They return at evening A book of ghost stories

out, “Sir Arthur Paradown murdered me, his wife, on March 9th.” I gripped my chair and glanced at Margaret, but she was placidly reading. “It’s very clear to-night,” she said. It was ridiculous and yet dreadful. I felt a deep horror of myself, an awful sense of isolation and distress. The question was--could I face this persecution? But then, I might be mad! I’d see a specialist the next day. In any case I was involved in something foul. My loathing for Ethel was such that, had she been with me, I would have strangled her in cold blood. The specialist found nothing the matter, and was obviously puzzled at my visit. I told him I fancied I heard sounds which were imperceptible to others. It sounded vague and lame. He made a few obvious remarks about possible over-work, which were so nauseatingly inadequate to my trouble that I hurried away. Of course I’d only gone to him in panic, it was a witch-doctor I needed. Margaret, as arranged, rang me up at the club at lunch-time. Just as she had finished reciting a list of things she wanted me to do for her, her voice went blurred, and through it came another: “Are you beginning to be sorry you murdered me? You can tell me when I come to you at Paradown.” In the agonised daze which from then on always ensued on these occasions, I drove back home. “When I come to you.” What had she meant by that? When Margaret came out to greet me, I took her in my arms and kissed her, and let the small, clean fraction of my soul sink into her. “What’s the matter, my darling?” she asked, looking anxiously into my eyes. “Sweetest,” I replied, “if I should die, think only this of me. I adored you. There might have been a time for such a word.” I felt unstrung, diseased, clinging to her, yet forced from her by that deadly secret she never could nor should share. “What is it, Arthur, my dearest? You’ve suddenly changed. Something has happened. Tell me! Tell me! Whatever it is you can tell _me_.” A surging, clanging fury of despair and self-pity raced through me and then suddenly left me, left me limp and lying with a certain despair and subtlety about over-work and liver and moodiness, rounded off with a desperate sort of “Soon be all right again” coda. Margaret forced some sort of reassurance on herself and went to bed. I stayed up with my thoughts. The bitterest knowledge which flays the brain of those who are at once vile and highly sensitive is that of the misery they inflict on those who love them. I know some who with a hardy egoism declare that the simple must suffer and the complex must cause them to suffer, that that is an inexorable law of life, and that the sufferings of the simple are simple, tolerable little pangs, those of the complex insufferable agonies, and that the only judge of a complex temperament should be another equally complex. Alas, when murder is the symptom of complexity that flattering unction fails of its purpose. Ethel had timed her re-entry well. She just gave me time to realise the full extent of the happiness of which she would deprive me, and she doubled my misery by reflecting it back again from Margaret. How I longed to get my hands on her! Just before going up to bed I went out into the garden. As I came through the door I saw her standing there on the top step with her back to me, just as at that other time. And then it seemed as though I was rent and torn apart, and that a shadow leapt from me, a furtive poised thing, which took her by the shoulders and hurled her--hurled her---- Margaret found me lying there, and, poor darling, sent for dear old Fritaker, who tried to pretend his feet were scientifically pacing the bottom when he was hopelessly out of his depth. “Nervous strain,” he diagnosed. “Bed, and feeding up,” he prescribed. I felt like quoting _Macbeth_ to him. Yet bed and feeding up and an aching determination to spare Margaret contrived to patch me up, and for fleeting moments I felt some little reassurance. The “symptoms” of my disorder were not renewed, still I felt that Ethel knew her business, and would torture me with finesse. In that case could I train myself to nerve myself against her? Could I face the worst she could do, leading otherwise a normal, sufficiently tolerable existence? Could I deceive and so protect Margaret? I must fight for her. My rotting brain might merely be breeding these phantoms in its corruption, though relatively there seemed to me little difference between being haunted by Ethel objectively and haunting myself with her subjectively. In any case I would fight. I sent for my lawyer and had my affairs put finally in order, and a week later got up and resumed my normal life. And for some days nothing happened, and I began to wonder if, perhaps, I had had some obscure nervous disorder--a lesion which had healed itself. And then one evening, just before dusk, when Margaret was in the garden, I had occasion to go up to my dressing-room for some papers. I opened the door. There was a coffin almost at my feet, housing a shrouded figure. There was a dark patch where the head of this figure should have been, and from it came something which slithered writhing down the shroud, and then the figure began slowly to rise. I shut the door and cowered shuddering in the passage. When I felt I had strength to move I went down, drank a glass of brandy, and kept out of Margaret’s way till dinner. But by that time she was seriously frightened about me and watching me closely, so she knew at once I had had a “relapse.” I assured her that such ups and downs were to be expected, but agreed to go up to London with her for a change. Anything to make her happy, and one place was as good as another to one in my case. We went up the next day. I was out alone seeing my publisher the next morning, and when I got back to the hotel I asked the lift-attendant if my wife was in. He said she was, as he’d seen a lady entering our suite. She was not there, however, so I asked him if he was quite certain, and he said that he was. Just then his bell rang, and a moment later he came up again with Margaret. His face was a study in astonishment. I tipped him and told him it was all right. I imagine he suspected that Salt Lake City was my spiritual home. I only mention this little incident, Weldon, as evidence that these appearances were, up to a point at least, perceived by others, and therefore some evidence of my sanity. What undermined and pierced me was that as my life grew more shadowed Margaret and I were being prised apart. She was still my darling, and the fact that she loved me the sole justification for my living, but I felt I was living in an extra dimension, as it were, that the shadow of what I had done and what I was suffering was erecting a barrier between us, and soon I should be alone with my secret, isolated and yet in some deadly way still Ethel’s husband. I could see that Margaret felt this vaguely, too, and that she knew something was sweeping us apart. I used to wonder miserably how I seemed to her, and what torturing, confused, despairing realisation must have come to her. If only I could have told her! But her belief in me was all I had to cling to, and I could not tell her that I had flung Ethel down those steps! And yet, if I could have got my hands on Ethel’s throat, I’d have been a murderer again. That obscene, meagre, despicable, mercenary, murdered fool! The best thing I ever did was to crack that evil little skull. She may have had her revenge, but if there are steps in Hell--melodrama! and likely to make a bad impression on you, my dear Weldon. My poor darling Margaret thought a little amusement would be good for me, so we went to see some picture by Charlie Chaplin that evening. It would have done me more good if Ethel hadn’t come in and sat down next to me and begun to produce the picture, for something went snap in my head and there were the steps at Paradown, and Ethel came out, and I behind her, and down she went, and then her crushed and bleeding face grew and grew and thrust itself into mine. And I found myself back at Paradown in bed in my room and Margaret, white and wretched, and with a certain dread and despair on her face, bending over me. And then I remembered, and could not face her eyes. That was yesterday morning. In the evening old Fritaker doped me, and Margaret went to bed in another room. Eventually I dozed off, and woke again, and then, as I turned sleepily, someone slipped into my arms. For a moment I had the ecstasy of feeling Margaret’s heart beating against mine. And then I doubted, shook, and turned on the reading lamp beside the bed, and there was Ethel. For a moment she was warm and whole, and then she glazed, swelled and burst asunder, and became a seething bladder of corruption. That, my dear Weldon, was five hours ago. It is now 6.30. This dirty little tale is ready for its envelope addressed to you. One bullet stands between me and release--for I can’t fight _that_--and, I hope, between my hands and Ethel’s throat. I’m not mad, I’m not mad, I swear it! OR PERSONS UNKNOWN OR PERSONS UNKNOWN Mr. James Ponders rubbed his nose, and then read again his brother’s letter:-- “Dear Jim, “I’ve just got back from Madeira, and am so sorry to hear about poor old Reynolds. How you must miss him! Have you got anyone else yet? If not, I have someone I can recommend with perfect confidence. He is a man of the name of Millin, who was my valet for a time many years ago; I don’t suppose you remember him. He left me to take up ‘butling,’ and was with Harry Roper till his death. He then went to Sir Roger Wallington, a very curious cove. You may remember that there was a mighty mystery about his passing. Well, Millin was suspected of having murdered him, not that there was any motive brought forward, but simply because he was sleeping in a room near by, and there was no other man in the house. Superficially it looked fishy. However, there was no real evidence against him, and he was never arrested. Now when I read the case I _knew_ quite positively that Millin was innocent. He is one of the best fellows in the world, kind, thoughtful, a gentleman if ever there was one, besides being as efficient and hard-working as they’re made. So I asked him to come to see me. When he came, looking weary and worn, he suddenly blurted out the very curious story which I hope you’ll permit him to tell to you. “Now you know what an arrant old sceptic I am, nevertheless I believed every word of this very curious story, though it tends to drive a hole clean through all my scandalous and antediluvian materialism. “Now there are many more things in _your_ heaven and earth than in mine, so if I can believe it, you should have no difficulty in doing likewise. If you can, that act of faith will give you the finest servant in Europe, and a charming companion. His past has made it impossible for him to get a decent job, so I have been looking after him for the last two years. This seems a heaven-sent opportunity to do you and him a very good turn. At any rate see him. He is 46 and a bachelor. I hope you’re flourishing; I should like to pay you a visit in June some time, if you’d like to have me. “LEONARD. “P.S.--His address is 38, Mustard Row, Clapham.” Certainly Mr. Ponders missed Reynolds, his devoted companion for 25 years. To middle-aged bachelors with large Tudor houses, dwarfed social senses and a great appreciation of personal comfort, to perhaps a little bit selfish gentry of this sort, their butlers are, next to themselves, the most important people in the world. Mrs. Dupine did her