A Book of Ghosts: 10
Author: Various authors
Date: 1889-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror
Description: A collection of ten stories of the supernatural and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 10 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of ten stories of the supernatural and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1890 ~ 1922. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- The Old Portrait  –1890
by Hume Nisbet
(1849–1920)

- A Set of Chessmen  –1890
by Richard Marsh
(1857–1915)

- An Unexpected Journey  –1893
by J. H. Pearce
(1856–1909)

- The Witches’ Sabbath  –1894
by James Platt
(1861–1910)

- The Page-Boy’s Ghost  –1896
by Wilhelmina Fitzclarence
(1830–1906)

- The Well  –1902
by W. W. Jacobs
(1863–1943)

- The Woman with a Candle  –1908
by W. Bourne Cooke
(1869–1935)

- In My Lady’s Bedchamber  –1919
by Howard Pease
(1863–1928)

- A Ghost  –1921
by Guy De Maupassant
(1850–1893)

- Waxworks  –1922
by W. L. George
(1885–1926)

THE OLD PORTRAIT

Hume Nisbet

1890

Old-fashioned frames are a hobby of mine. I am always on the prowl amongst the framers and dealers in curiosities for something quaint and unique in picture frames. I don’t care much for what is inside them, for being a painter it is my fancy to get the frames first and then paint a picture which I think suits their probable history and design. In this way I get some curious and I think also some original ideas.

One day in December, about a week before Christmas, I picked up a fine but dilapidated specimen of wood-carving in a shop near Soho. The gilding had been worn nearly away, and three of the corners broken off; yet as there was one of the corners still left, I hoped to be able to repair the others from it. As for the canvas inside this frame, it was so smothered with dirt and time stains that I could only distinguish it had been a very badly painted likeness of some sort, of some commonplace person, daubed in by a poor pot-boiling painter to fill the second-hand frame which his patron may have picked up cheaply as I had done after him; but as the frame was all right I took the spoiled canvas along with it, thinking it might come in handy.

For the next few days my hands were full of work of one kind and another, so that it was only on Christmas Eve that I found myself at liberty to examine my purchase which had been lying with its face to the wall since I had brought it to my studio.

Having nothing to do on this night, and not in the mood to go out, I got my picture and frame from the corner, and laying them upon the table, with a sponge, basin of water, and some soap, I began to wash so that I might see them the better. They were in a terrible mess, and I think I used the best part of a packet of soap-powder and had to change the water about a dozen times before the pattern began to show up on the frame, and the portrait within it asserted its awful crudeness, vile drawing, and intense vulgarity. It was the bloated, piggish visage of a publican clearly, with a plentiful supply of jewellery displayed, as is usual with such masterpieces, where the features are not considered of so much importance as a strict fidelity in the depicting of such articles as watch-guard and seals, finger rings, and breast pins; these were all there, as natural and hard as reality.

The frame delighted me, and the picture satisfied me that I had not cheated the dealer with my price, and I was looking at the monstrosity as the gaslight beat full upon it, and wondering how the owner could be pleased with himself as thus depicted, when something about the background attracted my attention – a slight marking underneath the thin coating as if the portrait had been painted over some other subject.

It was not much certainly, yet enough to make me rush over to my cupboard, where I kept my spirits of wine and turpentine, with which, and a plentiful supply of rags, I began to demolish the publican ruthlessly in the vague hope that I might find something worth looking at underneath.

A slow process that was, as well as a delicate one, so that it was close upon midnight before the gold cable rings and vermilion visage disappeared and another picture loomed up before me; then giving it the final wash over, I wiped it dry, and set it in a good light on my easel, while I filled and lit my pipe, and then sat down to look at it.

What had I liberated from that vile prison of crude paint? For I did not require to set it up to know that this bungler of the brush had covered and defiled a work as far beyond his comprehension as the clouds are from the caterpillar. The bust and head of a young woman of uncertain age, merged within a gloom of rich accessories painted as only a master hand can paint who is above asserting his knowledge, and who has learnt to cover his technique. It was as perfect and natural in its sombre yet quiet dignity as if it had come from the brush of Moroni.

A face and neck perfectly colourless in their pallid whiteness, with the shadows so artfully managed that they could not be seen, and for this quality would have delighted the strong-minded Queen Bess.

At first as I looked I saw in the centre of a vague darkness a dim patch of grey gloom that drifted into the shadow. Then the greyness appeared to grow lighter as I sat from it, and leaned back in my chair until the features stole out softly, and became clear and definite, while the figure stood out from the background as if tangible, although, having washed it, I knew that it had been smoothly painted.

An intent face, with delicate nose, well-shaped, although bloodless, lips, and eyes like dark caverns without a spark of light in them. The hair loosely about the head and oval cheeks, massive, silky-textured, jet black, and lustreless, which hid the upper portion of her brow, with the ears, and fell in straight indefinite waves over the left breast, leaving the right portion of the transparent neck exposed.

The dress and background were symphonies of ebony, yet full of subtle colouring and masterly feeling; a dress of rich brocaded velvet with a background that represented vast receding space, wondrously suggestive and awe-inspiring.

I noticed that the pallid lips were parted slightly, and showed a glimpse of the upper front teeth, which added to the intent expression of the face. A short upper tip, which, curled upward, with the underlip full and sensuous, or rather, if colour had been in it, would have been so.

It was an eerie looking face that I had resurrected on this midnight hour of Christmas Eve; in its passive pallidity it looked as if the blood had been drained from the body, and that I was gazing upon an open-eyed corpse.

The frame, also, I noticed for the first time, in its details appeared to have been designed with the intention of carrying out the idea of life in death; what had before looked like scroll-work of flowers and fruit were loathsome snake-like worms twined amongst charnel-house bones which they half covered in a decorative fashion; a hideous design in spite of its exquisite workmanship, that made me shudder and wish that I had left the cleaning to be done by daylight.

I am not at all of a nervous temperament, and would have laughed had anyone told me that I was afraid, and yet, as I sat here alone, with that portrait opposite to me in this solitary studio, away from all human contact; for none of the other studios were tenanted on this night, and the janitor had gone on his holiday; I wished that I had spent my evening in a more congenial manner, for in spite of a good fire in the stove and the brilliant gas, that intent face and those haunting eyes were exercising a strange influence upon me.

I heard the clocks from the different steeples chime out the last hour of the day, one after the other, like echoes taking up the refrain and dying away in the distance, and still I sat spellbound, looking at that weird picture, with my neglected pipe in my hand, and a strange lassitude creeping over me.

It was the eyes which fixed me now with the unfathomable depths and absorbing intensity. They gave out no light, but seemed to draw my soul into them, and with it my life and strength as I lay inert before them, until overpowered I lost consciousness and dreamt.

I thought that the frame was still on the easel with the canvas, but the woman had stepped from them and was approaching me with a floating motion, leaving behind her a vault filled with coffins, some of them shut down whilst others lay or stood upright and open, showing the grizzly contents in their decaying and stained cerernents.

I could only see her head and shoulders with the sombre drapery of the upper portion and the inky wealth of hair hanging round.

She was with me now, that pallid face touching my face and those cold bloodless lips glued to mine with a close lingering kiss, while the soft black hair covered me like a cloud and thrilled me through and through with a delicious thrill that, whilst it made me grow faint, intoxicated me with delight.

As I breathed she seemed to absorb it quickly into herself, giving me back nothing, getting stronger as I was becoming weaker, while the warmth of my contact passed into her and made her palpitate with vitality.

And all at once the horror of approaching death seized upon me, and with a frantic effort I flung her from me and started up from my chair dazed for a moment and uncertain where I was, then consciousness returned and I looked round wildly.

The gas was still blazing brightly, while the fire burned ruddy in the stove. By the timepiece on the mantel I could see that it was half-past twelve.

The picture and frame were still on the easel, only as I looked at them the portrait had changed, a hectic flush was on the cheeks while the eyes glittered with life and the sensuous lips were red and ripe-looking with a drop of blood still upon the nether one. In a frenzy of horror I seized my scraping knife and slashed out the vampire picture, then tearing the mutilated fragments out I crammed them into my stove and watched them frizzle with savage delight.

I have that frame still, but I have not yet had courage to paint a suitable subject for it.

A SET OF CHESSMEN

Richard Marsh

1890

I

“But, Monsieur, perceive how magnificent they are! There is not in Finistere, there is not in Brittany, nay, it is certain there is not in France so superb a set of chessmen. And ivory! And the carving – observe, for example, the variety of detail.”

They certainly were a curious set of chessmen, magnificent in a way, but curious first of all. As M. Bobineau remarked, holding a rook in one; hand and a knight in the other, the care paid to details by the carver really was surprising. But two hundred and fifty francs! For a set of chessmen!

“So, so, my friend. I am willing to admit that the work is good – in a kind of way. But two hundred and fifty francs! If it were fifty, now?”

“Fifty!” Up went M. Bobineau’s shoulders, and down went M. Bobineau’s head between them, in the fashion of those toys which are pulled by a string. “Ah, mon Dieu! Monsieur laughs at me!”

And there came another voluble declaration of their merits. They certainly were a curious set. I really think they were the most curious set I ever saw. I would have preferred them, for instance, to anything they have at South Kensington, and they have some remarkable examples there. And, of course, the price was small – I even admit it was ridiculously small. But when one has only five thousand francs a year for everything, two hundred and fifty being taken away – and for a set of chessmen – do leave a vacancy behind. I asked Bobineau where he got them. Business was slack that sunny afternoon – it seemed to me that I was the only customer he ever had, but that must have been a delusion on my part. Report said he was a warm man, one of Morlaix’s warmest men, and his queer old shop in the queer old Grande Rue – Grande Rue! what a name for an alley! – contained many things which were valuable as well as queer. But there, at least, was no other customer in sight just then, so Bobineau told me all the tale.

It seemed there had been a M. Funichon – Auguste Funichon – no, not a Breton, a Parisian, a true Parisian, who had come and settled down in the commune of Plouigneau, over by the gare. This M. Funichon was, for example, a little – well, a little – a little exalted, let us say. It is true that the country people said he was stark mad, but Bobineau, for his part, said non, no, no! It is not necessary, because one is a little eccentric, that one is mad. Here Bobineau looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Are not the English, of all people, the most eccentric, and yet is it not known to all the world that they are not, necessarily, stark mad? This M. Funichon was not rich, quite the contrary. It was a little place he lived in – the merest cottage, in fact. And in it he lived alone, and, according to report, there was only one thing he did all day and all night long, and that was, play chess. It appears that he was that rarest and most amiable of imbeciles, a chess-maniac. Is there such a word?

“What a life!” said M. Bobineau. “Figure it to yourself! To do nothing – nothing! – but play chess! They say” – M. Bobineau looked round him with an air of mystery – “they say he starved himself to death. He was so besotted by his miserable chess that he forgot – absolutely forgot, this imbecile – to eat.”

That was what M. Bobineau said they said. It required a vigorous effort of the imagination to quite take it in. To what a state of forgetfulness must a man arrive before he forgets to eat! But whether M. Funichon forgot to eat, or whether he didn’t, at least he died, and being dead they sold his goods – why they sold them was not quite clear, but at the sale M. Bobineau was the chief purchaser. One of the chief lots was the set of ivory chessmen which had caught my eye. They were the dead man’s favourite set, and no wonder! Bobineau was of the opinion that if he had had his way he would have had them buried with him in his grave.

“It is said,” he whispered, again with the glance of mystery around, “that they found him dead, seated at the table, the chessmen on the board, his hand on the white rook, which was giving mate to the adversary’s king.”

Either what a vivid imagination had Bobineau or what odd things the people said! One pictures the old man, seated all alone, with his last breath finishing his game.

Well, I bought the set of ivory chessmen. At this time of day I freely admit that they were cheap at two hundred and fifty francs – dirt cheap, indeed; but a hundred was all I paid. I knew Bobineau so well – I daresay he bought them for twenty-five. As I bore them triumphantly away my mind was occupied by thoughts of their original possessor. I was filled by quite a sentimental tenderness as I meditated on the part they had played, according to Bobineau, in that last scene. But St. Servan drove all those things away. Philippe Henri de St. Servan was rather a difficult person to get on with. It was with him I shared at that time my apartment on the place.

“Let us see!” I remarked when I got in, “what have I here?”

He was seated, his country pipe in his mouth, at the open window, looking down upon the river. The Havre boat was making ready to start – at Morlaix the nautical event of the week. There was quite a bustle on the quay. St. Servan just looked round, and then looked back again. I sat down and untied my purchase.

“I think there have been criticisms – derogatory criticisms – passed by a certain person upon a certain set of chessmen. Perhaps that person will explain what he has to say to these.”

St. Servan marched up to the table. He looked at them through his half-closed eyelids.

“Toys!” was all he said.

“Perhaps! Yet toys which made a tragedy. Have you ever heard of the name of Funichon?” By a slight movement of his grisly grey eyebrows he intimated that it was possible he had. “These chessmen belonged to him. He had just finished a game with them when they found him dead – the winning piece, a white rook, was in his hand. Suggest an epitaph to be placed over his grave. There’s a picture for a painter – eh?”

“Bah! He was a Communist!”

That was all St. Servan said. And so saying, St. Servan turned away to look out of the window at the Havre boat again. There was an end of M. Funichon for him. Not that he meant exactly what he said. He simply meant that M. Funichon was not Legitimist – out of sympathy with the gentlemen who met, and decayed, visibly, before the naked eye, at the club on the other side of the place. With St. Servan not to be Legitimist meant to be nothing at all – out of his range of vision absolutely. Seeing that was so, it is strange he should have borne with me as he did. But he was a wonderful old man.

II

We played our first game with the ivory chessmen when St. Servan returned from the club. I am free to confess that it was an occasion for me. I had dusted all the pieces, and had the board all laid when St. Servan entered, and when we drew for choice of moves the dominant feeling in my mind was the thought of the dead man sitting all alone, with the white rook in his hand. There was an odour of sanctity about the affair – a whiff of air from the land of the ghosts.

Nevertheless, my loins were girded up, and I was prepared to bear myself as a man in the strife. We were curiously well matched, St. Servan and I. We had played two hundred and twenty games, and, putting draws aside, each had scored the same number of wins. He had his days, and so had I. At one time I was eleven games ahead, but since that thrice blessed hour I had not scored a single game. He had tracked me steadily, and eventually had made the scores exactly tie. In these latter days it had grown with him to be an article of faith that as a chess-player I was quite played out – and there was a time when I had thought the same of him!

He won the move, and then, as usual, there came an interval for reflection. The worst thing about St. Servan – regarded from a chess-playing point of view – was, that he took such a time to begin. When a man has opened his game it is excusable – laudable, indeed – if he pauses to reflect, a reasonable length of time. But I never knew a man who was so fond of reflection before a move was made. As a rule, that absurd habit of his had quite an irritating effect upon my nerves, but that evening I felt quite cool and prepared to sit him out.

There we sat, both smoking our great pipes, he staring at the board, and I at him. He put out his hand, almost touched a piece, and then, with a start, he drew it back again. An interval – the same pantomime again. Another interval – and a repetition of the pantomime. I puffed a cloud of smoke into the air, and softly sighed. I knew he had been ten minutes by my watch. Possibly the sign had a stimulating effect, for he suddenly stretched out his hand and moved queen’s knight’s pawn a single square.

I was startled. He was great at book openings, that was the absurdest part of it. He would lead you to suppose that he was meditating something quite original, and then would perhaps begin with fool’s mate after all. He, at least, had never tried queen’s knight’s pawn a single square before.

I considered a reply. Pray let it be understood – though I would not have confessed it to St. Servan for the world – that I am no player. I am wedded to the same for an hour or two at night, or, peradventure, of an afternoon at times; but I shall never be admitted to its inner mysteries – never! Not if I outspan Methuselah. I am not built that way. St. Servan and I were two children who, loving the sea, dabble their feet in the shallows left by the tide. I have no doubt that there are a dozen replies to that opening of his, but I did not know one then. I had some hazy idea of developing a game of my own, while keeping an eye on his, and for that purpose put out my hand to move the queen’s pawn two, when I felt my wrist grasped by – well, by what felt uncommonly like an invisible hand. I was so startled that I almost dropped my pipe. I drew my hand back again, and was conscious of the slight detaining pressure of unseen fingers. Of course it was hallucination, but it seemed so real, and was so expected, that – well, I settled my pipe more firmly between my lips – it had all but fallen from my mouth, and took a whiff or two to calm my nerves. I glanced up, cautiously, to see if St. Servan noticed my unusual behaviour, but his eyes were fixed stonily upon the board.

After a moment’s hesitation – it was absurd! – I stretched out my hand again. The hallucination was repeated, and in a very tangible form. I was distinctly conscious of my wrist being wrenched aside and guided to a piece I had never meant to touch, and almost before I was aware of it, instead of the move I had meant to make, I had made a servile copy of St. Servan’s opening – I had moved queen’s knight’s pawn a single square!

To adopt the language of the late Dick Swiveller, that was a staggerer. I own that for an instant I was staggered. I could do nothing else but stare. For at least ten seconds I forgot to smoke. I was conscious that when St. Servan saw my move he knit his brows. Then the usual interval for reflection came again. Half unconsciously I watched him. When, as I supposed, he had decided on his move, he stretched out his hand, as I had done, and also, as I had done, he drew it back again. I was a little startled – he seemed a little startled too. There was a momentary pause; back went his hand again, and, by way of varying the monotony, he moved – king’s knight’s pawn a single square.

I wondered, and held my peace. There might be a gambit based upon these lines, or there might not; but since I was quite clear that I knew no reply to such an opening I thought I would try a little experiment, and put out my hand, not with the slightest conception of any particular move in my head, but simply to see what happened. Instantly a grasp fastened on my wrist; my hand was guided to – king’s knight’s pawn a single square.

This was getting, from every point of view, to be distinctly interesting. The chessmen appeared to be possessed of a property of which Bobineau had been unaware. I caught myself wondering if he would have insisted on a higher price if he had known of it. Curiosities nowadays do fetch such fancy sums – and what price for a ghost? They appeared to be automatic chessmen, automatic in a sense entirely their own.

Having made my move, or having had somebody else’s move made for me, which is perhaps the more exact way of putting it, I contemplated my antagonist. When he saw what I had done, or what somebody else had done – the things are equal – St. Servan frowned. He belongs to the bony variety, the people who would not loll in a chair to save their lives – his aspect struck me as being even more poker-like than usual. He meditated his reply an unconscionable length of time, the more unconscionable since I strongly doubted if it would be his reply after all. But at last he showed signs of action. He kept his eyes fixed steadily upon the board, his frown became pronounced, and he began to raise his hand. I write “began,” because it was a process which took some time. Cautiously he brought it up, inch by inch. But no sooner had he brought it over the board than his behaviour became quite singular. He positively glared, and to my eyes seemed to be having a struggle with his own right hand. A struggle in which he was worsted, for he leant back in his seat with a curiously discomfited air.

He had moved queen’s rook’s pawn two squares – the automatic principle which impelled these chessmen seemed to have a partiality for pawns.

It was my turn for reflection. I pressed the tobacco down in my pipe, and thought – or tried to think – it out. Was it an hallucination, and was St. Servan the victim of hallucination too? Had I moved those pawns spontaneously, actuated by the impulse of my own free will, or hadn’t I? And what was the meaning of the little scene I had just observed? I am a tolerably strong man. It would require no slight exercise of force to compel me to move one piece when I had made up my mind that I would move another piece instead. I have been told, and I believe not altogether untruly told, that the rigidity of my right wrist resembles iron. I have not spent so much time in the tennis-court and fencing-room for nothing. I had tried one experiment. I thought I would try another. I made up my mind that I would move queen’s pawn two – stop me who stop can.

I felt that St. Servan in his turn was watching me. Preposterously easy though the feat appeared to be as I resolved on its performance, I was conscious of an unusual degree of cerebral excitement – a sort of feeling of do or die. But as, in spite of the feeling, I didn’t do, it was perhaps as well I didn’t die. Intending to keep complete control over my own muscles, I raised my right hand, probably to the full as cautiously as St. Servan had done. I approached the queen’s pawn. I was just about to seize the piece when that unseen grasp fastened on my wrist. I paused, with something of the feeling which induces the wrestler to pause before entering on the veritable tug of war. For one thing, I was desirous to satisfy myself as to the nature of the grasp – what it was that seemed to grasp me.

It seemed to be a hand. The fingers went over the back of my wrist, and the thumb beneath. The fingers were long and thin – it was altogether a slender hand. But it seemed to be a man’s hand, and an old man’s hand at that. The skin was tough and wrinkled, clammy and cold. On the little finger there was a ring, and on the first, about the region of the first joint, appeared to be something of the nature of a wart. I should say that it was anything but a beautiful hand, it was altogether too attenuated and clawlike, and I would have betted that it was yellow with age.

At first the pressure was slight, almost as slight as the touch of a baby’s hand, with a gentle inclination to one side. But as I kept my own hand firm, stiff, resolved upon my own particular move, with, as it were, a sudden snap, the pressure tightened and, not a little to my discomfiture, I felt my wrist held as in an iron vice. Then, as it must have seemed to St. Servan, who, I was aware, was still keenly watching me, I began to struggle with my own hand. The spectacle might have been fun to him, but the reality was, at that moment, anything but fun to me. I was dragged to one side. Another hand was fastened upon mine. My fingers were forced open – I had tightly clenched my fist to enable me better to resist – my wrist was forced down, my fingers were closed upon a piece, I was compelled to move it forward, my fingers were unfastened to replace the piece upon the board. The move completed, the unseen grasp instantly relaxed, and I was free, or appeared to be free, again to call my hand my own.

I had moved queen’s rook’s pawn two squares. This may seem comical enough to read about, but it was anything but comical to feel. When the thing was done I stared at St. Servan, and St. Servan stared at me. We stared at each other, I suppose a good long minute, then I broke the pause.

“Anything the matter?” I inquired. He put up his hand and curled his moustache, and, if I may say so, he curled his lip as well. “Do you notice anything odd about – about the game?” As I spoke about the game I motioned my hand towards my brand-new set of chessmen. He looked at me with hard suspicious eyes.

“Is it a trick of yours?” he asked.

“Is what a trick of mine?”

“If you do not know, then how should I?”

I drew a whiff or two from my pipe, looking at him keenly all the time, then signed towards the board with my hand.

“It’s your move,” I said.

He merely inclined his head. There was a momentary pause. When he stretched out his hand he suddenly snatched it back again, and half started from his seat with a stifled execration.

“Did you feel anything upon your wrist?” I asked.

“Mon Dieu! It is not what I feel – see that!”

He was eyeing his wrist as he spoke. He held it out under the glare of the lamp. I bent across and looked at it. For so old a man he had a phenomenally white and delicate skin – under the glare of the lamp the impressions of finger-marks were plainly visible upon his wrist. I whistled as I saw them.

“Is it a trick of yours?” he asked again.

“It is certainly no trick of mine.”

“Is there anyone in the room besides us two?”

I shrugged my shoulders and looked round. He too looked round, with something I thought not quite easy in his glance.

“Certainly no one of my acquaintance, and certainly no one who is visible to me!”

With his fair white hand – the left, not the one which had the fingermarks upon the wrist – St. Servan smoothed his huge moustache.

“Someone, or something, has compelled me – yes, from the first – to move, not as I would, but – bah! I know not how.”

“Exactly the same thing has occurred to me.”

I laughed. St. Servan glared. Evidently the humour of the thing did not occur to him, he being the sort of man who would require a surgical operation to make him see a joke. But the humorous side of the situation struck me forcibly.

“Perhaps we are favoured by the presence of a ghost – perhaps even by the ghost of M. Funichon. Perhaps, after all, he has not yet played his last game with his favourite set. He may have returned – shall we say from – where? – to try just one more set-to with us! If, my dear sir” – I waved my pipe affably, as though addressing an unseen personage – “it is really you, I beg you will reveal yourself – materialize is, I believe, the expression now in vogue – and show us the sort of ghost you are!”

Somewhat to my surprise, and considerably to my amusement, St. Servan rose from his seat and stood by the table, stiff and straight as a scaffold-pole.

“These, Monsieur, are subjects on which one does not jest.”

“Do you, then, believe in ghosts?” I knew he was a superstitious man – witness his fidelity to the superstition of right divine – but this was the first inkling I had had of how far his superstition carried him.

“Believe! – In ghosts! In what, then, do you believe? I, Monsieur, am a religious man.”

“Do you believe, then, that a ghost is present with us now – the ghost, for instance, of M. Funichon?”

St. Servan paused. Then he crossed himself – actually crossed himself before my eyes. When he spoke there was a peculiar dryness in his tone.

“With your permission, Monsieur, I will retire to bed.”

There was an exasperating thing to say! There must be a large number of men in the world who would give – well, a good round sum, to light even on the trail of a ghost. And here were we in the actual presence of something – let us say apparently curious, at any rate, and here was St. Servan calmly talking about retiring to bed, without making the slightest attempt to examine the thing! It was enough to make the members of the Psychical Research Society turn in their graves. The mere suggestion fired my blood.

“I do beg, St. Servan, that you at least will finish the game.” I saw he hesitated, so I drove the nail well home. “Is it possible that you, a brave man, having given proofs of courage upon countless fields, can turn tail at what is doubtless an hallucination after all?”

“Is it that Monsieur doubts my courage?”

I knew the tone – if I was not careful I should have an affair upon my hands.

“Come, St. Servan, sit down and finish the game.”

Another momentary pause. He sat down, and – it would not be correct to write that we finished the game, but we made another effort to go on. My pipe had gone out. I refilled and lighted it.

“You know, St. Servan, it is really nonsense to talk about ghosts.”

“It is a subject on which I never talk.”

“If something does compel us to make moves which we do not intend, it is something which is capable of a natural explanation.”

“Perhaps Monsieur will explain it, then?”

“I will! Before I’ve finished! If you only won’t turn tail and go to bed! I think it very possible, too, that the influence, whatever it is, has gone – it is quite on the cards that our imagination has played us some subtle trick. It is your move, but before you do anything just tell me what move you mean to make.”

“I will move” – he hesitated – “I will move queen’s pawn.”

He put out his hand, and, with what seemed to me hysterical suddenness, he moved king’s rook’s pawn two squares.

“So! our friend is still here then! I suppose you did not change your mind?”

There was a very peculiar look about St. Servan’s eyes.

“I did not change my mind.”

I noticed, too, that his lips were uncommonly compressed.

“It is my move now. I will move queen’s pawn. We are not done yet. When I put out my hand you grasp my wrist – and we shall see what we shall see.”

“Shall I come round to you?”

“No, stretch out across the table – now!”

I stretched out my hand; that instant he stretched out his, but spontaneous thought the action seemed to be, another, an unseen hand, had fastened on my wrist He observed it too.

“There appears to be another hand between yours and mine.”

“I know there is.”

Before I had the words well out my hand had been wrenched aside, my fingers unclosed, and then closed, then unclosed again, and I had moved king’s rook’s pawn two squares. St. Servan and I sat staring at each other – for my part I felt a little bewildered.

“This is very curious! Very curious indeed! But before we say anything about it we will try another little experiment, if you don’t mind. I will come over to you.” I went over to him. “Let me grasp your wrist with both my hands.” I grasped it, as firmly as I could, as it lay upon his knee. “Now try to move queen’s pawn.”

He began to raise his hand, I holding on to his wrist with all my strength. Hardly had he raised it to the level of the table when two unseen hands, grasping mine, tore them away as though my strength were of no account I saw him give a sort of shudder – he had moved queen’s bishop’s pawn two squares.

“This is a devil of a ghost!” I said.

St. Servan said nothing. But he crossed himself, not once, but half a dozen times.

“There is still one little experiment that I would wish to make.”

St. Servan shook his head.

“Not I!” he said.

“Ah but, my friend, this is an experiment which I can make without your aid. I simply want to know if there is nothing tangible about our unseen visitor except his hands. It is my move.” I returned to my side of the table. I again addressed myself, as it were, to an unseen auditor. “My good ghost, my good M. Funichon – if it is you – you are at liberty to do as you desire with my hand.”

I held it out. It instantly was grasped. With my left hand I made several passes in the air up and down, behind and before, in every direction so far as I could. It met with no resistance. There seemed to be nothing tangible but those invisible fingers which grasped my wrist – and I had moved queen’s bishop’s pawn two squares.

St. Servan rose from his seat.

“It is enough. Indeed it is too much. This ribaldry must cease. It had been better had Monsieur permitted me to retire to bed.”

“Then you are sure it is a ghost – the ghost of M. Funichon, we’ll say?”

“This time Monsieur must permit me to wish him a good night’s rest.” He bestowed on me, as his manner was, a stiff inclination of the head, which would have led a stranger to suppose that we had met each other for the first time ten minutes ago, instead of being the acquaintances of twelve good years. He moved across the room.

“St. Servan, one moment before you go! You are surely not going to leave a man alone at the post of peril?”

“It were better that Monsieur should come too.”

“Half a second, and I will. I have only one remark to make, and that is to the ghost.”

I rose from my seat. St. Servan made a half-movement towards the door, then changed his mind and remained quite still.

“If there is any other person with us in the room, may I ask that person to let us hear his voice, or hers? Just to speak one word.”

Not a sound.

“It is possible – I am not acquainted with the laws which govern – eh – ghosts that the faculty of speech is denied to them. If that be so, might I ask for the favour of a sign – for instance, move a piece while my friend and I are standing where we are?”

Not a sign; not a chessman moved.

“Then M. Funichon, if it indeed be you, and you are incapable of speech, or even of moving a piece of your own accord, and are only able to spoil our game, I beg to inform you that you are an exceedingly ill-mannered and foolish person, and had far better have stayed away.”

As I said this I was conscious of a current of cold air before my face, as though a swiftly moving hand had shaved my cheek.

“By Jove, St. Servan, something has happened at last. I believe our friend the ghost has tried to box my ears!”

St. Servan’s reply came quietly stern.

“I think it were better that Monsieur came with me.”

For some reason St. Servan’s almost contemptuous coldness fired my blood. I became suddenly enraged.

“I shall do nothing of the kind! Do you think I am going to be fooled by a trumpery conjuring trick which would disgrace a shilling stance? Driven to bed at this time of day by a ghost! And such a ghost! If it were something like a ghost one wouldn’t mind; but a fool of a ghost like this!”

Even as the words passed my lips I felt the touch of fingers against my throat. The touch increased my rage. I snatched at them, only to find that there was nothing there.

“Damn you!” I cried. “Funichon, you old fool, do you think that you can frighten me? You see those chessmen; they are mine, bought and paid for with my money – you dare to try and prevent me doing with them exactly as I please.”

Again the touch against my throat. It made my rage the more. “As I live, I will smash them all to pieces, and grind them to powder beneath my heel.”

My passion was ridiculous – childish even. But then the circumstances were exasperating – unusually so, one might plead. I was standing three or four feet from the table. I dashed forward. As I did so a hand was fastened oh my throat. Instantly it was joined by another. They gripped me tightly. They maddened me. With a madman’s fury I still pressed forward. I might as well have fought with fate. They clutched me as with bands of steel, and flung me to the ground.

III

When I recovered consciousness I found St. Servan bending over me.

“What is the matter?” I inquired, when I found that I was lying on the floor.

“I think you must have fainted.”

“Fainted! I never did such a thing in my life. It must have been a curious kind of faint, I think.”

“It was a curious kind of faint.”

With his assistance I staggered to my feet. I felt bewildered. I glanced round. There were the chessmen still upon the board, the hanging lamp above. I tried to speak. I seemed to have lost the use of my tongue. In silence he helped me to the door. He half led, half carried me – for I seemed to have lost the use of my feet as well as that of my tongue – to my bedroom. He even assisted me to undress, never leaving me till I was between the sheets. All the time not a word was spoken. When he went I believe he took the key outside and locked the door.

That was a night of dreams. I know not if I was awake or sleeping, but all sorts of strange things presented themselves to my mental eye. I could not shut them from my sight. One figure was prominent in all I saw – the figure of a man. I knew, or thought I knew, that it was M. Funichon. He was a lean old man, and what I noticed chiefly were his hands. Such ugly hands! In some fantastical way I seemed to be contending with them all through the night.

And yet in the morning when I woke – for I did wake up, and that from as sweet refreshing sleep as one might wish to have – it was all gone. It was bright day. The sun was shining into the great, ill-furnished room. As I got out of bed and began to dress, the humorous side of the thing had returned to me again. The idea of there being anything supernatural about a set of ivory chessmen appeared to me to be extremely funny.

I found St. Servan had gone out. It was actually half-past ten! His table d’hôte at the Hôtel de Bretagne was at eleven, and before he breakfasted he always took a petit verre at the club. If he had locked the door overnight he had not forgotten to unlock it before he started. I went into the rambling, barnlike room which served us for a salon. The chessmen had disappeared. Probably St. Servan had put them away – I wondered if the ghost had interfered with him. I laughed to myself as I went out – fancy St. Servan contending with a ghost.

The proprietor of the Hôtel de Bretagne is Legitimist, so all the aristocrats go there – of course, St. Servan with the rest. Presumably the landlord’s politics is the point, to his cooking they are apparently indifferent – I never knew a worse table in my life! The landlord of the Hôtel de l’Europe may be a Communist for all I care – his cooking is first-rate, so I go there. I went there that morning. After I had breakfasted I strolled off towards the Grande Rue, to M. Bobineau.

When he saw me M. Bobineau was all smirks and smiles – he must have got those chessmen for less than five-and-twenty francs! I asked him if he had any more of the belongings of M. Funichon.

“But certainly! Three other sets of chessmen.”

I didn’t want to look at those, apparently one set was quite enough for me. Was that all he had?

“But no! There was an ancient bureau, very magnificent, carved—”

I thanked him – nor did I want to look at that. In the Grande Rue at Morlaix old bureaux carved about the beginning of the fifteenth century – if you listen to the vendors – are as plentiful as cobblestones.

“But I have all sorts of things of M. Funichon. It was I who bought them nearly all. Books, papers, and—”

M. Bobineau waved his hands towards a multitude of books and papers which crowded the shelves at the side of his shop. I took a volume down. When I opened it I found it was in manuscript.

“That work is unique!” explained Bobineau. “It was the intention of M. Funichon to give it to the world, but he died before his purpose was complete. It is the record of all the games of chess he ever played – in fifty volumes. Monsieur will perceive it is unique.”

I should think it was unique! In fifty volumes! The one I held was a large quarto, bound in leather, containing some six or seven hundred pages, and was filled from cover to cover with matter in a fine, clear handwriting, written on both sides of the page. I pictured the face of the publisher to whom it was suggested that he should give to the world such a work as that.

I opened the volume at the first page. It was, as Bobineau said, apparently the record, with comments, of an interminable series of games of chess. I glanced at the initial game. Here are the opening moves, just as they were given there.

White

Queen’s Knight’s Pawn, one square

King’s Knight’s Pawn, one square

Queen’s Rook’s Pawn, two squares

King’s Rook’s Pawn, two squares.

Black

Queen’s Knight’s Pawn, one square

King’s Knight’s Pawn, one square

Queen’s Rook’s Pawn, two squares

King’s Rook’s Pawn, two squares.

They were exactly the moves of the night before. They were such peculiar moves, and made under such peculiar circumstances, that I was scarcely likely to mistake them. So far as we had gone, St. Servan and I, assisted by the unseen hand, had reproduced M. Funichon’s initial game in the first volume of his fifty – and a very peculiar game it seemed to be. I asked Bobineau what he would take for the volume which I held.

“Monsieur perceives that to part them would spoil the set, which is unique. Monsieur shall have the whole fifty” – I shuddered. I imagine Bobineau saw I did, he spoke so very quickly – “for a five-franc piece, which is less than the value of the paper and the binding.”

I knew then that he had probably been paid for carting the rubbish away. However, I paid him his five-franc piece, and marched off with the volume under my arm, giving him to understand, to his evident disappointment, that at my leisure I would give him instructions as to the other forty-nine.

As I went along I thought the matter over. M. Funichon seemed to have been a singular kind of man – he appeared to have carried his singularity even beyond the grave. Could it have been the cold-blooded intention of his ghost to make us play the whole contents of the fifty volumes through? What a fiend of a ghost his ghost must be!

I opened the volume and studied the initial game. The people were right who had said that the man was mad. None but an imbecile would have played such a game – his right hand against his left! – and none but a raving madman would have recorded his imbecility in black and white, as though it were a thing to be proud of! Certainly none but a criminal lunatic would have endeavoured to foist his puerile travesty of the game and study of chess upon two innocent men.

Still the thing was curious. I flattered myself that St. Servan would be startled when he saw the contents of the book I was carrying home. I resolved that I would instantly get out the chessmen and begin another game – perhaps the ghost of M. Funichon would favour us with a further exposition of his ideas of things. I even made up my mind that I would communicate with the Psychical Research Society. Not at all improbably they might think the case sufficiently remarkable to send down a member of their body to inquire into the thing upon the spot. I almost began to hug myself on the possession of a ghost, a ghost, too, which might be induced to perform at will – almost on the principle of “drop a coin into the slot and the figures move”! It was cheap at a hundred francs. What a stir those chessmen still might make! What vexed problems they might solve! Unless I was much mistaken, the expenditure of those hundred francs had placed me on the royal road to immortality.

Filled with such thoughts I reached our rooms. I found that St. Servan had returned. With him, if I may say so, he had brought his friends. Such friends! Ye Goths! When I opened the door the first thing which greeted me was a strong, not to say suffocating, smell of incense. The room was filled with smoke. A fire was blazing on the hearth. Before it was St. Servan, on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him, in an attitude of prayer. By him stood a priest, in his robes of office. He held what seemed a pestle and mortar, whose contents he was throwing by handfuls on to the flames, muttering some doggerel to himself the while. Behind him were two acolytes, with nice clean faces, and nice white stoles, who were swinging censers – hence the odour which filled the room. I was surprised when I beheld all this. They appeared to be holding some sort of religious service – and I had not bargained for that sort of thing when I had arranged with St. Servan to share the rooms with him. In my surprise I unconsciously interrupted the proceedings.

“St. Servan! Whatever is the meaning of this?”

St. Servan looked up, and the priest looked round – that was all the attention they paid to me. The acolytes eyed me with what I conceived to be a grin upon their faces. But I was not to be put down like that.

“I must ask you, St. Servan, for an explanation.”

The priest turned the mortar upside down, and emptied the remainder of its contents into the fire.

“It is finished,” he said.

St. Servan rose from his knees and crossed himself.

“We have exorcised the demon,” he observed.

“You have what?” I asked.

“We have driven out the evil spirit which possessed the chessmen.”

I gasped. A dreadful thought struck me.

“You don’t mean to say that you have dared to play tricks with my property?”

“Monsieur,” said the priest, “I have ground it into dust.”

He had. That fool of a St. Servan had actually fetched his parish priest and his acolytes and their censers, and between them they had performed a comminatory service made and provided for the driving out of demons. They had ground my ivory chessmen in the pestle and mortar, and then burned them in the fire. And this in the days of the Psychical Research Society! And they had cost me a hundred francs! And that idiot of a ghost had never stretched out a hand or said a word!

AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

J. H. Pearce

1893

The performance was over: the curtain had descended and the spectators had dispersed.

There had been a slight crush at the doors of the theatre, and what with the abrupt change from the pleasant warmth and light of the interior to the sharp chill of the night outside, Preston shivered, and a sudden weakness smote him at the joints.

The crowd on the pavement in front of the theatre melted away with unexampled rapidity, in fact, seemed almost to waver and disappear as if the mise en scène had changed in some inexplicable way.

A hansom drove up, and Preston stepped into it heavily, glancing drowsily askance at the driver as he did so.

Seated up there, barely visible in the gloom, the driver had an almost grisly aspect, humped with waterproof capes, and with such a lean, white face. Preston, as he glanced at him, shivered again.

The trapdoor above him opened softly, and the colourless face peered down at him curiously.

“Where to, sir?” asked the hollow voice.

Preston leaned back wearily. “Home,” he replied.

It did not strike him as anything strange or unusual, that the driver asked no questions but drove off without a word. He was very weary, and he wanted to rest.

The sleepless hum of the city was abidingly in his ears, and the lamps that dotted the misty pavements stared at him blinkingly all along the route. The tall black buildings rose up grimly into the night; the faces that flitted to and fro along the pavements, kept ever sliding past him, melting into the darkness; and the cabs and buses, still astir in the streets, had a ghostly air as they vanished in the gloom.

Preston lay back, weary in every joint, a drowsy numbness settling on his pulse. He had faith in his driver: he would bring him safely home.

Presently they were at one of the wharves beside the river: Preston could hear the gurgle of the water around the piles.

Not this way had he ever before gone homeward. He looked out musingly on the swift, black stream.

“Just in time: we can go down with the tide,” said a voice.

Preston would have uttered some protest, but this sluggishness overpowered him: it was as if he could neither lift hand nor foot. The inertia of indifference had penetrated into his bones.

Presently he was aware that he had entered a barge that lay close against the wharf, heaving on the tide. And, as if it were all a piece of the play, the lean old driver, with his dead-white face, had the oars in his hands and stood quietly facing him, guiding the dark craft down the stream.

The panorama of the river-bank kept changing and shifting in the most inexplicable manner, and Preston was aware of a crowd of pictures ever coming and going before his eyes: as if some subtle magician, standing behind his shoulder, were projecting for him, on the huge black screen of night, the most marvellous display of memories he had ever contemplated. For they were all memories, or blends of memories, that now rose here on the horizon of his consciousness. There was nothing new in essentials presented to him: but the grouping was occasionally novel to a fault.

The dear old home – the dear old folks! Green hills, with the little white-washed cottage in a dimple of them, and in the foreground the wind-fretted plain of the sea. The boyish games – marbles and hoop-trundling – and the coming home at dusk to the red-lighted kitchen, where the mother had the tea ready on the table and the sisters sat at their knitting by the fire.

The dear, dear mother! how his pulse yearned towards her! there were tears in his eyes as he thought of her now. Yet, all the same, the quiet of his pulse was profound.

And there was the familiar scenery of his daily life: the ink-stained desks, the brass rails for the books, the ledgers and bankbooks, and the files against the walls; and the faces of his fellow-clerks (even the office boy) depicted here before him to the very life.

The wind across the waters blew chilly in his face: he shivered, a numbness settling in his limbs.

His sweet young wife, so loving and gentle – how shamefully he had neglected her, seeking his own pleasure selfishly – there she sat in the familiar chair by the fireside with dear little Daisy dancing on her knee. What a quiet, restful interior it was! He wondered: would they miss him much if he were dead? ... Above all, would little Daisy understand what it meant when someone whispered to her “favee is dead”?

The wavering shadows seemed to thicken around the boat. And the figure at the oars – how lean and white it was: and yet it seemed a good kind of fellow, too, he thought. Preston watched it musingly as the stream bore them onward: the rushing of the water almost lulling him to sleep.

Were they sweeping outward, then, to the unknown sea?

It was an unexpected journey … And he had asked to be taken home!

Presently the air grew full of shapes: shadowy shapes with mournful faces; shapes that hinted secrets, with threatenings in their eyes.

If a man’s sins, now, should take to themselves bodies, would it not be in some such guise as this they would front and affright him at dead of night?

Preston shivered, sitting there like a mere numb lump.

How much of his wrong-doing is forgiven to a man – and how much remembered against him in the reckoning?

How awful this gruesome isolation was becoming!

Was it thus a man went drifting up to God?

The figure at the oars was crooning softly. It was like the lullaby his mother used to sing to him when he was a child.

There was a breath of freer air – humanity lay behind them – they were alone with Nature on the vast, dim sea.

The numbness crept to the roots of his being. He had no hands to lift; he had no feet to move. His heart grew sluggish: there was a numbness in his brain.

Death stood upright now in the bow before him: and in the east he was aware of a widening breadth of grey.

Would the blackness freshen into perfect day for him … or would the night lie hopelessly on him forever?…

The figure drew near – and laid its hand across his eyes.…

•   •   •   •   •

“Thrown out of the hansom, and the wheels went over him, sir. He was dead in less than five minutes, I should think.”

“Cover his face … and break it gently to his wife.”

THE WITCHES’ SABBATH

By James Platt

1894

Our scene is one of those terrific peaks set apart by tradition as the trysting place of wizards and witches, and of every kind of folk that prefers dark to day.

It might have been Mount Elias, or the Brocken, associated with Doctor Faustus. It might have been the Horsel or Venusberg of Tannhaeuser, or the Black Forest. Enough that it was one of these.

Not a star wrinkled the brow of night. Only in the distance the twinkling lights of some town could be seen. Low down in the skirts of the mountain rode a knight, followed closely by his page. We say a knight, because he had once owned that distinction. But a wild and bloody youth had tarnished his ancient shield, the while it kept bright and busy his ancestral sword. Behold him now, little better than a highwayman. Latterly he had wandered from border to border, without finding where to rest his faithful steed. All authority was in arms against him; Hageck, the wild knight, was posted throughout Germany. More money was set upon his head than had ever been put into his pocket. Pikemen and Pistoliers had dispersed his following. None remained to him whom he could call his own, save this stnpling who still rode sturdily at the tail of his horse. Him also, the outlaw had besought, even with tears, to abandon one so ostensibly cursed by stars and men. But in vain. The boy protested that he would have no home, save in his master’s shadow.

They were an ill-assorted pair. The leader was all war-worn and weather-worn. Sin had marked him for its own and for the wages of sin. The page was young and slight, and marble pale. He would have looked more at home at the silken train of some great lady, than following at these heels from which the gilded spurs had long been hacked. Nevertheless, the music of the spheres themselves sings not more sweetly in accord than did these two hearts.

The wild knight, Hageck, had ascended the mountain as far as was possible to four-legged roadsters. Therefore he reined in his horse and dismounted, and addressed his companion. His voice was now quite gentle, which on occasion could quench mutiny, and in due season dry up the taste of blood in the mouths of desperate men.

“Time is that we must part, Enno.”

“Master, you told me we need never part.”

“Let be, child, do you not understand me? I hope with your own heart’s hope that we shall meet again tomorrow in this same tarrying place. But I have not brought you to so cursed a place without some object. When I say that we must part, I mean that you must take charge of our horses while I go further up the mountain upon business, which for your own sake you must never share.”

“And is this your reading of the oath of our brotherhood which we swore together?”

“The oath of our brotherhood, I fear, was writ in water. You are, in fact, the only one of all my company that has kept faith with me. For that very reason I would not spare your neck from the halter, nor your limbs from the wheel. But also for that very reason I will not set your immortal soul in jeopardy.”

“My immortal soul! Is this business then unhallowed that you go upon? Now I remember me that this mountain at certain seasons is said to be haunted by evil spirits. Master, you also are bound by our oath to tell me all.”

“You shall know all, Enno, were oaths even cheaper than they are. You have deserved by your devotion to be the confessor of your friend.”

“Friend is no name for companionship such as ours. I am sure you would die for me. I believe I could die for you, Hageck.”

“Enough, you have been more than brother to me. I had a brother once, after the fashion of this world, and it is his envious hand which has placed me where I stand. That was before I knew you, Enno, and it is some sweets in my cup at any rate, that had he not betrayed me I should never have known you. Nevertheless, you will admit that since he robbed me of the girl I loved, even your loyal heart is a poor set off for what fate and fraternity took from me. In fine, we both loved the same girl, but she loved me, and would have none of my brother. She was beautiful, Enno – how beautiful you can never guess that have not yet loved.”

“I have never conceived any other love than that I bear you.”

“Tush, boy, you know not what you say. But to return to my story. One day that I was walking with her my brother would have stabbed me. She threw herself between and was killed upon my breast.”

He tore open his clothes at the throat and showed a great faded stain upon his skin.

“The hangman’s brand shall fade,” he cried, “ere that wash out. Accursed be the mother that bore me seeing that she also first bore him! The devil squat down with him in his resting, lie with him in his sleeping, as the devil has sat and slept with me every noon and night since that deed was done. Never give way to love of woman, Enno, lest you lose the one you love, and with her lose the balance of your life.”

“Alas! Hageck, I fear I never shall.”

“Since that miscalled day, blacker than any night, you know as well as anyone the sort of death in life I led. I had the good or evil luck to fall in with some broken men like myself, fortune’s foes and foes of all whom fortune cherishes, you among them. Red blood, red gold for a while ran through our fingers. Then a turn of the wheel, and, presto, my men are squandered to every wind that blows – I am a fugitive with a price upon my head!”

“And with one comrade whom, believe me, wealth is too poor to buy.”

“A heart above rubies. Even so. To such alone would I confide my present purpose. You must know that my brother was a student of magic of no mean repute, and before we quarrelled had given me some insight into its mysteries. Now that I near the end of my tether I have summed up all the little I knew, and am resolved to make a desperate cast in this mountain of despair. In a word, I intend to hold converse with my dead sweetheart before I die. The devil shall help me to it for the love he bears me.”

“You would invoke the enemy of all mankind?”

“Him and none other. Aye, shudder not, nor seek to turn me from it. I have gone over it again and again. The gates of Hell are set no firmer than this resolve.”

“God keep Hell far from you when you call it!”

“I had feared my science was of too elementary an order to conduct an exorcism under any but the most favourable circumstances. Hence our journey hither. This place is one of those where parliaments of evil are held, where dead and living meet on equal ground. Tonight is the appointed night of one of these great Sabbaths. I propose to leave you here with the horses. I shall climb to the topmost peak, draw a circle that I may stand in for my defence, and with all the vehemence of love deferred, pray for my desire.”

“May all good angels speed you!”

“Nay, I have broken with such. Your good wish, Enno, is enough.” “But did we not hear talk in the town about a hermit that spent his life upon the mountain top, atoning for some sin in day-long prayer and mortification? Can this evil fellowship of which you speak still hold its meetings upon a spot which has been attached in the name of Heaven by one good man?”

“Of this hermit I knew nothing until we reached the town. It was then too late to seek another workshop. Should what you say be correct, and this holy man have purged this plague spot, I can do no worse than pass the night with him, and return to you. But should the practices of witch and wizard continue as of yore, then the powers of evil shall draw my love to me, be she where she may. Aye, be it in that most secret nook of heaven where God retires when He would weep, and where even archangels are never suffered to tread.”

“O all good go with you!”

“Farewell, Enno, and if I never return count my soul not so lost but what you may say a prayer for it now and again, when you have leisure.”

“I will not outlive you!”

The passionate words were lost on Hageck, who had already climbed so far as to be out of hearing. He only knew vaguely that something was shouted to him, and waved his hand above his head for a reply. On and on he climbed. Time passed. The way grew harder. At last exhausted, but fed with inward exaltation, he reached the summit. It was of considerable extent and extremely uneven. The first thing our hero noticed was the cave of the hermit. It could be nothing else, although it was closed with an iron door. A new departure, thought Hageck to himself, as he hammered upon it with the pommel of his sword, for a hermit’s cell to be locked in like a fortress.

“Open, friend,” he cried, “in heaven’s name, or in that of the other place if you like it better.”

The noise came from within of a bar being removed. The door opened. It revealed a mere hole in the rock, though large enough, it is true, to hold a considerable number of persons. Furniture was conspicuous by its absence. There was no sign even of a bed, unless a coffin that grinned in one corner served the occupant’s needs. A skull, a scourge, a crucifix, a knife for his food, what more does such a hermit want? His feet were bare, his head was tonsured, but his eyebrows were long and matted, and fell like a screen over burning maniacal eyes. A fanatic, every inch of him. He scrutinised the invader from top to toe. Apparently the result was unsatisfactory. He frowned.

“A traveller,” said he, “and at this unholy hour. Back, back, do you not know the sinister reputation of this time and place?”

“I know your reputation to be of the highest, reverend father; I could not credit what rumour circulates about this mountain top when I understood that one of such sanctity had taken up a perpetual abode here.”

“My abode is fixed here for the very reason that it is a realm of untold horror. My task is to win back, if I can, to the dominion of the church this corner, which has been so long unloved that it cries aloud to God and man. This position of my own choice is no sinecure. Hither at stated times the full brunt of the Sabbath sweeps to its rendezvous. Here I defy the Sabbath. You see that mighty door?”

“I had wondered, but feared to ask, what purpose such a barrier could serve in such a miserable place.”

“You may be glad to crouch behind it if you stay here much longer. At midnight, Legion, with all the swirl of all the hells at his back, will sweep this summit like a tornado. Were you of the stuff that never trembles, yet you shall hear such sounds as shall melt your backbone. Avoid hence while there is yet time.” “But you, if you remain here, why not I?”

“I remain here as a penance for a crime I did, a crime which almost takes prisoner my reason, so different was it from the crime I set out to do, so deadly death to all my hopes. I am on my knees throughout the whole duration of this pandemonium that I tell you of, and count thick and fast my beads during the whole time. Did I cease for one second to pray, that second would be my last. The roof of my cavern would descend and efface body and soul. But you, what would you do here?”

“I seek my own ends, for which I am fully prepared. To confer with a shade from the other world I place my own soul in jeopardy. For the short time that must elapse, before the hour arrives when I can work, I ask but a trifle of your light and fire.”

“The will-o’-the-wisp be your light, Saint Anthony’s your fire! Do you not recognise me?”

The wild knight bent forward and gazed into the~’ hermit’s inmost eye, then started back, and would have fallen had his head not struck the iron door. This recalled him to his senses, and after a moment he stood firm again, and murmured between his teeth, “My brother!”

“Your brother,” repeated the holy man, “your brother, whose sweetheart you stole and drove me to madness and crime.”

“I drove you to no madness, I drove you to no crime. The madness, the crime you expiate here, were all of your own making. She loved me, and me alone – you shed her blood, by accident I confess, yet you shed it, and not all the prayers of your lifetime can gather up one drop of it. What soaked into my own brain remains there forever, though I have sought to wash it out with an ocean of other men’s blood.”

“And I,” replied the hermit, and he tore his coarse frock off his shoulders, “I have sought to drown it with an ocean of my own.”

He spoke truth. Blood still oozed from his naked flesh, ploughed into furrows by the scourge.

“You, that have committed so many murders,” he continued, “and who have reproached me so bitterly for one, all the curses of your dying victims, all the curses I showered upon you before I became reformed have not availed to send you yet to the gibbet or to the wheel. You are one that, like the basil plant, grows ever the rifer for cursing. I remember I tried to lame you, after you left home, by driving a rusty nail into one of your footsteps, but the charm refused to work. You were never the worse for it that I could hear. They say the devil’s children have the devil’s luck. Yet someday shall death trip up your heels.”

“Peace, peace,” cried the wild horseman, “let ill-will be dead between us, and the bitterness of death be passed, as befits your sacred calling. Even if I see her for one moment tonight, by the aid of the science you once taught me, will you not see her for eternity in heaven some near day?”

“In heaven,” cried the hermit, “do I want to see her in heaven? On earth would I gladly see her again and account that moment cheap if weighted against my newly discovered soul! But that can never be. Not the art you speak of, not all the dark powers which move men to sin, can restore her to either of us as she was that day. And she loved you. She died to save you. You have nothing to complain of. But to me she was like some chaste impossible star.”

“I loved her most,” muttered the outlaw.

“You loved her most,” screamed the hermit. “Hell sit upon your eyes! Put it to the test. Look around. Do you see anything of her here?”

The other Hageck gazed eagerly round the cave, but without fixing upon anything.

“I see nothing,” he was forced to confess.

The hermit seized the skull and held it in front of his eyes. “This is her dear head,” he cried, “fairer far than living red and white to me!”

The wild knight recoiled with a gasp of horror, snatched the ghastly relic from the hand of his brother, and hurled it over the precipice. He put his fingers over his eyes and fell to shaking like an aspen. For a moment the hermit scarcely seemed to grasp his loss. Then with a howl of rage he seized his brother by the throat.

“You have murdered her,” he shrieked in tones scarcely recognisable, “she will be dashed to a hundred pieces by such a fall!”

He threw the outlaw to the ground and, retreating to his cave, slammed the door behind him, but his heartbroken sobs could still be heard distinctly. It was very evident that he was no longer in his right mind. The wild knight rose somewhat painfully and limped to a little distance where he perceived a favourable spot for erecting his circle. The sobbing of the crazed hermit presently ceased. He was aware that his rival had entered upon his operations. The hermit re-opened his door that he might more clearly catch the sound of what his foe was engaged upon. Every step was of an absorbing interest to the solitary as to the man who made it. Anon the hermit started to his feet. He fancied he heard another voice replying to his brother. Yes, it was a voice he seemed to know. He rushed out of the cave. A girlish figure clad in a stained dress was clasped in his brother’s arms. Kiss after kiss the wild knight was showering upon brow, and eye, and cheek, and lip. The girl responded as the hermit had surely seen her do once before. He flew to his cave. He grasped the knife he used for his food. He darted like an arrow upon the startled pair. The woman tried to throw herself in front of her lover, but the hermit with a coarse laugh, “Not twice the dagger seeks the same breast,” plunged it into the heart of her companion. The wild knight threw up his arms and without a cry fell to the ground. The girl uttered a shriek that seemed to rive the skies and flung herself across her dead. The hermit gazed at it stupidly and rubbed his eyes. He seemed like one dazed, but slowly recovering his senses. Suddenly he started, came as it were to himself, and pulled the girl by the shoulder.

“We have not a minute to lose,” he cried, “the great Sabbath is all but due. If his body remains out here one second after the stroke of twelve, his soul will be lost to all eternity. It will be snatched by the fiends who even now are bound to it. Do you not see yon shadowy hosts – but I forget, you are not a witch.”

“I see nothing,” she replied, sullenly, rising up and peering round. The night was clear, but starless.

“I have been a wizard,” he answered, “and once a wizard always a wizard, though I now fight upon the other side. Take my hand and you will see.”

She took his hand, and screamed as she did so. For at the instant there became visible to her these clouds of loathsome beings that were speeding thither from every point of the compass. Warlock, and witch, and wizard rode past on every conceivable graceless mount. Their motion was like the lightning of heaven, and their varied cries – owlet hoot, caterwaul, dragon shout – the horn of the Wild Hunter, and the burly of risen dead – vied with the bay of Cerberus to the seldseen moon: A forest of whips was flourished aloft. The whirr of wings raised dozing echoes. The accustomed mountain shook and shivered like a jelly, with the fear of their onset.

The girl dropped his hand and immediately lost the power of seeing them. She had learned at any rate that what he said was true.

“Help me to carry the body to the cave,” cried he, and in a moment it was done. The corpse was placed in the coffin of his murderer. Then the hermit crashed his door to its place. Up went bolts and bars. Some loose rocks that were probably the hermit’s chairs and tables were rolled up to afford additional security. “And now,” demanded the man, “now that we have a moment of breathing space, tell me what woman-kind are you whom I find here with my brother? That you are not her I know (woe is me that I have good reason to know) yet you are as like her as any flower that blows. I loved her, and I murdered her, and I have the right to ask, who and what are you that come to disturb my peace?”

“I am her sister.”

“Her sister! Yes, I remember you. You were a child in those days. Neither I nor my brother (God rest his soul!), neither of us noticed you.”

“No, he never took much notice of me. Yet I loved him as well as she did.”

“You, too, loved him,” whispered the hermit, as if to himself; “what did he do to be loved by two such women?”

“Yes, I loved him, though he never knew it, but I may confess it now, for you are a priest of a sort, are you not, you that shrive with steel?”

“You are bitter, like your sister. She was always so with me.”

“I owe you my story,” she replied more gently; “when she died and he fell into evil courses and went adrift with bad companions, I found I could not live without him, nor with anyone else, and I determined to become one of them. I dressed in boy’s clothes and sought enlistment into his company of free lances. He would have driven me from him, saying it was no work for such as I, yet at last I wheedled it from him. I think there was something in my face (all undeveloped as it was and stained with walnut juice) that reminded him of her he had lost. I followed him faithfully through good and evil, cringing for a look or word from him. We were at last broken up (as you know) and I alone of all his sworn riders remained to staunch his wounds. He brought me hither that he might wager all the soul that was left to him on the chance of evoking her spirit. I had with me the dress my sister died in, that I had cherished through all my wanderings, as my sole reminder of her life and death. I put it on after he had left me, and followed him as fast as my strength would allow me. My object was to beguile him with what sorry pleasure I could, while at the same time saving him from committing the sin of disturbing the dead. God forgive me if there was mixed with it the wholly selfish yearning to be kissed by him once, only once, in my true character as loving woman, rid of my hated disguise! I have had my desire, and it has turned to apples of Sodom on my lips. You are right. All we can do now is to preserve his soul alive.”

She fell on her knees beside the coffin. The hermit pressed his crucifix into her hands.

“Pray!” he cried, and at the same moment the distant clock struck twelve. There came a rush of feet, a thunder at the iron door, the cave rocked like a ship’s cabin abruptly launched into the trough of a storm. An infernal whooping and hallooing filled the air outside, mixed with it imprecations that made the strong man blanch. The banner of Destruction was unfurled. All the horned heads were upon them. Thrones and Dominions, Virtues, Princes, Powers. All hell was loose that night, and the outskirts of Hell.

The siege had begun. The hermit told his beads with feverish rapidity. One Latin prayer after another rolled off his tongue in drops of sweat. The girl, to whom these were unintelligible, tried in vain to think of prayers. All she could say, as she pressed the Christ to her lips, was “Lord of my life! My Love.” She scarcely heard the hurly-burly that raged outside. Crash after crash resounded against the door, but good steel tempered with holy water is bad to beat. Showers of small pieces of rock fell from the ceiling and the cave was soon filled with dust. Peals of hellish cachinnation resounded after each unsuccessful attempt to break down that defence. Living battering rams pressed it hard, dragon’s spur, serpent’s coil, cloven hoof, foot of clay. Tall Iniquities set their backs to it, names of terror, girt with earthquake. All the swart crew dashed their huge bulk against it, rake-helly riders, humans and superhumans, sin and its paymasters. The winds well nigh split their sides with hounding of them on. Evil stars in their courses fought against it. The seas threw up their dead. Haunted houses were no more haunted that night. Graveyards steamed. Gibbets were empty. The ghoul left his half-gnawed corpse, the vampire his victim’s throat. Buried treasures rose to earth’s surface that their ghostly guardians might swell the fray. Yet the hermit prayed on, and the woman wept, and the door kept its face to the foe. Will the hour of release never strike? Crested Satans now lead the van. Even steel cannot hold out forever against those in whose veins instead of blood, runs fire. At last it bends ever so little, and the devilish hubbub is increased tenfold.

“Should they break open the door—” yelled the hermit, making a trumpet of his hands, yet she could not hear what he shouted above the abominable din, nor had he time to complete his instructions. For the door did give, and that suddenly, with a clang that was heard from far off in the town, and made many a burgher think the last trump had come. The rocks that had been rolled against the door flew off in every direction, and a surging host – and the horror of it was that they were invisible to the girl – swept in.

The hermit tore his rosary asunder, and scattered the loose beads in the faces of the fiends.

“Hold fast the corpse!” he yelled, as he was trampled under foot, and this time he made himself heard. The girl seized the long hair of her lover pressed it convulsively, and swooned.

Years afterwards (as it seemed to her) she awakened and found the chamber still as death, and – yes – this was the hair of death which she still clutched in her dead hand. She kissed it a hundred times before it brought back to her where she was and what had passed. She looked round then for the hermit. He, poor man, was lying as if also dead. But when she could bring herself to release her hoarded treasure, she speedily brought him to some sort of consciousness. He sat up, not without difficulty, and looked around. But his mind, already half way to madness, had been totally overturned by what had occurred that woeful night.

“We have saved his soul between us,” she cried. “What do I not owe you for standing by me in that fell hour?”

He regarded her in evident perplexity. “I cannot think how you come to be wearing that blood-stained dress of hers,” was all he replied.

“I have told you,” she said, gently, “but you have forgotten that I cherished it through all my wanderings as my sole memento of her glorious death. She laid down the last drop of her blood for him. She chose the better part. But I! my God! what in the world is to become of me?”

“I had a memento of her once,” he muttered. “I had her beautiful head, but I have lost it.”

“That settles it,” she said, “you shall cut off mine.”

THE PAGE-BOY’S GHOST
the Countess of Munster

1896

In the month of March of the year 1894, I, accompanied by my niece, Clara (who is young, pretty, and, moreover, a very clever and practical hospital nurse), went with my cousin Mrs Oliver in search of a house for the latter lady, who was about to settle in Bath.

The house-agent, of course, told us of many residences likely to suit our requirements, and amongst others, there was one especially – situated in “Granville Crescent.” Cards were given us to view the house, and one lovely morning we three ladies started for that purpose.

When we arrived at the door, we found it was a corner house, which had been added to according to the owner’s convenience, and was consequently rather a rambling building, although not large.

After viewing the basement and dining rooms, we proceeded upstairs. I had not been noticing my niece for some minutes, having, of course, been thoroughly occupied with my cousin, looking over the rooms, their furniture, etc.; but suddenly I felt a tug at my sleeve, and turning, I saw Clara looking ghastly pale, and evidently much disturbed.

“Dearest Aunt,” she gasped, rather than whispered, “do come away!”

“Why, Clara!” I said, “what has happened? Are you ill?”

“Oh, Auntie,” she reiterated, “come away! Tell Mrs Oliver not to take the house – for it is haunted! Don’t you hear them?”

“Hear them!” I repeated, and laughed merrily. “What! You!” I added, “a nurse – and so well known for practical common sense, and frightened at ghosts!”

But I was struck, all the same, by the expression of her face; it was so wistful, so terrified! All her lovely colour was gone. She was as unlike her bright, laughing little self as it was possible to conceive.

In spite of her beseeching looks, however, I felt I must accompany my cousin upstairs; and after a few minutes, Clara (who had kept close to me, evidently dreading to be left alone) once more timidly caught hold of my arm, and whispered in awestricken tones:

“Auntie, come away from this dreadful house! I tell you it is haunted! Oh! don’t you hear them? Wherever we go footsteps are dogging us. For God’s sake, Auntie, come away!”

I was rather provoked at her persistency, and all the more so when, upon my insisting on further explorations, she positively refused to be of the party, and ran down the stairs and out of the house, in an extremity of terror! After having seen everything, we also (i.e., Mrs Oliver and myself) left the house, and discovered Clara walking up and down outside, like some uneasy spirit.

She proceeded again to implore my cousin not to take the house, for, she said, she had never experienced such a sensation before – and she knew it was haunted!

Mrs Oliver thereupon, to Clara’s enormous relief, told her that the house did not suit her, and that she did not mean to take it; but for the space of quite three weeks, subsequent to our visit to Granville Crescent, Clara told me she constantly felt she was being followed, and always was aware of footsteps (sometimes in front of, and sometimes behind her), whenever and wherever she walked! The whole thing, however, eventually passed out of our minds, till it was recalled some months later thus:

My cousin, the same Mrs Oliver called upon me one day, stating she had received a letter from a relative of hers, begging her to visit a friend of his who had taken a house in Granville Crescent, and who, having no friends or acquaintances there, began to find Bath lonely.

“Will you come with me?” asked my cousin; “for I don’t know the lady – besides which, I really think (from the address given me by my brother-in-law) that it is no other than Clara’s ‘haunted house’ in which they have taken up their abode!”

“Oh! do let us go and see!” I exclaimed; and we started together.

Directly we got to the house we both exclaimed: “Just as we thought! It is Clara’s $haunted house%! Now we shall hear something about it worth hearing!”

Mrs Oliver laughed, and said: “Well, we won’t alarm the inmates, supposing they have heard or seen nothing!”

So we rang, and waited.

After waiting some minutes – “Did you knock as well as ring?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think I did! but I will do so now.”

Mrs Oliver knocked, and rang again, and again we waited. Then we both knocked, and rang violently; but no one came to the door.

We tried to look in at the windows, but in vain! Thick muslin curtains effectually hid the view; then we peered down into the area – but it seemed untenanted.

“There must be a mistake in the address,” I suggested, and we were on the point of giving up any further efforts, when a woman of the “caretaker” genus, came up from the area of one of the neighbouring houses, looked mysterious, and approaching me near enough to be just audible, said in a stage-whisper: “That ’ouse is h-empty!”

She then hastily descended once more into the darkness below, not pausing for one moment, but tearing down the steps as though some unseen and dreaded pursuer were on her track. After violently slamming and locking the area door, she returned to her chair at the basement window, and watched us intently; to note (apparently) the effect of her oracular words.

We stood there for a few minutes, but as no signs of entreaty could persuade her to come out to us again, we were constrained to depart without any explanation; and curiously enough, we did not connect the circumstances in any way with Clara’s impressions about the house! We simply thought some mistake had been made concerning the address, which was very dull of us!

When my cousin got home, she wrote at once to her relation, saying she had not neglected his request, but that he must have given her the wrong address, or number, as no one lived in the house he had indicated; but that if he would rectify the mistake, she would gladly call again on his friend, when she hoped she should be more successful.

A few days later my cousin again appeared, in a state of great excitement. She brought with her a letter from the lady we had so fruitlessly sought to see, which fully explained the extraordinary circumstance.

After a few civil regrets over her loss of Mrs Oliver’s visit, she wrote:

We went to Granville Crescent, the house having been strongly recommended to us by the agent; but what we went through there it is impossible to describe! Indeed, we packed up and left very soon – in fact, in a few days; – being content and happy rather to sacrifice our rent (if needs be) than to subject ourselves to mysterious terrors, and possible dangers. Besides, our exodus was scarcely optional; for none of the servants would stay – and really we could not be surprised, for neither could we! “And why?” I can hear you ask.

Well – listen! We were followed all day by an invisible something! Whether we went up or downstairs, a footstep either followed or preceded us. If we walked across the room, someone was ever at our side; if we sat down, we felt a presence. We knew we were never alone. But – at night! Ah! that was worse still! The house was full of crooked passages, and one night I came suddenly round a corner, and face to face with the attenuated figure of an emaciated-looking page-boy, who stood quite still and looked at me. He had long thin hands, with very white fingers, and one hand he held behind him as though he held, and were concealing, something which trailed behind him. I screamed for one of the servants, but by the time they came the figure had disappeared.

My sister also saw him; she met him at the bottom of the stairs; he appeared suddenly – looking at her over the banisters, and she fell down in a faint.

Wherever there was a curtained doorway, or a sudden turn in any passage, one never felt sure of not meeting the pale, haggard-looking page, with his one long white hand in front, while the other was concealed behind him trailing something on the ground.

At last we got thoroughly terrified, and left! We wrote to the agent, after leaving, and reproached him, feeling sure he must have known something about the apparition.

He acknowledged that some months before, a miserable page-boy had committed suicide in the house, by hanging himself with a rope, to the stair-banisters. And he added in the letter, “he supposed he must haunt the building, trailing the rope.”

We all wished the agent had told us this story before we had entered the house! For he evidently knew a great deal; but he did not insist upon his rent!

The lady ended her letter by saying that after her departure, someone sent her a local-newspaper, giving a full account of the suicide, and of the coroner’s inquest.

THE WELL

W. W. Jacobs

1902

I

Two men stood in the billiard-room of an old country house, talking. Play, which had been of a half-hearted nature, was over, and they sat at the open window, looking out over the park stretching away beneath them, conversing idly.

“Your time’s nearly up, Jem,” said one at length, “this time six weeks you’ll be yawning out the honeymoon and cursing the man – woman, I mean – who invented them.”

Jem Benson stretched his long limbs in the chair and grunted in dissent.

“I’ve never understood it,” continued Wilfred Carr, yawning. “It’s not in my line at all; I never had enough money for my own wants, let alone for two. Perhaps if I were as rich as you or Croesus I might regard it differently.”

There was just sufficient meaning in the latter part of the remark for his cousin to forbear to reply to it. He continued to gaze out of the window and to smoke slowly.

“Not being as rich as Croesus – or you,” resumed Carr, regarding him from beneath lowered lids, “I paddle my own canoe down the stream of Time, and, tying it to my friends’ door-posts, go in to eat their dinners.”

“Quite Venetian,” said Jem Benson, still looking out of the window. “It’s not a bad thing for you, Wilfred, that you have the door-posts and dinners – and friends.”

Carr grunted in his turn. “Seriously though, Jem,” he said, slowly, “you’re a lucky fellow, a very lucky fellow. If there is a better girl above ground than Olive, I should like to see her.”

“Yes,” said the other, quietly.

“She’s such an exceptional girl,” continued Carr, staring out of the window. “She’s so good and gentle. She thinks you are a bundle of all the virtues.”

He laughed frankly and joyously, but the other man did not join him. “Strong sense – of right and wrong, though,” continued Carr, musingly. “Do you know, I believe that if she found out that you were not—”

“Not what?” demanded Benson, turning upon him fiercely, “Not what?”

“Everything that you are,” returned his cousin, with a grin that belied his words, “I believe she’d drop you.”

“Talk about something else,” said Benson, slowly; “your pleasantries are not always in the best taste.”

Wilfred Carr rose and taking a cue from the rack, bent over the board and practiced one or two favourite shots. “The only other subject I can talk about just at present is my own financial affairs,” he said slowly, as he walked round the table.

“Talk about something else,” said Benson again, bluntly.

“And the two things are connected,” said Carr, and dropping his cue, he half sat on the table and eyed his cousin.

There was a long silence. Benson pitched the end of his cigar out of the window and, leaning back, closed his eyes.

“Do you follow me?” inquired Carr at length.

Benson opened his eyes and nodded at the window.

“Do you want to follow my cigar?” he demanded.

“I should prefer to depart by the usual way for your sake,” returned the other, unabashed. “If I left by the window all sorts of questions would be asked, and you know what a talkative chap I am.”

“So long as you don’t talk about my affairs,” returned the other, restraining himself by an obvious effort, “you can talk yourself hoarse.”

“I’m in a mess,” said Carr, slowly, “a devil of a mess. If I don’t raise fifteen hundred by this day fortnight, I may be getting my board and lodging free.”

“Would that be any change?” questioned Benson.

“The quality would,” retorted the other. “The address also would not be good. Seriously, Jem, will you let me have the fifteen hundred?”

“No,” said the other, simply.

Carr went white. “It’s to save me from ruin,” he said, thickly.

“I’ve helped you till I’m tired,” said Benson, turning and regarding him, “and it is all to no good. If you’ve got into a mess, get out of it. You should not be so fond of giving autographs away.”

“It’s foolish, I admit,” said Carr, deliberately. “I won’t do so any more. By the way, I’ve got some to sell. You needn’t sneer. They’re not my own.”

“Whose are they?” inquired the other.

“Yours.”

Benson got up from his chair and crossed over to him. “What is this?” he asked, quietly. “Blackmail?”

“Call it what you like,” said Carr. “I’ve got some letters for sale, price fifteen hundred. And I know a man who would buy them at that price for the mere chance of getting Olive from you. I’ll give you first offer.”

“If you have got any letters bearing my signature, you will be good enough to give them to me,” said Benson, very slowly.

“They’re mine,” said Carr, lightly; “given to me by the lady you wrote them to. I must say that they are not all in the best possible taste.”

His cousin reached forward suddenly and, catching him by the collar of his coat, pinned him down on the table.

“Give me those letters,” he breathed, sticking his face close to Carr’s.

“They’re not here,” said Carr, struggling. “I’m not a fool. Let me go, or I’ll raise the price.”

The other man raised him from the table in his powerful hands, apparently with the intention of dashing his head against it. Then suddenly his hold relaxed as an astonished-looking maid-servant entered the room with letters. Carr sat up hastily.

“That’s how it was done,” said Benson, for the girl’s benefit as he took the letters.

“I don’t wonder at the other man making him pay for it, then,” said Carr, blandly.

“You will give me those letters?” said Benson, suggestively, as the girl left the room.

“At the price I mentioned, yes,” said Carr; “but so sure as I am a living man, if you lay your clumsy hands on me again, I’ll double it. Now, I’ll leave you for a time while you think it over.”

He took a cigar from the box and, lighting it carefully, quitted the room. His cousin waited until the door had closed behind him, and then turning to the window sat there in a fit of fury as silent as it was terrible.

The air was fresh and sweet from the park, heavy with the scent of new-mown grass. The fragrance of a cigar was now added to it, and glancing out he saw his cousin pacing slowly by. He rose and went to the door, and then, apparently altering his mind, he returned to the window and watched the figure of his cousin as it moved slowly away into the moonlight.

Then he rose again, and, for a long time, the room was empty.

•   •   •   •   •

It was empty when Mrs. Benson came in some time later to say good-night to her son on her way to bed. She walked slowly round the table, and pausing at the window gazed from it in idle thought, until she saw the figure of her son advancing with rapid strides toward the house. He looked up at the window.

“Good-night,” said she.

“Good-night,” said Benson, in a deep voice.

“Where is Wilfred?”

“Oh, he has gone,” said Benson.

“Gone?”

“We had a few words; he was wanting money again, and I gave him a piece of my mind. I don’t think we shall see him again.”

“Poor Wilfred!” sighed Mrs. Benson. “He is always in trouble of some sort. I hope that you were not too hard upon him.”

“No more than he deserved,” said her son, sternly. “Good night.”

II

The well, which had long ago fallen into disuse, was almost hidden by the thick tangle of undergrowth which ran riot at that corner of the old park. It was partly covered by the shrunken half of a lid, above which a rusty windlass creaked in company with the music of the pines when the wind blew strongly. The full light of the sun never reached it, and the ground surrounding it was moist and green when other parts of the park were gaping with the heat.

Two people walking slowly round the park in the fragrant stillness of a summer evening strayed in the direction of the well.

“No use going through this wilderness, Olive,” said Benson, pausing on the outskirts of the pines and eyeing with some disfavour the gloom beyond.

“Best part of the park,” said the girl briskly; “you know it’s my favourite spot.”

“I know you’re very fond of sitting on the coping,” said the man slowly, “and I wish you wouldn’t. One day you will lean back too far and fall in.”

“And make the acquaintance of Truth,” said Olive lightly. “Come along.”

She ran from him and was lost in the shadow of the pines, the bracken crackling beneath her feet as she ran. Her companion followed slowly, and emerging from the gloom saw her poised daintily on the edge of the well with her feet hidden in the rank grass and nettles which surrounded it. She motioned her companion to take a seat by her side, and smiled softly as she felt a strong arm passed about her waist.

“I like this place,” said she, breaking a long silence, “it is so dismal – so uncanny. Do you know I wouldn’t dare to sit here alone, Jem. I should imagine that all sorts of dreadful things were hidden behind the bushes and trees, waiting to spring out on me. Ugh!”

“You’d better let me take you in,” said her companion tenderly; “the well isn’t always wholesome, especially in the hot weather.”

“Let’s make a move.”

The girl gave an obstinate little shake, and settled herself more securely on her seat.

“Smoke your cigar in peace,” she said quietly. “I am settled here for a quiet talk. Has anything been heard of Wilfred yet?”

“Nothing.”

“Quite a dramatic disappearance, isn’t it?” she continued. “Another scrape, I suppose, and another letter for you in the same old strain; ‘Dear Jem, help me out.’”

Jem Benson blew a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air and, holding his cigar between his teeth, brushed away the ash from his coat sleeves.

“I wonder what he would have done without you,” said the girl, pressing his arm affectionately. “Gone under long ago, I suppose. When we are married, Jem, I shall presume upon the relationship to lecture him. He is very wild, but he has his good points, poor fellow.”

“I never saw them,” said Benson, with startling bitterness. “God knows I never saw them.”

“He is nobody’s enemy but his own,” said the girl, startled by this outburst.

“You don’t know much about him,” said the other, sharply. “He was not above blackmail; not above ruining the life of a friend to do himself a benefit. A loafer, a cur, and a liar!”

The girl looked up at him soberly but timidly and took his arm without a word, and they both sat silent while evening deepened into night and the beams of the moon, filtering through the branches, surrounded them with a silver network. Her head sank upon his shoulder, till suddenly with a sharp cry she sprang to her feet.

“What was that?” she cried breathlessly.

“What was what?” demanded Benson, springing up and clutching her fast by the arm.

She caught her breath and tried to laugh.

“You’re hurting me, Jem.”

His hold relaxed.

“What is the matter?” he asked gently. “What was it startled you?”

“I was startled,” she said, slowly, putting her hands on his shoulder. “I suppose the words I used just now are ringing in my ears, but I fancied that somebody behind us whispered ‘Jem, help me out.’”

“Fancy,” repeated Benson, and his voice shook; “but these fancies are not good for you. You – are frightened – at the dark and the gloom of these trees. Let me take you back to the house.”

“No, I’m not frightened,” said the girl, reseating herself. “I should never be really frightened of anything when you were with me, Jem. I’m surprised at myself for being so silly.”

The man made no reply but stood, a strong, dark figure, a yard or two from the well, as though waiting for her to join him.

“Come and sit down, sir,” cried Olive, patting the brickwork with her small, white hand, “one would think that you did not like your company.”

He obeyed slowly and took a seat by her side, drawing so hard at his cigar that the light of it shone upon his face at every breath. He passed his arm, firm and rigid as steel, behind her, with his hand resting on the brickwork beyond.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked tenderly, as she made a little movement.

“Pretty fair,” she shivered; “one oughtn’t to be cold at this time of the year, but there’s a cold, damp air comes up from the well.”

As she spoke a faint splash sounded from the depths below, and for the second time that evening, she sprang from the well with a little cry of dismay.

“What is it now?” he asked in a fearful voice. He stood by her side and gazed at the well, as though half expecting to see the cause of her alarm emerge from it.

“Oh, my bracelet,” she cried in distress, “my poor mother’s bracelet. I’ve dropped it down the well.”

“Your bracelet!” repeated Benson, dully. “Your bracelet? The diamond one?”

“The one that was my mother’s,” said Olive. “Oh, we can get it back surely. We must have the water drained off.”

“Your bracelet!” repeated Benson, stupidly.

“Jem,” said the girl in terrified tones, “dear Jem, what is the matter?”

For the man she loved was standing regarding her with horror. The moon which touched it was not responsible for all the whiteness of the distorted face, and she shrank back in fear to the edge of the well. He saw her fear and by a mighty effort regained his composure and took her hand.

“Poor little girl,” he murmured, “you frightened me. I was not looking when you cried, and I thought that you were slipping from my arms, down – down—”

His voice broke, and the girl throwing herself into his arms clung to him convulsively.

“There, there,” said Benson, fondly, “don’t cry, don’t cry.”

“Tomorrow,” said Olive, half-laughing, half-crying, “we will all come round the well with hook and line and fish for it. It will be quite a new sport.”

“No, we must try some other way,” said Benson. “You shall have it back.”

“How?” asked the girl.

“You shall see,” said Benson. “Tomorrow morning at latest you shall have it back. Till then promise me that you will not mention your loss to anyone. Promise.”

“I promise,” said Olive, wonderingly. “But why not?”

“It is of great value, for one thing, and – But there – there are many reasons. For one thing, it is my duty to get it for you.”

“Wouldn’t you like to jump down for it?” she asked mischievously. “Listen.”

She stooped for a stone and dropped it down.

“Fancy being where that is now,” she said, peering into the blackness; “fancy going round and round like a mouse in a pail, clutching at the slimy sides, with the water filling your mouth, and looking up to the little patch of sky above.”

“You had better come in,” said Benson, very quietly. “You are developing a taste for the morbid and horrible.”

The girl turned, and taking his arm walked slowly in the direction of the house; Mrs. Benson, who was sitting in the porch, rose to receive them.

“You shouldn’t have kept her out so long,” she said chidingly. “Where have you been?”

“Sitting on the well,” said Olive, smiling, “discussing our future.”

“I don’t believe that place is healthy,” said Mrs. Benson, emphatically. “I really think it might be filled in, Jem.”

“All right,” said her son, slowly. “Pity it wasn’t filled in long ago.”

He took the chair vacated by his mother as she entered the house with Olive, and with his hands hanging limply over the sides sat in deep thought. After a time he rose, and going upstairs to a room which was set apart for sporting requisites selected a sea fishing line and some hooks and stole softly downstairs again. He walked swiftly across the park in the direction of the well, turning before he entered the shadow of the trees to look back at the lighted windows of the house. Then having arranged his line he sat on the edge of the well and cautiously lowered it.

He sat with his lips compressed, occasionally looking about him in a startled fashion, as though he half expected to see something peering at him from the belt of trees. Time after time he lowered his line until at length in pulling it up he heard a little metallic tinkle against the side of the well.

He held his breath then, and forgetting his fears drew the line in inch by inch, so as not to lose its precious burden. His pulse beat rapidly, and his eyes were bright. As the line came slowly in he saw the catch hanging to the hook, and with a steady hand drew the last few feet in. Then he saw that instead of the bracelet he had hooked a bunch of keys.

With a faint cry he shook them from the hook into the water below, and stood breathing heavily. Not a sound broke the stillness of the night. He walked up and down a bit and stretched his great muscles; then he came back to the well and resumed his task.

For an hour or more the line was lowered without result. In his eagerness he forgot his fears, and with eyes bent down the well fished slowly and carefully. Twice the hook became entangled in something, and was with difficulty released. It caught a third time, and all his efforts failed’ to free it. Then he dropped the line down the well, and with head bent walked toward the house.

He went first to the stables at the rear, and then retiring to his room for some time paced restlessly up and down. Then without removing his clothes he flung himself upon the bed and fell into a troubled sleep.

III

Long before anybody else was astir, he arose and stole softly downstairs. The sunlight was stealing in at every crevice, and flashing in long streaks across the darkened rooms. The dining-room into which he looked struck chill and cheerless in the dark yellow light which came through the lowered blinds. He remembered that it had the same appearance when his father lay dead in the house; now, as then, everything seemed ghastly and unreal; the very chairs standing as their occupants had left them the night before seemed to be indulging in some dark communication of ideas.

Slowly and noiselessly he opened the hall door and passed into the fragrant air beyond. The sun was shining on the drenched grass and trees, and a slowly vanishing white mist rolled like smoke about the grounds. For a moment he stood, breathing deeply the sweet air of the morning, and then walked slowly in the direction of the stables.

The rusty creaking of a pump-handle and a spatter of water upon the red-tiled courtyard showed that somebody else was astir, and a few steps farther he beheld a brawny, sandy-haired man gasping wildly under severe self-infliction at the pump.

“Everything ready, George?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, sir,” said the man, straightening up suddenly and touching his forehead. “Bob’s just finishing the arrangements inside. It’s a lovely morning for a dip. The water in that well must be just icy.”

“Be as quick as you can,” said Benson, impatiently.

“Very good, sir,” said George, burnishing his face harshly with a very small towel which had been hanging over the top of the pump. “Hurry up, Bob.”

In answer to his summons a man appeared at the door of the stable with a coil of stout rope over his arm and a large metal candlestick in his hand.

“Just to try the air, sir,” said George, following his master’s glance, “a well gets rather foul sometimes, but if a candle can live down it, a man can.”

His master nodded, and the man, hastily pulling up the neck of his shirt and thrusting his arms into his coat, followed him as he led the way slowly to the well.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said George, drawing up to his side, “but you are not looking over and above well this morning. If you’ll let me go down, I’d enjoy the bath.”

“No, no,” said Benson, peremptorily.

“You ain’t fit to go down, sir,” persisted his follower. “I’ve never seen you look so before. Now if—”

“Mind your business,” said his master curtly.

George became silent, and the three walked with swinging strides through the long wet grass to the well. Bob flung the rope on the ground and at a sign from his master handed him the candlestick.

“Here’s the line for it, sir,” said Bob, fumbling in his pockets.

Benson took it from him and slowly tied it to the candlestick. Then he placed it on the edge of the well, and striking a match, lit the candle and began slowly to lower it.

“Hold hard, sir,” said George, quickly, laying his hand on his arm, “you must tilt it or the string’ll burn through.”

Even as he spoke the string parted and the candlestick fell into the water below.

Benson swore quietly.

“I’ll soon get another,” said George, starting up.

“Never mind, the well’s all right,” said Benson.

“It won’t take a moment, sir,” said the other over his shoulder.

“Are you master here, or am I?” said Benson hoarsely.

George came back slowly, a glance at his master’s face stopping the protest upon his tongue, and he stood by watching him sulkily as he sat on the well and removed his outer garments. Both men watched him curiously, as having completed his preparations he stood grim and silent with his hands by his sides.

“I wish you’d let me go, sir,” said George, plucking up courage to address him. “You ain’t fit to go, you’ve got a chill or something. I shouldn’t wonder it’s the typhoid. They’ve got it in the village bad.”

For a moment Benson looked at him angrily, then his gaze softened. “Not this time, George,” he said, quietly. He took the looped end of the rope and placed it under his arms, and sitting down threw one leg over the side of the well.

“How are you going about it, sir?” queried George, laying hold of the rope and signing to Bob to do the same.

“I’ll call out when I reach the water,” said Benson; “then pay out three yards more quickly so that I can get to the bottom.”

“Very good, sir,” answered both.

Their master threw the other leg over the coping and sat motionless. His back was turned toward the men as he sat with head bent, looking down the shaft. He sat for so long that George became uneasy.

“All right, sir?” he inquired.

“Yes,” said Benson, slowly. “If I tug at the rope, George, pull up at once. Lower away.”

The rope passed steadily through their hands until a hollow cry from the darkness below and a faint splashing warned them that he had reached the water. They gave him three yards more and stood with relaxed grasp and strained ears, waiting.

“He’s gone under,” said Bob in a low voice.

The other nodded, and moistening his huge palms took a firmer grip of the rope.

Fully a minute passed, and the men began to exchange uneasy glances. Then a sudden tremendous jerk followed by a series of feebler ones nearly tore the rope from their grasp.

“Pull!” shouted George, placing one foot on the side and hauling desperately. “Pull! pull! He’s stuck fast; he’s not coming; pull!”

In response to their terrific exertions the rope came slowly in, inch by inch, until at length a violent splashing was heard, and at the same moment a scream of unutterable horror came echoing up the shaft.

“What a weight he is!” panted Bob. “He’s stuck fast or something. Keep still, sir; for heaven’s sake, keep still.”

For the taut rope was being jerked violently by the struggles of the weight at the end of it. Both men with grunts and sighs hauled it in foot by foot.

“All right, sir,” cried George, cheerfully.

He had one foot against the well, and was pulling manfully; the burden was nearing the top. A long pull and a strong pull, and the face of a dead man with mud in the eyes and nostrils came peering over the edge. Behind it was the ghastly face of his master; but this he saw too late, for with a great cry he let go his hold of the rope and stepped back. The suddenness overthrew his assistant, and the rope tore through his hands. There was a frightful splash.

“You fool!” stammered Bob, and ran to the well helplessly.

“Run!” cried George. “Run for another line.”

He bent over the coping and called eagerly down as his assistant sped back to the stables shouting wildly. His voice re-echoed down the shaft, but all else was silence.

THE WOMAN WITH A CANDLE

W. Bourne Cooke

1908

In the autumn of the year 1900 I was staying at the isolated village of Knelby, which place, I need hardly inform the reader, is situated in the heart of the wild forest country known as Charnwood.

I have always had a decided weakness for antiquities, and it was, therefore, only natural that, on the day following my arrival at Knelby, I should take my way to the ancient church, which stands on a rocky eminence overlooking a precipitous and disused slate-quarry.

In the churchyard I found the sexton busily engaged in putting the final touches to a newly-dug grave. As I drew near, he came up the ladder from the depths where he had been working, and, after stretching himself, stood looking down at his handiwork with the air of one who has accomplished a hard task, and was satisfied.

He was a fine specimen of village manhood – tall, and broad in proportion; and although his white hair and beard indicated that he must be well advanced in years, his back was as straight as one of the spruce firs that fringed the churchyard in which he worked.

As he stood thus, gazing down into the grave at his feet, there was an expression of solemn thoughtfulness in his face, which betokened a mind not wholly engrossed with the doings of spade and pickaxe; while the height of his forehead and keenness of his eyes bespoke a more than ordinary intelligence.

Walking quietly over the grass, I reached the opposite side of the grave to the one on which he stood before he noticed my presence.

“Good-day, sir,” said he, touching his cap.

“Good-day,” I replied. “You are, or rather, have been busy, I see.”

“Yes, sir,” returned he. “I was just thinking, among other things, how many this one makes, and it’s either sixty-eight or sixty-nine; but I can’t be quite sure which, without referring to my figures at home.”

“You allude, I suppose, to the number of graves you have dug?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I ask how long you have been sexton of Knelby?”

“It is forty years this very day, sir, since I was appointed.”

“Strange, that you should have had a grave to dig on the anniversary.”

“Very strange, sir; I have been thinking so, off and on, all the morning.”

“And during the forty years you have been sexton, you have probably buried every person who has died in the parish?”

“All but one, sir,” replied the sexton; and then, to my surprise, I noticed that he regarded me with an uneasy look, and evinced a desire to change the subject of our conversation.

“Perhaps you would like to look over the church, sir?” he said.

I replied that I was most anxious to do so, in fact, had come out with that intention; and so we moved off in the direction of the time-worn building, the sexton leading the way, while I followed, with the thought of the one parishoner, whose grave had not been dug by my guide, uppermost in my mind.

“You are staying at Knelby, pehaps, sir?” said the sexton, as he unlocked the ponderous door.

I replied that it was my intention to stay in the village for some weeks, in order that I might have perfect quietness and rest.

“You will certainly find our village quiet, sir,” rejoined the old man, as he threw open the door and bowed me courteously in.

As we entered, the sun was shining brightly through the ivy-clad windows, the movement of the leaves in the wind breaking the light into a hundred fantastic shapes, which quivered on the walls.

The chancel was a large one in proportion to the church, and in it there reposed in stony watchfulness, two knights in armour, with their ladies beside them; for the Androvil family, who still lived at the Hall, had been lords of the manor far back in the Middle Ages.

After looking for some time on the cold, expectant faces of these effigies, trying, as I did so, to make them live again in my imagination, I raised my eyes and noticed a small brass plate on the north wall of the chancel. Following a habit I have, I read aloud the following inscription:

Sacred to the Memory
of
DOROTHY LESLIE HOWARD,

Who disappeared mysteriously on the 18th of December, 1858. Her remains were found by a strange coincidence on the 5th day of March, 1865, and now rest in the churchyard.

“Until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away.”

As I finished reading the inscription I turned round, and looking at the sexton, noticed the same half-fearful expression which had so impressed me at the side of the newly-made grave. I think as our eyes met, he saw the questioning look in mine, for, with a hasty remark about its being a long time ago, and best forgotten, he turned and led the way to another part of the church. But in spite of the interest I felt in a most perfect specimen of a cross-legged knight, I found my thoughts and eyes continually wandering to the brass tablet in the chancel, and I was not sorry when, after seeing everything worthy of notice, I found myself once more in the churchyard and the sunshine.

When we came to the grave I left the sexton to gather up his tools, and, walking across to the south side of the churchyard, seated myself on the low stone wall. It was then that I noticed for the first time a mournful-looking house, standing in somewhat extensive grounds, and surrounded by trees – most of which were ancient yews of gigantic growth.

Surely, thought I, this must be the rectory, and yet I marvelled to see that it was in a state of utter neglect and decay, as though it had been unoccupied for many years. The windows were close-shuttered, except in the case of one in the upper storey, where a shutter had in some way become loose and hung by a single hinge, creaking in the wind. One end of the house was covered with ivy, which, unchecked by the pruner’s knife, had overgrown itself, and now waved its long tendrils above the chimney stack like the arms of some mighty octopus feeling for its prey. Truly this ancient and deserted house was the most eerie one I had ever seen.

I am of a decidedly imaginative temperament, and at once began to indulge in all sorts of wild fancies to account for the gloomy scene before me.

My reverie was broken by the sound of a footstep at my side, and, looking up, I found the sexton standing beside me, his spade and pickaxe over his shoulder, and his gaze fixed on the lifeless old house which had so fascinated me.

“Is that the rectory?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” replied the sexton, “or rather it still goes by that name, although no rector has lived there these thirty years.”

“Indeed,” replied I, “that is singular, for although the house has evidently fallen into great decay through neglect, it still bears evidence of having once been a pleasant and commodious residence; besides which, the grounds are extensive and beautiful, and the close situation of the rectory to the church must have been extremely convenient.”

“Yes, sir,” rejoined the sexton, “I daresay you’re right in your way of looking at it, but I happen to know that there were good reasons for the rector refusing to live there.”

“Reasons!” I exclaimed, my curiosity now thoroughly awakened by the mysterious tone of my informant’s voice. “It must, indeed, have been a very strong reason that could drive a man from a spot like this to new surroundings and a new house.”

The sexton seated himself on the wall beside me, and lowering his voice to a solemn whisper, said:

“The reason, sir, was one that would have driven a man from any house, even though the surroundings were like Paradise. Sir, the house you are looking at is haunted.”

“Haunted!” I exclaimed, in an incredulous and bantering tone. “By what?”

The sexton drew closer to me, and looking round with an air of one who was half-fearful of being overheard, whispered in my ear:“By a woman, sir – an old and ghastly woman – who walks the house at dead of night with a lighted candle in her hand.”

“But, surely,” said I, “you do not believe in such a foolish tale as that. It must be one of those village superstitions, which one finds handed down from generation to generation in all remote country districts; and most probably the rector’s reasons for removing to a new house was that he might have the benefit of more modern conveniences; for certainly yonder house is very ancient.”

But the sexton passed over unheeded the latter part of my speech, and replied in even more set and solemn tones than before:

“Sir, it is no foolish tale, for I, who now speak to you, have met the woman face to face.”

Even had I felt so inclined, I could not, looking into the old man’s face as he uttered these words, have made light of them.

“Pray tell me all about it,” I said eagerly, placing my hand upon his arm.

“Sir,” he replied, “I have told no one for many years, and even now when I think of it, all the horror of that night comes back upon me, making me tremble like an aspen leaf; but as you have shown such interest in the matter, I will do my best to tell you the story, asking you to excuse me if I am unable to finish it.”

Having said this, the sexton sat for some moments gazing in absorbed silence on the eerie scene before us; then, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, as though bracing himself for a great effort, he thus began:

•   •   •   •   •

First of all, sir, I must tell you that my name is William Harness, and that I have lived in Knelby all my life, succeeding my father as sexton forty years ago. I was then a young man of about thirty-two, and had, up to the time of entering upon my new duties, been in the service of the rector for over ten years as coachman and gardener; but it was always an understood thing that I should follow my father in the sextonship, that office having been in our family for many generations; and though it may seem hard and strange to you, sir, I began my new duties by digging my father’s grave; this, too, being an understood thing in our family, my father having done the same in the case of my grandfather, and so on right back for nearly one hundred and fifty years.

In the year 1858, two years before I became sexton, a mysterious event happened which cast a gloom and horror over the whole district.

There lived with the then rector, who was childless, his niece, a Miss Howard, the tablet to whose memory you saw in the church this morning. She was as good as she was beautiful, and was beloved by everyone in the parish, from the highest to the lowest. Her time was spent in doing good, and her sunny face and cheery voice brought happiness and gladness wherever she went. Needless to say that she was worshipped by the old rector and his wife, of whose home she was the life and light. Judge, then, of our dismay when the news spread one dark December morning that Miss Howard had disappeared. As she did not make her appearance at breakfast, a servant was sent to her room, when it was found that the door was open, and that she had evidently left her bed during the night.

The old rector and his wife were nearly frantic, and I can truly say that I was hardly less affected, for Miss Howard had been my dearest friend, and many a long talk we had had together.

During the whole day the rector and myself led search parties, beating every part of the country for miles around; but all to no purpose – we found not a trace of the missing one; and although the search was continued day after day for more than a week, all our efforts ended in failure and despair; so that we had, at last, to face the awful fact that our dear young friend had gone from us forever. It was the rector’s death-blow, and ere a year had passed away we laid him to rest in the churchyard, whither, within a few weeks, he was followed by his sorrowing wife.

And here I must tell you that for some years a tale had been rife in the village – of the rectory being haunted by an old woman, who walked the house at night with a lighted candle in her hand. Several of the servants vowed that they had seen her, and had refused to stay in consequence; and, moreover, the rector, shortly before he died, had confided in me that he had also met her, when one night, being unable to sleep, he had gone down to his study to read.

I shall never forget how the old man’s face went ashy pale as he told me how the woman came upon him suddenly as he sat reading; how hideous was her face, and how she beckoned to him to follow her. But at that sight he swooned away, and knew no more until he found himself in bed, with his wife bending anxiously over him.

He, however, desired that I would not speak of this to anyone, for fear of strengthening a story that he had always ridiculed as foolish and superstitious. And, indeed, when I considered the shattered state of his health since the disappearance of his niece, and being moreover myself a decided disbeliever in ghosts of any kind – I say, when I considered these things, I readily came to the conclusion that the old man’s senses had deceived him, and that he had seen nothing.

I was, however, soon to find how greatly in error I had been in coming to this hasty conclusion.

In the spring of the year 1860 our new rector settled among us, taking up his residence at the old rectory; and I continued to occupy the same position I had done in the time of his predecessor; for I knew well the ways of both house and garden, and could be relied upon to do my best for my new master.

So the spring and summer ran on to autumn, when my father died, and, as I have already told you, the duties of sexton and grave-digger fell to my lot. But my new employment, though it occupied a great part of my time, did not take me wholly out of the rector’s private service, and I continued to work a day or two each week on his garden. It was one morning in the early spring of 1865 that the rector came to me, as I was engaged in pruning some rose trees, and after greeting me as was his wont, said:

“William, you will be sorry to hear that Mrs. Rennard is so poorly that the doctor has ordered me to take her away at once for a complete change of scene. I have, therefore, decided to start tomorrow, and to close the rectory, taking the two children and servants with us.”

I told him how sorry I was to hear it, but hoped the change and rest would soon pull Mrs. Rennard round again. Then, not knowing what more to say, I continued my work, thinking that the rector would pass on; but as he did not do so I looked round, and was surprised to find that he was eyeing me in an anxious way, and tapping the ground uneasily with his stick, as though there was something more which he wished to say, and yet did not know how to begin.

At length, after an awkward pause, which I did my best to cover by the loud click of my pruning shears, he came close to where I stood, and said:

“William, you are not a superstitious man, are you?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” I answered, laughing.

“I thought not,” went on the rector, still playing uneasily with his stick among the pebbles on the path. “No doubt you have heard a tale about the rectory being haunted.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, “I have heard it.”

“But you don’t believe it, of course, William?”

“Not a bit of it, sir,” said I, laughing again.

“Well,” went on the rector, looking down at the ground, “the reason I mention it is that Mrs. Rennard declares that she last night saw this old woman, who is said to walk the house with a lighted candle in her hand; and I will tell you in strict confidence that it is this that has helped to make her so much worse.”

“Indeed, sir,” I replied, “I am very sorry to hear what you say, but no doubt Mrs. Rennard’s health accounts for the delusion.”

“Exactly, William; exactly what I think and believe; but the doctor insists on the necessity of taking her away at once, and so, as I have said, we start tomorrow. Now there is another thing I wish to ask you, and that is, if you will mind sleeping at the rectory during our absence, just as a kind of guard against burglary or anything of that sort. You will be about the grounds pretty often during the day, and if you do not mind sleeping in the house at night, we shall leave home more comfortably, for I know everything will be safe in your care. What do you say, William; do you mind?”

“Not in the least, sir,” I replied, “if it will make you and Mrs. Rennard more satisfied.”

“Thank you,” said the rector. “That is a great relief to me. You will, of course, have the free run of the place and come and go as you please. Good morning, William, I must be off.” And with that he left me and went towards the door which leads from the rectory garden to the churchyard. On reaching the door he turned, with his hand upon the latch, and said, laughing:

“Remember, William, no tales of ghosts when we return.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” I replied, and then fell to my work again; but I could not help thinking that the rector’s laugh was of a forced kind, and my mind went back to what he had just told me concerning Mrs. Rennard.

Also I thought of what the late rector had told me with regard to the same woman with the candle. But I persuaded myself that in both cases weakened nerves, the result of continued bad health, were responsible for the hallucination.

On the following day I saw them drive off to the station which, as you know, is some five miles distant. The rector and children were in good spirits, but Mrs. Rennard looked old and broken, and I fancied that, as the carriage moved off, she shuddered on looking back quickly at the house. When they were out of sight I walked slowly back to my work in the garden.

I was a young man in those days, sir, and not over troubled with nerves; still, when night came on and I found myself sitting alone in the rectory kitchen, I couldn’t help my mind running on the mystery of poor Miss Howard’s sudden disappearance and also on the creature who was said to haunt the house. However, I did my best to put these thoughts away from me, and even started a song (for I was a bit of a singer in those days); but my voice sounded so unnatural and hollow in the silence, that I was quiet again ere I had sung one verse; and after trying in vain to give my attention to reading, I rose as the church clock struck nine, and went upstairs to bed.

The room I occupied was one of the upper row overlooking the churchyard, and was that which, as you may perhaps have noticed, has a shutter hanging loosely by a single hinge. I was a heavy sleeper, and little troubled by dreams, so that I soon fell into a heavy slumber, from which I awoke to find the sun streaming brightly into the room. Then I laughed at the idea of ghosts and springing out of bed, threw open the lattice, and took deep draughts of the pure morning air.

Villagers who knew where I had passed the night, questioned me, with solemn faces, as to whether I had seen anything; but I returned one answer to them all, namely – that ghosts only show themselves to those who believe in them. And so the second night came on.

Having had a heavy day, I retired to rest earlier than on the previous night, and hardly had my head touched the pillow before I fell into a deep sleep.

How long I slept I cannot tell, but suddenly I awoke to find myself in utter darkness. I have heard it said that the sound of a footstep at dead of night, will, in some mysterious way, penetrate to the brain of the deepest sleeper, and cause sudden wakefulness, where a louder but more usual noise, such as the howling of the wind, will but lull him into heavier slumber. Whether it was so in my case, or whether what I had been told had so impressed itself on my brain as to make me dream of a footstep, I cannot say; but certain it is that I now found myself lying wide awake, listening with an intensity that was almost overpowering, to the sound of a stealthy tread in the passage outside my room. It was a halting step, as of one who was lame, and by the flap on the stone floor, I knew the feet were bare.

The sound came nearer and nearer, and then I remembered, with sudden fright, that the door was not fastened. I could not move, but lay stark still, and listened.

Presently the halting tread ceased, and the latch of my door clicked. A moment later the door was opened, and then such a sight met my horrified gaze as to think of, even after all these years, makes my blood run cold.

–   –   –

Here the sexton passed his hand over his brow, on which a cold sweat was plainly to be seen. After a short time he thus continued:

–   –   –

As I was saying, the door slowly opened, and there appeared a bare and shrivelled arm, and in the hand a lighted candle. I could not move; a cold sweat broke out upon me, and although I tried to shout, all utterance was frozen on my lips. But if the candle-bearing hand and arm were terrible, a thousand times more so was the figure belonging to them, which now came slowly into the room. It was that of a woman, well advanced in years, whose haggard face and wild, staring eyes were now turned full upon me. Grizzled hair hung about a face of such diabolical ugliness as is impossible to describe in words.

Her lips were parted in a horrid grin, exposing to view flaccid gums, studded with broken stumps of teeth; a loose, flowing garment of some ancient make was thrown about her shoulders, and reached to the ground; and at every step she went down on one side, as one afflicted with a shortened limb or stiffened knee-joint. Thus she came slowly towards me, her mouth twitching horribly the while. When within a few feet of my bed, she raised her left hand and beckoned to me as if to follow. But I could neither move nor speak, and my eyes felt as though they must roll from their sockets, so intense and fixed was my horrified gaze.

Closer and closer she came, step by step, until with one frantic effort, born of the fear that she would touch me, my voice rushed from my lips, and I gave one loud, piercing scream.

She stopped, and, regarding me with a look that I could pray might be blotted out from my memory forever, again beckoned with her left hand, turning her body partly round as she did so, but still keeping her ghastly face towards me.

Unable to resist the power of those wild, drawing eyes, I rose straightaway from my bed and followed her as one bereft of his senses. Perceiving this, she turned round and led the way from the room, ever and anon casting a hideous glance at me over her shoulder.

Along the silent passages we passed; down the broad creaking stairs, and so out into the dark still night.

I was as powerless as a child, and if, at any moment, a thought of turning back shot through my brain, one sight of that twitching face cast back upon its shoulder was sufficient to make me follow as though I were drawn along by some great mesmeric force.

Across the rectory lawn she led the way – under the great yew trees, which looked like weird funeral plumes in their inky blackness. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees, and not a star relieved the frowning, clouded sky.

So on and on we went, until we came to the little wood which stands upon the verge of one of the oldest slate pits. Skirting this wood, the old hag led the way to the further end of the pit, where the deep water may be approached, even to its very brink. There she stopped, and beckoned to me with her bony hand to come to her – for I was some yards behind.

I had no power but to obey, and so, when I was within a yard of her, she moved on again, leading the way along a narrow and dangerous shelf of rock, which was in some parts under water. Suddenly I saw her stop, and bend down towards a chasm or small cave in the side of the pit, which, from the splash of a stone which fell from near her feet, I knew must contain water. Holding the candle to the opening, she motioned me to look in. At first I would not, but the fury of her face and gestures compelled me at last to do so, and stooping down I beheld, by the glittering light of the candle, a sight that froze me to the spot with horror; for there, lying in the water, which was three feet deep, lay a skeleton, with the face of the skull turned towards me, while round the neck there hung, by a chain, a metal cross, which told me at once whose remains they were I looked upon.

I was as one turned to stone – without thought or feeling, or any sense of life; and for some time – I know not how long – I stood there, forgetful of everything, even of the scene before me. Then again, for a second time, I realized that in those bleaching bones beneath the water, I saw all that was left of my first rector’s niece, and of our dear friend of years ago – Miss Howard.

The flaring of the candle in its socket broke the spell, and looking quickly round I found the old hag’s horrible face so close to mine that her grizzled locks nearly touched my cheek. That was the final straw to my already cracking nerves, and with a shriek that echoed round and round the pit, I sank down into a deep swoon.

When I came to myself the dawn was breaking and I was alone. For some moments I lay dazed, but gradually the horrors of the night came back to me, and turning my head I looked into the cave, hoping, I believe, to find that it was all a dream; but to my horror I saw the skeleton, with the chain about its neck, lying beneath the water. The next moment I rushed wildly from the spot, never stopping until I reached the Hall, where the servants, who were just astir, doubtless took me for a madman.

I insisted on seeing Lord Androvil, and presently he came to me in the study, in his dressing gown. To him I told my tale, he listening, I remember, with a pitying look; then, as I rose to go, I fell senseless at his feet.

I remember no more until I awoke to consciousness, after a dangerous illness, some weeks later.

When I was strong enough to bear it, I learned from Lord Androvil himself how, after bringing me home, he had organized and led a search party to the spot I had indicated; how they there found the skeleton, which was at once identified as Miss Howard’s (for the metal cross bore the significant initials “D.L.H.”), and how the remains had been buried in the churchyard, the sexton of a neighbouring village digging the grave.

•   •   •   •   •

“And that, sir,” concluded the sexton, “ends my story of the woman with the candle, and of the one grave I did not dig: and if you are disposed to question it or put it down to a delusion of the senses, I can only point to the fact of the finding of the skeleton and ask you to account for that.”

“I do not question it for one moment,” I replied, “though it is the strangest tale I have ever listened to. But I would like to ask you one thing. How do you think Miss Howard met her death?”

The old man bent upon me a most serious look as he replied in a deep and solemn voice—

“My only answer to that question, sir, is that I firmly believe Miss Howard was led from her room by the same hideous creature who led me; that she was taken along the same way; and that, coming to the cave, and being beckoned to look in, she saw there something – I cannot tell what – something that caused her to swoon and lose her life by falling into the water.”

“One more question,” said I. “Are you a believer in ghosts?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the sexton, more solemnly than ever; “I am.”

IN MY LADY’S BEDCHAMBER

Howard Pease

1919

“Well,” said Harry laughingly, as he showed me the family portraits, and more especially the ladies, on the wall of the panelled dining-room, “which of them would you choose if you were, like Henry VIII., on the look-out for a fresh wife?”

“This one, I think,” I replied, as I gazed at a charming fragile beauty in a big bonnet, beneath which shy eyes looked bewitchingly; “surely she was a Frenchwoman and painted by Fragonard?”

“Aha!” cried he, “you are a bold man, for there are tales told of her – strange tales of feminine and deadly jealousy for all her soft demureness. She was French, as you say, and a devoted wife, I believe, but probably her mari was not as faithful as he should have been. She is said to haunt the house, but I haven’t come across her yet myself. You are to sleep in her bedchamber,” he added with a smile, “so perhaps you may be favoured with the sight of your charmer.”

I pressed naturally for further information, but he put me off by saying it was too long a story, and that he had many other things to show me on this my first evening in the manor house.

I had only just arrived by motor. We had dined, and my friend was showing me round his possessions with all the pride of new and sudden inheritance. Harry had always been lucky; he had a talent for “dropping in” for things unexpectedly. Thus at Eton, though really only thirteenth man, he had played against Harrow; and now owing to unexpected deaths he had become the possessor of a charming seventeenth-century manor house on the northern Border – a house that, lying in a deep crook of the Tweed and hidden by trees, had marvellously escaped the hand and torch of the raider.

He had succeeded to his great-uncle – an antiquary and recluse – a disappointed bachelor, and latterly, ’twas said, somewhat of a miser, which was fortunate for my friend, who had very little of his own.

Harry was soon to be married, and I was to be best man. He had come down to interview the agent and see what alterations and new furniture would be required, and had insisted on my joining him for a few days’ fishing in the Tweed, while he was being inducted by agent and bailiff into his estate and introduced to the tenantry. After surveying his ancestors’ portraits we adjourned to the hail, which was furnished with battle-axes, Jethart spears, basket-hilted swords, maces, salmon leisters, masks of otters and foumarts, foxes and badgers, and all the various trophies of Border sport and warfare of old time. This was the oldest part of the house, and proved by its stone-vaulted roof that it had belonged to the old peel tower on to which the manor had been engrafted; a fire of pine logs flamed in an open fireplace, gleaming and glancing on the copper drums that held relays of firewood on either hand.

Skins of red deer and the tufted pelts of kyloe cattle lay on the stone floor: there were massive black oak coffers and a great wardrobe like some huge safe for coats behind us, but two broad ancient leathern armchairs stood by the hearth invitingly, suggestive of unperturbed eighteenth-century ease, wherein we at once settled ourselves.

It was perhaps the absence of feminine taste and adornment that made the house seem older than it really was; apart from the charming portraits of the ladies in the dining-room the house resembled rather a Border strength than a Jacobean manor house. However, the atmosphere was rendered all the more romantic thereby, and I lay back in my chair making believe to myself that I was staying with a Lord Warden of the Marches in the days of the ancient feud between England and Scotland.

We smoked and talked, however, not of the far, but of the immediate, past, of Eton and Oxford, and of mutual friends till twelve o’clock struck on the brazen rim of a Cromwellian clock, and we agreed that it was bedtime.

I had clean forgotten all about the reputed ghost till my host said “good-night” at the door of my bedroom and bade me call him if I got a “gliff” in the night from the apparition of “Silkie” – so he informed me the lady was called locally. “You’ve got your retriever with you,” he said, “so no doubt you will feel protected.”

“Brenda,” I replied, “is Scotch by birth, so possibly she may be superstitious. The event will determine. So long,” I said, as Harry went off to the room of his late bachelor great-uncle.

Though very sleepy after a long motor ride I could not “turn in” till I had explored my bedroom, which was indeed a fascinating and enchanting chamber. It seemed to be a coign plucked out of an old French château, and inset here like a rare plant in an old stone wall. The panelling was of Italian intarsia work inlaid with a renaissance design portraying the tale of Cupid and Psyche; on the final panel Jupiter was handing the cup of ambrosia to Psyche with the words, “Sume, Psyche, et immortalis esto, nec unquam digridietur a tuo nexu Cupido, sed istae vobis erunt perpetuae nuptiae” ; the floor was formed of parquetry, and the rugs above were fine Persian workmanship. The curtains of the window were of purple silk, embroidered, I imagined, by the fair Frenchwoman herself, and the great four-poster bed was of fine walnut with deep mouldings, and adorned with the fleur-de-lys of France. The whole room seemed to be redolent of the grace of a charming grande dame of old France. I made up the fire with fresh pine logs upon the tiled hearth, settled Brenda upon a rug by the side of it, undressed and went to bed, enchanted by my surroundings, and very much inclined to envy my friend his good fortune.

I fell asleep at once, for the bed was luxuriously comfortable, and I was extraordinarily sleepy.

How long I slept I did not know, but when awoke I had an immediate and most lively intimation that someone was in the room. I drew myself noiselessly upward, and at once my eyes rested upon a dainty figure sitting in the chair by the dying fire, evidently engaged upon some absorbing occupation. It was a woman clad in a sprigged silk gown, the image of my lady of the dining-room portrait. What was she doing? Seemingly pounding some substance in a small mortar. As I gazed astounded a slight knock sounded on the door. My Lady seemed extraordinarily perturbed; she started violently, seemed to shake something white from the mortar as she gathered it hastily to her, moved swiftly with the slightest rustle as of a scurrying mouse and vanished through the door that led into the dressing-room.

I waited a few minutes to see if she would return, or perhaps someone else enter by the other door, but no sound greeted my ear, and my eyes could discover nothing unusual about the room.

I rose, and, moving on tiptoe, opened both doors, and with the light of an electric torch I always carried with me, investigated the corridor and dressing-room, but could make no discovery of any kind, nor perceive where my fair visitant had vanished.

When I returned to my room I found Brenda had been disturbed by my perambulation, for she was up and moving about restlessly. Giving her a pat I bade her lie down again, and went back to bed determined to stay awake for the chance of my Lady reappearing.

A few minutes after this Brenda seemed to be taken with a fit, for she got up suddenly, made a bolt, as it were, for the door, shook with some convulsive movements of her jaw, gave a horrible sort of strangled sob, and fell with a heavy thud on the floor. I leapt out of bed, got some water in a basin and knelt down beside her, but she was already stiff, her teeth were clenched, and she showed a horribly distorted mask.

A horrid suspicion awoke in my mind. I searched with my torch on the floor where my Lady had dropped the powder, and I could plainly see the wet edge of Brenda’s tongue and the smudge of the white powder which she had licked up.

I went back to where Brenda lay stiff and stark, and felt with a trembling hand for her heart.

It beat no more; my Brenda was dead – poisoned by the beautiful Lady.

A GHOST

Guy De Maupassant

1921

We were speaking of sequestration, alluding to a recent lawsuit. It was at the close of a friendly evening in a very old mansion in the Rue de Grenelle, and each of the guests had a story to tell, which he assured us was true.

Then the old Marquis de la Tour-Samuel, eighty-two years of age, rose and came forward to lean on the mantelpiece. He told the following story in his slightly quavering voice.

•   •   •   •   •

I, also, have witnessed a strange thing – so strange that it has been the nightmare of my life. It happened fifty-six years ago, and yet there is not a month when I do not see it again in my dreams. From that day I have borne a mark, a stamp of fear – do you understand?

Yes, for ten minutes I was a prey to terror, in such a way that ever since a constant dread has remained in my soul. Unexpected sounds chill me to the heart; objects which I can ill distinguish in the evening shadows make me long to flee. I am afraid at night.

No! I would not have owned such a thing before reaching my present age. But now I may tell everything. One may fear imaginary dangers at eighty-two years old. But before actual danger I have never turned back, mesdames.

That affair so upset my mind, filled me with such a deep, mysterious unrest that I never could tell it. I kept it in that inmost part, that corner where we conceal our sad, our shameful secrets, all the weaknesses of our life which cannot be confessed.

I will tell you that strange happening just as it took place, with no attempt to explain it. Unless I went mad for one short hour it must be explainable, though. Yet I was not mad, and I will prove it to you. Imagine what you will. Here are the simple facts:

It was in 1827, in July. I was quartered with my regiment in Rouen.

One day, as I was strolling on the quay, I came across a man I believed I recognized, though I could not place him with certainty. I instinctively went more slowly, ready to pause. The stranger saw my impulse, looked at me, and fell into my arms.

It was a friend of my younger days, of whom I had been very fond. He seemed to have become half a century older in the five years since I had seen him. His hair was white, and he stooped in his walk, as if he were exhausted. He understood my amazement and told me the story of his life.

A terrible event had broken him down. He had fallen madly in love with a young girl and married her in a kind of dreamlike ecstasy. After a year of unalloyed bliss and unexhausted passion, she had died suddenly of heart disease, no doubt killed by love itself.

He had left the country on the very day of her funeral, and had come to live in his hotel at Rouen. He remained there, solitary and desperate, grief slowly mining him, so wretched that he constantly thought of suicide.

“As I thus came across you again,” he said, “I shall ask a great favor of you. I want you to go to my château and get some papers I urgently need. They are in the writing-desk of my room, of our room. I cannot send a servant or a lawyer, as the errand must be kept private. I want absolute silence.

“I shall give you the key of the room, which I locked carefully myself before leaving, and the key to the writing-desk. I shall also give you a note for the gardener, who will let you in.

“Come to breakfast with me tomorrow, and we’ll talk the matter over.”

I promised to render him that slight service. It would mean but a pleasant excursion for me, his home not being more than twenty-five miles from Rouen. I could go there in an hour on horseback.

At ten o’clock the next day I was with him. We breakfasted alone together, yet he did not utter more than twenty words. He asked me to excuse him. The thought that I was going to visit the room where his happiness lay shattered, upset him, he said. Indeed, he seemed perturbed, worried, as if some mysterious struggle were taking place in his soul.

At last he explained exactly what I was to do. It was very simple. I was to take two packages of letters and some papers, locked in the first drawer at the right of the desk of which I had the key. He added:

“I need not ask you not to glance at them.”

I was almost hurt by his words, and told him so, rather sharply. He stammered:

“Forgive me. I suffer so much!”

And tears came to his eyes.

I left about one o’clock to accomplish my errand.

The day was radiant, and I rushed through the meadows, listening to the song of the larks, and the rhythmical beat of my sword on my riding-boots.

Then I entered the forest, and I set my horse to walking. Branches of the trees softly caressed my face, and now and then I would catch a leaf between my teeth and bite it with avidity, full of the joy of life, such as fills you without reason, with a tumultuous happiness almost indefinable, a kind of magical strength.

As I neared the house I took out the letter for the gardener, and noted with surprise that it was sealed. I was so amazed and so annoyed that I almost turned back without fulfilling my mission. Then I thought that I should thus display over-sensitiveness and bad taste. My friend might have sealed it unconsciously, worried as he was.

The manor looked as though it had been deserted the last twenty years. The gate, wide-open and rotten, held, one wondered how. Grass filled the paths; you could not tell the flower-beds from the lawn.

At the noise I made kicking a shutter, an old man came out from a side-door and was apparently amazed to see me there. I dismounted from my horse and gave him the letter. He read it once or twice, turned it over, looked at me with suspicion, and asked:

“Well, what do you want?”

I answered sharply:

“You must know it as you have read your master’s orders. I want to get in the house.”

He appeared overwhelmed. He said:

“So – you are going in – in his room?”

I was getting impatient.

“Parbleu! Do you intend to question me, by chance?”

He stammered:

“No – monsieur – only – it has not been opened since – since the death. If you will wait five minutes, I will go in to see whether—”

I interrupted angrily:

“See here, are you joking? You can’t go in that room, as I have the key!”

He no longer knew what to say.

“Then, monsieur, I will show you the way.”

“Show me the stairs and leave me alone. I can find it without your help.”

“But – still – monsieur—”

Then I lost my temper.

“Now be quiet! Else you’ll be sorry!”

I roughly pushed him aside and went into the house.

I first went through the kitchen, then crossed two small rooms occupied by the man and his wife. From there I stepped into a large hall. I went up the stairs, and I recognized the door my friend had described to me.

I opened it with ease and went in.

The room was so dark that at first I could not distinguish anything. I paused, arrested by that moldy and stale odor peculiar to deserted and condemned rooms, of dead rooms. Then gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and I saw rather clearly a great room in disorder, a bed without sheets having still its mattresses and pillows, one of which bore the deep print of an elbow or a head, as if someone had just been resting on it.

The chairs seemed all in confusion. I noticed that a door, probably that of a closet, had remained ajar.

I first went to the window and opened it to get some light, but the hinges of the outside shutters were so rusted that I could not loosen them.

I even tried to break them with my sword, but did not succeed. As those fruitless attempts irritated me, and as my eyes were by now adjusted to the dim light, I gave up hope of getting more light and went toward the writing-desk.

I sat down in an armchair, folded back the top, and opened the drawer. It was full to the edge. I needed but three packages, which I knew how to distinguish, and I started looking for them.

I was straining my eyes to decipher the inscriptions, when I thought I heard, or rather felt a rustle behind me. I took no notice, thinking a draft had lifted some curtain. But a minute later, another movement, almost indistinct, sent a disagreeable little shiver over my skin. It was so ridiculous to be moved thus even so slightly, that I would not turn round, being ashamed. I had just discovered the second package I needed, and was on the point of reaching for the third, when a great and sorrowful sigh, close to my shoulder, made me give a mad leap two yards away. In my spring I had turned round, my hand on the hilt of my sword, and surely had I not felt that, I should have fled like a coward.

A tall woman, dressed in white, was facing me, standing behind the chair in which I had sat a second before.

Such a shudder ran through me that I almost fell back! Oh, no one who has not felt them can understand those gruesome and ridiculous terrors! The soul melts; your heart seems to stop; your whole body becomes limp as a sponge, and your innermost parts seem collapsing.

I do not believe in ghosts; and yet I broke down before the hideous fear of the dead; and I suffered, oh, I suffered more in a few minutes, in the irresistible anguish of supernatural dread, than I have suffered in all the rest of my life!

If she had not spoken, I might have died. But she did speak; she spoke in a soft and plaintive voice which set my nerves vibrating. I could not say that I regained my self-control. No, I was past knowing what I did; but the kind of pride I have in me, as well as a military pride, helped me to maintain, almost in spite of myself, an honorable countenance. I was making a pose, a pose for myself, and for her, for her, whatever she was, woman, or phantom. I realized this later, for at the time of the apparition, I could think of nothing. I was afraid.

She said:

“Oh, you can be of great help to me, monsieur!”

I tried to answer, but I was unable to utter one word. A vague sound came from my throat.

She continued:

“Will you? You can save me, cure me. I suffer terribly. I always suffer. I suffer, oh, I suffer!”

And she sat down gently in my chair. She looked at me.

“Will you?”

I nodded my head, being still paralyzed.

Then she handed me a woman’s comb of tortoiseshell, and murmured:

“Comb my hair! Oh, comb my hair! That will cure me. Look at my head – how I suffer! And my hair – how it hurts!”

Her loose hair, very long, very black, it seemed to me, hung over the back of the chair, touching the floor.

Why did I do it? Why did I, shivering, accept that comb, and why did I take between my hands her long hair, which left on my skin a ghastly impression of cold, as if I had handled serpents? I do not know.

That feeling still clings about my fingers, and I shiver when I recall it.

I combed her, I handled, I know not how, that hair of ice. I bound and unbound it; I plaited it as one plaits a horse’s mane. She sighed, bent her head, seemed happy.

Suddenly she said, “Thank you!” tore the comb from my hands, and fled through the door which I had noticed was half opened.

Left alone, I had for a few seconds the hazy feeling one feels in waking up from a nightmare. Then I recovered myself. I ran to the window and broke the shutters by my furious assault.

A stream of light poured in. I rushed to the door through which that being had gone. I found it locked and immovable.

Then a fever of flight seized on me, a panic, the true panic of battle. I quickly grasped the three packages of letters from the open desk; I crossed the room running, I took the steps of the stairway four at a time. I found myself outside, I don’t know how, and seeing my horse close by, I mounted in one leap and left at a full gallop.

I didn’t stop till I reached Rouen and drew up in front of my house. Having thrown the reins to my orderly, I flew to my room and locked myself in to think.

Then for an hour I asked myself whether I had not been the victim of an hallucination. Certainly I must have had one of those nervous shocks, one of those brain disorders such as give rise to miracles, to which the supernatural owes its strength.

And I had almost concluded that it was a vision, an illusion of my senses, when I came near to the window. My eyes by chance looked down. My tunic was covered with hairs, long woman’s hairs which had entangled themselves around the buttons!

I took them off one by one and threw them out of the window with trembling fingers.

I then called my orderly. I felt too perturbed, too moved, to go and see my friend on that day. Besides, I needed to think over what I should tell him.

I had his letters delivered to him. He gave a receipt to the soldier. He inquired after me and was told that I was not well. I had had a sunstroke, or something. He seemed distressed.

I went to see him the next day, early in the morning, bent on telling him the truth. He had gone out the evening before and had not come back.

I returned the same day, but he had not been seen. I waited a week. He did not come back. I notified the police. They searched for him everywhere, but no one could find any trace of his passing or of his retreat.

A careful search was made in the deserted manor. No suspicious clue was discovered.

There was no sign that a woman had been concealed there.

The inquest gave no result, and so the search went no further.

And in fifty-six years I have learned nothing more. I never found out the truth.

WAXWORKS

W. L. George

1922

Henry Badger rapidly paced the City churchyard; his air of anxiety seemed to overweigh his small, though not unpleasing, features. He was an insignificant little man, dressed in pepper-and-salt tweeds. His hair was cut very close, except where a love-lock, plastered down with jasmine-oil, trailed over his forehead from under his hard black hat. Whenever he completed the circuit of the churchyard he peered towards the gate through which must come disturbance and romance. Henry Badger was in love, and he could not escape the consequences of his share in our common delight and affliction.

Suddenly brightness overspread his sharp features. It was she! She, in a pink crêpe-de-Chine blouse, disconnected rather than connected with her white serge skirt by a patent-leather belt. Above the pink blouse was an equally pink neck, and a rather pretty face, all soft curves. She was bright blue of eye and tumbled in pleasant fairness about the hair, under a large straw hat from which drooped on one side a fragment of ivy that might with advantage have been placed elsewhere. But her name was Ivy, and she liked to live in harmony.

“I’m late,” she said, with pretty briskness, as they shook hands. “So sorry, Henry. Only the boss got dictating, and he likes to hear himself talk, even if it is only to little me. Still, better late than never,” she added, with a smile indicating wit.

Henry Badger replied “Yes,” and wondered if it would be good policy to attack her for being late. Since he felt at fault, no doubt it would. Only – an argument with Ivy, one never knew what that would lead to.

“Well, you dummy,” she said, “is that all you’ve got to say? Got the tickets?”

“Er—” said Henry Badger, “no.”

“What do you mean?” said Ivy, crossly.

“What I say,” replied Henry Badger, with feeble determination. “Fact is, Ivy, I’m sorry, but I forgot.”

The blue eyes stared at him, incredulous.

“Forgot! What you been and done that for?”

Henry Badger explained profusely. The night before he’d had an awful headache, and it had slipped his memory to go round to the Imperial Music Hall, and this morning the manager—

Ivy trampled upon these confused excuses. “All I can see,” she said, “is here we are landed on a Saturday afternoon with nowhere to go except the pictures. And it’s so hot in those places. Last time I was fair melted. I do think it’s too bad of you.”

It was then that Henry Badger expressed himself. “Fact is, Ivy, I been thinking.”

“Hope you didn’t break anything,” said Ivy, “but since you done it, what’s the ideer?”

“I been thinking that we don’t know the town we live in. I was reading a book the other day. Strange Sights of London, it was called. And, would you believe it, Ivy? there’s lots of things I got to learn.”

“Ah, I do believe it,” said Ivy.

“For instance,” said Henry, “did you know that the church of St Ethelburga wasn’t burnt down in the Fire of London?”

“No,” said Ivy, “and now I do know it I don’t seem to be much better off.”

“Ah!” said Henry, “that’s where you’re wrong, Ivy. It improves your mind to know that sort of thing. And that’s how I got my ideer. I been thinking we might go round to the docks.”

“What for?”

“Oh, I dunno. Just to mooch round. Ever been to the docks? No? Well, why not try ’em? You know, Ivy, people spend a lot of money going to the Riviera, and they never see the place round the corner. See your own country first,” he added, with originality.

“Well,” said Ivy, after a moment, “seeing you’ve mucked up this afternoon, and mother’s gone out and there won’t be any tea, I suppose we may as well.”

•   •   •   •   •

The two little people, for neither of them was quite five-foot-six, made their way along the East India Dock Road, where an omnibus had deposited them. For an hour they wandered the tragic land where none live for pleasure, and where slowly the soot falls to obliterate sooty footmarks. They were too tired to be pleased when, behind a long brick wall, they found the docks. They perceived the smell of the East, oil of macassar, piled logs of sandalwood, barrels of copra; at a point against the sky, where now the dark clouds were racing, they saw outlined tall spars, while a funnel striped in yellow and blue threw out a shower of sparks against the sky like a dun veil touched with tinsel. The heat seemed to grow.

They lost their direction, not liking to ask their way of the rough inhabitants, not knowing where they wanted to go. They were astray, unprotected lambs in a land of slender law. Ivy began to drag her feet as loudly as she could, to show that she was displeased. Both were secretly oppressed because that day they had not kissed.

At that moment came rain. Very slowly at first in separate warm drops that made upon the pavement spots as large as a coin. “My!” said Henry, “it’s going to come down like billy-oh!”

“I don’t care,” said Ivy.

“Come on,” said Henry, “let’s see if we can get under shelter somewhere.” But they were still progressing along another brick wall; opposite, the warehouses were closed. They ran, for now the rain was beginning to fall with greater determination.

“Here,” gasped Henry, as he ran, “we must get in somewhere; you’ll be sopped through. Let’s go into a shop.”

They stopped irresolutely at the corner of a side-street. As it was almost entirely occupied by warehouses no living creature could be seen. But just as they prepared to run on through the rain, Henry observed a tottering post, bearing a battered sign. The sign was in the shape of a hand pointing up the lane, and upon it were painted the words: “To the Waxworks.”

“Here,” he cried, dragging Ivy along, “that’ll do. I didn’t know they had waxworks in this part of the world, but it’ll save us getting wet.” They ran up the street, expecting a veranda and a commissionaire. At the end of the lane they had found nothing, and paused irresolute, when upon the door of a three-floored house Ivy saw the word “Waxworks”, with the addition: “Mrs Groby, Proprietress.” Henry seized the door handle, which resisted for a moment. The door jammed, but with a great effort he forced it open. It made a great clatter as he flung it against the wall. Breathless, and wiping their wet faces, the two stood giggling in the hall. Then, feeling alone, suddenly they kissed. The excitement of the run and of the caress sheltered them against an impression which the place imposed upon them only by degrees. They were in the hall of a house, of a house like any other house. There was no noise, except for a slight sound. It felt deserted. The door handle on the right was covered with dust. Nobody had gone into that room for a long time. An unaccountable emotion developed in them. The house was still except that at last they identified the slight sound: far away a tap was leaking. They found themselves listening to the drip which came regularly from the basement.

“Well,” said Henry, with forced cheerfulness, “here we are.” And as if to reassure himself: “Anyhow, we shan’t get wet.”

They stood for a moment looking out at the rain, which now came faster. The effect of this falling water, soft and hot, the dusty silence of the place except for that regular drip far away, combined to cast upon them a sort of uneasiness, an almost physical oppression. Ivy began to look about her with unexplainable anxiety. The darkness of the stairs, the banisters broken in several places, the dusty door handle, stirred in her a vague fear; she looked about her like a cat in a strange place and preparing to flee. As the feeling communicated itself to Henry his manliness revolted. It would be too silly to have the jumps. So he said: “lye, since we’re here, why not go upstairs and see the show?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Ivy dominated her disturbance and said: “All right.”

•   •   •   •   •

They went up the stairs, firmly, but with instinctive slowness, troubled by the sound of their feet upon the boards, followed by the fainter drip of the distant tap. The first floor was like the ground floor. Here, too, the door handles were dusty, and here, too, there came no sound from beyond the doors. They had to make an effort to go up further. The sense that here was emptiness made emptiness frightful. But Henry was leading and still went up. He didn’t know why, but knew he must go up. Perhaps because he was a man and couldn’t run away from anything, not even from nothing. The second floor comforted them, for here was a pay-box, empty it is true, but marked: “Pay here.” Henry released a great sigh. It really was a show. It had a human air.

“Come on, Ivy,” he said, in a loud voice which rang unpleasantly down the uncarpeted stairs. “Since there’s nobody down here we can pay when we get to the top.”

Ivy silently followed him up, and so they reached what seemed to be a large attic. Once again a reluctant door yielded to their hands, and Henry stepped into the doorway with a sort of jauntiness, but Ivy paused for a moment at his back. Waxworks, yes, but, she didn’t know why, at once she was terrified. One couldn’t see very well in the attic, for the dust of years lay upon the skylight, and the avaricious light of the sullen sky hardly penetrated. The walls had been whitewashed, but now were stained black with damp, soiled by the touch of hands, the smoke of lamps. About the door hung rags of dirty red damask. And in the immense silence of the place, hearing not even the drip of the distant tap, they found themselves alone with the wax figures.

Some stood upon little thrones of red-painted wood, here a man in day clothes, staring emptily from a yellow countenance, here a woman spreading crimson nostrils to an absent scent. The two were still in the doorway, not knowing why they did not go in. They were conscious of a secret vileness in these faces. The things stood so still, but sure of themselves, as if they had always stood in the dust and twilight. But at last Henry seized Ivy’s arm more firmly and they went in.

Altogether there were fourteen figures. Three of the men were labelled Charles Peace, Dr Crippen, and Gouffé. The woman with the intense gaze was Mrs Maybrick, and there were two other women, one with bright red hair over which a spider had built its web. But Henry and Ivy, as they stood before them, did not at once read the legends telling how Crippen had killed his wife and burnt her body in the furnace, nor did they gaze at Gouffé, the bailiff, who had been carved into pieces and packed in a trunk. A little later Ivy read that ticket to the end and shudderingly stepped away from the invitation to draw apart the figure’s clothing and see indicated the lines along which the body had been cut up. At that moment she was cowering against Henry, who instinctively had laid an arm about her shoulders, for the single figures were less terrifying than two groups represented in action. One of the groups comprised a man and a woman in a pink flannelette dressing-gown. With an expression of pinched determination the murderer was forcing the female figure down into a bath, where a sheet of mica, tinted green, represented water. In the grasp of a bony hand, the female figure held the edge of the bath, wildly raising the other arm, while into her distorted mouth floated the green edge of the water that was to drown her. It was a work of art of indescribable horror. It was as if the snake-like fingers moved, as if in another moment the head would disappear under that still green surface.

With an exclamation Henry turned aside to the other group, that stood dim within the shadow, away from the faint rays that fell through the skylight. This represented a very old woman, lying on her face, her white hair scattered and stained with blood, while kneeling over her, a sandbag still half-raised, was a short man in the clothes of the day, his face set and coated with a horrible scarlet flush.

Now a new sound made them start. It was the growing rain, pattering upon the skylight, as if goblins raced across it. In a sudden desire for union again they kissed, quickly falling apart, as if espied.

They turned away for a moment, fascinated, they did not know how, in this gallery of crime; the still things about them seemed to have a motion, a vibration of their own. They found themselves looking sharply into corners as if something were there after all, as if these were not creatures of wax, but actually poisoners, men and women experienced in violence and still capable of evil. The great horror, which always drew them back to itself, was that bath, soiled, chipped, and streaked with black rivulets of dirt, into which the murderer was endlessly pressing down the figure that endlessly strove for life.

So great was the tension that Henry tried to rejoin the ordinary world. He whispered: “We ought to have paid someone,” but while he spoke he looked from side to side, as if begging some material custodian to appear with a familiar ticket and a sounding punch. Ivy did not reply; she was holding his arm in a nervous clutch; once or twice she moved away from him, and then came back, as if her fingers grasped him independently of the processes of her brain. She was opening and closing her mouth, striving to speak and finding her tongue dry. Only at last did she find a whisper: “I don’t like it. Let’s go.”

Henry Badger also wanted to go, but he was so unaccountably afraid that he dared not go. His virility spoke: it told him that if he went now he would be everlastingly ashamed. He was afraid to tell himself that he was afraid. So, in a voice the loudness of which half-startled him, he replied: “Oh, rot! Since we’ve come up we may as well see the lot of them.” So, Ivy still grasping his arm, they circled the attic, stopping in turn before each figure. Ivy did not want to see, but she could not look away. It was as if she must meet material, human eyes. It was always the eyes she looked at. There was a challenge in them. It was the defiance of the dead which she must meet. She must again view the bath, look down through the green surface of the water upon the agonized limbs which twisted in the dimness that was to be their grave. But now there was a change. Perhaps because habit made that first seem less awful, the second group gained in horror. It was not only the sight of the blood coagulated on the white hair, it was something else, something unnamable. The art of the sculptor had gone too far; here was mere and abominable reality. Real hair, and crouching above, with drooping eyelids, the figure of the murderer, ill-shaven and flushed with health. Something twisted in Ivy’s body as she thought that upon the still mask she could discern beads of sweat. They stayed staring, half-conscious that they had been here a long time, though little more than a minute had passed. The beating of their hearts deafened them, and combined with the hissing sound of the rain, as if thin ghosts shod in cloud were racing across the skylight. Her eyes still fixed upon the creature with the sandbag, Ivy whispered again: “Let’s go.”

***

Then, in the far distance, they heard the front door slam.

At that sound a confused terror seized them both. The contrast between incoming humanity and the unearthly silence here affected them like a blow. Heat and weakness rushed up their limbs, and in Ivy’s ears was a sound like the distant unwinding of an endless chain. Henry was the first to recover; a compound emotion formed in him: the proprietress – of course – he wanted to get out – they really ought to pay – he’d better see. This summarized itself in an inarticulate sound. Turning, he ran to the landing and looked down the stairs. He did not know what he expected to see, but something, and after a few seconds, as he heard nothing, such a weakness overcame him that he let himself go against the balustrade, his head hanging down over the well of the stairs, where all was silence and darkness.

But almost at once he recovered, for suddenly behind him there came a long cry, a cry with a strange, torn quality, like that of a beast in pain, that jerked him to his feet as it dragged from his pores a sheet of cold sweat. As he turned, Ivy came tumbling out of the attic, her arms outstretched before her as if she fumbled for her way. She could not see, for her eyes were so retroverted that only the whites showed under the falling lids. He caught her just as she was going to throw herself down the stairs. As he touched her she flung her arms about his neck with maniacal strength and he could not free himself from that grasp. As they stumbled together down the stairs, he thought that it was like being held by bones. They fell together at the foot of the second landing, and somehow struggled to their feet. There was a moment of incredible effort before they could pull open the outer door, which had been closed by the wind. They halted for an instant upon the steps, close-locked under the falling hot rain, and Henry did not understand what drove him then, what strange relief or exaltation, what insane excitement made him press his mouth to the lips drawn tightly into pallid lines. At the kiss Ivy’s nerves suddenly relaxed. She became a bundle in his arms, something he dragged along, staggering as he fled, he knew not from what. They shared but one idea: to get away. The pavement streamed before them as they ran with downcast eyes. Then, with a shock, they were stopped by two policemen in oilskins, with whom they nearly collided at the junction of the lane and the main road. The policemen stared at these two, instinctively holding them by the arm, not understanding that they were at the limit of terror, and already suspecting that they had committed some crime. Indeed, Henry and Ivy were struggling in their grasp, still dominated by their one desire: to get away. At last, when they grew quiet and stood breathing hard, their mouths relaxed by nervous exhaustion, the elder policeman, who was a sergeant, said: “Now then, what’s all this?”

“I don’t know,” said Henry.

“Come on,” said the sergeant, “you don’t put me off like that. What you been up to, you two?” Henry did not reply. “Mark you, it’ll be all the worse for you if you don’t talk. What’s happened?” He shook his prisoner, suggesting that he’d make him talk yet, but failing to draw a reply he turned to the girl: “You, why were you running?”

Ivy seemed to have recovered more quickly than her companion. Though her eyelids did not cease to twitch, she managed to say: “I saw something.”

“Saw something?” said the sergeant. “Saw what?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Ivy.

“I expect they’re drunk,” said the constable. “No,” said the sergeant, meditatively, “I can’t smell it on ’em.”

“Oh, no,” cried Ivy, “no, of course not, only it’s the waxworks – the waxworks.”

“Waxworks?” said the sergeant. “What waxworks?”

“I know, sergeant,” said the constable, nodding up the lane. “Mrs Groby’s place.”

“Oh, yes,” said the sergeant, “I know now. Sort of chamber of ’orrors. Well, you been to the waxworks. What about it?”

“I saw something,” whispered Ivy.

“Saw what?” said the constable. “Saw Mrs Groby, I suppose. Funny old dame, sergeant. She’s been living in that house all by herself for the last forty years, alone with them things. Used to make a lot of money out of them, and they say she’s got a lot saved up. Between you and me and the lamp-post I’m surprised no one’s knocked her on the head yet and walked off with her money.”

Ivy gave a low cry: “Yes – that’s it – there’s a man in there – he’s killed her – blood all over her head.”

“What’s all this?” asked the sergeant, professionally incredulous. “What’s all this story? And how do you know anything about it?”

“There was a noise,” said Ivy. “The door slammed – Henry ran out. I couldn’t move for a moment – she was on the floor, and the man—” Her voice became shrill: “as I turned to look after Henry I just – he raised his arm and rubbed it – just with the corner of my eye – I—” She gave a heavy sigh, and her head fell back upon the policeman’s chest.

But she had not fainted, and in a moment the policemen were striding up the lane, followed by Henry and Ivy, who clung to the companionship of these tall, loud-speaking men. As they went the sergeant theorized:

“I see the dodge. He did the old woman in; then he heard this pair come up the stairs, and rigged himself up as a wax figure. Got cramp, I suppose, and took the chance to rub his arm when he thought she wasn’t looking. Cheer up, missy,” he added to Ivy, who was crying out of weakness. “We’ll soon get him.” As they reached the door of the museum he winked at her and drew his truncheon. “Better stay downstairs, missy,” he added, as he led the way up. But after a moment Ivy and Henry could not bear their loneliness, and tiptoed up the stairs behind the blue shapes that walked with such assurance, making no attempt to muffle their tread. When they reached the attic, the policeman looked in a puzzled way into the twilight.

“Which one is it?” said the policeman, and instinctively his voice fell to a whisper. Ivy, who was just behind him, pointed at the kneeling shape carrying the sandbag.

“That one,” she said. The sergeant did not understand his own feeling, but he received some dim impression from the grey place. He walked only three feet into the room. Then, in an uneasy voice, he addressed the kneeling figure: “Now then, my man. The game’s up. You better go quietly.”

There was no reply, and the echoes died away, repeating a quivering uncertainty in the policeman’s voice.

•   •   •   •   •

After a moment’s pause the sergeant, irritated by the silence, strode into the room; raising his truncheon, he went up to the kneeling figure and touched it on the shoulder. He drew back his hand, touched the body again. Then, suddenly, he burst into a roar of laughter, as with a derisive gesture he passed his hand up and down over the waxen face. “Wax!” he cried. “Bert! have you ever seen such a pair of gabies as these two? Been here and got the ’orrors, the two of them, and ran out like a pair of loonies to tell us this dummy is Jack the Ripper posing for the Russian bally. Oh, my!”

“Wax!” whispered Ivy, “oh, no. Oh, please don’t touch it. It’s not wax. No, it’s not.”

“Come on,” said the sergeant, kindly, “touch it yourself.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Ivy, quivering, but with a laugh the policeman seized her wrist, and, drawing her towards the figure, forced her to lay her hand upon the waxen coldness of the cheek.

“Wax,” said the policeman, “you silly kid. That’s only wax. And so’s this wax,” he added, as he bent down and negligently laid his hand upon the blood-stained white hair. But, in the same movement almost, the policeman jumped up and recoiled, his staring eyes glaring at his hand. For less than a second did he gaze at it; then, with a cry, as if seized by ungovernable hysteria, he brought down his truncheon upon the head of the kneeling man, which, under the blow, scattered into tiny fragments of tinted wax. Then the other policeman drew back as he saw his comrade’s hand stained with fresh blood.

“A waxwork,” he gasped. “What – how? It isn’t a waxwork. It’s Mrs Groby.” He laid a single finger on the woman’s head, stared at his own blood-stained hand. “Dead – still warm.” His voice rose high: “Killed – by what?”

In the silence, far below, could be heard the thin drip of the leaky tap.