Ghost Stories and Mysteries (17 page)

It had been gazing sadly out of the window as usual at about one o’clock in the morning, when there came the sound of unsteady steps down the street. Presently, a stout old gentleman in evening dress, with his hat on one side and an overcoat on his arm, stopped suddenly in front of the gate and gazed curiously at the building. Would he come in? The ghost’s heart beat fast with anxiety.

“Astonishing!” said the old gentleman. “How on earth did I get home so quick? Don’t remember the tram—don’t remember the train. My house, though, right enough.” He opened the crazy gate and lurched in.

“At last, at last!” cried the apparition, restraining itself by a might effort from appearing on the verandah and prematurely flushing its game.

The old gentleman tried to put a latch-key in the door, but as there was no keyhole he failed. Then he kicked, and knocked, and swore. Finally he coiled himself up on the verandah, and after a grunt or two went fast asleep.

Then the exultant spectre passed through the crack underneath the door, and stood contemplating its unconscious victim. But all the old gentleman did was to turn over and say pettishly, as he dragged his coat over his shoulders, “Don’t Maria!”

This put the ghost on its mettle. It laid an ice-cold hand on the sleeper, and, in a thrilling whisper, said, “Awake!”

The old gentleman sat up and blinked at the vision of the dead, and the vision regarded the old gentleman.

“Right, old boy!” said the latter. “I’ll wake up in time, never fear. Bring me a stiff brandy-and-soda at it. Good night. Gobless you!” and he laid down again and snored.

This was maddening. A ghost to be mistaken for a waiter and told to bring a brandy-and-soda in the morning! It fled through the top window to the haunted chamber and sat down on the bloodstain and cried.

Time passed, but no other mortal visited the haunted house between midnight and daylight. Other ghosts came. Ghosts who were allowed out at nights; and they used to tell the old deceased inhabitant what joyous times they had; but that only made things worse. Sometimes it thought that a burglar might break in during the small hours and give it a chance; but, then, the occupants of the two alleged offices hadn’t enough between them to allure any respectable burglar; and the burglars knew it.

Sorrowfully the poor old apparition mused, and if it could only have repeated the operation of cutting its throat, it would have done so out of sheer desperation and
ennui
.

At that moment the sound of approaching footsteps broke the stillness.

Two men, in earnest conversation, halted opposite the gate, and, by the light of the street lamp, the ghost saw that one of them was the occupant of the offices. He was some sort of agent—general commission—and, as the ghost knew, his principal occupation was hiding behind some old tanks in the back yard when his creditors called, which they did constantly. The old ghost, in its invisible state, used to do a good deal of wandering about in the day-time.

After a few minutes more talk the two men came in, and the agent proceeded to unlock the door.

The ghost nearly shrieked with joy. How should it make the most startling appearance? It decided to await them in the passage and shake its gaunt arms in the shadows.

The agent struck a match, opened the door of his office, and and was about entering, followed by his companion, when by the expiring light of the match, the latter caught a glimpse of the apparition standing at the end of the passage.

“Hallo! Somebody living here?” he said.

“No,” said the agent, who had lit another match, and was searching for a candle.

“Thought I saw something at the end of the passage.”

“Pooh! Cats, I suppose. This is a regular meeting place of theirs;” and the agent picked up an empty stone ink-bottle and, going to the door, hurled it down the passage, crying, “Shoo! get out!” Then he shut the office-door.

The ink-bottle went clean through the ghost, but the insult hurt it worse. First, to be taken for a waiter, then to be “shoo’ed” at for a cat. It approached the office vowing vengeance, and tramping frantically with the spectres of its old shadow feet on the floor. It was about to pass through the door, and, with a blood-curdling shriek appear before them with its gashed and bleeding throat, but a few words it heard arrested it. The ghost stopped and listened.

“Come, Tom, hurry up and get me those papers I left with you; I must go on board, we start at five sharp,” said the younger man to the agent.

Tom sat on the edge of the ricketty deal table, swinging one leg moodily to and fro, but made no attempt to move.

“You know how frightfully hard up we’ve been?” he said at last.

“Of course I do; has not my sister told me all about it to-day, and, as you know, I gave her all the money I could to keep you going for a bit. I can do no more. Give me the papers.”

“Well, then,” said the agent, getting up, desperately and defiantly, “I haven’t got them.”

“Not got them!” repeated the other. “God Almighty, man! what do you mean?”

“Mean what I say.”

“What have you done with them?” cried the younger, fiercely.

“The bank has them as security.”

The agent’s brother-in-law gazed at him in silence. “Do you know,” he said at last, quite quickly, “that you have ruined me?”

“I can redeem them and send them to you overland,” muttered the other, with white lips.

“Bah!
you
redeem them; how?” and he glanced round the poverty-stricken room. “Even if you had the money, or could get it, how could you redeem them before Monday? This is Friday, and before you could forward them we should have left Brisbane. You’ve ruined yourself, and now you’ve ruined me.”

The agent said nothing, and his companion walked impatiently up and down the room.

“How much did you get advanced on them?”

“Five hundred pounds.”

“And what became of it?”

“Speculated with it. That was the temptation. I knew of such a safe thing.”

“Such a safe thing!” said the other, mockingly.

There was silence for a time. The younger man continued his wild-beast walk, and the agent leant against the table with folded arms and eyes cast down.

Half an hour passed, but the ghost was not impatient; after thirty years of loneliness, this little tragedy was interesting. Besides, it had cut its throat for doing almost the same thing the agent had done. Would the agent cut his throat? In that case he would also become a ghost.

“I dare not go back without those deeds,” said the young man at last. “How do you propose to get them back?”

“I think I can borrow the money.”

“If that is all I have to rely on, why, they are gone. Well, if it comes to the worst, I must go to the bank and demand their restitution as stolen property. I don’t know how the law stands, but I believe they will give them up and—”

“Prosecute me,” said the agent.

“I suppose so. I will do my duty, even though it puts you in gaol.”

“You will put me in gaol, will you?” snarled the agent, walking up to his companion with an ugly look on his face.

The ghost executed a double shuffle in his joy, and pressed about in the passage. There was going to be a murder, and he would have another ghost to bear him company.

The young man confronted his brother-in-law, and said quietly, “If every other means fails, I must inform the bank, and after that I cannot interfere.”

Tom fell back, and said, after a pause, “You had better leave me. I must try and think of some way out of this.”

The other seemed in no hurry to stay, and walked to the door merely remarking, “I will see you this afternoon.” Then the front door slammed behind him, and the house was left to the agent and the ghost.

Was the agent going to cut his throat? The ghost looked anxiously in; such an opportunity was worth waiting thirty years for.

Was he going to cut his throat? Nothing of the sort. The agent looked quite relieved, as though an unpleasant task had at last been got over. He lit another candle and turned towards the old-fashioned fireplace on one side of the room. The ghost watched him curiously. It was a hearth for burning wood; and the agent prised up one of the side stones, and from a whole underneath took out a large cash-box; put it on the table, and opened it. The spirit rushed through the wall unseen, and looked over his shoulder. The box was full of sovereigns. The agent counted them over with a sigh of relief, replaced the box in its hiding place, and made ready to go.

The apparition had passed through the wall again into the dark passage. It would never do to scare the agent now; he was coming back for that box, and then—the ghost hugged itself in anticipation. The agent closed and locked his door; slammed the front door after him and departed. The ghost stopped behind and chuckled. It was all plain as the proverbial pikestaff, and to be summed up in one word, “bolt.” The five hundred pounds had
not
gone in speculation; they were in the cash-box, besides other little pickings. The spectre reckoned it all up on its shadowy fingers; holiday time, crowds travelling about, best chance in the world to get away; he’s off, with whatever he can lay his hands on, leaves his wife and children to do the best they can, robs his brother-in-law, and ruins the people who own those deeds; now, how can I circumvent him?

The ghost fell into a brown study. “If I could only materialise myself like some of those new fangled spirits say they can, I might collar that money and tell the young fellow all about it, but I can’t. If I appear before him I shall scare him, and then—he might not come back here. I’ll best that fellow though if I.…”—die for it, the ghost was about to say, but as he had done that already he changed the expression. Just then the daylight lightened the eastern sky, and it vanished, but its face wore a look of satisfaction that was not on it before; evidently the apparition had an idea.

Christmas day passed in the usual manner, so far as the ghost was concerned; that is to say, nobody came near the place, and it either sat on the blood-spot or looked out of the window. Midnight struck, and the ghost was happy. It had six hours of visibility before it, and in a shadowy sort of way it cleared the desk for action.

At half-past twelve the agent made his appearance carrying a small portmanteau.

He struck a match before closing the front door, and dropped it immediately with a yell. Somebody was leaning against the door of his room, a strange, mouldy-looking little man who smelt exactly like a damp umbrella. Resisting the impulse to turn and fly, he waited and listened. There was no sound but the violent thumping of his own heart. He looked round into the street behind him to reassure himself, mustered up his nerve, and struck another match. This time the passage was empty. He wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead, and laughed with considerable difficulty. Then he unlocked his own door, but he left the front door open. Nobody in his room so far as he could see with a match, so he lit the candle and—it was no fancy. An old man with a ghastly white face and a horrible blood-stain on his white beard and shirt front was sitting loose in the air about three feet above the floor. He might have stood his ground even then, but the thing started to walk through the air towards him, and, smitten with unreasoning panic, he turned and ran through the open door, and the triumphant ghost heard his flying footsteps die away in the distance.

“Now for the other man,” muttered the ghost.

One o’clock struck, and in a few minutes the ghost heard someone entering the house. Both doors were still open and the candle still burning, so the newcomer walked straight in. He stopped short inside the room. Seated at the table where he expected to find his relative was a seedy old gentleman who, in spite of the heat, had his coat buttoned right to the neck and his collar turned up. The visitor was silent with astonishment, but the spectre grinned at him in an amiable manner and he faltered at last:

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“So glad you spoke,” said the apparition, blandly.

“You see I’m a ghost, and, of course, I can’t speak first. Not allowed by the regulations. Now, don’t be frightened and run away, because I want to do you a good turn. How do you feel? Quite well?”

“You’re a ghost? But I don’t believe in them. It’s a joke.”

“Don’t be sceptical, young man. Shall I walk through the table or do any little absurdity of that sort? But, no! you’ve more sense than that. Listen: Your brother-in-law is a thief, you know, but he is worse than you think. He did not lose the money the bank advanced him. He has it all in a cash box under that stone. Lift it up and see. He was going to bolt. There is his portmanteau.”

As in a dream, the live man advanced and did as the dead man directed him. Sure enough he lifted out a weighty cash-box.

“If I were you,” said the ghost, “I would go straight to his house with that, and make him open it in front of your sister. His wife, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Poor woman! Well, good morning, my boy. Wish you luck.”

The young man halted at the door. “Is there any little thing I can do, sir, to show my gratitude?”

“There is. Now and again, say at intervals of a few months, persuade someone to come here between midnight and daylight. A sceptic, if possible. I won’t give them much of a fright.”