The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
"Are you Mr. Blake?" he asked.
"I am."
"Mr. Arthur Blake?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Arthur _Herbert_ Blake?" persisted the other, with emphasis on the
middle name.
"That is my full name," Blake answered simply, adding, as he remembered
his manners; "but won't you sit down, first, please?"
The man advanced with a curious sideways motion like a crab and took a
seat on the edge of the sofa. He put his hat on the floor at his feet,
but still kept the bag in his hand.
"I come to you from a well-wisher," he went on in oily tones, without
lifting his eyes. Blake, in his mind, ran quickly over all the people he
knew in New York who might possibly have sent such a man, while waiting
for him to supply the name. But the man had come to a full stop and was
waiting too.
"A well-wisher of _mine_?" repeated Blake, not knowing quite what else
to say.
"Just so," replied the other, still with his eyes on the floor. "A
well-wisher of yours."
"A man or--" he felt himself blushing, "or a woman?"
"That," said the man shortly, "I cannot tell you."
"You can't tell me!" exclaimed the other, wondering what was coming
next, and who in the world this mysterious well-wisher could be who sent
so discreet and mysterious a messenger.
"I cannot tell you the name," replied the man firmly. "Those are my
instructions. But I bring you something from this person, and I am to
give it to you, to take a receipt for it, and then to go away without
answering any questions."
Blake stared very hard. The man, however, never raised his eyes above
the level of the second china knob on the chest of drawers opposite. The
giving of a receipt sounded like money. Could it be that some of his
influential friends had heard of his plight? There were possibilities
that made his heart beat. At length, however, he found his tongue, for
this strange creature was determined apparently to say nothing more
until he had heard from him.
"Then, what have you got for me, please?" he asked bluntly.
By way of answer the man proceeded to open the bag. He took out a parcel
wrapped loosely in brown paper, and about the size of a large book. It
was tied with string, and the man seemed unnecessarily long untying the
knot. When at last the string was off and the paper unfolded, there
appeared a series of smaller packages inside. The man took them out very
carefully, almost as if they had been alive, Blake thought, and set them
in a row upon his knees. They were dollar bills. Blake, all in a
flutter, craned his neck forward a little to try and make out their
denomination. He read plainly the figures 100.
"There are ten thousand dollars here," said the man quietly.
The other could not suppress a little cry.
"And they are for you."
Blake simply gasped. "Ten thousand dollars!" he repeated, a queer
feeling growing up in his throat. "_Ten thousand._ Are you sure? I
mean--you mean they are for _me_?" he stammered. He felt quite silly
with excitement, and grew more so with every minute, as the man
maintained a perfect silence. Was it not a dream? Wouldn't the man put
them back in the bag presently and say it was a mistake, and they were
meant for somebody else? He could not believe his eyes or his ears. Yet,
in a sense, it was possible. He had read of such things in books, and
even come across them in his experience of the courts--the erratic and
generous philanthropist who is determined to do his good deed and to get
no thanks or acknowledgment for it. Still, it seemed almost incredible.
His troubles began to melt away like bubbles in the sun; he thought of
the other fellows when they came in, and what he would have to tell
them; he thought of the German landlady and the arrears of rent, of
regular food and clean linen, and books and music, of the chance of
getting into some respectable business, of--well, of as many things as
it is possible to think of when excitement and surprise fling wide open
the gates of the imagination.
The man, meanwhile, began quietly to count over the packages aloud from
one to ten, and then to count the bills in each separate packet, also
from one to ten. Yes, there were ten little heaps, each containing ten
bills of a hundred-dollar denomination. That made ten thousand dollars.
Blake had never seen so much money in a single lump in his life before;
and for many months of privation and discomfort he had not known the
"feel" of a twenty-dollar note, much less of a hundred-dollar one. He
heard them crackle under the man's fingers, and it was like crisp
laughter in his ears. The bills were evidently new and unused.
But, side by side with the excitement caused by the shock of such an
event, Blake's caution, acquired by a year of vivid New York experience,
was meanwhile beginning to assert itself. It all seemed just a little
too much out of the likely order of things to be quite right. The police
courts had taught him the amazing ingenuity of the criminal mind, as
well as something of the plots and devices by which the unwary are
beguiled into the dark places where blackmail may be levied with
impunity. New York, as a matter of fact, just at that time was literally
undermined with the secret ways of the blackmailers, the green-goods
men, and other police-protected abominations; and the only weak point
in the supposition that this was part of some such proceeding was the
selection of himself--a poor newspaper reporter--as a victim. It did
seem absurd, but then the whole thing was so out of the ordinary, and
the thought once having entered his mind, was not so easily got rid of.
Blake resolved to be very cautious.
The man meanwhile, though he never appeared to raise his eyes from the
carpet, had been watching him closely all the time.
"If you will give me a receipt I'll leave the money at once," he said,
with just a vestige of impatience in his tone, as if he were anxious to
bring the matter to a conclusion as soon as possible.
"But you say it is quite impossible for you to tell me the name of my
well-wisher, or why _she_ sends me such a large sum of money in this
extraordinary way?"
"The money is sent to you because you are in need of it," returned the
other; "and it is a present without conditions of any sort attached. You
have to give me a receipt only to satisfy the sender that it has reached
your hands. The money will never be asked of you again."
Blake noticed two things from this answer: first, that the man was not
to be caught into betraying the sex of the well-wisher; and secondly,
that he was in some hurry to complete the transaction. For he was now
giving reasons, attractive reasons, why he should accept the money and
make out the receipt.
Suddenly it flashed across his mind that if he took the money and gave
the receipt _before a witness_, nothing very disastrous could come of
the affair. It would protect him against blackmail, if this was, after
all, a plot of some sort with blackmail in it; whereas, if the man were
a madman, or a criminal who was getting rid of a portion of his
ill-gotten gains to divert suspicion, or if any other improbable
explanation turned out to be the true one, there was no great harm done,
and he could hold the money till it was claimed, or advertised for in
the newspapers. His mind rapidly ran over these possibilities, though,
of course, under the stress of excitement, he was unable to weigh any of
them properly; then he turned to his strange visitor again and said
quietly--
"I will take the money, although I must say it seems to me a very
unusual transaction, and I will give you for it such a receipt as I
think proper under the circumstances."
"A proper receipt is all I want," was the answer.
"I mean by that a receipt before a proper witness--"
"Perfectly satisfactory," interrupted the man, his eyes still on the
carpet. "Only, it must be dated, and headed with your address here in
the correct way."
Blake could see no possible objection to this, and he at once proceeded
to obtain his witness. The person he had in his mind was a Mr. Barclay,
who occupied the room above his own; an old gentleman who had retired
from business and who, the landlady always said, was a miser, and kept
large sums secreted in his room. He was, at any rate, a perfectly
respectable man and would make an admirable witness to a transaction of
this sort. Blake made an apology and rose to fetch him, crossing the
room in front of the sofa where the man sat, in order to reach the door.
As he did so, he saw for the first time the _other side_ of his
visitor's face, the side that had been always so carefully turned away
from him.
There was a broad smear of blood down the skin from the ear to the
neck. It glistened in the gaslight.
Blake never knew how he managed to smother the cry that sprang to his
lips, but smother it he did. In a second he was at the door, his knees
trembling, his mind in a sudden and dreadful turmoil.
His main object, so far as he could recollect afterwards, was to escape
from the room as if he had noticed nothing, so as not to arouse the
other's suspicions. The man's eyes were always on the carpet, and
probably, Blake hoped, he had not noticed the consternation that must
have been written plainly on his face. At any rate he had uttered no
cry.
In another second he would have been in the passage, when suddenly he
met a pair of wicked, staring eyes fixed intently and with a cunning
smile upon his own. It was the other's face in the mirror calmly
watching his every movement.
Instantly, all his powers of reflection flew to the winds, and he
thought only upon the desirability of getting help at once. He tore
upstairs, his heart in his mouth. Barclay must come to his aid. This
matter was serious--perhaps horribly serious. Taking the money, or
giving a receipt, or having anything at all to do with it became an
impossibility. Here was crime. He felt certain of it.
In three bounds he reached the next landing and began to hammer at the
old miser's door as if his very life depended on it. For a long time he
could get no answer. His fists seemed to make no noise. He might have
been knocking on cotton wool, and the thought dashed through his brain
that it was all just like the terror of a nightmare.
Barclay, evidently, was still out, or else sound asleep. But the other
simply could not wait a minute longer in suspense. He turned the handle
and walked into the room. At first he saw nothing for the darkness, and
made sure the owner of the room was out; but the moment the light from
the passage began a little to disperse the gloom, he saw the old man, to
his immense relief, lying asleep on the bed.
Blake opened the door to its widest to get more light and then walked
quickly up to the bed. He now saw the figure more plainly, and noted
that it was dressed and lay only upon the outside of the bed. It struck
him, too, that he was sleeping in a very odd, almost an unnatural,
position.
Something clutched at his heart as he looked closer. He stumbled over a
chair and found the matches. Calling upon Barclay the whole time to wake
up and come downstairs with him, he blundered across the floor, a
dreadful thought in his mind, and lit the gas over the table. It seemed
strange that there was no movement or reply to his shouting. But it no
longer seemed strange when at length he turned, in the full glare of the
gas, and saw the old man lying huddled up into a ghastly heap on the
bed, his throat cut across from ear to ear.
And all over the carpet lay new dollar bills, crisp and clean like those
he had left downstairs, and strewn about in little heaps.
For a moment Blake stood stock-still, bereft of all power of movement.
The next, his courage returned, and he fled from the room and dashed
downstairs, taking five steps at a time. He reached the bottom and tore