The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
re-establish the firm, and she will never know what was done with it.
With that amount, Otto, you know I can recoup all these terrible losses,
and in less than a year all will be repaid. But without it. . . . You must
get it, Otto. Hear me, you must. Am I to be arrested for the misuse of
trust moneys? Is our honoured name to be cursed and spat on?" The old
man choked and stammered in his anger and desperation.
Shorthouse stood shivering in the darkness and listening in spite of
himself. The conversation had carried him along with it, and he had been
for some reason afraid to let his neighbourhood be known. But at this
point he realised that he had listened too long and that he must inform
the two men that they could be overheard to every single syllable. So he
coughed loudly, and at the same time rattled the handle of his door. It
seemed to have no effect, for the voices continued just as loudly as
before, the son protesting and the father growing more and more angry.
He coughed again persistently, and also contrived purposely in the
darkness to tumble against the partition, feeling the thin boards yield
easily under his weight, and making a considerable noise in so doing.
But the voices went on unconcernedly, and louder than ever. Could it be
possible they had not heard?
By this time Jim was more concerned about his own sleep than the
morality of overhearing the private scandals of his neighbours, and he
went out into the passage and knocked smartly at their door. Instantly,
as if by magic, the sounds ceased. Everything dropped into utter
silence. There was no light under the door and not a whisper could be
heard within. He knocked again, but received no answer.
"Gentlemen," he began at length, with his lips close to the keyhole and
in German, "please do not talk so loud. I can overhear all you say in
the next room. Besides, it is very late, and I wish to sleep."
He paused and listened, but no answer was forthcoming. He turned the
handle and found the door was locked. Not a sound broke the stillness of
the night except the faint swish of the wind over the skylight and the
creaking of a board here and there in the house below. The cold air of a
very early morning crept down the passage, and made him shiver. The
silence of the house began to impress him disagreeably. He looked behind
him and about him, hoping, and yet fearing, that something would break
the stillness. The voices still seemed to ring on in his ears; but that
sudden silence, when he knocked at the door, affected him far more
unpleasantly than the voices, and put strange thoughts in his
brain--thoughts he did not like or approve.
Moving stealthily from the door, he peered over the banisters into the
space below. It was like a deep vault that might conceal in its shadows
anything that was not good. It was not difficult to fancy he saw an
indistinct moving to-and-fro below him. Was that a figure sitting on the
stairs peering up obliquely at him out of hideous eyes? Was that a sound
of whispering and shuffling down there in the dark halls and forsaken
landings? Was it something more than the inarticulate murmur of the
night?
The wind made an effort overhead, singing over the skylight, and the
door behind him rattled and made him start. He turned to go back to his
room, and the draught closed the door slowly in his face as if there
were someone pressing against it from the other side. When he pushed it
open and went in, a hundred shadowy forms seemed to dart swiftly and
silently back to their corners and hiding-places. But in the adjoining
room the sounds had entirely ceased, and Shorthouse soon crept into bed,
and left the house with its inmates, waking or sleeping, to take care of
themselves, while he entered the region of dreams and silence.
Next day, strong in the common sense that the sunlight brings, he
determined to lodge a complaint against the noisy occupants of the next
room and make the landlady request them to modify their voices at such
late hours of the night and morning. But it so happened that she was not
to be seen that day, and when he returned from the office at midnight it
was, of course, too late.
Looking under the door as he came up to bed he noticed that there was no
light, and concluded that the Germans were not in. So much the better.
He went to sleep about one o'clock, fully decided that if they came up
later and woke him with their horrible noises he would not rest till he
had roused the landlady and made her reprove them with that
authoritative twang, in which every word was like the lash of a metallic
whip.
However, there proved to be no need for such drastic measures, for
Shorthouse slumbered peacefully all night, and his dreams--chiefly of
the fields of grain and flocks of sheep on the far-away farms of his
father's estate--were permitted to run their fanciful course unbroken.
Two nights later, however, when he came home tired out, after a
difficult day, and wet and blown about by one of the wickedest storms he
had ever seen, his dreams--always of the fields and sheep--were not
destined to be so undisturbed.
He had already dozed off in that delicious glow that follows the removal
of wet clothes and the immediate snuggling under warm blankets, when his
consciousness, hovering on the borderland between sleep and waking, was
vaguely troubled by a sound that rose indistinctly from the depths of
the house, and, between the gusts of wind and rain, reached his ears
with an accompanying sense of uneasiness and discomfort. It rose on the
night air with some pretence of regularity, dying away again in the roar
of the wind to reassert itself distantly in the deep, brief hushes of
the storm.
For a few minutes Jim's dreams were coloured only--tinged, as it were,
by this impression of fear approaching from somewhere insensibly upon
him. His consciousness, at first, refused to be drawn back from that
enchanted region where it had wandered, and he did not immediately
awaken. But the nature of his dreams changed unpleasantly. He saw the
sheep suddenly run huddled together, as though frightened by the
neighbourhood of an enemy, while the fields of waving corn became
agitated as though some monster were moving uncouthly among the crowded
stalks. The sky grew dark, and in his dream an awful sound came
somewhere from the clouds. It was in reality the sound downstairs
growing more distinct.
Shorthouse shifted uneasily across the bed with something like a groan
of distress. The next minute he awoke, and found himself sitting
straight up in bed--listening. Was it a nightmare? Had he been dreaming
evil dreams, that his flesh crawled and the hair stirred on his head?
The room was dark and silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and
drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows. How
nice it would be--the thought flashed through his mind--if all winds,
like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish
noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they
had such a different sound. If only--
Hark! It was no dream after all, for the sound was momentarily growing
louder, and its _cause_ was coming up the stairs. He found himself
speculating feebly what this cause might be, but the sound was still too
indistinct to enable him to arrive at any definite conclusion.
The voice of a church clock striking two made itself heard above the
wind. It was just about the hour when the Germans had commenced their
performance three nights before. Shorthouse made up his mind that if
they began it again he would not put up with it for very long. Yet he
was already horribly conscious of the difficulty he would have of
getting out of bed. The clothes were so warm and comforting against his
back. The sound, still steadily coming nearer, had by this time become
differentiated from the confused clamour of the elements, and had
resolved itself into the footsteps of one or more persons.
"The Germans, hang 'em!" thought Jim. "But what on earth is the matter
with me? I never felt so queer in all my life."
He was trembling all over, and felt as cold as though he were in a
freezing atmosphere. His nerves were steady enough, and he felt no
diminution of physical courage, but he was conscious of a curious sense
of malaise and trepidation, such as even the most vigorous men have been
known to experience when in the first grip of some horrible and deadly
disease. As the footsteps approached this feeling of weakness increased.
He felt a strange lassitude creeping over him, a sort of exhaustion,
accompanied by a growing numbness in the extremities, and a sensation of
dreaminess in the head, as if perhaps the consciousness were leaving its
accustomed seat in the brain and preparing to act on another plane. Yet,
strange to say, as the vitality was slowly withdrawn from his body, his
senses seemed to grow more acute.
Meanwhile the steps were already on the landing at the top of the
stairs, and Shorthouse, still sitting upright in bed, heard a heavy body
brush past his door and along the wall outside, almost immediately
afterwards the loud knocking of someone's knuckles on the door of the
adjoining room.
Instantly, though so far not a sound had proceeded from within, he
heard, through the thin partition, a chair pushed back and a man quickly
cross the floor and open the door.
"Ah! it's you," he heard in the son's voice. Had the fellow, then, been
sitting silently in there all this time, waiting for his father's
arrival? To Shorthouse it came not as a pleasant reflection by any
means.
There was no answer to this dubious greeting, but the door was closed
quickly, and then there was a sound as if a bag or parcel had been
thrown on a wooden table and had slid some distance across it before
stopping.
"What's that?" asked the son, with anxiety in his tone.
"You may know before I go," returned the other gruffly. Indeed his voice
was more than gruff: it betrayed ill-suppressed passion.
Shorthouse was conscious of a strong desire to stop the conversation
before it proceeded any further, but somehow or other his will was not
equal to the task, and he could not get out of bed. The conversation
went on, every tone and inflexion distinctly audible above the noise of
the storm.
In a low voice the father continued. Jim missed some of the words at the
beginning of the sentence. It ended with: " . . . but now they've all left,
and I've managed to get up to you. You know what I've come for." There
was distinct menace in his tone.
"Yes," returned the other; "I have been waiting."
"And the money?" asked the father impatiently.
No answer.
"You've had three days to get it in, and I've contrived to stave off the
worst so far--but to-morrow is the end."
No answer.
"Speak, Otto! What have you got for me? Speak, my son; for God's sake,
tell me."
There was a moment's silence, during which the old man's vibrating
accents seemed to echo through the rooms. Then came in a low voice the
answer--
"I have nothing."
"Otto!" cried the other with passion, "nothing!"
"I can get nothing," came almost in a whisper.
"You lie!" cried the other, in a half-stifled voice. "I swear you lie.
Give me the money."
A chair was heard scraping along the floor. Evidently the men had been
sitting over the table, and one of them had risen. Shorthouse heard the
bag or parcel drawn across the table, and then a step as if one of the
men was crossing to the door.
"Father, what's in that? I must know," said Otto, with the first signs
of determination in his voice. There must have been an effort on the
son's part to gain possession of the parcel in question, and on the
father's to retain it, for between them it fell to the ground. A curious