Three Ghost Stories
it. At the same period, and as a part of the same arrangement,—the door
had been nailed up and canvased over.
I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions to my
servant before he went to bed. My face was towards the only available
door of communication with the dressing-room, and it was closed. My
servant’s back was towards that door. While I was speaking to him, I saw
it open, and a man look in, who very earnestly and mysteriously beckoned
to me. That man was the man who had gone second of the two along
Piccadilly, and whose face was of the colour of impure wax.
The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed the door. With no
longer pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I opened the
dressing-room door, and looked in. I had a lighted candle already in my
hand. I felt no inward expectation of seeing the figure in the
dressing-room, and I did not see it there.
Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, and said:
“Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses I fancied I saw a —”
As I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden start he trembled
violently, and said, “O Lord, yes, sir! A dead man beckoning!”
Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached
servant for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of having
seen any such figure, until I touched him. The change in him was so
startling, when I touched him, that I fully believe he derived his
impression in some occult manner from me at that instant.
I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and was
glad to take one myself. Of what had preceded that night’s phenomenon, I
told him not a single word. Reflecting on it, I was absolutely certain
that I had never seen that face before, except on the one occasion in
Piccadilly. Comparing its expression when beckoning at the door with its
expression when it had stared up at me as I stood at my window, I came to
the conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought to fasten itself
upon my memory, and that on the second occasion it had made sure of being
immediately remembered.
I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty,
difficult to explain, that the figure would not return. At daylight I
fell into a heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John Derrick’s
coming to my bedside with a paper in his hand.
This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at the
door between its bearer and my servant. It was a summons to me to serve
upon a Jury at the forthcoming Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at
the Old Bailey. I had never before been summoned on such a Jury, as John
Derrick well knew. He believed—I am not certain at this hour whether
with reason or otherwise—that that class of Jurors were customarily
chosen on a lower qualification than mine, and he had at first refused to
accept the summons. The man who served it had taken the matter very
coolly. He had said that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to
him; there the summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril,
and not at his.
For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take
no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias,
influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly
sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided,
as a break in the monotony of my life, that I would go.
The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of November. There
was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively black and
in the last degree oppressive East of Temple Bar. I found the passages
and staircases of the Court-House flaringly lighted with gas, and the
Court itself similarly illuminated. I _think_ that, until I was
conducted by officers into the Old Court and saw its crowded state, I did
not know that the Murderer was to be tried that day. I _think_ that,
until I was so helped into the Old Court with considerable difficulty, I
did not know into which of the two Courts sitting my summons would take
me. But this must not be received as a positive assertion, for I am not
completely satisfied in my mind on either point.
I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I
looked about the Court as well as I could through the cloud of fog and
breath that was heavy in it. I noticed the black vapour hanging like a
murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed the stifled sound
of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the street; also, the
hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder
song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards the
Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats. The buzz in the
Court was awfully hushed. The direction was given to put the Murderer to
the bar. He appeared there. And in that same instant I recognised in
him the first of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.
If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered to it
audibly. But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel, and I was
by that time able to say, “Here!” Now, observe. As I stepped into the
box, the prisoner, who had been looking on attentively, but with no sign
of concern, became violently agitated, and beckoned to his attorney. The
prisoner’s wish to challenge me was so manifest, that it occasioned a
pause, during which the attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered
with his client, and shook his head. I afterwards had it from that
gentleman, that the prisoner’s first affrighted words to him were, “_At
all hazards_, _challenge that man_!” But that, as he would give no
reason for it, and admitted that he had not even known my name until he
heard it called and I appeared, it was not done.
Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving the
unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a detailed account
of his long trial is by no means indispensable to my narrative, I shall
confine myself closely to such incidents in the ten days and nights
during which we, the Jury, were kept together, as directly bear on my own
curious personal experience. It is in that, and not in the Murderer,
that I seek to interest my reader. It is to that, and not to a page of
the Newgate Calendar, that I beg attention.
I was chosen Foreman of the Jury. On the second morning of the trial,
after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the church clocks
strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother jurymen, I found an
inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I counted them several times,
yet always with the same difficulty. In short, I made them one too many.
I touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I whispered to
him, “Oblige me by counting us.” He looked surprised by the request, but
turned his head and counted. “Why,” says he, suddenly, “we are Thirt—;
but no, it’s not possible. No. We are twelve.”
According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail, but in
the gross we were always one too many. There was no appearance—no
figure—to account for it; but I had now an inward foreshadowing of the
figure that was surely coming.
The Jury were housed at the London Tavern. We all slept in one large
room on separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge and under
the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping. I see no reason
for suppressing the real name of that officer. He was intelligent,
highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much respected in
the City. He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black
whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice. His name was Mr. Harker.
When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker’s bed was drawn
across the door. On the night of the second day, not being disposed to
lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside
him, and offered him a pinch of snuff. As Mr. Harker’s hand touched mine
in taking it from my box, a peculiar shiver crossed him, and he said,
“Who is this?”
Following Mr. Harker’s eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again the
figure I expected,—the second of the two men who had gone down
Piccadilly. I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and looked
round at Mr. Harker. He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and said in a
pleasant way, “I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth juryman,
without a bed. But I see it is the moonlight.”
Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk with
me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did. It stood for a
few moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother jurymen, close to
the pillow. It always went to the right-hand side of the bed, and always
passed out crossing the foot of the next bed. It seemed, from the action
of the head, merely to look down pensively at each recumbent figure. It
took no notice of me, or of my bed, which was that nearest to Mr.
Harker’s. It seemed to go out where the moonlight came in, through a
high window, as by an aërial flight of stairs.
Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had dreamed
of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr. Harker.
I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down Piccadilly
was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been borne into my
comprehension by his immediate testimony. But even this took place, and
in a manner for which I was not at all prepared.
On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was
drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from his
bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in a
hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in
evidence. Having been identified by the witness under examination, it
was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be inspected by the
Jury. As an officer in a black gown was making his way with it across to
me, the figure of the second man who had gone down Piccadilly impetuously
started from the crowd, caught the miniature from the officer, and gave
it to me with his own hands, at the same time saying, in a low and hollow
tone,—before I saw the miniature, which was in a locket,—“_I was younger
then_, _and my face was not then drained of blood_.” It also came
between me and the brother juryman to whom I would have given the
miniature, and between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have
given it, and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back
into my possession. Not one of them, however, detected this.
At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr. Harker’s
custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the day’s proceedings
a good deal. On that fifth day, the case for the prosecution being
closed, and we having that side of the question in a completed shape
before us, our discussion was more animated and serious. Among our
number was a vestryman,—the densest idiot I have ever seen at large,—who
met the plainest evidence with the most preposterous objections, and who
was sided with by two flabby parochial parasites; all the three
impanelled from a district so delivered over to Fever that they ought to
have been upon their own trial for five hundred Murders. When these
mischievous blockheads were at their loudest, which was towards midnight,
while some of us were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered
man. He stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me. On my going towards
them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired. This
was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined to that