The haunted house
himself was surprised to find how much his nerves were on edge. Betsy
Broom might have been the ghost, he felt so startled. But he had the
sense to quiet her.
“Hold your tongue,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, sir,” said the unfortunate young woman, “I thought you was the
ghost! That’s the third time I thought I seen it!”
Lord Hambourne made another of those rapid decisions which I sincerely
hope will sooner or later lead him to an independent income. He did not
like parting with money, and he had very little to part with. But he
decided it was worth his while; and after all, he had won at bridge. He
took a crumpled ten-shilling note out of his waistcoat pocket, and put
it into Betsy’s hand.
“Betsy,” he said, “if I were you I wouldn’t talk too much about my
telephoning. Their nerves are all on edge, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” said the simple girl, bobbing and grateful, “I quite
understand.” But she was still trembling. He patted her paternally upon
the shoulder.
“There,” he said. “It’s all right. Even if there was anything, you
wouldn’t see it after sunrise, you know.”
“So I’ve always heard, sir,” answered Betsy, with due acknowledgment of
his learning. “That and runnin’ water lays ’em.”
“Yes, you’re right, Betsy,” he said loftily; and then gently left the
scene of his misdeeds, hoping that the office would not commit the
unpardonable folly of ringing him up. But he ought to have warned them.
* * * * *
We still have relics of an age when the Press could be managed by
people of influence, because its owners, though millionaires, were
commonly still climbing. Hilda Maple was of that age. She was quite
secure in her own mind after she had telephoned to five or six London
offices that she could keep the thing out of the papers. There would
be no reporters, at any rate, and it was a relief, and she had seen to
a detective coming to watch the place against photographers. She had
ordered that loudly before she had lain down, and Lord Hambourne had
heard her.
Therefore it was that, while yet the morning was very young, and while
there was still a dew upon the gardens of Rackham—so quiet that the
second under-gardener could hear the low moans proceeding from the
patient’s bedroom—a figure appeared by a very singular approach, to
wit, pushing its way through the laurels to the west-south-west of the
main approach. It would seem that the figure had avoided the publicity
of the lodge, and preferred its own method of entry, which was by
crawling under a barbed-wire fence, crashing through the brushwood and
finding its way, a little torn and bleeding, to the edge of the lawn in
front of the house. But with great gallantry the figure had borne with
him throughout this adventure a huge contraption, a tripod covered with
a black cloth, and reminiscent of the photography of thirty years ago.
And the name of the figure was Columbus.
It was not his real name. It was the name facetiously given him in
his good-nature and condescension by his master, Lord Toronto, who,
having asked upon one occasion which serf of his had managed to secure
unexpected photographs, in double quick time, of other people’s very
private and intimate affairs, was respectfully given the efficient
dependant’s name. His lordship had thereupon christened the good serf
Columbus, because he got there, and Columbus he continued to be called.
It was the method of Columbus, I say, whenever he had to surprise
the vigilance of those whose lack of public spirit prompted them to
elude the Press, to carry with him this huge superstructure upon a
tripod, covered with a black cloth. He knew well enough the attention
it would excite, the gathering of menials ordering him off the place,
even the approach of the police. But its weight and size also meant
that he could not be driven off at a moment’s notice, and during the
altercation nothing was easier than to bring out his little Zeiss
camera on the sly and snap the whole concern, unbeknownst.
For this also had Columbus everything prepared upon that early morning.
He put himself squarely facing the antique front of Rackham Catchings;
he elaborately fixed the tripod; he covered his head with the cloth;
he went through all the gestures of a performance dear to our fathers.
Nor was he, as one might imagine, incapacitated by this attitude from
watching his foes; for the camera box beneath the cloth was a fake and
in place of its glass a large round hole stared empty, through which
all could be naturally observed. He swept the landscape. He patiently
waited the arrival of the servants, perhaps with police. He had his
expostulations ready in his mind; and, nicely tucked away, concealed
in the hollow between his left arm and his left side, the little Zeiss
that was to do the trick. He wanted “figures in the foreground.” He got
more than he bargained for.
No servant appeared. But what did at last saunter into the bright
circle framed in black was something very different. By the boots, a
policeman; by the clothes, and especially the sharply pressed trousers,
an advertisement for that which the vulgar call ready-to-wear and the
gentle ready-made; by the hat, a scandal to God and man; by the face,
a fool. My reader has divined him with her customary skill. It was Mr.
Pretherton, the Detective.
With a fine nonchalance Mr. Pretherton strolled across the green, as
one taking the morning air. He came up to Columbus, still distracted,
still, as it were, careless of mundane things. He lifted a corner of
the black cloth and whispered in the ear of the stooping expert:
“It may interest you to know that I am a member of the Force in plain
clothes.”
Columbus answered—to himself:
“Forty-three and one-tenth, diameter eight,” and proceeded to turn a
little screw which was not there.
“And the sooner you make off, young man,” went on the redoubtable
Pretherton, lifting the corner of the cloth again, but turning his face
towards the house, as though he were taking part in the photography,
“the better for you, I can tell you.”
To which Columbus very simply replied, but again to himself and not to
his interlocutor:
“Double for morning light; cloudy sky, no deep shadows.”
Upon the scene of this blinded duel there appeared at some little way
off, round a corner of the house, an unexpected ally, and an unexpected
enemy, of the one and the other protagonist.
They were Bo with the hound Lovey-Lad.
Bo (Oh, the efficiency of the efficient!) had caught the whole
situation in a moment. She had inherited, here again, that quality in
the eminent peer her progenitor whereby the market may be seized at a
glance. The Press was snapping the house. A bull point for the Bo-Jacko
crowd. That fellow whom she had suspected was interfering; a bear point
for same. To have the tragedy in the papers would complete the ruin of
Aunt Hilda’s market. To keep it out was the object of the interfering
fellow in the policeman’s boots.
The greatest generals are capable in the heat of action of an ambiguous
order. It must be admitted in defence of Lovey-Lad that he could hardly
have distinguished between the friend and the enemy of his mistress.
When, therefore, he heard from Bo’s arched lips the glad words “Siccum,
boy!” he leapt forward like a shell from a gun, not for the evil
Pretherton, but alas! for the well-working Columbus. And after all, how
should not your bow-legged, hideous, brass-banded bulldog befriend a
common human who might be anybody’s friend and rather go for a monster
with three wooden legs, two trouser ends and no head?
Through the round empty aperture, where the object glass was not,
Columbus saw his Fate hurtling at him. Without pausing to arbitrate on
moral right, he fled incontinent. And Mr. Pretherton, very innocently
and naturally thinking that someone from the household which he was
serving had supported his effort, laughed heartily at the clumsy
efforts of the devoted prey, who ran regardless, blinded by the black
cloth, straight for the rhododendrons, the first cover he could find.
But dogs, since they are quite unintelligent, are admirably subject to
discipline. Bo (who had learned the art in childhood and had happily
retained it) put two fingers between her teeth and with a piercing
whistle recalled the well-meaning but mistaken hound. What it must
have cost Lovey-Lad to pull up again upon the common earth, to lose his
quarry, to turn back, slinking—only a dog can know. But the whistle had
been imperative, and he had obeyed. He came back panting, not without
an irresolute halt now and then and a glance back at the strange morsel
he had missed, as Columbus, finding the chase had failed, recovered
himself, folded his cloth upon his arm, and, grasping his tripod, came
forward somewhat timidly to explain.
But Bo gave him no opportunity. She did not want explanations. She
wanted a frank friendship and excellent publicity for the great Rackham
Catchings tragedy—for the ghost—in the Press of the metropolis; and
notably in that of Lord Toronto, as being to her certain knowledge the
most vulgar of all the six vulgarians who control our great organs of
opinion.
She could trust Lord Toronto to have it all over London that evening.
Meanwhile she must be rid of Hilda’s policeman.
The thing had not taken sixty seconds from the moment when Lovey-Lad
had shot forward to the moment when he came back unsatisfied, and
almost daring to growl, and sat on his haunches panting at his
mistress’ feet. Mr. Pretherton was still smiling the smile of triumph,
Columbus was still in hesitating stance, wondering how he would be
received, when Bo gave her second order, without hesitation, rapidly,
and this time more directly, pointing with an unashamed finger at
her victim, and launched the Friend of Man at the Detective.
Then was it seen with what majesty the British policeman bolts! Note to
what skill, what promptitude, what immediate appreciation of reality,
the public civilian forces of our beloved country are trained!
The flight of Columbus from Lovey-Lad had been a turtle’s waddle, hasty
though it was, compared with the whizz of the detective. Lovey-Lad
never reached him. He was through the brushwood, under the wire and
over the stone coping in a flash; and, her purpose accomplished, his
mistress called him back to heel.
What happens in the souls of dogs when they are used for retrievers,
for pointers, for any object at all except their own (and they are
so used all the time)? Is it triumph in their skill, and an obscure
but loyal understanding that they have served their masters, mere
disappointment, bewilderment, or what? I know not. But I fancy a
mixture of all these things, from the description I have had of what
lay upon Lovey-Lad’s features as he came back the second time panting,
still hungry, to his mistress’ feet. He had torn nothing, he had bitten
nothing; but he had gloriously chased him whom he had been sent to
destroy—let that suffice.
Columbus came back extending a large hand towards Bo with the
self-possession of his kind. Bo took it with the simplicity of hers.
When he thanked her, as one who had saved his life, and when they had
both remarked upon the absurd picture presented by the detective in
his flight, a very few words made clearer still what Bo had already
discovered. With charming good nature the young woman sought out for
the journalist the exact point of vantage whence best Rackham Catchings
might be snapped. She was torn between her desire for a striking
picture which no one could miss and a contradictory desire for early