toed Jim?”

Light Toed Jim! I should have been a poor detective if I had not. Why, the man known under that sobriquet was one of the cleverest burglars and thieves in England, and had enjoyed such a famous career that his name was a household word. At that moment there was an additional interest attached to him. He had been convicted of burglary at the Northminster assizes in 1871, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. After serving nearly two years of his time he had escaped from Portland, getting away in such clever fashion that he had never been heard of since. Where he was no one could say; but lately there had been a strong suspicion among the police that Light Toed Jim was at his old tricks again.

“Light Toed Jim!” I repeated. “I should think so. Why, what do you know about him?”

He smiled and nodded his head. “Light Toed Jim,” said he, “is in Westford at this ’ere hidentical moment. Listen to me, officer. Light Toed Jim is a-goin’ to crack a crib tonight. Said crib is the mansion of Miss Singleton, that ’ere rich old lady as lives out on the Mapleton Road. You know her—awfully rich, with naught but women servants and animals about the place. There’s some very valyable plate there. That’s what Light Toed Jim’s after. He’ll get in through the scullery window about one a.m., then he’ll pass through the back and front kitchens and into the butler’s pantry—only it’s a butleress, ’cos there ain’t no men at all—and there he’ll set to work on the safe. Some of his late pals in Portland give him the tip about this ’ere job.”

“How did you come to hear of it?” I asked.

“Never mind, guv’nor. You wouldn’t understand. Now, I wants you to be up there tonight and to nab Light Toed Jim red-handed, so to speak. It’ll mean promotion for you, and it’ll suit me down to the ground. You wants to be about and to watch him enter. Then follow him and dog him. And be armed, officer, for Jim’ll fight like a tiger if you don’t draw his teeth first.”

“Now, look here, my man,” said I, “this is all very well, but it’s all irregular. You must just tell me who you are and how you come to be in Light Toed Jim’s secrets, and I’ll put it down in black and white.”

I turned away from him to get my writing materials. I was not half a minute with my back to him, but when I turned round he was gone. The door was shut, but I had heard no sound from it either opening or shutting. Quick as thought I darted to it, tore it wide open, and looked down the narrow staircase. There was no one there. I ran hastily downstairs into the passage, and found my landlady, Mrs. Marriner, standing at the open door with a female friend. “Mrs. Marriner,” I said, breaking in upon their conversation, “which way did that man go who came downstairs just now?”

Mrs. Marriner looked at me strangely. “There ain’t been no man come downstairs, Mr. Parker,” said she; “leastways, not this good three-quarters of an hour, which me and Missis Higgins ’ere, as ’ave come out to take an airing, her having been ironin’ all this blessed day, has been standin’ ’ere all the time and ain’t never seen a soul.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “A man came down from my room just now—the man you sent up twenty minutes since.”

Mrs. Marriner looked at me with an expression betokening the most profound astonishment. Mrs. Higgins sighed deeply.

“Mr. Parker,” said Mrs. Marriner, “sorry am I to say it, sir, but you’re either intoxicated or else you’re a-sickening for brain fever, sir. There ain’t no person entered this door, in or out, for nigh onto an hour, as me and Missis Higgins ’ere will take our Bible oaths on.”

I went upstairs and looked in the rooms on either side of mine. The man was not there. I looked under my bed, and of course he was not there. He must have gone downstairs. But then the women must have seen him. There was only one door to the house. I gave it up in despair and began to smoke my pipe. By the time I had drawn the last whiff I decided that if anyone was “intoxicated,” it was probably Mrs. Marriner and Mrs. Higgins, and that my strange visitor had departed by the door. I was not going to believe that he had anything supernatural about him.

I had no duty that night, and as the hours wore on I found myself stern in my resolve to go up to Miss Singleton’s house and see what I could make out of my informant’s story. It was my opinion that my late visitor was a whilom “pal” of Light Toed Jim, and that having become aware of the latter’s plot, he had, for some reason of his own, decided to split on his old chum. Thieves’ disagreement is an honest man’s opportunity, and I determined to solve the truth of the story told me. Lest it should come to nothing, I decided not to report the matter to my chief. If I could really capture Light Toed Jim, my success would be all the more brilliant by being suddenly sprung upon the authorities.

I made my plan of action rapidly. I took a revolver with me and went up to Miss Singleton’s house. Fortunately, I knew the housekeeper there—a middle-aged, strong-minded woman, not easily frightened, which was a good thing. To her I communicated such information as I considered necessary. She consented to conceal me in the room where the safe stood. There was a cupboard close by the safe from which I could command a full view of the burglar’s operations and pounce upon him at the right moment. If only my information was to be relied upon, there was every chance of my capturing the famous burglar.

Soon after midnight, when the house was all quiet, I went to the pantry and got into the cupboard, locking myself in. There were two openings in the panel, through either of which I was able to command a full view of the room. My position was somewhat cramped, but the time soon passed away. My mind was principally occupied in wondering if I was really about to have a chance of distinguishing myself. Somehow, there was an air of unreality about the events of the evening which puzzled me.

Suddenly I heard a sound which put me on the alert at once. It was nothing more than the creaking of a board or opening of a door would make in a quiet house; but it sounded intensified to my expectant ears. I drew myself up against the door of the cupboard and placed my eye to the opening in the panel. I had oiled the key of the door, and kept my fingers upon it in readiness to spring upon the burglar at the proper moment. After what seemed some time I saw the gleam of light through the keyhole of the door opening into the pantry. Then it opened, and a man carrying a small lantern came gently into the room. At first I could see nothing of his face; but when my eyes grew accustomed to the hazy light I saw that I had been rightly informed, and that the burglar was indeed no other than the famous Light Toed Jim.

As I stood there watching him I could not help admiring the cool fashion in which he went to work. He went over to the window and examined it. He tried the door of the cupboard in which I stood concealed. Then he locked the door of the pantry and turned his attention to the safe. He set his lamp on a chair before the lock and took from his pocket as neat and pretty a collection of tools as ever I saw. With these he went quietly and swiftly to work.

Light Toed Jim was a somewhat slimly built fellow, with little muscular development about him, while I am a big man with plenty of bone and sinew. If matters had come to a fight between us I could have done what I pleased with him; but I knew that Jim would not chance a fight. Somewhere about him I felt sure there was a revolver, which he would use on the least provocation. My plan, therefore, was to wait until his back was bent over the lock of the safe, then to open the cupboard door noiselessly and fall bodily upon him, pinning him to the ground beneath me.

Before long the moment came. He was working steadily away at the lock, his whole attention concentrated on the job. The slight noise of his drill was sufficient to drown the faint click of the key in the cupboard door. I turned it quickly and tumbled right upon him, driving the tool out of his hands and tumbling him into a heap at the foot of the safe. He uttered an exclamation of rage and astonishment as he went down, and immediately began to wriggle under me like an eel. As I kept him down with one hand I tried to pull out the handcuffs with the other. This somewhat embarrassed me, and the burglar profited by it to pull out a sharp knife. He had worked himself round on his back, and before I realized what he was after he was hacking furiously at me with his keen, dagger-like blade. Then I realized that we were going to have a fight for it, and prepared myself. He tried to run the knife into my side. I warded it off, but the blade caught the fleshy part of my left arm and I felt a warm stream of blood spurt out.

That maddened me, and I seized one of the steel drills lying near at hand, and hit my man such a blow over the temple that he collapsed at once, and lay as if dead. I put the handcuffs on him instantly, and, to make matters still more certain, I secured his ankles. Then I rose and looked at my arm. The knife had made a nasty gash, and the blood was flowing freely, but it was not serious; and when the housekeeper, who had just then appeared on the scene, had bandaged it, I went out and secured the help of the first policeman I met in conveying Light Toed Jim to the office.

I felt a proud man when I made my report to the inspector.

“Light Toed Jim?” said he. “What, James Bland? Nonsense, Parker.” But I took him to the cells where Jim was being attended to by the doctor.

“You’re right, Parker,” he said. “That’s the man. Well, this will be a fine thing for you.”

After a time, feeling a little exhausted, I went home to try and get some sleep. The surgeon had attended to my arm, and told me it was but a superficial wound. It felt sore enough in spite of that.

I had no sooner reached my lodgings than I saw sitting in my easy-chair the strange man who had called upon me earlier in the evening. He rose to his feet when I entered. I stared at him in utter astonishment.

“Well, guv’nor,” said he, “I see you’ve done it. You’ve got him square and fair, I reckon?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Ah!” he said, with a sigh of complete satisfaction. “Then I’m satisfied. Yes, I don’t know as how there’s aught more I could say. I reckon as how Light Toed Jim an’ me is quits.”

I was determined to find out who this man was this time. “Sit down,” I said. “There’s a question or two I must ask you. Just let me get my coat off and I’ll talk to you.” I took my coat off and went over to the bed to lay it down. “Now then,” I began, and looked around at him. I said no more, being literally struck dumb. The man was gone!

I began to feel uncomfortable. I ran hastily downstairs, only to find the outer door locked and bolted, as I had left it a few minutes before. I went back, utterly nonplussed. For an hour I pondered the matter over, but could neither make head nor tail of it.

When I went down to the office next morning I was informed that the burglar wanted to see me. I went to his cell, where he was lying in bed with his head bandaged. I had hit him pretty hard, as it turned out, and it was probable he would have to lie on the sick list for some days. “Well, guv’nor,” said he, “you’d the best of me last night. You hit me rather hard that time.”

“I was sorry to have to do it, my man,” I answered. “You would have stabbed me if you could.”

“Yes,” he said, “I should. But I say, guv’nor, come a bit closer; I want to ask you a question. How did you know I was on that little job last night? For, s’elp me, there wasn’t a soul knew a breath about it but myself. I hadn’t no pals, never talked to anybody about it, never thought aloud about it, as I knows on. How came you to spot it, guv’nor?”

There was no one else in the cell with us, and I thought I might find out something about my mysterious visitor of the night before. “It was a pal of yours who gave me the information,” I said.

“Can’t be, guv’nor. No use telling me that. I ain’t got no pals—leastways not in this job.”

“Did you ever know a man like this?” I described my visitor. As I proceeded, Light Toed Jim’s face assumed an expression of real terror. Whatever color there was in it faded away. I never saw a man look more thoroughly frightened. “Yes, yes,” he said, eagerly. “In course I know who it is. Why, it’s Barksea Bill, as I pal’d with at one time—and what did he say, guv’nor—that he owed me a grudge? That we was quits at last? Right you are, ’cos he did owe me a grudge. I treated Bill very shabby—very shabby, indeed, and he swore solemn he’d have his revenge. On’y, guv’nor, what you see wasn’t Barksea Bill at all, but his ghost, ’cos Barksea Bill’s been dead and buried this three year.”

I was naturally very much exercised in my mind over this weird development of the affair, and I used to think about it long after Light Toed Jim had once more retired to the seclusion of Portland. While he was in charge at Westford I tried more than once to worm some more information out of him about the defunct Barksea Bill, but with no success. He would say no more than that “Bill was dead and buried this three year;” and with that I had to be content. Gradually I came to have a firm belief that I had indeed been visited by Barksea Bill’s ghost, and I often told the story to brother officers, and sometimes got well laughed at. That, however, mattered little to me; I felt sure that any man who had gone through the same experience would have had the same beliefs.

Of course I got my promotion and was soon afterward married. Things went well with me, and I was lifted from one step to another. In my secret mind I was always sure I owed my first rise to the burglar’s ghost, and I should have continued to think so but for an incident which occurred just five years after my capture of Light Toed Jim.

I had occasion to travel to Sheffield from Westford, and had to change trains at Leeds. The carriage I stepped into was occupied by a solitary individual, who turned his face to me as I sat down. Though dressed in more respectable fashion, I immediately recognized the man who had visited me so mysteriously at my lodgings. My first feeling was one of fear, and I daresay my face showed it, for the man laughed.

“Hallo, guv’nor,” said he; “I see you knew me as soon as you come in. You owes a deal to me, guv’nor; now, don’t you, eh?”

“Look here, my man,” I said, “I’ve been taking you for a ghost these five years past. Now just tell me how you got in and out of my room that night, will you?”

He laughed long and loud at that. “A ghost?” said he. “Well, if that ain’t a good un! Why, easy enough, guv’nor. I was a-lodging for a day or two in the same house. It’s easy enough, when you know how, to open a door very quiet and to slip out, too.”

“But I followed you sharp, and looked for you.”

“Ay, guv’nor; but you looked down, and I had gone up! You should ha’ come up to the attics, and there you’d ha’ found me. So you took me for a ghost? Well, I’m blowed.”

I told him what Light Toed Jim had said in the cell.

“Ay,” said he, “I dessay, guv’nor. You see, ’twas this way—it weren’t Jim’s fault as I wasn’t dead. He tried to murder me, guv’nor, he did, and left me a-lying for dead. So I ses to myself when I comes round that I’d pay him out sooner or later. But after that I quit the profession, Jim’s nasty conduck havin’ made me sick of it. So I went in for honest work at my old trade, which was draining and pipe repairing. I was on a job o’ that sort in Westford, near Miss Singleton’s house, when I see Light Toed Jim. I had a hidea what he was up to, havin’ heard o’ the plate, and I watches him one or two nights, and gets a notion ’ow he was going to work the job. Then, o’ course, you being a officer and close at hand I splits on him—and that’s all.”

“But you had got the time and details correct?”

“Why, o’ course, guv’nor. I was an old hand—served many years at Portland, I have, and I knew just how Jim would work it, after seeing his perlim’nary observations. But a ghost! Ha, ha, ha! Why, guv’nor, you must ha’ been a very green young officer in them days!”

Perhaps I was. At any rate I learned a lesson from the ci-devant Barksea Bill—namely, that in searching a house it is always advisable to look up as well as down.

A PHANTOM TOE,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

I am not a superstitious man, far from it, but despite all my efforts to the contrary I could not help thinking, directly I had taken a survey of my chamber, that I should never quit it without going through a strange adventure. There was something in its immense size, heaviness and gloom that seemed to annihilate at one blow all my resolute skepticism as regards supernatural visitations. It appeared to me totally impossible to go into that room and disbelieve in ghosts.

The fact is, I had incautiously partaken at supper of that favorite Dutch dish, sauerkraut, and I suppose it had disagreed with me and put strange fancies into my head. Be this as it may I only know that after parting with my friend for the night I gradually worked myself up into such a state of fidgetiness that at last I wasn’t sure whether I hadn’t become a ghost myself.

“Supposing,” ruminated I, “supposing the landlord himself should be a practical robber and should have taken the lock and bolt from off this door for the purpose of entering here in the dead of the night, abstracting all my property, and perhaps murdering me! I thought the dog had a very cutthroat air about him.” Now, I had never had any such idea until that moment, for my host was a fat (all Dutchmen are fat), stupid-looking fellow, who I don’t believe had sense enough to understand what a robbery or murder meant, but somehow or other, whenever we have anything really to annoy us (and it certainly was not pleasant to go to bed in a strange place without being able to fasten one’s door), we are sure to aggravate it by myriads of chimeras of our own brain.

So, on the present occasion, in the midst of a thousand disagreeable reveries, some of the most wild absurdity, I jumped very gloomily into bed, having first put out my candle (for total darkness was far preferable to its flickering, ghostly light, which transformed rather than revealed objects), and soon fell asleep, perfectly tired out with my day’s riding.

How long I lay asleep I don’t know, but I suddenly awoke from a disagreeable dream of cutthroats, ghosts and long, winding passages in a haunted inn. An indescribable feeling, such as I never before experienced, hung upon me. It seemed as if every nerve in my body had a hundred spirits tickling it, and this was accompanied by so great a heat that, inwardly cursing mine host’s sauerkraut and wondering how the Dutchmen could endure such poison, I was forced to sit up in bed to cool myself. The whole of the room was profoundly dark, excepting at one place, where the moonlight, falling through a crevice in the shutters, threw a straight line of about an inch or so thick upon the floor—clear, sharp and intensely brilliant against the darkness. I leave you to conceive my horror when, upon looking at this said line of light, I saw there a naked human toe—nothing more.

For the first instant I thought the vision must be some effect of moonlight, then that I was only half awake and could not see distinctly. So I rubbed my eyes two or three times and looked again. Still there was the accursed thing—plain, distinct, immovable—marblelike in its fixedness and rigidity, but in everything else horribly human.

I am not an easily frightened man. No one who has traveled so much and seen so much and been exposed to so many dangers as I, can be, but there was something so mysterious and unusual in the appearance of this single toe that for a short time I could not think what to be at, so I did nothing but stare at it in a state of utter bewilderment.

At length, however, as the toe did not vanish under my steady gaze, I thought I might as well change my tactics, and remembering that all midnight invaders, be they thieves, ghosts or devils, dislike nothing so much as a good noise I shouted out in a loud voice:

“Who’s there?”

The toe immediately disappeared in the darkness.

Almost simultaneously with my words I leaped out of bed and rushed toward the place where I had beheld the strange appearance. The next instant I ran against something and felt an iron grip round my body. After this I have no distinct recollection of what occurred, excepting that a fearful struggle ensued between me and my unseen opponent; that every now and then we were violently hurled to the floor, from which we always rose again in an instant, locked in a deadly embrace; that we tugged and strained and pulled and pushed, I in the convulsive and frantic energy of a fight for life, he (for by this time I had discovered that the intruder was a human being) actuated by some passion of which I was ignorant; that we whirled round and round, cheek to cheek and arm to arm, in fierce contest, until the room appeared to whiz round with us, and that at least a dozen people (my fellow traveler among them), roused, I suppose, by our repeated falls, came pouring into the room with lights and showed me struggling with a man having nothing on but a shirt, whose long, tangled hair and wild, unsettled eyes told me he was insane. And then, for the first time, I became aware that I had received in the conflict several gashes from a knife, which my opponent still held in his hand.

To conclude my story in a few words (for I daresay all of you by this time are getting very tired), it turned out that my midnight visitor was a madman who was being conveyed to a lunatic asylum at The Hague, and that he and his keeper had been obliged to stop at Delft on their way. The poor fellow had contrived during the night to escape from his keeper, who had carelessly forgotten to lock the door of his chamber, and with that irresistible desire to shed blood peculiar to many insane people had possessed himself of a pocketknife belonging to the man who had charge of him, entered my room, which was most likely the only one in the house unfastened, and was probably meditating the fatal stroke when I saw his toe in the moonlight, the rest of his body being hidden in the shade.

After this terrible freak of his he was watched with much greater strictness, but I ought to observe, as some excuse for the keeper’s negligence, that this was the first act of violence he had ever attempted.

THE PHANTOM WOMAN,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

He took an all-possessing, burning fancy to her from the first. She was neither young nor pretty, so far as he could see—but she was wrapped round with mystery. That was the key of it all; she was noticeable in spite of herself. Her face at the window, sunset after sunset; her eyes, gazing out mournfully through the dusty panes, hypnotized the lawyer. He saw her through the twilight night after night, and he grew at length to wait through the days in a feverish waiting for dusk, and that one look at an unknown woman.

She was always at the same window on the ground floor, sitting doing nothing. She looked beyond, so the infatuated solicitor fancied, at him. Once he even thought that he detected the ghost of a friendly smile on her lips. Their eyes always met with a mute desire to make acquaintance. This romance went on for a couple of months.

Gilbert Dent assured himself that nothing in this life can possibly remain stationary, and he cudgeled his brain for a respectable manner of introducing himself to his idol.

He had hardly arrived at this point when he received a shock. There came an evening when she was not at the window.

Next morning he walked down Wood Lane on his way to the office. He always went by train, but he felt a strong disinclination to go through another day without a sight of her. His heart began to beat like a schoolgirl’s as he drew near the house. If she should be at the window. He was almost disposed to take his courage in his hand and call on her, and—yes, even—tell her in a quick burst that she had mysteriously become all the world to him. He could see nothing ridiculous in this course; the possibility of her being married, or having family ties of any sort, had simply never occurred to him.

However, she was not at the window; what was more, there was a sinister silence, a sort of breathlessness about the whole place.

It was a very hot morning in late August. He looked a long time, but no face came, and no movement stirred the house.

He went his way, walking like a man who has been heavily knocked on the brow and sees stars still. That afternoon he left the office early, and in less than an hour stood at the gate again. The window was blank. He pushed the gate back—it hung on one hinge—and walked up the drive to the door. There were five steps—five steps leading up to it. At the foot he wheeled aside sharply to the window; he had a sick dread of looking through the small panes—why he could not have told.

When at last he found courage to look he saw that there was a small round table set just under the window—a work-table to all appearance; one of those things with lots of little compartments all round and a lid in the middle which shut over a well-like cavity for holding pieces of needlework. He remembered that his mother had one—thirty years before.

Round the edge of the table was gripped a small, delicate hand. Gilbert Dent’s eyes ran from this bloodless hand and slim wrist to a shoulder under a coarse stuff bodice—to a rather wasted throat, which was bare and flung back.

So this was the end—before the beginning. He saw her. She was dead; twisted on the floor with a ghastly face turned up toward the ceiling, and stiff fingers caught in desperation round the work table.

He stumbled away along the path and into the lane.

For a long time he could not realize the horror of this thing. The influence of the decayed house hung over him—nothing seemed real. It was quite dark when he moved away from the gate, and went in the direction of the nearest police station. That she was dead—this woman whose very name he did not know although she influenced him so powerfully—he was certain; one look at the face would have told anyone that. That she was murdered he more than suspected. He had seen no blood about; there had been no mark on the long, bare throat, and yet the word rushed in his ears, “Murder.”

Later on he went back with a police officer.

They broke into the house and entered the room. It was in utter darkness, of course, by now. Dent, his fingers trembling, struck a match. It flared round the walls and lighted them for a moment before he let it fall on the dusty floor.

The policeman began to light his lantern and turned it stolidly on the window. He had no reason for delay; he was eager to get to the bottom of the business. His professional zeal was whetted; this promised to be a mystery with a spice in it.

He turned the light full on the window; he gave a strange, choked cry, half of rage, half of apprehension. Then he went up to Gilbert Dent, who stood in the middle of the room with his hands before his eyes, and took his shoulder and shook it none too gently.

“There ain’t nobody,” he said.

Dent looked wildly at the window—the recess was empty except for the work-table. The woman was gone.

They searched the house; they minutely inspected the garden. Everything was normal; everything told the same mournful tale—of desertion, of death, of long empty years. But they found no woman, nor trace of one.

“This house,” said the policeman, looking suspiciously into the lawyer’s face, “has been empty for longer than I can remember. Nobody’ll live in it. They do say something about foul play a good many years ago. I don’t know about that. All I do know is that the landlord can’t get it off his hands.”

It was doubtful if Gilbert Dent heard one word of what the man was saying. He was too stunned to do anything but creep home—when he was allowed to go—and let himself stealthily into his own house with a latch key; he was afraid even of himself. He did not go to bed that night.

As for the mystery of the woman, the matter was allowed to drop; it ended—officially. There was a shrug and a grin at the police station. The impression there was that the lawyer had been drinking—that the dead woman in the empty room was a gruesome freak of his tipsy brain.

* * *

A week or so later Dent called on his brother Ned—the one near relation he had. Ned was a doctor; perhaps he was a shade more matter-of-fact than Gilbert; at all events, when the latter told his story of the house and the woman, he attributed the affair solely to liver.

“You are overworked”—the elder brother looked at the younger’s yellow face. “An experience of this nature is by no means uncommon. Haven’t you heard of people having their pet ‘spooks’?”

“But this was a real woman,” he declared. “I—I, well, I was in love with her. I had made up my mind to marry her—if I could.”

Ned gave him a keen, swift glance.

“We’ll go to Brighton tomorrow,” he said, with quiet decision. “As for your work, everything must be put aside. You’ve run completely down. You ought to have been taken in hand before.”

They went to Brighton, and it really seemed as if Ned was right, and that the woman at the window had been merely a nervous creation. It seemed so, that is, for nearly three weeks, and then the climax came.

It was in the twilight—she had always been part of it—that Gilbert Dent saw her again; the woman that he had found lying dead.

They were walking, the two brothers, along the cliffs.

The wind was blowing in their faces, the sea was booming beneath the cliff. Ned had just said it was about time they turned back to the hotel and had some dinner, when Gilbert with a cry leapt forward to the very edge of the flat grass path on which they were strolling. The movement was so sudden that his brother barely caught him in time. They struggled and swayed on the very edge of the cliff for a second; Gilbert, possessed by some sudden frenzy, seemed resolved to go over, but the other at last dragged him backward, and they rolled together on the close, thick turf.

At this point Gilbert opened his eyes and tried to get on his feet.

“Better?” asked his brother, cheerfully, holding out a helping hand. “Strange! The sea has that effect on some people. Didn’t think that you were one of them.”

“What effect?”

“Vertigo, my dear fellow.”

“Ned,” said the other solemnly, “I saw her. It is not worth your while to try to account for anything. I have been inclined to think that you were right—that she, the woman at the window, was a fancy, that I had fallen in love with a creation of my own brain; but I saw her again tonight. You must have seen her yourself—she was within a couple of feet of you. Why did you not try and save her? It was nothing short of murder to let her go over like that. I did my best.”

“You certainly did—to kill us both,” said Ned, grimly.

Gilbert gave him a wild look.

After luncheon Ned persuaded him to rest—watched him fall asleep, and then went out.

In the porch of the hotel he was met by a waiter on his return who told him that Gilbert had left about a quarter of an hour after he had himself gone out.

Directly he heard this he feared the worst; having, as is usual in such cases, a very hazy idea of what the worst might be. Of course he must follow without a moment’s delay; but a reference to the time-table told him that there was not another train for an hour, and that was slow.

It was already getting dusk when he arrived there. He felt certain that Gilbert would go there. He got to the end of the lane and walked up it slowly, examining every house. There would be no difficulty in recognizing the one he wanted; Gilbert had described it in detail more than once.

He stood outside the loosely hanging gate at last, and stared through the darkness at the shabby stucco front and rank garden.

He went down a flight of steps to the back door, and finding it unfastened, stepped into a stone passage. It was one of the problems of the place that he should have avoided the main entrance door with a half-admitted dread, and that, only half admitting still, he was afraid to mount the long flight of stone stairs leading from the servants’ quarters. However, he pulled himself together and went up to the room.

It was quite dark inside. He heard something scuttle across the floor; he felt the grit and dust of years under his feet. He struck a match—just as Gilbert had done—and looked first at the recess in which the window was built. The match flared round the room for a moment and gave him a flash picture of his surroundings. He saw the stripes of gaudy paper moving almost imperceptibly, like tentacles of some sea monster, from the wall; he saw a creature—it looked like a rat—scurry across the floor from the window to the great mantelpiece of hard white marble.

If he had seen nothing more than this.

He saw in detail all that the first match had flashed at him. He saw his brother lying on the floor; a ghastly coincidence, his hand was caught round the edge of the work-table as hers had been. The other hand was clenched across his breast; there was a look of great agony on his face.

A dead face, of course. This was the end of the affair. He was lying dead by the window where the woman had sat every night at dusk and smiled at him.

The second match went out; the brother of the dead man struck a third. He looked again and closely. Then he staggered to his feet and gave a cry. It rang through the empty rooms and echoed without wearying down the long, stone passages in the basement.

Gilbert’s head was thrown back; his chin peaked to the ceiling. On his throat were livid marks. The doctor saw them distinctly; he saw the grip of small fingers; the distinct impression of a woman’s little hand.

* * *

The curious thing about the whole story—the most curious thing, perhaps—is that no other eye ever saw those murderous marks. So there was no scandal, no chase after the murderer, no undiscovered crime. They faded; when the doctor saw his brother again in the full light and in the presence of others his throat was clear. And the post mortem proved that death was due to natural causes.

So the matter stands, and will.

But where the house and its overgrown garden stood runs a new road with neat red and white villas.

Whatever secret it knew—if any—it kept discreetly.

Ned Dent is morbid enough to go down the smart new road in the twilight sometimes and wonder.

THE GHOSTS OF RED CREEK,

by S.T.

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

To the northward of Mississippi City and its neighbor, Handsboro, there extends a tract of pine forest for miles with but few habitations scattered through it. Black and Red Creeks, with their numerous branches, drain this region into the Pascagoula River to the eastward. With the swamps of Pascagoula as a refuge, and the luxuriant and unfrequented bottoms of Red and Black Creeks to browse upon, there are few choicer spots for deer. Knowing this fact, a small party of gentlemen on the day before a crisp, cold Christmas, started from Handsboro in a large four-wheeled wagon for a thirty-mile drive into this wilderness of pine and a week’s sport after the deer. The guide was Jim Caruthers, a true woodsman, and the driver and general factotum, a jolly negro named Jack Lyons, than whom no one could make a better hoe-cake and cook a venison steak. His laugh could be heard a quarter of a mile, and his good nature was as expansive as the range of the laughter.

The usual experiences of a hunting camp were heartily enjoyed during the first days of this life out of doors; but its cream did not rise until about the fifth night, when, from familiar intercourse, Jack Lyons became loquacious, and after the day’s twenty or twenty-five-mile walk, would spin yarns in front of the camp fire, which brought forgetfulness of fatigue.

The night before New Year’s was intensely cold. The cold north wind of the afternoon had subsided at sunset, and only a gust now and again touched the musical leaves of the pines, making them vibrant with that mournful score of nature’s operas which even maestros have failed to catch.

In front of two new and white tents two sportsmen reclined at length within reach of the warmth of the fire, while opposite them rested at ease the guide and the worthy Jack Lyons.

Wearied with the day’s chase four stanch hounds—Ringwood, Rose, Jet and Boxer—were dreaming of future quarry.

The firelight brought out in bright relief the trunks of the tall pines like cathedral columns, and sparkling through the leafy dome overhead the scintillating stars glistened with a diamond brightness. A silence which added its influence to the scene rested about the borders of the creek below, and gave more effect to the story of the veteran teamster than perhaps it otherwise would have had.

“If de deer run down de creek,” said old Jack, smacking his lips over a carefully prepared brewing of the real Campbellton punch, “wese boun’ to see fun to-morrer, for dey’ll take us down thar by de old Gibbet’s place. In daylight dere’s no place like it, but after nightfall, you bet you wouldn’t catch dis nigger thar.”

Old Jack was naturally asked why he didn’t care about visiting the Gibbet’s place at night. Asking to be excused until he filled his pipe, the silence was unbroken until his return. He piled on more pine knots and commenced:

“You kno’, gemmen, dat when de gunboats was in de sound we folks had to travel way back hyar on dese roads outun de range of deir big guns. I was ’gaged by Mr. Harrison in hauling salt from de factory at Mississippi City, on de beach ober to Mobile, an’ I had been making a trip ebery week or so. Dis back country road was neber thought ob by de Federals, an’ we had good times long de way, no shells and no shootin’.

“De nite, gemmen, I’se speakin’ of was a Friday, dat yous all knows is unlucky. Well, you see, I hitched up Betsie an’ Rose in de lead, an’ ole Fox an’ Blossom at de pole, an’ takes in de biggest load of salt dat team eber carried. I starts out an’ crosses de Biloxi Riber at Han’sboro jes’ as de moon was goin’ down. Yes, boss, dese roads weren’t no better den now, an’ de rain had made ’em mighty rough when yer come to de holes.

“I sat in de seat whistlin’ ‘De Cows is in de Pea Patch,’ and a-thinkin’ of Sarah Jamison, what was afterwards my wife, when I felt de off fore wheel go ‘kersush’ in a hole up to de hub. I’d made seventeen miles out ob Han’sboro. I did some cussin’, an’ den went to de fence, about twenty yards off, an’ took out a rail to prize up de wheel. Den I saw I was at Mister Gibbet’s place. I sez to myself, I’ll go up to de house an’ get old Mr. Gibbet to give me a turn. I had done gone by dar two weeks afore an’ seed de old man.

“Now, gemmen, yer listen to me, for what I’se tellin’ yer is as sure as Jinny’ll blow de horn on de las’ day. I walked up to de house an’ dar I saw a bright light inside. It showed out froo de windows, an’ I saw shadders of Miss Gibbet and Mrs. Gibbet on de window curtain—shore, honeys, shore. De front do’ was shet, an’ I steps up on ter de gallery an’ knocks wid de butt end of my whip. I didn’t knock loud, needer. God bless us all, gemmen, de lights went out like dat, an’ I hears set up a laugh, ha-ha-ha-ha. How dat set my knees a-shakin’. I opens de do’, an’ dere was no sign of anybody. I struck a match an’ all de furniture was moved out, an’ de old red curtain dat I fought I seed was in rags. De whole family was gone, for shore. I didn’t kno’ ’zactly what to think ’bout dem strange voices, but I started back to de wagon, when it lightened, an’ bress God, dar in de front yard was six graves jes’ made. Somefin’ wrong here, sed I; an’ I builds a fire by de wagon an’ digs de wheel out. Jes’ den old Squire Pasture kem along de road from Mobile, an’ he tells me de news. Ole man Gibbet cut de froats of his wife and fore chillerns an’ shoot hisself in de head outun jealousy of his wife. Dey was all buried in de front yard, an’ de house was deserted ten days befo’.

“Gemmen, when I hear dat, dem mules make de quickest time to Mobile eber seed; an’ youse can tell me dar’s no ghosts, but yo’ don’ catch me roun’ dat log house of Gibbet’s ’ceptin’ sun’s an hour high.”

Jack looked suspiciously over his shoulder into the darkness and crawled into his blanket, muttering:

“It scares dis nigger eben now to tell ’bout dat night.”

Sleep soon fell upon the camp, but the impression of old Jack’s story survived the night, and the next day he still asserted its truth.

THE PHANTOM HAG,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

The other evening in an old castle the conversation turned upon apparitions, each one of the party telling a story. As the accounts grew more horrible the young ladies drew closer together.

“Have you ever had an adventure with a ghost?” said they to me. “Do you not know a story to make us shiver? Come, tell us something.”

“I am quite willing to do so,” I replied. “I will tell you of an incident that happened to myself.”

Toward the close of the autumn of 1858 I visited one of my friends, sub-prefect of a little city in the center of France. Albert was an old companion of my youth, and I had been present at his wedding. His charming wife was full of goodness and grace. My friend wished to show me his happy home, and to introduce me to his two pretty little daughters. I was feted and taken great care of. Three days after my arrival I knew the entire city, curiosities, old castles, ruins, etc. Every day about four o’clock Albert would order the phaeton, and we would take a long ride, returning home in the evening. One evening my friend said to me:

“Tomorrow we will go further than usual. I want to take you to the Black Rocks. They are curious old Druidical stones, on a wild and desolate plain. They will interest you. My wife has not seen them yet, so we will take her.”

The following day we drove out at the usual hour. Albert’s wife sat by his side. I occupied the back seat alone. The weather was gray and somber that afternoon, and the journey was not very pleasant. When we arrived at the Black Rocks the sun was setting. We got out of the phaeton, and Albert took care of the horses.

We walked some little distance through the fields before reaching the giant remains of the old Druid religion. Albert’s wife wished to climb to the summit of the altar, and I assisted her. I can still see her graceful figure as she stood draped in a red shawl, her veil floating around her.

“How beautiful it is! But does it not make you feel a little melancholy?” said she, extending her hand toward the dark horizon, which was lighted a little by the last rays of the sun.

The afternoon wind blew violently, and sighed through the stunted trees that grew around the stone cromlechs; not a dwelling nor a human being was in sight. We hastened to get down, and silently retraced our steps to the carriage.

“We must hurry,” said Albert; “the sky is threatening, and we shall have scarcely time to reach home before night.”

We carefully wrapped the robes around his wife. She tied the veil around her face, and the horses started into a rapid trot. It was growing dark; the scenery around us was bare and desolate; clumps of fir trees here and there and furze bushes formed the only vegetation. We began to feel the cold, for the wind blew with fury; the only sound we heard was the steady trot of the horses and the sharp clear tinkle of their bells.

Suddenly I felt the heavy grasp of a hand upon my shoulder. I turned my head quickly. A horrible apparition presented itself before my eyes. In the empty place at my side sat a hideous woman. I tried to cry out; the phantom placed her fingers upon her lips to impose silence upon me. I could not utter a sound. The woman was clothed in white linen; her head was cowled; her face was overspread with a corpse-like pallor, and in place of eyes were ghastly black cavities.

I sat motionless, overcome by terror.

The ghost suddenly stood up and leaned over the young wife. She encircled her with her arms, and lowered her hideous head as if to kiss her forehead.

“What a wind!” cried Madame Albert, turning precipitately toward me. “My veil is torn.”

As she turned I felt the same infernal pressure on my shoulder, and the place occupied by the phantom was empty. I looked out to the right and left—the road was deserted, not an object in sight.

“What a dreadful gale!” said Madame Albert. “Did you feel it? I cannot explain the terror that seized me; my veil was torn by the wind as if by an invisible hand; I am trembling still.”

“Never mind,” said Albert, smiling; “wrap yourself up, my dear; we will soon be warming ourselves by a good fire at home. I am starving.”

A cold perspiration covered my forehead; a shiver ran through me; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and I could not articulate a sound; a sharp pain in my shoulder was the only sensible evidence that I was not the victim of an hallucination. Putting my hand upon my aching shoulder, I felt a rent in the cloak that was wrapped around me. I looked at it; five perfectly distinct holes—visible traces of the grip of the horrible phantom. I thought for a moment that I should die or that my reason should leave me; it was, I think, the most dreadful moment of my life.

Finally I became more calm; this nameless agony had lasted for some minutes; I do not think it is possible for a human being to suffer more than I did during that time. As soon as I had recovered my senses, I thought at first I would tell my friends all that had passed, but hesitated, and finally did not, fearing that my story would frighten Madame Albert, and feeling sure my friend would not believe me. The lights of the little city revived me, and gradually the oppression of terror that overwhelmed me became lighter.

So soon as we reached home, Madame Albert untied her veil; it was literally in shreds. I hoped to find my clothes whole and prove to myself that it was all imagination. But no, the cloth was torn in five places, just where the fingers had seized my shoulder. There was no mark, however, upon my flesh, only a dull pain.

I returned to Paris the next day, where I endeavored to forget the strange adventure; or at least when I thought of it, I would force myself to think it an hallucination.

The day after my return I received a letter from my friend Albert. It was edged with black. I opened it with a vague fear.

His wife had died the day of my return.

THE SPECTRE BRIDE,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

The winter nights up at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way. The silence that rests upon the solitude appears to be white also. Nature has included sound in her arrestment. Save the still white frost, all things are obliterated. The stars are there, but they seem to belong to heaven and not to earth. They are at an immeasurable height, and so black is the night that the opaque ether rolls between them and the observer in great liquid billows.

In such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is peopled to any great extent. One fancies that Cain has just killed Abel, and that there is need for the greatest economy in the matter of human life.

The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay he felt as if he were the only man in the world, so complete was the solitude through which he was passing. He was going over to attend the wedding of his best friend, and was, in fact, to act as the groomsman. Business had delayed him, and he was compelled to make his journey at night. But he hadn’t gone far before he began to feel the exhilaration of the skater. His skates were keen, his legs fit for a longer journey than the one he had undertaken, and the tang of the frost was to him what a spur is to a spirited horse.

He cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water. He could feel the tumult of the air as he cleft it. As he went on he began to have fancies. It seemed to him that he was enormously tall—a great Viking of the Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love. That reminded him that he had a love—though, indeed, that thought was always present with him as a background for other thoughts. To be sure, he had not told her she was his love, because he had only seen her a few times and the opportunity had not presented itself. She lived at Echo Bay, too, and was to be the maid of honor to his friend’s bride—which was another reason why he skated on almost as swiftly as the wind, and why, now and then, he let out a shout of exhilaration.

The one drawback in the matter was that Marie Beaujeu’s father had money, and that Marie lived in a fine house and wore otter skin about her throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went sledding, and that the jacket in which she kept a bit of her dead mother’s hair had a black pearl in it as big as a pea. These things made it difficult—nay, impossible—for Ralph Hagadorn to say anything more than “I love you.” But that much he meant to have the satisfaction of saying, no matter what came of it.

With this determination growing upon him he swept along the ice which gleamed under the starlight. Indeed, Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed to reassure him. He was sorry he could not skim down that avenue of light from the love star, but he was forced to turn his back upon it and face toward the northeast.

It came to him with a shock that he was not alone. His eyelashes were a good deal frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, and at first he thought it an illusion. But he rubbed his eyes hard and at length made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in fluttering garments who sped over the snows fast as ever werewolf went. He called aloud, but there was no answer, and then he gave chase, setting his teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm young muscles. But however fast he might go the white skater went faster. After a time he became convinced, as he chanced to glance for a second at the North Star, that the white skater was leading him out of his direct path. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should not keep to his road, but the strange companion seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and so he followed.

Of course it came to him more than once that this might be no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes men see strange things when the hoar frost is on the earth. Hagadorn’s father, who lived up there with the Lake Superior Indians and worked in the copper mines, had once welcomed a woman at his hut on a bitter night who was gone by morning, and who left wolf tracks in the snow—yes, it was so, and John Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any day—if he were alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were is melted now!)

Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the ice flushed red at dawn and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold heavens, she was gone, and Hagadorn was at his destination. Then, as he took off his skates while the sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, Hagadorn chanced to glance lakeward, and he saw there was a great wind-rift in the ice and that the waves showed blue as sapphires beside the gleaming ice. Had he swept along his intended path, watching the stars to guide him, his glance turned upward, all his body at magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that cold grave. The white skater had been his guardian angel!

Much impressed, he went up to his friend’s house, expecting to find there the pleasant wedding furore. But someone met him quietly at the door, and his friend came downstairs to greet him with a solemn demeanor.

“Is this your wedding face?” cried Hagadorn. “Why, really, if this is the way you are affected, the sooner I take warning the better.”

“There’s no wedding today,” said his friend.

“No wedding? Why, you’re not—”

“Marie Beaujeu died last night—”

“Marie—”

“Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it somehow. She got worse and worse and talked all the time of you.”

“Of me?”

“We wondered what it all meant. We didn’t know you were lovers.”

“I didn’t know it myself; more’s the pity.”

“She said you were on the ice. She said you didn’t know about the big breaking up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore. Then she cried that you could come in by the old French Creek if you only knew—?”

“I came in that way,” interrupted Hagadorn.

“How did you come to do that? It’s out of your way.”

So Hagadorn told him how it came to pass.

And that day they watched beside the maiden, who had tapers at her head and feet, and over in the little church the bride who might have been at her wedding said prayers for her friend. Then they buried her in her bridesmaid’s white, and Hagadorn was there before the altar with her, as he intended from the first. At midnight the day of the burial her friends were married in the gloom of the cold church, and they walked together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths on her grave.

* * *

Three nights later Hagadorn started back again to his home. They wanted him to go by sunlight, but he had his way and went when Venus made her bright path on the ice. He hoped for the companionship of the white skater. But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The only voice he heard was the baying of a wolf on the north shore. The world was as white as if it had just been created and the sun had not yet colored nor man defiled it.

HOW HE CAUGHT THE GHOST,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

“Yes, the house is a good one,” said the agent; “it’s in a good neighborhood, and you’re getting it at almost nothing; but I think it right to tell you all about it. You are orphans, you say, and with a mother dependent on you? That makes it all the more necessary that you should know. The fact is, the house is said to be haunted—”

The agent could not help smiling as he said it, and he was relieved to see an answering smile on the two faces before him.

“Ah, you don’t believe in ghosts,” he went on; “nor do I, for that matter; but, somehow, the reputation of the house keeps me from having a tenant long at a time. The place ought to rent for twice as much as it does.”

“If we succeed in driving out the ghost, you will not raise the rent?” asked the boy, with a merry twinkle in his eyes.

“Well, no—not this year, at any rate,” laughed the agent. And so the house was rented; and the slip of a girl and the tall lad, her brother, went their way.

Within a week the family had moved into the house, and were delighted with it. It was large and cool, with wide halls and fine stairways, and with more room than they needed. But that did not matter in the least, for they had always been cramped in small houses, suffering many discomforts; and they never could have afforded such a place as this if it had not been “haunted.”

“Blessings on the ghost!” cried Margaret, gaily, as she ran about as merry as a child. “Who would be without a ghost in the house, when it brings one like this?”

“And it is so near your school,” said the mother; “and I used to worry so over the long walk; and David can come home to lunch now, and you don’t know what a pleasure that will be.”

“It seems to me,” David gravely explained, “that if I should meet the ghost I would treat him with the greatest politeness and encourage him to stay. We shall not miss the room he takes, shall we? I think it would be well to set aside that room over yours, Maggie, for his ghostship’s own, for we shall not need that, you know. Besides, the door doesn’t shut, and he can go in and out without breaking the lock.”

And then they all laughed and had a great deal of fun over the ghost, which was a great joke to them.

They were very tired that night and slept soundly all night long. When they met the next morning there was more laughter about the ghost which was shy about meeting strangers, probably, and had made no effort to introduce himself. For the next three days they were all hard at work, trying to bring chaos into something like order; and then it was time for the school to open, and Margaret was to begin teaching, and David inserted an advertisement in the city papers for a maid-of-all-work, who might help their mother in their absence.

For one whole day prospective colored servants presented themselves and announced:

“Is dis de house whar dey wants a worklady? No, ma’am, I ain’ gwine to work in dis house. Ketch me workin’ in no ha’nted house.”

After which they each and all departed, and others came in their stead. One was secured after a while, but no sooner had she talked across the fence with a neighbor’s servant than she, too, departed.

“Never mind, children,” said Mrs. Craig, wearily, “I would much rather do the work than be troubled in this way.”

So the maid-of-all-work was dismissed and the Craig family locked the doors and went to their rooms, worn out with the day’s anxieties.

They had been in the house four days, and there had been neither sight nor sound of the ghost. The very mention of it was enough to start them all to laughing, for they were thoroughly practical people, with a fondness for inquiring into anything that seemed mysterious to them and for understanding it thoroughly before they let it go.

David was soon sleeping the sound sleep of healthy boyhood, and all was silent in the house, when Margaret stole softly into his room and laid her hand on his arm. He was not easy to waken, and several minutes had passed before he sat up in bed with an articulate murmur of surprise.

“Hush!” said Margaret, in a whisper, with her hand on his lips. “I want you to come into my room and listen to a sound that I have been hearing for some time.”

“Doors creaking,” suggested David, as he began to dress.

“Nothing of the kind,” was all she said.

They walked up the stairway, and along the upper hall to the door of the unused room. Something was wrong with the lock and the door would not stay fastened, as I have said.

Something that was not fear thrilled their hearts as they pushed the door further ajar, and stood where they could see every foot of the vacant floor. One of their own boxes stood in the middle of the room, but aside from that, nothing was to be seen, and they looked at one another in silence.

“Hold the lamp a minute, Maggie,” David said, at last, and then he went all over the room, and looked more particularly at its emptiness, and even felt the walls.

“Secret panels, you know,” he said, with a smile, but it was a very puzzled smile indeed.

“I can’t see what it could have been,” Margaret said, as they went down the stairs.

“No, I can’t see, either, but I’m going to see,” said David. “That was a chain, and chains don’t drag around by themselves, you know. A ghost could not drag a chain, if he were to try.”

“The conventional ghost very often drags chains,” said Margaret, as she closed the door of her room.

And then she lay awake all night and listened for the conventional ghost that dragged a chain, but it seemed that the weight of the chain must have wearied him, for he was not heard again.

The mother had slept through it all, and next morning they gave her a vivid account of the night’s adventure.

“Perhaps it was someone in the house,” she said, in alarm. There were no ghosts within the bounds of possibility, so far as she was concerned, but burglars were very possible, indeed.

Then Margaret and David both laughed more than ever.

“What fun it would be,” said David, “for a burglar to get into this house and try to find something worth carrying away!”

So they went on to the next night, all three fully determined to spend the night in listening for the ghost, and running him to earth if possible.

But it was Margaret that heard the ghost, after all. She had been sleeping and was suddenly startled wide awake, and there, overhead, was the sound of the chain dragging; and just as she was on the point of springing out of bed to call her brother, the chain seemed to go out of the upper room. She lay still and listened, and in a moment she heard it again.

It was coming down the stairs.

There was no carpet on the stairs, and she could hear the chain drop from step to step, until it had come the whole way down. There it was, almost at the door of her room, and something that was strangely like fear kept her lying still, listening in horrified silence.

Then it went along the hall, dragging close to the door; and then further away; and back and forth for awhile; and then it began dragging back up the stairs again. Step by step she could hear it drawn over the edge of every step—and by the time it had reached the top she remembered herself and called David.

Again did the brother and sister make a tour of the upper room, with the lamp. Not only that, but they looked into every nook and corner of the upper part of the house, and at last came back, baffled. They had seen nothing extraordinary, and they had not heard a sound.

“I’m going to see that ghost tonight,” David said to his sister the next evening.

“How?”

“I’m going to sit up all night at the head of the stairs. Don’t say anything about it to mother; it might make her uneasy.”

So, after the household were all quiet, David slipped into his place at the head of the stairs, and sat down to his vigil. He had placed a screen at the head of the stairway so that it hid him from view—as if a ghost cared for a screen—and he established himself behind it, and prepared to be as patient as he could.

It seemed to him that hours so long had never been devised as those the town clocks tolled off that night. He bore it until midnight moderately well, because, he argued with himself, if there were any ghosts about they would surely walk then; but they were not in a humor for walking; and still the hours rolled on without any developments. He took the fidgets, and had nervous twitches all over him, and at last he could endure it no longer, and had leaned his head back against the wall and was going blissfully to sleep when—

He heard a chain dragging just beyond the open door of that unused room.

In spite of himself a shiver ran down his back. There was no mistaking it; it was a real chain, if he had ever heard one. More than that, it had left the room, and was coming straight towards the stairs. The hall was dark, and it was impossible for him to see anything, although he strained his eyes in the direction of the sound. And even while he looked it had passed behind the screen, and was going down the stairs, dropping from step to step with a clank.

Half way down a narrow strip of moonlight from a stair-window lay directly across the steps. Whatever the thing was, it must pass through that patch of light, and David leaned forward and watched.

Down it went from step to step, and presently it had slipped through the light, and was down; and a little later it came back again, through the light, and up the stairs, and back into that unused room.

And then David slapped his knees jubilantly, and ran down to his room, and slept all the rest of the night.

Next morning he was very mysterious about his discoveries of the night before.

“Oh, yes, I saw the ghost,” he said to Maggie. “There; don’t ask so many questions; I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow, maybe.”

And that was all the information she could get from him. It was very provoking.

That day David made a purchase down town and brought home a bulky bundle, which he hid in his own room and would not let his sister even peep at.

“I’m going to try to catch a ghost tonight,” he said, “and you know how it is; if I brag too much beforehand, I shall be sure to fail.”

He was working with something in the hall after the others had retired; but he did not sit up this time. He went to bed, and Margaret listened at his door and found that he was soon asleep.

But away in the night they were all awakened by a squealing that brought them all into the hall in a great hurry; and there, at the head of the stairs, they found the huge rat-trap that David had set a few hours before, and in the midst of the toils was a rat.

“Why, David,” exclaimed the mother, “I didn’t know that there was a rat in the house.”

And then, all at once, she saw that there was a long chain hanging from a little iron collar around the creature’s neck, and she and Margaret cried together.

“And this was the ghost!”

Such a funny ghost when they came to think of it—this poor rat, with a nest in some hole of the broken chimney. He had been someone’s pet, once, perhaps; and now, the households he had broken up, the nights he had disturbed, the wild sensations he had created—it made his captors laugh to think that this innocent creature had been the cause of the whole trouble.

“I’ll get a cage for him, and take care of him for the rest of his life,” said David. “We owe him so much that we can’t afford to be ungrateful.”

The next morning he took the ghost-in-a-cage and showed it to the agent, and gave him a vivid account of the capture.

“So, you have a good house for about half price, all on account of that rat,” exclaimed the agent, grimly. “Young man—but never mind, you deserve it. What are you working for now? Six dollars a week? If you ever want to change your place—suppose you come around here. I think you need a business that will give you a chance to grow.”

And the agent and David shook hands warmly over the cage of the “ghost.”

COLONEL HALIFAX’S GHOST STORY,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

I had just come back to England, after having been some years in India, and was looking forward to meet my friends, among whom there was none I was more anxious to see than Sir Francis Lynton. We had been to Eton together, and for the short time I had been at Oxford, before entering the army, we had been at the same college. Then we had parted. He came into the title and estates of the family in Yorkshire on the death of his grandfather—his father had predeceased—and I had been over a good part of the world. One visit, indeed, I had made him in his Yorkshire home, before leaving for India, of but a few days.

It will be easily imagined how pleasant it was, two or three days after my arrival in London, to receive a letter from Lynton, saying that he had just seen in the papers that I had arrived, and, begging me to come down at once to Byfield, his place in Yorkshire.

“You are not to tell me,” he said, “that you cannot come. In fact, you are to come on Monday. I have a couple of horses which will just suit you; the carriage shall meet you at Packham, and all you have got to do is to put yourself in the train which leaves Kings Cross at twelve o’clock.”

Accordingly, on the day appointed, I started, in due time reached Packham, losing much time on a detestable branch line, and there found the dog-cart of Sir Francis awaiting me. I drove at once to Byfield.

The house I remembered. It was a low gable structure of no great size, with old-fashioned lattice windows, separated from the park, where were deer, by a charming terraced garden.

No sooner did the wheels crunch the gravel by the principal entrance, than, almost before the bell was rung, the porch-door opened, and there stood Lynton himself, whom I had not seen for so many years, hardly altered, and with all the joy of welcome beaming in his face. Taking me by both hands, he drew me into the house, got rid of my hat and wraps, looked me all over, and then, in a breath, began to say how glad he was to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days over again.

He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he bade me make haste and dress for dinner.

So saying he took me through a paneled hall, up an old oak staircase, and showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung with tapestry, and had a large four-post bed, with velvet curtains, opposite the window.

They had gone in to dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I made in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.

Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others, whom I do not remember distinctly.

After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the better part of the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in bed I slept so soundly that my servant’s entrance the next morning failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.

After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way to dislike the task.

The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making the fourth side. The interior was full of interest—passages, rooms, galleries, as well as hall, were paneled in dark wood and hung with pictures. I was shown everything on the ground floor, and then on the first floor. Then my guide proposed that we should ascend a narrow, twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did as proposed, and entered a handsome long room or passage leading to a small chamber at one end, in which my guide told me her father kept books and papers.

I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed and fireplace, and rods by means of which curtains might be drawn, enclosing one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it into a very cosy chamber.

She answered, “No;” the place was not really used, except as a playroom; though, sometimes, if the house happened to be very full—in her great-grandfather’s time—she had heard that it had been occupied.

By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one o’clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.

This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea, after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some business, did not go down into the smoking-room, and I took the opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next day.

I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or three others, and had just got into bed, when I heard a step overhead, as of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran immediately above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I could hear getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually fading away, as it retreated into the distance.

I was startled for a moment, having been told that the gallery was unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.

I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. “How late you were last night,” I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. “I heard you overhead after one o’clock.”

Lynton replied rather shortly: “Indeed you did not, for I was in bed last night before twelve.”

“There was someone certainly moving overhead last night,” I answered, “for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life going down the gallery.”

Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had heard steps on the staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they would first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and we might fall in with them about one o’clock and have a run. I said there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very nice chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and the young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven o’clock for our ride.

It was a beautiful day, soft, with a bright sun, one of those beautiful days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.

On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds, no trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and run in a different direction. At three o’clock, after we had eaten our sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.

We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and the remains of a disused kiln.

I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my former visit, many years ago. “Why, bless me!” said I; “do you remember, Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or anthropologist, any one of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether the remains were dolichocephalous or brachycephalous—whether British, Danish, or—modern. What was the result?”

Sir Francis hesitated a moment, and then answered, “It is true, I had the remains removed.”

“Was there an inquest?”

“No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarsborough museum. This, I was doubtful about—whether it was a prehistoric interment—in fact, to what date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest.”

On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out tea for her husband’s sister and her husband, who, as we came in, exclaimed: “We have come to beg a night’s lodging.”

It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighborhood, and had been obliged to leave at a moment’s notice in consequence of a sudden death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to Byfield.

“We thought,” Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, “that as we were coming here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner; or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later.”

Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and then, turning to her husband, added: “But I want to speak to you for a moment.”

They both left the room together.

Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me, on a map in the hall, the point to which we had ridden, said, as soon as we were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: “I am afraid we must ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we can make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the only room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is really not cold, and it will be only for a night or two. Your servant has been told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like to give orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you.”

I assured him that I did not mind in the very least; that I should be quite as comfortable upstairs; but that I did mind very much their making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like myself.

Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an arm-chair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady’s long dress trunk could have mounted it.

Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt, and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.

Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rods, partly because I like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been drawn.

I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books and papers.

I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.

A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the click of the latch falling back into place. Then I heard a sound on the boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I did so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery.

I heard them approach and pass my bed; I could see nothing, all was dark; but I heard the tread proceeding toward where were the uncurtained and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the moon shone through only one of these, the nearest—the other was dark, shadowed by the chapel or some other building at right angles. The tread seemed to me to pause now and again, and then continue as before.

I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it; but what? I listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery, and then return.

I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound reached that portion of the long passage it ceased momentarily, and I saw, as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my life, by moonlight, a figure of a man with marked features, in what appeared to be a fur cap drawn over the brows.

It stood in the embrasure of the window, and the outline of the face was in silhouette; then it moved on, and as it moved I again heard the tread.

I was as certain as I could be that the thing, whatever it was, or the person, whoever he was, was approaching my bed.

I threw myself back in the bed, and as I did see a mass of charred wood on the hearth fell down and sent up a flash of—I fancy sparks, that gave out a glare into the darkness, and by that—red as blood—I saw a face near me.

With a cry, over which I had as little control as the scream uttered by a sleeper in the agony of a nightmare, I called, “Who are you?”

There was an instant during which my hair bristled on my head, as in the horror of the darkness I prepared to grapple with the being at my side; when a board creaked as if someone had moved, and I heard the footsteps retreat, and again the click of the latch.

The next instant there was a rush on the stairs and Lynton burst into the room, just as he had sprung out of bed, crying: “For God’s sake, what is the matter? Are you ill?”

I could not answer. Lynton struck a light and leaned over the bed. Then I seized him by the arm, and said, without moving: “There has been something in this room—gone in thither.”

The words were hardly out of my mouth when Lynton, following the direction of my eyes, had sprung to the end of the corridor and thrown open the door there.

He went into the room beyond, looked round it, returned, and said: “You must have been dreaming.”

By this time I was out of bed.

“Look for yourself,” said he, and he led me into the little room. It was bare, with cupboards and boxes, a sort of lumber place. “There is nothing beyond this,” said he, “no door, no staircase. It is a blind way.” Then he added: “Now pull on your dressing-gown and come downstairs to my sanctum.”

I followed him, and after he had spoken to Lady Lynton, who was standing with the door of her room ajar in a state of great agitation, he turned to me, and said: “No one can have been in your room. You see, my and my wife’s apartments are close below, and no one could come up the spiral staircase without passing my door. You must have had a nightmare. Directly you screamed I rushed up the steps, and met no one descending; and there is no place of concealment in the lumber-room at the end of the gallery.”

Then he took me into his private snuggery, blew up the fire, lighted a lamp, and said: “I shall be really grateful if you will say nothing about this. There are some in the house and neighborhood who are silly enough as it is. You stay here, and if you do not feel inclined to go to bed, read—here are books. I must go to Lady Lynton, who is a good deal frightened, and does not like to be left alone.”

He then went to his bedroom.

Sleep, as far as I was concerned, was out of the question, nor do I think Sir Francis and his wife slept much, either.

I made up the fire, and after a time took up a book, and tried to read, but it was useless.

I sat absorbed in thoughts and questionings till I heard the servants stirring in the morning. I went to my own room, left the candle burning, and got into bed. I had just fallen asleep when my servant brought me a cup of tea at eight o’clock.

At breakfast Colonel Hampshire and his wife asked if anything had happened in the night, as they had been much disturbed by noises overhead, to which Lynton replied that I had not been very well, and had an attack of cramp, and that he had been upstairs to look after me. From his manner I could see that he wished me to be silent, and I said nothing accordingly.

In the afternoon, when everyone had gone out, Sir Francis took me into his snuggery, and said: “Halifax, I am very sorry about that matter last night. It is quite true, what my brother said, that steps have been heard about this house, but I never gave heed to such things, putting all noises down to rats. But after your experiences I feel that it is due to you to tell you something, and also to make to you an explanation. There is—there was—no one in the room at the end of the corridor, except the skeleton that was discovered in the chalk-pit when you were here many years ago. I confess I had not paid much heed to it. My archæological fancies passed; I had no visits from anthropologists; the bones and skull were never shown to experts, but remain packed in a chest in that lumber-room. I confess I ought to have buried them, having no more scientific use for them, but I did not—on my word, I forgot all about them, or, at least, gave no heed to them. However, what you have gone through, and have described to me, has made me uneasy, and has also given me a suspicion that I can account for that body in a manner that had never occurred to me before.”

After a pause, he added: “What I am going to tell you is known to no one else, and must not be mentioned by you—anyhow, in my lifetime. You know now that, owing to the death of my father when quite young, I and my brother and sister were brought up here with our grandfather, Sir Richard. He was an old, imperious, hot-tempered man. I will tell you what I have made out of a matter that was a mystery for long, and I will tell you afterwards how I came to unravel it. My grandfather was in the habit of going out at night with a young under-keeper, of whom he was very fond, to look after the game and see if any poachers, whom he regarded as his natural enemies, were about.

“One night, as I suppose, my grandfather had been out with the young man in question, and, returning by the plantations, where the hill is steepest, and not far from the chalk-pit you remarked on yesterday, they came upon a man who, though not actually belonging to the country, was well known in it as a sort of traveling tinker of indifferent character and a notorious poacher. Mind this, I am not sure it was at the place I mention; I only now surmise it. On the particular night in question, my grandfather and the keeper must have caught this man setting snares; there must have been a tussle, in the course of which, as subsequent circumstances have led me to imagine, the man showed fight, and was knocked down by one or the other of the two—my grandfather or the keeper. I believe that after having made various attempts to restore him, they found that the man was actually dead.

“They were both in great alarm and concern—my grandfather especially. He had been prominent in putting down some factory riots, and had given orders to the military to fire, whereby several lives had been lost. There was a vast outcry against him, and a certain political party had denounced him as an assassin. No man was more vituperated; yet now, in my conscience, I believe he acted with both discretion and pluck, and arrested a mischievous movement that might have led to much bloodshed. Be that as it may, my impression is that he lost his head over this fatal affair with the tinker, and that he and the keeper together buried the body secretly, not far from the place where he was killed. I now think it was in the chalk-pit, and that the skeleton found years after there belonged to this man.”

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, as at once my mind rushed back to the figure with the fur cap that I had seen against the window.

Sir Francis went on: “The sudden disappearance of the tramp, in view of his well-known habits and wandering mode of life, did not for some time excite surprise; but, later on, one or two circumstances having led to suspicion, an inquiry was set on foot, and among others, my grandfather’s keepers were examined before the magistrates. It was remembered afterwards that the under-keeper in question was absent at the time of the inquiry, my grandfather having sent him with some dogs to a brother-in-law of his who lived upon the moors; but whether anyone noticed the fact, or if they did, preferred to be silent, no observations were made. Nothing came of the investigation, and the whole subject would have been dropped if it had not been that two years later, for some reasons I do not understand, but at the instigation of a magistrate recently imported into the division, whom my grandfather greatly disliked, and who was opposed to him in politics, a fresh inquiry was instituted. In the course of that inquiry it transpired that, owing to some unguarded words dropped by the under-keeper, a warrant was about to be issued for his arrest. My grandfather, who had a fit of the gout, was away from home at the time, but on hearing the news he came home at once. The evening he returned he had a long interview with the young man, who left the house after he had supped in the servants’ hall. It was observed that he looked much depressed. The warrant was issued the next day, but in the meantime the keeper had disappeared. My grandfather gave orders to his people to do everything in their power to assist the authorities in the search that was at once set on foot, but was unable himself to take any share in it.

“No trace of the keeper was found, although at a subsequent period rumors circulated that he had been heard of in America. But the man having been unmarried, he gradually dropped out of remembrance, and as my grandfather never allowed the subject to be mentioned in his presence, I should probably never have known anything about it but for the vague tradition which always attaches to such events, and for this fact, that after my grandfather’s death, a letter came addressed to him from somewhere in the United States from some one—the name different from that of the keeper—but alluding to the past, and implying the presence of a common secret, and, of course, with it came a request for money. I replied, mentioning the death of Sir Richard, and asking for an explanation. I did get an answer, and it is from that that I am able to fill in so much of the story. But I never learned where the man had been killed and buried, and my next letter to the fellow was returned with ‘deceased’ written across it. Somehow, it never occurred to me till I heard your story that possibly the skeleton in the chalk-pit might be that of the poaching tinker. I will now most assuredly have it buried in the churchyard.”

“That certainly ought to be done,” said I.

“And,” said Sir Francis, after a pause, “I give you my word—after the burial of the bones, and you are gone, I will sleep for a week in the bed in the gallery, and report to you if I see or hear anything. If all be quiet, then—well, you form your own conclusions.”

I left a day after. Before long I got a letter from my friend, brief, but to the point: “All quiet, old boy; come again.”

THE GHOST OF THE COUNT,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

Not far from the Alameda, in the City of Mexico, there is a great old stone building, in which once lived a very wealthy and wicked Spanish count. The house has about four floors, and ninety rooms, more or less. The entire fourth floor is rented and occupied by a big American firm, and their bookkeeper, an American girl, has given us the following true account of the ghost that for years haunted the building. The second floor is unoccupied, as no one cares to live there for obvious reasons. And the bottom floor is also unoccupied, save for lumber rooms, empty boxes and crates and barrels. And last of all is the great patio with its tiled floor, where secretly in the night a duel was fought to the death by the wicked count and a famous Austrian prince, who was one of Maximilian’s men. The count was killed.

No one knows why the duel was fought; some say it was because of a beautiful Spanish woman; some say that it was because of treasure that the two jointly “conveyed,” and which the count refused to divide with his princely “socio,” and more people—Mexicans—shrug their shoulders if you ask about it, and say, “Quien sabe?”

“I saw a ghost here last night, Miss James,” announces our cashier with much eclat and evident pride.

So great is the shock that I gasp, and my pen drops, spattering red ink on my nice fresh cuffs, and (worse luck!) on the ledger page that I had just totted up. It is ruined, and I will have to erase it, or—something! Wretched man!

“I wish to goodness it had taken you off,” I cry, wrathfully, as I look at the bespattered work. “Now will you just look here and see what you have done? I wish you and your ghosts were in—”

“Gehenna?” he inquires, sweetly; “I’ll fix that—it won’t take half a minute. And don’t look so stern, else I won’t tell you about the ‘espanto.’ And you will be sorry if you don’t hear about it—it would make such a good story.” (Insinuatingly.)

“Then go ahead with it.” (Ungraciously.)

“Well, last night I was waiting for West. He was to meet me here, after which it was our intention to hit the—that is, I mean we were going out together. (I nod scornfully.) And it seems that while I was patiently waiting here, in my usual sweet-tempered way, the blank idiot had his supper and then lay down to rest himself for a while. You know how delicate he is? (Another contemptuous nod.) Unfortunately he forgot the engagement, and slept on. He says he never awoke until three o’clock, and so didn’t come, thinking I wouldn’t be there. Meantime I also went to sleep, and might have snoozed on until three, likewise, but for the fact that the ghost woke me—”

“Well? Do go on,” I urge.

“The ghost woke me, as I said,” proceeds the simpleton, slowly. “It was passing its cold fingers over my face and groaning. Really, it was most extraordinary. At first I didn’t know what it was; then, as I felt the icy fingers stroking my face and heard blood-curdling groans issuing from the darkness, I knew what it was. And I remembered the story of the prince and his little duel down in the patio, and knew it was the ghost of the prince’s victim. By the way, you don’t know what a funny sensation it is to have a ghost pat your face, Miss James—”

“Pat nothing,” I retort, indignantly. “I wonder you are not ashamed to tell me such fibs. Such a ta-ra-diddle! And as for the man that the prince killed downstairs, you know as well as I do that he was taken home to Spain and buried there. Why, then, should he come back here, into our offices, and pat your face?”

“Ah, that I can’t say,” with a supercilious drawl. “I can only account for it by thinking that the ghost has good taste—better than that of some people I know,” meaningly. “But honestly, I swear that I am telling you the truth—cross my heart and hope to die if I am not! And you don’t know how brave I was—I never screamed; in fact, I never made a sound; oh, I was brave!”

“Then what did you do?” sternly.

“I ran. Por Dios, how I ran! You remember with what alacrity we got down the stairs during the November earthquake? (I remember only too distinctly.) Well, last night’s run wasn’t a run, in comparison—it was a disappearance, a flight, a sprint! I went down the four flights of stairs like a streak of blue lightning, and the ghost flew with me. I heard the pattering of its steps and its groans clean down to the patio door, and I assure you I quite thought I had made such an impression that it was actually going on home with me. And the thought made me feel so weak that I felt perforce obliged to take a—have a—that is, strengthen myself with a cocktail. After which I felt stronger and went home quite peacefully. But it was an uncanny experience, wasn’t it?”

“Was it before or after taking that cocktail?” I ask, incredulously. “And did you take one only or eleven?”

I am hard on the man, but he really deserves it. Ghosts! Spirits, perhaps, but not ghosts. Whereat his feelings are quite “hurted”—so much so that he vows he will never tell me anything again; I had better read about Doubting Thomas; he never has seen such an unbelieving woman in all his life, and if I were only a man he would be tempted to pray that I might see the ghost; it would serve me right. Then, wrathfully departs, to notice me no more that day.

Not believing the least bit in ghosts I gave the matter no more thought. In fact, when you fall heir to a set of books that haven’t been posted for nineteen days, and you have to do it all, and get up your trial balance, too, or else give up your Christmas holidays, you haven’t much time to think about ghosts, or anything else, except entries. And though I had been working fourteen hours per day, the 24th of December, noon hour, found me with a difference of $13.89. The which I, of course, must locate and straighten out before departing next morning on my week’s holiday. Por supuesto, it meant night work. Nothing else would do; and besides, our plans had all been made to leave on the eight o’clock train next morning. So I would just sit up all night, if need be, and find the wretched balance and be done with it.

Behold me settled for work that night at seven o’clock in my own office, with three lamps burning to keep it from looking dismal and lonely, and books and ledgers and journals piled up two feet high around me. If hard work would locate that nasty, hateful $13.89 it would surely be found. I had told the portero downstairs on the ground floor to try and keep awake for a time, but if I didn’t soon finish the work I would come down and call him when I was ready to go home.

He lived in a little room, all shut off from the rest of the building, so that it was rather difficult to get at him. Besides, he was the very laziest and sleepiest peon possible, and though he was supposed to take care of the big building at night, patrolling it so as to keep off ladrones, he in reality slept so soundly that the last trumpet, much less Mexican robbers, would not have roused him.

And for this very reason, before settling to my work I was careful to go around and look to locks and bolts myself; everything was secure, and the doors safely fastened. So that if ladrones did break through they would have to be in shape to pass through keyholes or possess false keys.

With never a thought of spirits or porteros, or anything else, beyond the thirteen dollars and eighty-nine cents, I worked and added and re-added and footed up. And at eleven o’clock, grazia a Dios, I had the thirteen dollars all safe, and would have whooped for joy, had I the time. However, I wasn’t out of the woods yet, the sum of eighty-nine dollars being often more easy of location than eighty-nine cents. The latter must be found, also, before I could have the pleasure of shouting in celebration thereof.

At it I went again. After brain cudgeling and more adding and prayerful thought I at last had under my thumb that abominable eighty cents. Eureka! Only nine cents out. I could get it all straight and have some sleep, after all! Inspired by which thought I smothered my yawns and again began to add. I looked at my watch—ten minutes to twelve. Perhaps I could get it fixed before one.

I suppose I had worked at the nine cents for about twenty minutes. One of the cash entries looked to me to be in error. I compared it with the voucher—yes, that was just where the trouble lay! Eleven cents—ten—nine—

S-t-t! Out went the lights in the twinkling of an eye—as I sat, gaping in my astonishment, from out of the pitchy darkness of the room came the most dreary, horrible, blood-curdling groan imaginable. As I sat paralyzed, not daring to breathe, doubting my senses for a moment, and then thinking indignantly that it was some trick of that wretched cashier, I felt long, thin, icy fingers passing gently over my face. Malgame Dios! what a sensation! At first I was afraid to move. Then I nervously tried to brush the icy, bony things away. As fast as I brushed, with my heart beating like a steam-hammer, and gasping with deadly fear, the fingers would come back again; a cold wind was blowing over me. Again came that dreadful groan, and too frightened to move or scream, I tumbled in a heap on the floor, among the books and ledgers. Then I suppose I fainted.

When I regained my senses I was still in a heap with the ledgers; still it was dark and still I felt the cold fingers caressing my face. At which I became thoroughly desperate. No ghost should own me! I had laughed at the poor cashier and hinted darkly at cocktails. Pray, what better was I?

I scrambled to my feet, the fingers still stroking my face. I must address them—what language—did they understand English or Spanish, I wondered? Spanish would doubtless be most suitable, if indeed, it was the ghost of the murdered count—.

“Will you do me the favor, Señor Ghost,” I started out bravely, in my best Spanish, but with a very trembling voice, “to inform me what it is that you desire? Is there anything I can do for you? Because, if not, I would like very much to be allowed to finish my work, which I cannot do (if you will pardon my abruptness) if I am not alone.”

(Being the ghost of a gentleman and a diplomat, surely he would take the hint and vanish. Ojala!)

Perhaps the ghost did not understand my Spanish; at any rate there was no articulate reply; there was another groan—again the fingers touched me, and then there was such a mournful sigh that I felt sorry for the poor thing—what could be the matter with it? With my pity, all fear was lost for a moment, and I said to the darkness all about me:

“What is it that you wish, pobre señor? Can I not aid you? I am not afraid—let me help you!”

The fingers moved uncertainly for a moment; then the ledgers all fell down, with a loud bang; a cold hand caught mine, very gently—I tried not to feel frightened, but it was difficult—and I was led off blindly, through the offices. I could not see a thing—not a glimmer of light showed; not a sound was heard except my own footsteps, and the faint sound of the invisible something that was leading me along—there were no more groans, thank goodness, else I should have shrieked and fainted, without a doubt. Only the pattering footsteps and the cold hand that led me on and on.

We—the fingers and I—were somehow in the great hall, then on the second floor, and at last on the stairs, going on down, flight after flight. Then I knew that I was being led about by the fingers on the tiled floor of the patio, and close to the portero’s lodge. Simpleton that he was! Sleeping like a log, no doubt, while I was being led about in the black darkness by an invisible hand, and no one to save me! I would have yelled, of course, but for one fact—I found it utterly impossible to speak or move my tongue, being a rare and uncomfortable sensation.

But where were we going? Back into the unused lumber rooms, joining onto the patio? Nothing there, except barrels and slabs and empty boxes. What could the ghost mean? He must be utterly demented, surely.

In the middle of the first room we paused. I had an idea of rushing out and screaming for the portero, but abandoned it when I found that my feet wouldn’t go. I heard steps passing to and fro about the floor, and waited, cold and trembling. They approached me; again my hand was taken, and I was led over near the corner of the room. Obedient to the unseen will, I bent down and groped about the floor, guided by the cold fingers holding mine, until I felt something like a tiny ring, set firmly in the floor. I pulled at it faintly, but it did not move, at which the ghost gave a faint sigh. For a second the cold fingers pressed mine, quite affectionately, then released me, and I heard steps passing slowly into the patio, then dying away. Where was it going, and what on earth did it all mean?

But I was so tired and wrought up I tried to find the door, but couldn’t (the cashier would have been revenged could he have seen me stupidly fumbling at a barrel, thinking it was the door), and at last, too fatigued and sleepy to stand, I dropped down on the cold stone floor and went to sleep.

I must have slept for some hours, for when I awoke the light of dawn was coming in at the window, and I sat up and wondered if I had taken leave of my senses during the night. What on earth could I be doing here in the lumber-room? Then, like a flash, I remembered, and, half unconsciously, crept about on the floor seeking the small ring. There it was! I caught it and jerked at it hard. Hey, presto, change! For it seemed to me that the entire floor was giving way. There was a sliding, crashing sound, and I found myself hanging on for dear life to a barrel that, fortunately, retained its equilibrium, and with my feet dangling into space. Down below me was a small, stone-floored room, with big boxes and small ones ranged about the walls. Treasure! Like a flash the thought struck me, and with one leap I was down in the secret room gazing about at the boxes.

But, alas! upon investigation, the biggest chests proved empty. The bad, wicked count! No wonder he couldn’t rest in his Spanish grave, but must come back to the scene of his wickedness and deceit to make reparation! But the smaller chests were literally crammed with all sorts of things—big heavy Spanish coins, in gold and silver—gold and silver dinner services, with the crest of the unfortunate emperor; magnificent pieces of jeweled armor and weapons, beautiful jewelry and loose precious stones. I deliberately selected handfuls of the latter, giving my preference to the diamonds and pearls—I had always had a taste for them, which I had never before been able to gratify!—and packed them in a wooden box that I found in the lumber-room. The gold and dinner services and armor, etc., I left as they were, being rather cumbersome, and carried off, rejoicing, my big box of diamonds and pearls and other jewelry.

Needless to say we didn’t go away for the holidays on the eight o’clock train. But I did come down to the office and proceeded to locate my missing nine cents. After which I unfolded the tale of the ghost and the treasure—only keeping quiet the matter of my private loot. Of which I was heartily glad afterwards. For when the government learned of the find what do you suppose they offered me for going about with the ghost and discovering the secret room and treasure? Ten thousand dollars! When I refused, stating that I would take merely, as my reward, one of the gold dinner services, the greedy things objected at first, but I finally had my way. And to this very day they have no idea that I—even I—have all the beautiful jewels. Wouldn’t they be furious if they knew it? But they aren’t apt to, unless they learn English and read this story. Which isn’t likely.

THE OLD MANSION,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

Down on Long Beach, that narrow strip of sand which stretches along the New Jersey coast from Barnegat Inlet on the north to Little Egg Harbor Inlet on the south, the summer sojourner at some one of the numerous resorts, which of late years have sprung up every few miles, may, in wandering over the sand dunes just across the bay from the village of Manahawkin, stumble over some charred timbers or vestiges of crumbling chimneys, showing that once, years back, a human habitation has stood there. If the find rouses the jaded curiosity of the visitor sufficiently to impel him to question the weatherbeaten old bayman who sails him on his fishing trips he will learn that these relics mark the site of one of the first summer hotels erected on the New Jersey coast.

“That’s where the Old Mansion stood,” he will be informed by Captain Nate or Captain Sam, or whatever particular captain it may chance to be, and if by good fortune it chances to be Captain Jim, he will hear a story that will pleasantly pass away the long wait for a sheepshead bite.

It was my good luck to have secured Captain Jim for a preceptor in the angler’s art during my vacation last summer, and his stories and reminiscences of Long Beach were not the least enjoyable features of the two weeks’ sojourn.

Captain Jim was not garrulous. Few of the baymen are. They are a sturdy, self-reliant and self-controlled people, full of strong common sense, but still with that firm belief in the supernatural which seems inherent in dwellers by the sea.

“The Old Mansion,” said Captain Jim, “or the Mansion of Health, for that was its full name, was built away back in 1822, so I’ve heard my father say. There had been a tavern close by years before that was kept by a man named Cranmer, and people used to come from Philadelphia by stage, sixty miles through the pines, to ’Hawkin, and then cross here by boat. Some would stop at Cranmer’s and others went on down the beach to Homer’s which was clear down at End by the Inlet. Finally some of the wealthy people concluded that they wanted better accommodations than Cranmer gave, so they formed the Great Swamp Long Beach Company, and built the Mansion of Health. I’ve heard that when it was built it was the biggest hotel on the coast, and was considered a wonder. It was 120 feet long, three stories high, and had a porch running all the way around it, with a balcony on top. It was certainly a big thing for those days. I’ve heard father tell many a time of the stage loads of gay people that used to come rattling into ’Hawkin, each stage drawn by four horses, and sometimes four or five of them a day in the summer. A good many people, too, used to come in their own carriages, and leave them over on the mainland until they were ready to go home. There were gay times at the Old Mansion then, and it made times good for the people along shore, too.”

“How long did the Old Mansion flourish, Captain?” I asked.

“Well, for twenty-five or thirty years people came there summer after summer. Then they built a railroad to Cape May, and that, with the ghosts, settled the Mansion of Health.”

“What do you mean by the ghosts?” I demanded.

“Well, you see,” said Captain Jim, cutting off a mouthful of navy plug, “the story got around that the old house was haunted. Some people said there were queer things seen there, and strange noises were heard that nobody could account for, and pretty soon the place got a bad name and visitors were so few that it didn’t pay to keep it open any more.”

“But how did it get the name of being haunted, Captain Jim?” I persisted.

“Why, it was this way,” continued the mariner. “Maybe you’ve heard of the time early in the fifties when the Powhatan was wrecked on the beach here, and every soul on board was lost. She was an emigrant ship, and there were over 400 people aboard—passengers and crew. She came ashore here during the equinoctial storm in September. There wasn’t any life-saving stations in them days, and everyone was drowned. You can see the long graves now over in the ’Hawkin churchyard, where the bodies were buried after they came ashore. They put them in three long trenches that were dug from one end of the burying-ground to the other. The only people on the beach that night was the man who took care of the old mansion. He lived there with his family, and his son-in-law lived with him. He was the wreckmaster for this part of the coast, too. It wasn’t till the second day that the people from ’Hawkin could get over to the beach, and by that time the bodies had all come ashore, and the wreckmaster had them all piled up on the sand. I was a youngster, then, and came over with my father, and, I tell you, it was the awfullest sight I ever saw—them long rows of drowned people, all lying there with their white, still faces turned up to the sky. Some were women, with their dead babies clasped tight in their arms, and some were husbands and wives, whose bodies came ashore locked together in a death embrace. I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live. Well, when the coroner came and took charge he began to inquire whether any money or valuables had been found, but the wreckmaster declared that not a solitary coin had been washed ashore. People thought this was rather singular, as the emigrants were, most of them, well-to-do Germans, and were known to have brought a good deal of money with them, but it was concluded that it had gone down with the ship. Well, the poor emigrants were given pauper burial, and the people had begun to forget their suspicions until three or four months later there came another storm, and the sea broke clear over the beach, just below the Old Mansion, and washed away the sand. Next morning early two men from ’Hawkin sailed across the bay and landed on the beach. They walked across on the hard bottom where the sea had washed across, and, when about half way from the bay, one of the men saw something curious close up against the stump of an old cedar tree. He called the other man’s attention to it, and they went over to the stump. What they found was a pile of leather money-belts that would have filled a wheelbarrow. Every one was cut open and empty. They had been buried in the sand close by the old stump, and the sea had washed away the covering. The men didn’t go any further.

“They carried the belts to their boats and sailed back to ’Hawkin as fast as the wind would take them. Of course, it made a big sensation, and everybody was satisfied that the wreckmaster had robbed the bodies, if he hadn’t done anything worse, but there was no way to prove it, and so nothing was done. The wreckmaster didn’t stay around here long after that, though. The people made it too hot for him, and he and his family went away South, where it was said he bought a big plantation and a lot of slaves. Years afterward the story came to ’Hawkin somehow that he was killed in a barroom brawl, and that his son-in-law was drowned by his boat upsettin’ while he was out fishin’. I don’t furnish any affidavits with that part of the story, though.

“However, after that nobody lived in the Old Mansion for long at a time. People would go there, stay a week or two, and leave—and at last it was given up entirely to beach parties in the day time, and ghosts at night.”

“But, Captain, you don’t really believe the ghost part, do you?” I asked.

Captain Jim looked down the bay, expectorated gravely over the side of the boat, and answered, slowly:

“Well, I don’t know as I would have believed in ’em if I hadn’t seen the ghost.”

“What!” I exclaimed; “you saw it? Tell me about it. I’ve always wanted to see a ghost, or next best thing, a man who has seen one.”

“It was one August, about 1861,” said the captain. “I was a young feller then, and with a half dozen more was over on the beach cutting salt hay. We didn’t go home at nights, but did our own cooking in the Old Mansion kitchen, and at nights slept on piles of hay upstairs. We were a reckless lot of scamps, and reckoned that no ghosts could scare us. There was a big full moon that night, and it was as light as day. The muskeeters was pretty bad, too, and it was easier to stay awake than go to sleep. Along toward midnight me and two other fellers went out on the old balcony, and began to race around the house. We hollered and yelled, and chased each other for half an hour or so, and then we concluded we had better go to sleep, so we started for the window of the room where the rest were. This window was near one end on the ocean side, and as I came around the corner I stopped as if I had been shot, and my hair raised straight up on top of my head. Right there in front of that window stood a woman looking out over the sea, and in her arms she held a little child. I saw her as plain as I see you now. It seemed to me like an hour she stood there, but I don’t suppose it was a second; then she was gone. When I could move I looked around for the other boys, and they were standing there paralyzed. They had seen the woman, too. We didn’t say much, and we didn’t sleep much that night, and the next night we bunked out on the beach. The rest of the crowd made all manner of fun of us, but we had had all the ghost we wanted, and I never set foot inside the old house after that.”

“When did it burn down, Captain?” I asked, as Jim relapsed into silence.

“Somewhere about twenty-five years ago. A beach party had been roasting clams in the old oven, and in some way the fire got to the woodwork. It was as dry as tinder, and I hope the ghosts were all burnt up with it.”

A MISFIT GHOST,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

Every boy with a knowledge of adventurous literature, otherwise “novels of action,” knows of the “phantom ship,” the spook of the high seas.

But it has not been known that ships themselves are haunted, and that in the service of the United States Coast Survey there is a vessel now in commission that is by her own officers supposed to be haunted.

Yet the Eagre, a 140-foot schooner of the coast survey, is looked upon in the service as a very undesirable vessel to be aboard of. About her there is an atmosphere of gloom that wardroom jest cannot dispel.

Duty on board her has been shunned as would be a pestilence, and stories have been told by officers who have cruised aboard her that are not good for timid people to hear. Officers have hesitated about telling these uncanny stories, but they have become sufficiently well known to make a billet to duty aboard the Eagre unwelcome among the coast survey men.

The Mohawk was launched June 10, 1875, at Greenpoint, and she was then the largest sailing yacht afloat.

William T. Garner, her young millionaire owner, was very proud of his new craft, and all the then leaders of New York society were invited to participate in the good time afloat with which her launching was celebrated. Commodore Garner, then but thirty-three years old, and his young wife entertained charmingly, and the trim, speedy Mohawk was christened with unusually merry festivities. Soon after that she was capsized by a sudden squall off the landing at Stapleton, N. Y., and six people were drowned like rats in her cabin and forecastle.

Then the Mohawk was raised at a cost of $25,000 and purchased by the United States Government for the service of the coast survey. Her name was changed to Eagre, for Jack Tar is proverbially superstitious, and with the old name it would have been impossible to ship a crew.

Lieutenant Higby King describes his initial experience when he was assigned to duty on the Eagre in this way:

“She had her full complement of officers minus one when I boarded her at Newport to complete the list. Every cabin was occupied but the port cabin by the companion way, and to that I was assigned.

“We had a jolly wardroom mess that night, and I retired from it early, as I was tired by my journey to join the vessel. The others who were still at the table regarded my retirement to the port cabin in absolute silence, having bidden me good-night. Their silence did not lead me to suspect anything, though I knew that the Eagre had once been the Mohawk. My cabin door had the usual cabin lock of brass, and the porthole was also securely fastened. There could have been no one under the bed or sofa, as beneath each was a facing of solid oak paneling.

“I undressed lazily and left the light burning dimly in my bracket lamp. I tried conscientiously to go to sleep for I don’t know how long with my back turned to the light. The noise ceased in the wardroom after a time, and I knew the others had turned in, but I felt unaccountably nervous and restless. I turned over and faced the light, thoroughly wide awake, and there in the single chair sat an elderly man, seemingly wrapt in deep thought. He was dressed in a blue yachting reefer, and had a long, gray beard. His hands were clasped in his lap, and his eyes were downcast. His face was not pale and ghastly, as the faces of ghosts are popularly supposed to be, but ruddy and weatherbeaten.

“I regarded him in scared silence for I don’t know how long, though it seemed an hour when he, or it, or whatever it was, disappeared. During that time the ghost, and such I now believe it to have been, made not a motion, nor did it say anything. Presently I looked again, and it was gone.

“At breakfast the others watched me critically as I took my seat. I had not intended to say anything about my experience, for I thought then I had seen some sort of hallucination and strongly suspected that I was verging on insanity. Lieutenant Irving asked me if I had slept well. I replied that I had. ‘Didn’t you see anything?’ he inquired. I then frankly admitted that I had and described my experience. Then I learned that each one of the seven others present had tried the port cabin at one time or another, and each had seen the self-same apparition. It had acted in exactly the same way in each case, except in the case of Irving, who shot at it with his pistol, when it immediately disappeared. Some of the others had been led by their curiosity to inquire if anyone lost on the Mohawk resembled the figure, and found that none of the unfortunate ones at all fitted the description. It had been dubbed by them the ‘misfit ghost.’ That one experience was enough for me, and after that I, by courtesy, shared the cabin of another fellow.”

Lieutenant Irving and others corroborate the story of Lieutenant King, and as additional evidence that the Eagre is haunted, Lieutenant Irving describes a New Year’s Eve experience of the Eagre’s officers, that is, to say the least, novel in the way of supernatural manifestations.

“It was at mess. The first toast, ‘Sweethearts and Wives,’ had been drunk, as it always is by Yankee sailors the world over on occasions of festivity. Everyone was feeling happy, or, as Thackeray has it, ‘pleasant,’ when suddenly the sliding-doors separating the wardroom from the companion way closed slowly with a loud, squeaking noise. They had seldom been closed, and it took the entire strength of a man to start them from their rusty fastenings. Yet upon this occasion they started easily and closed tightly, while the officers jumped to their feet in breathless astonishment. Half a dozen men hauled them open in haste, but not a soul was behind them or anywhere about. ‘It must be our old friend of the port cabin,’ suggested one, and in awe-stricken silence the health of the ‘misfit ghost’ was drunk.”

AN UNBIDDEN GUEST,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

My cousins, Kate and Tom Howard, married at Trinity, at Easter time, concluded to commence housekeeping by taking one of those delightfully expensively furnished, unfurnished cottages, with which the fashionable watering place of W—— abounds, from whose rear windows one might almost take a plunge into the surf, the beach beginning at the back door. They went down quite early in May, being in a great hurry to try their domestic experiment; and, as the evenings were still cold, they spent them about the open fire, “spooning.”

It was upon one of those nights, about eleven o’clock, that they were startled by a noise, as of some small object falling, soon followed by the sound of heavy footsteps, and then quiet again reigned supreme. At once Tom, poker in hand, boldly started in search of the burglar, followed by Kate, wildly clutching at his coat-tail, and in a state of tremor. They looked upstairs, under the various beds, Kate suggesting that in novels they were always to be found there.

The dining-room was next explored, where all seemed well, and, lastly the kitchen, where they found what was evidently a solution of the mystery. The burglar had entered by the back door, which was found to be unlocked and slightly ajar. The first excitement subsiding, they returned again to the dining-room, where Tom, upon closer inspection, then discovered that one of a pair of quaint little pepper-pots, wedding gifts, was missing, and other small articles on the sideboard had been slightly disturbed.

The next morning, when Kate mildly remonstrated with the queen of the kitchen for her carelessness, she received a shock by being told that it was her usual custom to leave the door open, “so that it would be aisy, convanient loike for the milkmaid.” They parted with her, and a new maid was engaged, whose chief qualification for the place was that she was most faithful in the discharge of her duties, especially in “locking up.”

While they mourned the loss of the pepper-pot, still it seemed so trifling when they thought of that lovely repousse salad bowl, sent by Aunt Julia, which stood near by, that nothing was said of the loss outside of the family, and the little household settled into its normal state once more of “billing and cooing.”

About a fortnight later, Tom started out one night with an old fisherman, one of the natives, and a local “character,” to indulge in that delightful pastime, so dear to the heart of man, known as “eeling,” and, as the night was dark, the eels were particularly “sporty,” so that it was well on towards the “wee sma’ hours” when Tom at last returned to the cottage.

He found all excitement within. Kate was in hysterics, and the new maid, also weeping, was industriously applying the camphor bottle to her mistress’ nose. The burglar, or ghost, as they had now decided, the windows and doors being found to be securely locked this time, had been abroad again, but had succeeded in purloining nothing. His royal ghostship had amused himself, apparently, by simply walking about.

“Oh, Tom! he had on such heavy boots and was so dreadfully bold about it,” said Kate, tearfully.

From that time Kate became nervous and refused to be left alone. Tom started whenever a door creaked, and the “treasure” departed hurriedly, saying, “Faith, the house is haunted, sure.”

After that Kate spent her days in “girl hunting,” and her nights in answering shadowy advertisements that never materialized. They tried Irish, English, Dutch, and a “heathen Chinee,” with a sprinkling of “colored ladies” to vary the monotony. They seemed about to become famous throughout the length and breadth of the land as “the family that changes help once a week,” when they landed Treasure No. 2.

Shortly after her advent we were all asked down to W——, to help celebrate their happiness, and incidentally to christen the new dinner set. We were not a little surprised at finding Kate so pale and Tom rather distrait. However, after a delightful dinner, that should have filled with pleasure the most exacting bride, we adjourned to the piazza, leaving the men to the contemplation of their cigars. We were enthusiastic in our praise of the house, and congratulated Kate in securing such a prize, when, to our horror, she burst into tears, and said: “Oh, girls, it’s a dreadful place; it’s haunted!” and then tearfully proceeded with the details, until we all felt creepy and suggested the parlor and lights.

It was not until long afterwards that Kate discovered that Tom had also related the “ghost story” to the men, that evening, to which Ned Harris had said, laconically, “Rats,” and Bob Shaw laughingly remarked, “Tom, old chap, you really shouldn’t take your nightcap so strong.”

About the first of July the climax came. The ghost walked again, this time taking not only the remaining pepper-pot, but also a silver salt-cellar. Evidently he had a penchant for small articles, but unlike former times, everything on the sideboard was in the greatest disorder. Aunt Julia’s salad bowl was found on the floor, and not far away the cheese-dish, with its contents scattered about. This time one of the windows was found half open. A week later a note came to me from Kate, saying that she and Tom had gone to Saratoga to spend the remainder of the season with her mother.

The following spring Tom received a note and parcel from Mr. B——, the owner of the house at W——, which read as follows:

Dear Mr. Howard:

I send you by express three articles of silver, which my wife suggests may belong to you, as they are marked with your initials, namely, two silver pepper-pots and a salt-cellar; they were found, the other day, during the process of spring house cleaning, in a rat hole, behind the sideboard. I forgot to have the holes stopped up last spring, or to caution you against the water rats; the great fellows will get in, you know. Kind regards to Mrs. Howard.

Very truly,

John B——.

The next season the “Ghost Club” was organized, the badge being a small silver rat, bearing proudly aloft a tiny pepper-pot. We thoughtfully offered Tom the presidency, but he declined, with offended dignity, from the effects of which I think he will never fully recover.

THE DEAD WOMAN’S PHOTOGRAPH,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

Virgil Hoyt is a photographer’s assistant up at St. Paul, and a man of a good deal of taste. He has been in search of the picturesque all over the West, and hundreds of miles to the north in Canada, and can speak three or four Indian dialects, and put a canoe through the rapids. That is to say, he is a man of an adventurous sort and no dreamer. He can fight well and shoot well and swim well enough to put up a winning race with the Indian boys, and he can sit all day in the saddle and not dream about it at night.

Wherever he goes he uses his camera.

“The world,” Hoyt is in the habit of saying to those who sit with him when he smokes his pipe, “was created in six days to be photographed. Man—and especially woman—was made for the same purpose. Clouds are not made to give moisture, nor trees to cast shade. They were created for the photographer.”

In short, Virgil Hoyt’s view of the world is whimsical, and he doesn’t like to be bothered with anything disagreeable. That is the reason that he loathes and detests going to a house of mourning to photograph a corpse. The horribly bad taste of it offends him partly, and partly he is annoyed at having to shoulder, even for a few moments, a part of someone’s burden of sorrow. He doesn’t like sorrow, and would willingly canoe 500 miles up the cold Canadian rivers to get rid of it. Nevertheless, as assistant photographer, it is often his duty to do this very kind of thing.

Not long ago he was sent for by a rich Jewish family at St. Paul to photograph the mother, who had just died. He was very much put out, but he went. He was taken to the front parlor, where the dead woman lay in her coffin. It was evident that there was some excitement in the household and that a discussion was going on, but Hoyt wasn’t concerned, and so he paid no attention to the matter.

The daughter wanted the coffin turned on end, in order that the corpse might face the camera properly, but Hoyt said he could overcome the recumbent attitude and make it appear that the face was taken in the position it would naturally hold in life, and so they went out and left him alone with the dead.

The face was a strong and positive one, such as may often be seen among Jewish matrons. Hoyt regarded it with some admiration, thinking to himself that she was a woman who had been used to having her own way. There was a strand of hair out of place, and he pushed it back from her brow. A bud lifted its head too high from among the roses on her breast and spoiled the contour of the chin, so he broke it off. He remembered these things later very distinctly and that his hand touched her bare face two or three times.

Then he took the photographs and left the house.

He was very busy at the time and several days elapsed before he was able to develop the plates. He took them from the bath, in which they had lain with a number of others, and went to work upon them. There were three plates, he having taken that number merely as a precaution against any accident. They came up well, but as they developed he became aware of the existence of something in the photograph which had not been apparent to his eye. The mysterious always came under the head of the disagreeable with him, and was therefore to be banished, so he made only a few prints and put the things away out of sight. He hoped that something would intervene to save him from attempting an explanation.

But it is a part of the general perplexity of life that things do not intervene as they ought and when they ought, so one day his employer asked him what had become of those photographs. He tried to evade him, but it was futile, and he got out the finished photographs and showed them to him. The older man sat staring at them a long time.

“Hoyt,” said he, at length, “you’re a young man, and I suppose you have never seen anything like this before. But I have. Not exactly the same thing, but similar phenomena have come my way a number of times since I went into the business, and I want to tell you there are things in heaven and earth not dreamt of—”

“Oh, I know all that tommy-rot,” cried Hoyt, angrily, “but when anything happens I want to know the reason why, and how it is done.”

“All right,” said his employer, “then you might explain why and how the sun rises.”

But he humored the younger man sufficiently to examine with him the bath in which the plates were submerged and the plates themselves. All was as it should be. But the mystery was there and could not be done away with.

Hoyt hoped against hope that the friends of the dead woman would somehow forget about the photographs, but of course the wish was unreasonable, and one day the daughter appeared and asked to see the photographs of her mother.

“Well, to tell the truth,” stammered Hoyt, “those didn’t come out as well as we could wish.”

“But let me see them,” persisted the lady. “I’d like to look at them, anyway.”

“Well, now,” said Hoyt, trying to be soothing, as he believed it was always best to be with women—to tell the truth, he was an ignoramus where women were concerned—“I think it would be better if you didn’t see them. There are reasons why—” he ambled on like this, stupid man that he was, and of course the Jewess said she would see those pictures without any further delay.

So poor Hoyt brought them out and placed them in her hand, and then ran for the water pitcher, and had to be at the bother of bathing her forehead to keep her from fainting.

For what the lady saw was this: Over face and flowers and the head of the coffin fell a thick veil, the edges of which touched the floor in some places. It covered the features so well that not a hint of them was visible.

“There was nothing over mother’s face,” cried the lady at length.

“Not a thing,” acquiesced Hoyt. “I know, because I had occasion to touch her face just before I took the picture. I put some of her hair back from her brow.”

“What does it mean, then?” asked the lady.

“You know better than I. There is no explanation in science. Perhaps there is some in psychology.”

“Well,” said the lady, stammering a little and coloring, “mother was a good woman, but she always wanted her own way, and she always had it, too.”

“Yes?”

“And she never would have her picture taken. She didn’t admire herself. She said no one should ever see a picture of hers.”

“So?” said Hoyt, meditatively. “Well, she’s kept her word, hasn’t she?”

The two stood looking at the pictures for a time. Then Hoyt pointed to the open blaze in the grate.

“Throw them in,” he commanded. “Don’t let your father see them—don’t keep them yourself. They wouldn’t be good things to keep.”

“That’s true enough,” said the lady, slowly. And she threw them in the fire. Then Virgil Hoyt brought out the plates and broke them before her eyes.

And that was the end of it—except that Hoyt sometimes tells the story to those who sit beside him when his pipe is lighted.

THE GHOST OF A LIVE MAN,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

We were in the South Atlantic Ocean, in the latitude of the island of Fernando Norohna, about 40 degrees 12 minutes south, on board the barque H. G. Johnson, homeward bound from Australia. I was the only passenger, and we had safely rounded Cape Horn, with the barometer at 28 degrees 18 minutes, and yet had somehow miraculously escaped any extremely heavy gale—had had light northerly and easterly winds till we reached 20 degrees, and thence the southeast trades were sending us fast on our way to the equator. I sat on deck smoking my pipe, with a glorious full moon shedding its bright pathway across the blue waters, and chatting with the first mate, a man some fifty-eight years of age, who had followed the sea since he was a boy. For twenty years or more he had been mate or captain, and many and varied were the experiences he could relate. A thorough sailor and skillful navigator, he was as honest as the day is long—had a heart as big as an ox and was an all-round good fellow and genial companion. Some of his yarns might be taken cum grano salis, yet he always positively assured me that he “was telling me the truth.” An account of a voyage that he made in a whaler from the Southern Ocean to New Bedford seemed to me worthy to be repeated. He had rounded Cape Horn six times and the Cape of Good Hope twenty-six times, besides making many trips across the Western Ocean and to South American ports. I give his account as near as possible in his own words:

“It was in ’71 that I commanded the whaler Mary Jane. We had been out from home over three years, and had on board a full cargo of whale oil, besides 2,000 pounds of whalebone, which was then worth $5 per pound. I also had been fortunate enough to find in a dead whale which we came across a large quantity of ambergris, and our hearts were all very light as we began our homeward voyage, and our thoughts all tended to the hearty welcome which we should receive from wives and sweethearts when we reached our journey’s end. Many a night as I lay in my berth I had thought with great pleasure of the amount of money that would be coming to me from the proceeds of our voyage when we arrived in New Bedford.

“I calculated that I had made $12,000 as my share of the proceeds of the whalebone and oil—to say nothing of the ambergris, which I well knew would bring at least $20,000, and one-half of which belonged to me. You can therefore imagine that I was well pleased with myself as we went bounding along through the southeast trades. We crossed the equator in longitude 36 and soon after took strong northeast trades, and all was going as well as I could wish. We had put the ship in perfect order, painted her inside and out, and you would never have recognized her as the old whaling ship that had for three years been plying the Southern Ocean for whales. Never shall I forget an old bull whale that we tackled about two degrees to the south of Cape Horn—but that is another story, which I will give you another time.

“We had just lost the northeast trades and were entering the Gulf Stream. I sat in my cabin with my chart on the table before me rolled up. I had just picked our location on it, and was thinking that in a week more I should be at home, surrounded by those near and dear to me, and relating to them the story of my great good fortune.

“It was always my custom to work up my latitude and longitude about four o’clock in the afternoon, and then after supper pick off her position on the chart, have a smoke and perhaps just before retiring a nip of grog, and then at 8.30 o’clock, as regular as a clock, I would turn in.

“I am a great smoker, and this day I had been smoking all the afternoon, besides having had two or three nips. We had a dog on board whom we called ‘Bosun,’ who had been out with us all the voyage, and who was afraid of nothing. He had endeared himself to every man on board, and when Bosun ‘took water’ something very serious was in the wind. This night as I sat in the cabin I heard a most dismal howl from Bosun, and called out to the mate to know what was the matter with the dog. He replied that he ‘reckoned some of the men had been teasing him,’ and the occurrence soon passed from my mind.

“Suddenly I saw someone coming down the after companion way into the cabin. I supposed at first it was the mate and wondered that he had not first spoken to me, but then I noticed that he wore clothes I had never seen on the mate, and as he advanced into the cabin I saw his face. It was the face of a man I had never seen in my life. He was thin and pale and haggard, and as he advanced he looked about the cabin and at the rolled up chart on the table. There seemed to be an appeal in his eyes, and then there swept over his face a look of intense disappointment, and before I could move or speak, he had vanished from my sight.

“Now I am a very practical man, and I at once straightened myself in my chair and said to myself: ‘Well, old man, you have smoked one too many pipes today, or else you have had one drink too much, for you have been asleep in your chair and seen a ghost.’ I was quite satisfied that I had had a dream, especially as I called to the mate and asked him if he had seen anyone come below. He said no; that he had not left the deck for the last hour, and the man at the wheel, directly in front of the door, was sure no one had entered the cabin, so I convinced myself that I had had a very vivid dream—though I could not help thinking of the matter all through the next day.

“At eight o’clock the next evening I sat in the same place with my work just finished and the chart lying rolled up on the table before me, when suddenly the dog’s dismal howl rang through the ship, and looking up I saw those same legs coming down the after companion. My hair fairly stood on end, and yet today surely I was wide awake. I had only smoked one pipe all day, and had not touched a drop of liquor. The same wan, emaciated figure walked into the cabin, glanced inquiringly and appealingly at me, and again there spread over his face that look of utter disappointment as if he had sought something and failed to find it, and again he disappeared. I rushed on deck to the mate and told him all I had seen during the last two nights; but he made light of it, and assured me I had been asleep or smoking too much. He did not like to suggest that I had been drinking. Still, I could see that the thought that came into his mind was ‘The old man has seen ’em again.’ I gave up trying to convince him, but requested that the next night, from 8 to 8.30, he should sit with me in the cabin.

“How the next day passed I cannot tell. I only know that my thoughts never left that ghostly visitant, and somehow I felt that the evening would reveal something to me and the spell be broken. I made up my mind I would speak to the thing, whatever it was, and I felt a sort of security in the presence of the mate, who was a daring fellow and feared neither man nor the devil. Neither rum nor tobacco passed my lips during the next day, and eight o’clock found the mate and I sitting in the cabin, and this time the chart lay open on the table beside us. Just as eight bells struck the dog’s premonitory wail sounded, and looking up we both saw the figure descending the cabin stairs. We both seemed frozen to our seats, and the strange weirdness of the whole proceeding cast the same spell over the mate and me alike, and we were both unable to move or speak. Slowly the figure proceeded into the cabin and glanced around without a word, but with the same expectant look on his face. His form was even more wasted, his cheeks sunken and his eyes seemed almost out of sight so deeply were they set in their sockets. As his eye fell on the open chart a look of supreme joy fairly irradiated his features, and advancing to the table he placed one long, bony finger on the chart, held it for a moment and then again disappeared from our sight.

“For five minutes after he had left us we sat speechless. Then I managed to say: ‘What do you think of that, Mr. Morris?’ ‘My God! sir, I don’t know—it’s beyond me.’ Then my eyes fell on the open chart and there where the finger had been was a tiny spot of blood, exactly on the point of longitude 63 degrees west and latitude 37 degrees north. We were then only about fifty miles distant from that position, and immediately there came to me the determination to steer the ship there; so I laid her course accordingly, and posted a lookout in the crow’s nest. At five o’clock in the morning, just as the east began to grow gray, the lookout called out: ‘Boat on the lee bow,’ and as we came up to it we found four men in it—three dead and one with just a remnant of life left in him. We sewed the three bodies in canvas and buried them in the ocean, and then gave all our attention to restoring life to the poor emaciated frame, which, I then recognized, was the very man who for three successive nights had visited me in my cabin.

“By judicious and careful nursing life gradually came back to him, and in four days’ time he was able to sit up and talk with me in the cabin. It seems he commanded the ship Promise, and she had taken fire and been destroyed, and all hands had to take to the boats. Ten were in the boats at first, but their food had given out, and one by one he had seen them die, and one by one he had cast the bodies overboard. Finally he lost consciousness and knew not whether his three remaining companions were dead or alive.

“Then he said he seemed in a dream to see a ship and tried to go to her for help, but just as he would be going on board of her something would seem to keep him back; three times in his dreams he tried to visit this ship, and the last time there seemed to come to him a certain satisfaction, and he felt that he had succeeded in his object. Turning to my table, he said: ‘Let me take your chart; I’ll show you just where we were.’

“‘Stop,’ said I, ‘don’t take that chart, it is an old one and all marked over. Mark your position on this new one.’ He took my pencil and knife, and carefully sharpened his pencil. Then, taking my dividers, he measured his latitude and longitude and placed a pencil dot at a point on the clean chart. As he lifted his hand he said: ‘Oh, excuse me, captain, I cut my finger in sharpening the pencil and have left a drop of blood on the chart.’

“‘Never mind,’ said I, ‘leave it there.’ And then I produced the old chart and there, in an exactly corresponding place was the drop of blood left by my ghostly visitor.”

Then looking steadily into my face the mate solemnly added: “I can’t explain this, sir, perhaps you can; but I can tell you on my honor it is God’s own truth that I have told you.”

THE GHOST OF WASHINGTON,

by Anonymous

Taken from Twenty-Five Ghost Stories (1904).

It was early on Christmas morning when John Reilly wheeled away from a picturesque little village where he had passed the previous night, to continue his cycling tour through eastern Pennsylvania. Today his intention was to stop at Valley Forge, and then to ride on up the Schuylkill Valley, visiting in turn the many points of historical interest that lay along his route. Valley Forge, his road map indicated, was but a short distance further on. All around him were the hills and fields and roads over which Washington and his half-starved army had foraged and roamed throughout the trying winter of 1777-8—one hundred and twenty-six years ago.

It was a beautiful Christmas day, truly, and, as he wheeled along, young Reilly’s thoughts were almost equally divided between the surrounding pleasant scenery and the folks at home, who, he knew very well, were assembling at just about the present time around a heavily laden Christmas tree in the front parlor. The sun rose higher and higher and Reilly pedaled on down the valley, passing every now and then quaint, pleasant-looking farmhouses, many of which, no doubt, had been built anterior to the period which had given the vicinity its history.

Arriving, finally, at a place where the road forked off in two directions, Reilly was puzzled which way to go on. There happened to be a dwelling close by. Accordingly he dismounted, left his wheel leaning against a gate-post at the side of the road, and walked up a wretchedly flagged walk leading to the house, with the idea of getting instructions from its inmates.

Situated in the center of an unkempt field of rank grass and weeds, the building lay back from the highway probably one hundred and fifty feet. It was long and low in shape, containing but one story and having what is termed a gabled roof, under which there must have been an attic of no mean size. On coming close to the house, a fact Reilly had not noticed from the road became plainly evident. It was deserted. He saw that the roof and side shingles were in wretched condition; that the window sashes and frames as well as the doors and door frames were missing from the openings in the side walls where once they had been, and that the entire side of the house, including that part of the stone foundation which showed above the ground, was full of cracks and seams. At first on the point of turning back, he concluded to see what the interior was like anyway.

Accordingly he went inside. Glancing around the large dust-filled room he had entered his gaze at first failed to locate any object of the least interest. A rickety appearing set of steps went up into the attic from one side of the apartment and over in one corner was a large open fireplace, from the walls of which much of the brickwork had become loosened and fallen out. Reilly had started up the steps toward the attic, when happening to look back for an instant, his attention was attracted to a singular-looking, jug-shaped bottle no larger than a vinegar cruet, which lay upon its side on the hearth of the fireplace, partly covered up by debris of loose bricks and mortar. He hastened back down the steps and crossed the room, taking the bottle up in his hand and examining it with curiosity. Being partly filled with a liquid of some kind or other the bottle was very soon uncorked and held under the young man’s nose. The liquid gave forth a peculiar, pungent and inviting odor. Without further hesitation Reilly’s lips sought the neck of the bottle. It is hardly possible to describe the pleasure and satisfaction his senses experienced as he drank.

While the fluid was still gurgling down his throat a heavy hand was placed most suddenly on his shoulder and his body was given a violent shaking. The bottle fell to the floor and was broken into a hundred pieces.

“Hello!” said a rough voice almost in Reilly’s ear. “Who are you, anyway? And what are you doing within the lines? A spy, I’ll be bound.”

As most assuredly there had been no one else in the vicinity of the building when he had entered it and with equal certainty no one had come down the steps from the attic, Reilly was naturally surprised and mystified by this unexpected assault. He struggled instinctively to break loose from the unfriendly grasp, and when he finally succeeded he twisted his body around so that he faced across the room. Immediately he made the remarkable discovery that there were four other persons in the apartment—three uncouth-looking fellows habited in fantastic but ragged garments, and a matronly-looking woman, the latter standing over a washtub which had been elevated upon two chairs in a corner near the fireplace. To all appearance the woman had been busy at her work and had stopped for the moment to see what the men were going to do; her waist sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders and her arms dripped with water and soapsuds. Over the tops of the tubs, partly filled with water, there were visible the edges of several well-soaked fabrics. Too add to his astonishment he noticed that in the chimney-place, which a moment before was falling apart, but now seemed to be clean and in good condition, a cheerful fire burned, and that above the flames was suspended an iron pot, from which issued a jet of steam. He noticed also that the entire appearance of the room had undergone a great change. Everything seemed to be in good repair, tidy and neat; the ceilings, the walls and the door; even the stairway leading to the attic. The openings in the walls were fitted with window sashes and well-painted doors. The apartment had, in fact, evolved under his very eyesight from a state of absolute ruin into one of excellent preservation.

All of this seemed so weird and uncanny, that Reilly stood for a moment or two in the transformed apartment, utterly dumbfounded, with his mouth wide open and his eyes all but popping out of his head. He was brought to his senses by the fellow who had shaken him growling out:

“Come! Explain yourself!”

“An explanation is due me,” Reilly managed to gasp.

“Don’t bandy words with the rascal, Harry,” one of the other men spoke up. “Bring him along to headquarters.”

Thereupon, without further parley, the three men marched Reilly in military fashion into the open air and down to the road. Here he picked up at the gate-post his bicycle, while they unstacked a group of three old-fashioned-looking muskets located close by. When the young man had entered the house a few minutes before, this stack of arms had not been there. He could not understand it. Neither could he understand, on looking back at the building as he was marched off down the road, the mysterious agency that had transformed its dilapidated exterior, just as had been the interior, into a practically new condition.

While they trudged along, the strangers exhibited a singular interest in the wheel Reilly pushed at his side, running their coarse hands over the frame and handle-bar, and acting on the whole as though they never before had seen a bicycle. This in itself was another surprise. He had hardly supposed there were three men in the country so totally unacquainted with what is a most familiar piece of mechanism everywhere.

At the same time that they were paying so much attention to the wheel, Reilly in turn was studying with great curiosity his singular-looking captors. Rough, unprepossessing appearing fellows they were, large of frame and unshaven, and, it must be added, dirty of face. What remained of their very ragged clothing, he had already noticed, was of a most remarkable cut and design, resembling closely the garments worn by the Continental militiamen in the War of Independence. The hats were broad, low of crown, and three-cornered in shape; the trousers were buff-colored and ended at the knees, and the long, blue spike-tailed coats were flapped over at the extremities of the tails, the flaps being fastened down with good-sized brass buttons. Leather leggings were strapped around cowhide boots, through the badly worn feet of which, in places where the leather had cracked open, the flesh, unprotected by stockings, could be seen. Dressed as he was, in a cleanly, gray cycling costume, Reilly’s appearance, most assuredly, was strongly in contrast to that of his companions.

After a brisk walk of twenty minutes, during which they occasionally met and passed by one or two or perhaps a group of men clothed and outfitted like Reilly’s escorts, the little party followed the road up a slight incline and around a well-wooded bend to the left, coming quite suddenly, and to the captive, very unexpectedly, to what was without doubt a military encampment; a village, in fact, composed of many rows of small log huts. Along the streets, between the buildings, muskets were stacked in hundreds of places. Over in one corner, on a slight eminence commanding the road up which they had come, and cleverly hidden from it behind trees and shrubbery, the young man noticed a battery of field pieces. Wherever the eye was turned on this singular scene were countless numbers of soldiers all garmented in three-cornered hats, spike-tailed coats and knee breeches, walking lazily hither and thither, grouped around crackling fires, or parading up and down the streets in platoons under the guidance of ragged but stern-looking officers.

Harry stopped the little procession of four in front of one of the larger of the log houses. Then, while they stood there, the long blast from a bugle was heard, followed by the roll of drums. A minute or two afterward, several companies of militia marched up and grounded their arms, forming three sides of a hollow square around them, the fourth and open side being toward the log house. Directly succeeding this maneuver there came through the doorway of the house and stepped up the center of the square, stopping directly in front of Reilly, a dignified-looking person, tall and straight and splendidly proportioned of figure, and having a face of great nobility and character.

The cold chills chased one another down Reilly’s back. His limbs swayed and tottered beneath his weight. He had never experienced another such sensation of mingled astonishment and fright.

He was in the presence of General Washington. Not a phantom Washington, either, but Washington in the flesh and blood; as material and earthly a being as ever crossed a person’s line of vision. Reilly, in his time, had seen so many portraits, marble busts and statues of the great commander that he could not be mistaken. Recovering the use of his faculties, which for the moment he seemed to have lost, Reilly did the very commonplace thing that others before him have done when placed unexpectedly in remarkable situations. He pinched himself to make sure that he was in reality wide awake and in the natural possession of his senses. He felt like pinching the figure in front of him also, but he could not muster up the courage to do that. He stood there trying to think it all out, and as his thoughts became less stagnant, his fright dissolved under the process of reasoning his mind pursued. To reason a thing out, even though an explanation can only be obtained by leaving much of the subject unaccounted for, tends to make one bolder and less shaky in the knees.

The series of strange incidents which he was experiencing had been inaugurated in the old-fashioned dwelling he had visited after information concerning the roads. And everything had been going along in a perfectly normal way up to, the very moment when he had taken a drink from the bottle found in the fireplace. But from that precise time everything had gone wrongly. Hence the inference that the drinking of the peculiar liquid was accountable in some way or other for his troubles. There was a supernatural agency in the whole thing. That much must be admitted. And whatever that agency was, and however it might be accounted for, it had taken Reilly back into a period of time more than a hundred years ago, and landed him, body and soul, within the lines of the patriot forces wintering at Valley Forge. He might have stood there, turning over and over in his mind, pinching himself and muttering, all the morning, had not the newcomer ceased a silent but curious inspection of his person, and asked: “Who are you, sir?”

“John Reilly, at your pleasure,” the young man replied, adding a question on his own account: “And who are you, sir?”

Immediately he received a heavy thump on his back from Harry’s hard fist.

“It is not for you to question the general,” the ragged administrator of the blow exclaimed.

“And it is not for you to be so gay,” Reilly returned, angrily, giving the blow back with added force.

“Here, here!” broke in the first questioner. “Fisticuffs under my very nose! No more of this, I command you both.” To Harry he added an extra caution: “Your zeal in my behalf will be better appreciated by being less demonstrative. Blows should be struck only on the battlefield.” To Reilly he said, with a slight smile hovering over his face, “My name is Washington. Perhaps you may have heard of me?”

To this Reilly replied: “I have, indeed, and heard you very well spoken of, too.” Emboldened by the other’s smile, he ventured another question: “I think my reckoning of the day and year is badly at fault. An hour ago I thought the day was Christmas day. How far out of the way did my calculation take me, sir?”

“The day is indeed Christmas day, and the year is, as you must know, the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven.”

Reilly again pinched himself.

“Why do you bring this man to me?” Washington now inquired, turning to Harry and his companions.

“He is a spy, sir,” said Harry.

“That is a lie!” Reilly indignantly interpolated. “I have done nothing to warrant any such charge.”

“We found him in the Widow Robin’s house, pouring strong liquor down his throat.”

“I had gone inside after information concerning the roads—”

“Which he was getting from a bottle, sir.”

“If drinking from a bottle of necessity constitutes being a spy, I fear our camp is already a hotbed,” Washington somewhat sagely remarked, casting his eye around slyly at his officers and men. “Tell me,” he went on, with sudden sternness, looking Reilly through and through, as though to read his very thoughts, “is the charge true? Do you come from Howe?”

“The charge is not true, sir. I come from no one. I simply am making a tour of pleasure through this part of the country on my bicycle.”

“With the country swarming with the men from two hostile armies, any kind of a tour, save one of absolute necessity, seems ill-timed.”

“When I set out I knew nothing about any armies. The fact is, sir—” Reilly started to make an explanation, but he checked himself on realizing that the telling of any such improbable yarn would only increase the hazardousness of his position.

“Well?” Washington questioned, in a tone of growing suspicion.

“I certainly did not know that your army or any other army was quartered in this vicinity.” Reilly hesitated for lack of something further to say. “You see,” he finally added, prompted by a happy idea, “I rode my wheel from New York.”

“You may have come from New York, though it is hard to believe you came on that singular-looking machine so great a distance. Where is the horse which drew the vehicle?”

Reilly touched his bicycle. “This is the horse, sir, just as it is; the vehicle,” he said.

“The man is crazy!” Harry exclaimed. Washington only looked the incredulity he felt, and this time asked a double question.

“How can the thing be balanced without it be held upright by a pair of shafts from a horse’s back, and how is the motive power acquired?”

For an answer Reilly jumped upon the wheel, and at a considerable speed and in a haphazard way pedaled around the space within the hollow square of soldiers. Hither and thither he went, at one second nearly wheeling over the toes of the line of astonished, if not frightened, militiamen; at the next, bearing suddenly down on Harry and his companions and making them dance and jump about most alertly to avoid a collision. Even the dignified Washington was once or twice put to the necessity of dodging hurriedly aside when his equilibrium was threatened. Reilly eventually dismounted, doing so with assumed clumsiness by stopping the wheel at Harry’s back and falling over heavily against the soldier. Harry tumbled to the ground, but Reilly dexterously landed on his feet. At once he began offering a profusion of apologies.

“You did that by design!” Harry shouted, jumping to his feet. His face was red with anger and he shook his fist threateningly at the bicyclist.

Washington commanded the man to hold his peace. Then to Reilly he expressed a great surprise at his performance and a desire to know more about the bicycle. The young man thereupon described the machine minutely, lifting it into the air and spinning the wheels to illustrate how smoothly they rotated.

“I can see it is possible to ride the contrivance with rapidity. It has been put together with wonderful ingenuity,” Washington said, when Reilly had replaced the wheel on the ground.

“And you, sir, it is but a toy,” an officer spoke up. “Put our friend on his bundle of tin and race him against one of our horsemen and he would make a sorry showing.”

Reilly smiled. “I bear the gentleman no ill-will for his opinion,” he said. “Still, I should like to show him by a practical test of the subject that his ignorance of it is most profound.”

“You would test the speed of the machine against that of a horse?” Washington said, in amazement.

“I would, sir. You have a good road yonder. With your permission and a worthy opponent I would make the test at once.”

“But, sir, the man is a spy,” Harry broke in. “Would it not be better to throw a rope around his neck and give him his deserts?”

“The charge is by no means proven,” Washington replied. “Nor can it be until a court martial convenes this afternoon. And I see no reason why we may not in the meantime enjoy the unique contest which has been suggested. It will make a pleasant break in the routine of camp life.”

A murmur of approval went up from the masses of men by whom they were surrounded. While they had been talking it seemed as though everybody in the camp not already on the scene had gathered together behind the square of infantry.

“Then, sir,” Harry said, with some eagerness, “I would like to be the man to ride the horse. There is no better animal than mine anywhere. And I understand his tricks and humors quite well enough to put him to his best pace.”

“I confess I have heard you well spoken of as a horseman,” Washington said. “Be away with you! Saddle and bridle your horse at once.”

It was the chain of singular circumstances narrated above which brought John Reilly into the most remarkable contest of his life. He had entered many bicycle races at one time or other, always with credit to himself and to the club whose colors he wore. And he had every expectation of making a good showing today. Yet a reflection of the weird conditions which had brought about the present contest took away some of his self-possession when a few minutes later he was marched over to the turnpike and left to his own thoughts, while the officers were pacing out a one mile straightaway course down the road.

After the measurements had been taken, two unbroken lines of soldiers were formed along the entire mile; a most evident precaution against Reilly leaving the race course at any point to escape across the fields. Washington came up to him again, when the preparations were completed, to shake his hand and whisper a word or two of encouragement in his ear. Having performed these kindly acts he left to take up a position near the point of finish.

The beginning of the course was located close to the battery of half concealed field pieces. Reilly was now conducted to this place. Shortly afterward Harry appeared on his horse. He leered at the bicyclist contemptuously and said something of a sarcastic nature partly under his breath when the two lined up, side by side, for the start. To these slights Reilly paid no heed; he had a strong belief that when the race was over there would be left in the mutton-like head of his opponent very little of his present inclination toward the humorous. The soldier’s mount was a handsome black mare, fourteen and a half hands high; strong of limbs and at the flanks, and animated by a spirit that kept her prancing around with continuous action. It must be admitted that the man rode very well. He guided the animal with ease and nonchalance when she reared and plunged, and kept her movements confined to an incredibly small piece of ground, considering her abundance of action.

“Keep to your own side of the road throughout the race. I don’t want to be collided with by your big beast,” Reilly cautioned, while they were awaiting two signals from the starter.

To this Harry replied in some derision, “I’ll give you a good share of the road at the start, and all of it and my dust, too, afterward.” And then the officer who held the pistol fired the first shot.

Reilly was well satisfied with the conditions under which the race was to be made. The road was wide and level, smooth, hard and straight, and a strong breeze which had sprung up, blew squarely against his back. His wheel was geared up to eighty-four inches; the breeze promised to be a valuable adjunct in pushing it along. Awaiting the second and last signal, Reilly glanced down the two blue ranks of soldiers, which stretched away into hazy lines in the distance and converged at the termination of the course where a flag had been stuck into the ground. The soldiers were at parade rest. Their unceasing movements as they chatted to one another, turning their bodies this way and that and craning their heads forward to look toward the starting point, and then jerking them back, made the lines seem like long, squirming snakes. At the end of the course a thick bunch of militiamen clogged the road and overspread into the fields.

Crack! The signal to be off. Reilly shoved aside the fellow who had been holding his wheel upright while astride of it, and pushed down on the pedals. The mare’s hoofs dug the earth; her great muscular legs straightened out; she sprang forward with a snort of apparent pleasure, taking the lead at the very start. Reilly heard the shout of excitement run along the two ranks of soldiers. He saw them waving their arms and hats as he went by. And on ahead through the cloud of dust there was visible the shadow-like outlines of the snorting, galloping horse, whose hoof beats sounded clear and sharp above the din which came from the sides of the highway. The mare crept farther and farther ahead. Very soon a hundred feet or more of the road lay between her and the bicyclist. Harry turned in his saddle and called out another sarcasm.

“I shall pass you very soon. Keep to your own side of the road!” Reilly shouted, not a bit daunted by the way the race had commenced. His head was well down over the handle-bars, his back had the shape of the upper portion of an immense egg. Up and down his legs moved; faster and faster and faster yet. He went by the soldiers so rapidly that they only appeared to be two streaks of blurry color. Their sharp rasping shouts sounded like the cracking of musketry. The cloud of dust blew against the bicyclist’s head and into his mouth and throat. When he glanced ahead again he saw with satisfaction that the mare was no longer increasing her lead. It soon became evident even that he was slowly cutting down the advantages she had secured.

Harry again turned his head shortly afterward, doubtless expecting to find his opponent hopelessly distanced by this time. Instead of this Reilly was alarmingly close upon him. The man ejaculated a sudden oath and lashed his animal furiously. Straining every nerve and sinew the mare for the moment pushed further ahead. Then her pace slackened a bit and Reilly again crept up to her. Closer and closer to her than before, until his head was abreast of her outstretched tail. Harry was lashing the mare and swearing at her unceasingly now. But she had spurted once and appeared to be incapable of again increasing her speed. In this way they went on for some little distance, Harry using his whip brutally, the mare desperately struggling to attain a greater pace, Reilly hanging on with tenacity to her hind flanks and giving up not an inch of ground.

A mile is indeed a very short distance when traversed at such a pace. The finishing flag was already but a few hundred feet further on. Reilly realized that it was time now to go to the front. He gritted his teeth together with determination and bent his head down even further toward his front wheel. Then his feet began to move so quickly that there was only visible an indistinct blur at the sides of his crank shaft. At this very second, with a face marked with rage and hatred, Harry brought his horse suddenly across the road to thet part of it which he had been warned to avoid.

It is hard to tell what kept Reilly from being run into and trampled under foot. An attempt at back pedaling, a sudden twist of the handle-bar, a lurch to one side that almost threw him from his seat. Then, in the fraction of a second he was over on the other side of the road, pushing ahead of the mare almost as though she were standing still. The outburst of alarm from the throats of the soldiers changed when they saw that Reilly had not been injured; first into a shout of indignation at the dastardly attempt which had been made to run him down, and then into a roar of delight when the bicyclist breasted the flag a winner of the race by twenty feet.

As he crossed the line Reilly caught a glimpse of Washington. He stood close to the flag and was waving his hat in the air with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy. Reilly went on down the road slackening his speed as effectively as he could. But before it was possible to entirely stop his wheel’s momentum the noisy acclamations in his rear ceased with startling suddenness. He turned in his saddle and looked back. As sure as St. Peter he had the road entirely to himself. There wasn’t a soldier or the ghost of a soldier in sight.

As soon as he could he turned his bicycle about and rode slowly back along the highway, now so singularly deserted, looking hither and thither in vain for some trace of the vanished army. Even the flag which had been stuck into the ground at the end of the one-mile race course was gone. The breeze had died out again and the air was tranquil and warm. In the branches of a nearby tree two sparrows chirped and twittered peacefully. Reilly went back to the place where the camp had been. He found there only open fields on one side of the road and a clump of woodland on the other. He continued on down the little hill up which Harry and his companions had brought him a few hours previously and followed the road on further, coming finally to the fork in it near which was located the old farmhouse wherein he had been taken captive. The house was, as it had been when he had previously entered it, falling apart from age and neglect. When he went inside he found lying on the brick hearth in front of the fireplace a number of pieces of broken glass.

COPYRIGHT INFO

The 7th Ghost Story MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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“You Can’t Kill a Ghost,” by Frank Belknap Long, originally appeared in Weird Tales, August 1928. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

“A Friendly Exorcise,” by Talmage Powell, originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Talmage Powell. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

“Cousin Kelly,” by Fletcher Flora, originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, June 1967. Copyright © 1968 by Fletcher Flora. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

“I Had a Hunch, and…”, by Talmage Powell, originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, May 1959. Copyright © 1959, renewed 1987 by Talmage Powell. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

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>The Third Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

>The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

>The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

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>The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

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>The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

>The 12th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The A. Merritt MEGAPACK®*

The A.R. Morlan MEGAPACK®

The Alien MEGAPACK®

The Avram Davidson Science Fiction & Fantasy MEGAPACK®

The King Arthur MEGAPACK®

The Andre Norton MEGAPACK®

The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK®

The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK®

The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK®

The Dragon MEGAPACK®

The E. E. “Doc” Smith MEGAPACK®

The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK®

The Edgar Pangborn MEGAPACK®

The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK®

The Edward Bellamy MEGAPACK®

The First Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK®

The First Theodore Cogswell MEGAPACK®

The First Kothar the Barbarian MEGAPACK®

>The Second Kothar the Barbarian MEGAPACK®

The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

>The Second Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

>The Third Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel MEGAPACK®

The Fred M. White Disaster MEGAPACK®

The Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®

>The Second Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®

The Fritz Leiber MEGAPACK®

> The Second Fritz Leiber MEGAPACK®

The Gismo Complete Series MEGAPACK®, by Keo Felker Lazarus

The H. Beam Piper MEGAPACK®

The Jack London Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Lloyd Biggle, Jr. MEGAPACK®

The Lost Worlds MEGAPACK®

The Mack Reynolds MEGAPACK®

The Mad Scientist MEGAPACK®

The Martian MEGAPACK®

The Milton A. Rothman Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Miss Pickerell MEGAPACK®

The First Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®

>The Second Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®

>The Third Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®

The Olaf Stapledon MEGAPACK®**

The Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®

>The Second Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®

The Plague, Pestilence, & Apocalypse MEGAPACK®

The Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®

>The Second Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®

The R.A. Lafferty Fantastic MEGAPACK®

The Ray Cummings MEGAPACK®

The First Richard Wilson MEGAPACK®

The Robert Sheckley MEGAPACK®

The Robert Silverberg MEGAPACK®

The Science-Fantasy MEGAPACK®

The Sydney J. Van Scyoc Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Space Opera MEGAPACK®

The Space Patrol MEGAPACK®, by Eando Binder

>The Second Space Patrol MEGAPACK®, by Eando Binder

The Steampunk MEGAPACK®

The Stephen Vincent Benét MEGAPACK®

Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

Thomas A. Easton’s Love Songs and UFOs MEGAPACK®

The Time Travel MEGAPACK®

>The Second Time Travel MEGAPACK®

>The Third Time Travel MEGAPACK®

Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

The Utopia MEGAPACK®

The Willam P. McGivern Fantasy MEGAPACK®

The First Willam P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

>The Second Willam P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The William Hope Hodgson MEGAPACK®

The Wizard of Oz MEGAPACK®

The Zanthodon MEGAPACK®, by Lin Carter

WESTERN

The Andy Adams Western MEGAPACK®

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The Max Brand MEGAPACK®

The Buffalo Bill MEGAPACK®

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The Cowboy MEGAPACKc

The Edgar Rice Burroughs Western MEGAPACK®*

The George W. Ogden Western MEGAPACK®

The Leslie Ernenwein Western MEGAPACK®

The Lon Williams Weird Western MEGAPACK® The Western MEGAPACK®

> The Second Western MEGAPACK®

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The Western Novel MEGAPACK®

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YOUNG ADULT

The Bobbsey Twins MEGAPACK®

The Boy Scouts MEGAPACK®

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The Bryce Walton Boys’ Adventure MEGAPACK®

The Dan Carter, Cub Scout MEGAPACK®

The Dare Boys MEGAPACK®

The Dave Dawson War Adventure MEGAPACK®

The Doll Story MEGAPACK®

The G.A. Henty MEGAPACK®

The Girl Detectives MEGAPACK®

The Gismo Complete Series MEGAPACK®, by Keo Felker Lazarus

The Horatio Alger MEGAPACK®

The Miss Pickerell MEGAPACK®

The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK®

The Penny Parker MEGAPACK®

The Pinocchio MEGAPACK®

The Rover Boys MEGAPACK®

The Sandy Steele MEGAPACK®

The Carolyn Wells MEGAPACK®

> The Second Carolyn Wells MEGAPACK®

The Sky Detectives MEGAPACK®

The Space Patrol MEGAPACK®

The Tahara, Boy Adventurer MEGAPACK ®

The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet MEGAPACK®

The Tom Swift MEGAPACK®

The Wizard of Oz MEGAPACK®

The Young Adult Award-Winners MEGAPACK®

The Young Adult Mystery MEGAPACK®

SINGLE-AUTHOR

The A. Merritt MEGAPACK®*

The A.R. Morlan MEGAPACK®

The Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK®

The Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK®

>The Second Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK®

The Anatole France MEGAPACK®

The Andre Norton MEGAPACK®

The Anna Katharine Green MEGAPACK®

The Arthur Conan Doyle MEGAPACK®: Beyond Sherlock Holmes

The Arthur Conan Doyle Early Novels MEGAPACK®

The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Arthur Machen MEGAPACK®**

The Arthur Morrison Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Avram Davidson Science Fiction & Fantasy MEGAPACK®

The B.M. Bower MEGAPACK®

The Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson MEGAPACK®

The Bram Stoker MEGAPACK®

The Burt Arthur Western MEGAPACK®

The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK®

The Charles Alden Seltzer MEGAPACK®

The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK®

The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK®

The Dashiell Hammett MEGAPACK®

The E. Hoffmann Price Spicy Story MEGAPACK®

The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK®

The E.F. Benson MEGAPACK®

>The Second E.F. Benson MEGAPACK®

The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK®

The Edgar Pangborn MEGAPACK®

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The F. Scott Fitzgerald MEGAPACK®

The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®

The First Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK®

The First William P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Fred M. White Disaster MEGAPACK®

The Frederick Douglass MEGAPACK®

The Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®

>The Second Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®

The George Barr McCutcheon MEGAPACK®

The Guy de Maupassant MEGAPACK®

The H. Beam Piper MEGAPACK®

The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Harold Lamb MEGAPACK®

The Henri Bergson MEGAPACK®

The Jacques Futrelle MEGAPACK®

The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel MEGAPACK®

The Jane Austen MEGAPACK®

The Johnston McCulley Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Jonas Lie MEGAPACK®

The Katherine Mansfield MEGAPACK®

The Kenneth Grahame MEGAPACK®

The Lloyd Biggle, Jr. MEGAPACK®

The Lon Williams Weird Western MEGAPACK®

The M.R. James MEGAPACK®

The Mack Reynolds MEGAPACK®

The Mary Fortune Mystery & Suspense MEGAPACK®

The Max Brand MEGAPACK®

The Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®

>The Second Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®

>The Third Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®

The Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®

> The Second Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®

The Rafael Sabatini MEGAPACK®

The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®

> The Second Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®

The Ray Cummings MEGAPACK®

The R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®*

> The Second R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®*

> The Third R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®*

The Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK®

> The Second Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK®

The Robert Sheckley MEGAPACK®

The Robert Silverberg MEGAPACK®

The Saki MEGAPACK®

The Selma Lagerlof MEGAPACK®

The Sydney J. Van Scyoc Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Stephen Crane MEGAPACK®

The Stephen Vincent Benét MEGAPACK®

The Talbot Mundy MEGAPACK®

The Third R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®*

The Virginia Woolf MEGAPACK®

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The Wilkie Collins MEGAPACK®

The Willa Cather MEGAPACK®

The William Hope Hodgson MEGAPACK®

The William P. McGivern Fantasy MEGAPACK®

The William P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Zane Grey MEGAPACK®

HORROR

The 2014 Halloween Horrors MEGAPACK®

The 2015 Halloween Horrors MEGAPACK®

The Horror MEGAPACK®

> The Second Horror MEGAPACK®

The Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK®

> The Second Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK®

The E.F. Benson MEGAPACK®

The Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK®

> The Second Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK®

The Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®

> The Second Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®

The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK®

The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural MEGAPACK®

The Erckmann-Chatrian MEGAPACK®

The Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

> The Second Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

> The Third Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

> The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

> The Fifth Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

> The Sixth Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

> The 7th Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

The Gothic Terror MEGAPACK®

The Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®

The Lon Williams Weird Western MEGAPACK®

The M.R. James MEGAPACK®

The Macabre MEGAPACK®

> The Second Macabre MEGAPACK®

> The Third Macabre MEGAPACK®

The Arthur Machen MEGAPACK®**

The Monster MEGAPACK®

The Mummy MEGAPACK®

The Occult Detective MEGAPACK®

The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK®

The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK®

The Uncanny Stories MEGAPACK®**

The Vampire MEGAPACK®

The Victorian Ghost Story MEGAPACK®

The Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Werewolf MEGAPACK®

The William Hope Hodgson MEGAPACK®

The Zombie MEGAPACK®

MYSTERY

The First Mystery MEGAPACK®

>The Second Mystery MEGAPACK®

>The Third Mystery MEGAPACK®

The First Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®

The Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK®

The Anna Katharine Green Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Arthur Morrison Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Arthur Train Crime & Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Boy Detectives MEGAPACK®

The Bulldog Drummond MEGAPACK®*

The Carolyn Wells Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Charlie Chan MEGAPACK®*

The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective MEGAPACK®

The Crime and Corruption Novel MEGAPACK®

The Detective MEGAPACK®

>The Second Detective MEGAPACK®

The Dickson McCunn MEGAPACK®,* by John Buchan

The E. Hoffmann Price Spicy Story MEGAPACK®

The Espionage Novel MEGAPACK®

The Father Brown MEGAPACK®

The Fantômas MEGAPACK®

The Johnston McCulley Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Lady Sleuth MEGAPACK®

The Mary Fortune Mystery & Suspense MEGAPACK®

The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®

>The Second R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®*

The Third R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®*

The Jacques Futrelle MEGAPACK®

James Holding’s Conmen & Cutthroats MEGAPACK®

James Holding’s Murder & Mayhem MEGAPACK®

The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel MEGAPACK®

The George Allan England MEGAPACK®

The Girl Detective MEGAPACK®

>The Second Girl Detective MEGAPACK®

The Gothic Terror MEGAPACK®

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The Library Fuzz MEGAPACK®

The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Noir Novel MEGAPACK®

The Penny Parker MEGAPACK®

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The Pulp Crime MEGAPACK®

>The Second Pulp Crime MEGAPACK®

The Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Raffles MEGAPACK®

The Red Finger Pulp Mystery MEGAPACK®, by Arthur Leo Zagat*

The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Richard Hannay Spy MEGAPACK®*, by John Buchan

The Roy J. Snell Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Sherlock Holmes MEGAPACK®

The Singer Batts Mystery MEGAPACK®: The Complete Series, by Thomas B. Dewey

The Sky Detectives MEGAPACK®

The Spicy Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Suspense Novel MEGAPACK®

The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK®

>The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK®

The Thubway Tham Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Victorian Mystery MEGAPACK®

>The Second Victorian Mystery MEGAPACK®

The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK®

The Victorian Villains MEGAPACK®

The Weird Crime MEGAPACK®

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GENERAL INTEREST

The Adventure MEGAPACK®

The Anne of Green Gables MEGAPACK®

The Baseball MEGAPACK®

The Cat Story MEGAPACK®

>The Second Cat Story MEGAPACK®

>The Third Cat Story MEGAPACK®

The Christmas MEGAPACK®

>The Second Christmas MEGAPACK®

The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK®

The Classic American Short Stories MEGAPACK®, Vol. 1.

The Classic Humor MEGAPACK®

The Dog Story MEGAPACK®

The Doll Story MEGAPACK®

The Great American Novel MEGAPACK®

The Horse Story MEGAPACK®

The Jungle Story MEGAPACK®

The Lesbian Pulp MEGAPACK®

The Maxim Gorky MEGAPACK®

The Military MEGAPACK®

The Peck’s Bad Boy MEGAPACK®

The Pirate Story MEGAPACK®

The Sea-Story MEGAPACK®

The Thanksgiving MEGAPACK®

The Utopia MEGAPACK®

The Walt Whitman MEGAPACK®

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PULP FICTION

1. George Allan England

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MYSTERY AND CRIME

1. Fletcher Flora

2. Ruth Chessman

* Not available in the United States

** Not available in the European Union

***Out of print.

FREE PROMO MINI-MEGAPACKS®

Each one was only available from our web site for a single day—on Free Ebook Tuesday (which has since been replaced by Discover a New Author Wednesday!) Like us on Facebook or join our mailing list to see new title announcements.

The Poul Anderson MINIPACK™

The John Gregory Betancourt MINIPACK™

The Richard Deming Crime MINIPACK™

The Charles V. de Vet MINIPACK™

The Paul Di Filippo MINIPACK™

The H.B. Fyfe MINIPACK™

The Lt. Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol MINIPACK™, by Eando Binder

The Fritz Leiber MINIPACK™

The Richard Wilson MINIPACK™

The Rufus King Mystery MINIPACK™

>The Second Rufus King Mystery MINIPACK™

The Sime~Gen MINIPACK™

The Spicy Mystery MINIPACK™

The Thubway Tham Thanksgiving MINIPACK™

OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY

The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany MEGAPACK®”)

The Wildside Book of Fantasy

The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

Content

The 7th Ghost Story MEGAPACK

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

ABOUT THE SERIES

BEAUTIFUL DREAMER, by R.A. Lafferty

FROM THE TOMB, by Guy De Maupassant

THE VENGEANCE OF A TREE, by Eleanor F. Lewis

YOU CAN’T KILL A GHOST, by Frank Belknap Long

A FIGHT WITH A GHOST, by Q.E.D.

A CRY ACROSS THE BLACK WATER, by S. R. Crockett

A FRIENDLY EXORCISE, by Talmage Powell

MRS. DAVENPORT’S GHOST, by Frederick P. Schrader

COUSIN KELLY, by Fletcher Flora

GHOST OF BUCKSTOWN INN, by Arnold M. Anderson

THE HUNGRY GHOST, by Emil Petaja

GRAND-DAME’S GHOST STORY, by C.D.

THE STONE CHAMBER OF TAVERNDALE MANOR HOUSE, by Lady Mabel Howard

THE WATER GHOST OF HARROWBY HALL, by John Kendrick Bangs

THE PARLOR-CAR GHOST, by A Lady

THE THIRTEENTH BOAT, by George J. Rawlins

THE RETURN OF YEN-TCHIN-KING, by Lafcadio Hearn

THE SPECTRE OF TAPPINGTON, by Thomas Ingoldsby

I HAD A HUNCH, AND…, by Talmage Powell

THE BURGLAR’S GHOST, by Anonymous

A PHANTOM TOE, by Anonymous

THE PHANTOM WOMAN, by Anonymous

THE GHOSTS OF RED CREEK, by S.T.

THE PHANTOM HAG, by Anonymous

THE SPECTRE BRIDE, by Anonymous

HOW HE CAUGHT THE GHOST, by Anonymous

COLONEL HALIFAX’S GHOST STORY, by Anonymous

THE GHOST OF THE COUNT, by Anonymous

THE OLD MANSION, by Anonymous

A MISFIT GHOST, by Anonymous

AN UNBIDDEN GUEST, by Anonymous

THE DEAD WOMAN’S PHOTOGRAPH, by Anonymous

THE GHOST OF A LIVE MAN, by Anonymous

THE GHOST OF WASHINGTON, by Anonymous

COPYRIGHT INFO

The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series