Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
pointed out that its windows commanded only the blank wall of the next
house, and that it would be very dark in the afternoon. Either Number
12 or Number 14 would be better, for both of them looked on the street,
and the bright evening light and the pretty view would more than
compensate him for the additional amount of noise.
Eventually Number 12 was selected. Like its neighbours, it had three
windows, all on one side of the room; it was fairly high and unusually
long. There was, of course, no fireplace, but the stove was handsome
and rather old—a cast-iron erection, on the side of which was a
representation of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and the inscription, “1
Bog Mose, Cap. 22,” above. Nothing else in the room was remarkable; the
only interesting picture was an old coloured print of the town, date
about 1820.
Supper-time was approaching, but when Anderson, refreshed by the
ordinary ablutions, descended the staircase, there were still a few
minutes before the bell rang. He devoted them to examining the list of
his fellow-lodgers. As is usual in Denmark, their names were displayed
on a large blackboard, divided into columns and lines, the numbers of
the rooms being painted in at the beginning of each line. The list was
not exciting. There was an advocate, or Sagförer, a German, and some
bagmen from Copenhagen. The one and only point which suggested any food
for thought was the absence of any Number 13 from the tale of the
rooms, and even this was a thing which Anderson had already noticed
half a dozen times in his experience of Danish hotels. He could not
help wondering whether the objection to that particular number, common
as it is, was so widespread and so strong as to make it difficult to
let a room so ticketed, and he resolved to ask the landlord if he and
his colleagues in the profession had actually met with many clients who
refused to be accommodated in the thirteenth room.
He had nothing to tell me (I am giving the story as I heard it from
him) about what passed at supper, and the evening, which was spent in
unpacking and arranging his clothes, books, and papers, was not more
eventful. Towards eleven o’clock he resolved to go to bed, but with
him, as with a good many other people nowadays, an almost necessary
preliminary to bed, if he meant to sleep, was the reading of a few
pages of print, and he now remembered that the particular book which he
had been reading in the train, and which alone would satisfy him at
that present moment, was in the pocket of his great-coat, then hanging
on a peg outside the dining-room.
To run down and secure it was the work of a moment, and, as the
passages were by no means dark, it was not difficult for him to find
his way back to his own door. So, at least, he thought; but when he
arrived there, and turned the handle, the door entirely refused to
open, and he caught the sound of a hasty movement towards it from
within. He had tried the wrong door, of course. Was his own room to the
right or to the left? He glanced at the number: it was 13. His room
would be on the left; and so it was. And not before he had been in bed
for some minutes, had read his wonted three or four pages of his book,
blown out his light, and turned over to go to sleep, did it occur to
him that, whereas on the blackboard of the hotel there had been no
Number 13, there was undoubtedly a room numbered 13 in the hotel. He
felt rather sorry he had not chosen it for his own. Perhaps he might
have done the landlord a little service by occupying it, and given him
the chance of saying that a well-born English gentleman had lived in it
for three weeks and liked it very much. But probably it was used as a
servant’s room or something of the kind. After all, it was most likely
not so large or good a room as his own. And he looked drowsily about
the room, which was fairly perceptible in the half-light from the
street-lamp. It was a curious effect, he thought. Rooms usually look
larger in a dim light than a full one, but this seemed to have
contracted in length and grown proportionately higher. Well, well!
sleep was more important than these vague ruminations—and to sleep he
went.
On the day after his arrival Anderson attacked the Rigsarkiv of Viborg.
He was, as one might expect in Denmark, kindly received, and access to
all that he wished to see was made as easy for him as possible. The
documents laid before him were far more numerous and interesting than
he had at all anticipated. Besides official papers, there was a large
bundle of correspondence relating to Bishop Jörgen Friis, the last
Roman Catholic who held the see, and in these there cropped up many
amusing and what are called “intimate” details of private life and
individual character. There was much talk of a house owned by the
Bishop, but not inhabited by him, in the town. Its tenant was
apparently somewhat of a scandal and a stumbling-block to the reforming
party. He was a disgrace, they wrote, to the city; he practised secret
and wicked arts, and had sold his soul to the enemy. It was of a piece
with the gross corruption and superstition of the Babylonish Church
that such a viper and blood-sucking _Troldmand_ should be patronized
and harboured by the Bishop. The Bishop met these reproaches boldly; he
protested his own abhorrence of all such things as secret arts, and
required his antagonists to bring the matter before the proper court—of
course, the spiritual court—and sift it to the bottom. No one could be
more ready and willing than himself to condemn Mag Nicolas Francken if
the evidence showed him to have been guilty of any of the crimes
informally alleged against him.
Anderson had not time to do more than glance at the next letter of the
Protestant leader, Rasmus Nielsen, before the record office was closed
for the day, but he gathered its general tenor, which was to the effect
that Christian men were now no longer bound by the decisions of Bishops
of Rome, and that the Bishop’s Court was not, and could not be, a fit
or competent tribunal to judge so grave and weighty a cause.
On leaving the office, Mr Anderson was accompanied by the old gentleman
who presided over it, and, as they walked, the conversation very
naturally turned to the papers of which I have just been speaking.
Herr Scavenius, the Archivist of Viborg, though very well informed as
to the general run of the documents under his charge, was not a
specialist in those of the Reformation period. He was much interested
in what Anderson had to tell him about them. He looked forward with
great pleasure, he said, to seeing the publication in which Mr Anderson
spoke of embodying their contents. “This house of the Bishop Friis,” he
added, “it is a great puzzle to me where it can have stood. I have
studied carefully the topography of old Viborg, but it is most
unlucky—of the old terrier of the Bishop’s property which was made in
1560, and of which we have the greater part in the Arkiv, just the
piece which had the list of the town property is missing. Never mind.
Perhaps I shall some day succeed to find him.”
After taking some exercise—I forget exactly how or where—Anderson went
back to the Golden Lion, his supper, his game of patience, and his bed.
On the way to his room it occurred to him that he had forgotten to talk
to the landlord about the omission of Number 13 from the hotel board,
and also that he might as well make sure that Number 13 did actually
exist before he made any reference to the matter.
The decision was not difficult to arrive at. There was the door with
its number as plain as could be, and work of some kind was evidently
going on inside it, for as he neared the door he could hear footsteps
and voices, or a voice, within. During the few seconds in which he
halted to make sure of the number, the footsteps ceased, seemingly very
near the door, and he was a little startled at hearing a quick hissing
breathing as of a person in strong excitement. He went on to his own
room, and again he was surprised to find how much smaller it seemed now
than it had when he selected it. It was a slight disappointment, but
only slight. If he found it really not large enough, he could very
easily shift to another. In the meantime he wanted something—as far as
I remember it was a pocket-handkerchief—out of his portmanteau, which
had been placed by the porter on a very inadequate trestle or stool
against the wall at the farthest end of the room from his bed. Here was
a very curious thing: the portmanteau was not to be seen. It had been
moved by officious servants; doubtless the contents had been put in the
wardrobe. No, none of them were there. This was vexatious. The idea of
a theft he dismissed at once. Such things rarely happen in Denmark, but
some piece of stupidity had certainly been performed (which is not so
uncommon), and the _stuepige_ must be severely spoken to. Whatever it
was that he wanted, it was not so necessary to his comfort that he
could not wait till the morning for it, and he therefore settled not to
ring the bell and disturb the servants. He went to the window—the
right-hand window it was—and looked out on the quiet street. There was
a tall building opposite, with large spaces of dead wall; no
passers-by; a dark night; and very little to be seen of any kind.
The light was behind him, and he could see his own shadow clearly cast
on the wall opposite. Also the shadow of the bearded man in Number 11
on the left, who passed to and fro in shirtsleeves once or twice, and
was seen first brushing his hair, and later on in a nightgown. Also the
shadow of the occupant of Number 13 on the right. This might be more
interesting. Number 13 was, like himself, leaning on his elbows on the
window-sill looking out into the street. He seemed to be a tall thin
man—or was it by any chance a woman?—at least, it was someone who
covered his or her head with some kind of drapery before going to bed,
and, he thought, must be possessed of a red lamp-shade—and the lamp
must be flickering very much. There was a distinct playing up and down
of a dull red light on the opposite wall. He craned out a little to see
if he could make any more of the figure, but beyond a fold of some
light, perhaps white, material on the window-sill he could see nothing.
Now came a distant step in the street, and its approach seemed to
recall Number 13 to a sense of his exposed position, for very swiftly
and suddenly he swept aside from the window, and his red light went
out. Anderson, who had been smoking a cigarette, laid the end of it on
the window-sill and went to bed.
Next morning he was woken by the _stuepige_ with hot water, etc. He
roused himself, and after thinking out the correct Danish words, said
as distinctly as he could:
“You must not move my portmanteau. Where is it?”
As is not uncommon, the maid laughed, and went away without making any
distinct answer.
Anderson, rather irritated, sat up in bed, intending to call her back,
but he remained sitting up, staring straight in front of him. There was
his portmanteau on its trestle, exactly where he had seen the porter
put it when he first arrived. This was a rude shock for a man who
prided himself on his accuracy of observation. How it could possibly
have escaped him the night before he did not pretend to understand; at
any rate, there it was now.
The daylight showed more than the portmanteau; it let the true
proportions of the room with its three windows appear, and satisfied
its tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he
was almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to
look out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely
unobservant he must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times
over that he had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing