The haunted house
leaned forward painfully to take up the poker and stir the fire. But he
dropped it with a loud clatter that startled him again.
“Foolishness!” he muttered.
He heard the knock once again. This time he did not say “Come in!” He
nerved himself to rise painfully from his chair, and threw the door
wide open. There was nothing but empty darkness outside. He shut the
door again and fell rather than sank into the place he had just left.
“George,” he said to himself, half aloud, “George, pull yerself
together. This’ll never do! You’re ’igh-strung, George, that’s what you
are; remember what the doctor said about yer blood pressing. Wot was it
’e said? He said, ‘No whisky,’ ’e said. Well, I don’t know wot’s right
about that, but I know it steadies me.” He stretched out his arm to
the table by his side, and took up his flask from where it lay on the
table—a large flask with a silver cup, and his coat of arms—supporters
talbots, three mancuses quartered chevron and the devil and all on a
field azure—engraved thereon. It shone under the electric shaded light
on the table and the warmer glow of the fire. Other light in the room
there was none.
He slowly poured out the strong drink into the silver.
“It’ll calm yer, George,” he said.
Below, he heard the noise of many voices. Too many, he thought, for the
few guests. But it was company like. Then he heard people moving across
the lawn. Perhaps some neighbours had come in, and gone again. Then the
voices quieted down. He took his first sip of the whisky, pre-war.
“That’s better, George,” he said. “That’ll put yer right.”
His back, as he sat in the deep chair facing the fire, was to the side
door which led to the little box-room. It opened so noiselessly that he
heard no sound, tense though his nerves were.
He waited a moment, less unmanned, raising the silver cup again for
a second sip—when there came, whether within his mind or from the
air without he could not tell, a hint of rustling, a suspicion of a
Presence in the room—near the bed. The start stopped the cup as he
still held it in his hand, and he poised it in mid-air, staring—there
came the pleading words from very far away:
“Not again, George! Oh, not again! It’s yer pison!”
“It’s me mother’s voice,” groaned the old man in a dreadful whisper.
He let the cup fall to the floor at his feet, careless of the liquor
running out upon the rug. His hand shook, as did his whole body.
“’Er voice,” he said again, frozen with fear.
A hand came out from behind the head of the bed—a hand the wrist of
which was draped in black. Lord Mere de Beaurivage did not see it—he
was staring into the air before him—it was Her Voice.
The hand found the switch, and all was suddenly dark, save for the glow
of the fire. He had heard but the slightest of sounds—he looked round
into that darkness—and there he saw, dreadfully distinct in the half
light which the glowing coals threw upon the dull red damask and the
tapestry—what he had seen too often that day in his unhappy mind. There
IT stood, for the half second in which he still retained his sanity.
He was on his gouty feet groping towards it, his mouth open and giving
small inarticular sounds. IT was there by the side of the bed against
the wall, agleam on the sword-hilt, tall, black, too vague, but the
white ruff standing out glaring—and above that ruff nothing: only the
wall. Even as he looked he saw a hand which appeared from beneath the
cloak slowly moving. He gave a loud shriek and crashed to the ground.
In a flash the figure had passed the fallen man, and was through the
door into the side room, and had turned the key. But quick as the
motion was, even as he turned the key in the lock the great swirl of
feet was running up the sounding wood of the staircase, the main door
of the bedroom was thrown open, all the lights were turned on, and the
hubbub of guests and servants flocked to what might be the living or
the dead.
Amathea was the first of them, kneeling by her husband, trying to lift
him up in her arms, calling him by his name, and sobbing loudly.
Three of the menservants hoisted the motionless form and got it on to
the bed. He was breathing. His eyes opened for a moment, but he stared
vacantly, seeing no one, and with yet another loud cry and a shudder
his head fell back upon the pillow.
CHAPTER XV
All that night was a changed world for Rackham: messengers sent hither
and thither; the telephone at work; a nurse from the Cottage Hospital;
another nurse urgently sent for from Lewes; the local practitioner
jumping into his trousers hurriedly after an insufficient sleep, and
also jumping out of his skin for joy when he heard the great name of
his patient; lanterns going back and forth through the spring night,
as one and another was sent upon a further errand; motors purring,
buzzing, hooting, and every human being stirred up to an unnatural
vigil.
Meanwhile, upstairs Amathea sat steadfast by her husband’s bed, glad
to hear his breathing, for it told her that he lived. She looked like
a vulgar queen of the Renaissance, of the swollen commercial families,
with big lips curved downwards, determined on what she should do. Anger
was flaming in her heart.
She sent order after order, and Hilda Maple’s servants humbly obeyed.
She had them telephone for an ambulance to be at Rackham Catchings by
nine the next morning—not a second later, or it would be the worse
for them; and it had to be the best ambulance Maxton, who is open all
night, could supply. It was she who had sent for the nurses and the
doctors, often doubling her hostess’ orders.
She did more. She was determined that her George should return to
recover—if recovery Gawd would grant him—in his own house in Mayfair.
She knew the servants would have gone to bed, and she sent the message
through an all-night office to knock the place up and compel them to
have everything ready against the morning.
She thought of everything. Yet she did all this from where she sat,
without moving from the bedside, despatching one after another to do
her will.
It was half-past one o’clock in the small hours before she had
received the final replies. She was still alone in the room, with the
half-conscious, muttering man. She had given terrible commands that
no one was to be admitted till she allowed it; and the nurses and
the doctors were waiting, with the torturedly-anxious Hilda in the
drawing-room below.
George Huggins stirred. Amathea leaned over the bed and tried to catch
what confused words were coming from those lips which she had known for
a lifetime, and so much loved. The old fellow propped himself up on his
elbow, a momentary gleam of sanity entered his eyes as they looked into
hers.
“Mattie,” he whispered hoarsely, “is that you?”
He smiled foolishly. Then his face changed dreadfully, and he went on
in rising tones:
“It ’ad no ’ed, it ’ad no ’ed, Mattie! Oh! OH! OH!” and with a horrible
groan he sank back, and went on muttering—but half sitting up at
intervals and pointing, and catching her, and saying, “There ’tis!
There ’tis! Keep it awye, Mattie! Keep it awye!”
She knew what had happened. He had seen IT. Her anger rose, enormous;
but she contained it. She allowed the doctors and the nurses to come
in. Hilda Maple, already stricken with fatigue, and showing her age
under the strain, timidly followed them; but Amathea, Lady Mere de
Beaurivage, on seeing her hostess, called out strongly, “Not that un!
Keep ’er out, keep ’er out!” And poor Hilda had capitulated and retired.
The servants had gone to bed; Hilda herself lay down, all dressed as
she was, half loosened and no more, to catch if she could an hour or
two of sleep—but sleep came not to her.
John in his room, after helping to run innumerable messages and
counter-messages, tried to sleep also, and did sleep a little,
fitfully; but his conscience troubled him.
Lord Hellup thought it his duty to stay awake in the Little Red Room,
and he did so too, with Motley and successive cigars.
Of all in that household only Isabeau slept placidly, when she had
seen it all fixed up: so great conquerors on the night of victory.
So William of Falaise in his tent after Hastings; so Mr. Gulp, at
the Ritz after the Pugley deal, before he resigned in affluence his
Secretaryship of State.
While the agony thus proceeded upstairs, Lord Hambourne showed
initiative beyond his academic kind. But he was one whose wits had been
sharpened by poverty. It was not the first time in his life that he had
displayed those qualities which, with better luck, make millions. Had
he not scooped the Chair of Psychology? Here was another little scoop,
and he was going to pick it up. He had got the main event at once,
overhearing two phrases in the frightened muttering of the servant.
Leaving them to their agony upstairs, he himself went quietly into the
deserted drawing-room, took up the telephone and got on to _The Howl_.
It was not too late for a stop-press in that enterprising paper, at any
rate for the London edition.
Carter was at the other end of the wire. No. It was not to be on the
usual terms. He told Carter with great rapidity in a low, precise tone,
conquering his stammer, what had happened, but he gave neither the
place nor the name.
No. It was not to be in the contract. It would be a separate
£100—posted that day. Would he accept the verbal promise on the
telephone? He would. Carter could not undertake the responsibility?
Then he must do without the scoop. Oh, he could, could he? All right.
He would trust him. The place was Rackham Catchings, and the old fellow
was Bruvvish himself.... Yes, it _was_ a scoop, wasn’t it? Would Carter
leave word for someone to be there when he rang up again, so that they
could go on with it in the evening paper? It would be difficult for
him to get to the telephone after they were down. He must have someone
there to take it between six and seven o’clock in the morning. Yes,
that was all.
He hung up the receiver, just in time, as the shuffling of someone
descending came down the stairs, while above altercation and confused
advice filled the air. He managed to get into the hall and to mix with
them before they had noticed his absence.
* * * * *
In the grey light of morning Lord Hambourne had taken up the telephone
again. He felt secure. They had all been lying down, dressed as they
were, exhausted, and he himself in his evening clothes, looking
crumpled and dishevelled in the new light, was the only one doing
business.
He gave rapid advice to Lord Toronto’s other serfs. The old boy was
very bad indeed, he thought he would be moved that morning. He
advised someone from _The Howl_ to be sent to photograph the house and
if possible the scene when the ambulance left. It would make a good
picture. But he warned them that Mrs. Maple had got a policeman in
plain clothes on the place, and there were orders to allow no one to
come near. She didn’t want it in the papers—he laughed, gently, and
there was another much louder laugh at the other end of the wire. No,
he could not send a sketch of the ghost. They must do that. They could
get that little drunken artist of theirs to make a line sketch—just a
long black cloak and a sword and a big Elizabethan ruff, and no head,
and an old curtained bed close by.
Even as he was talking he dropped the receiver at the sound of a
piteous wail. It was Betsy Broom, casting her dustpan and brush to the
winds and calling on her maker to deliver her from evil. Lord Hambourne