Twenty-Five Ghost Stories
the door. There were five steps--five steps leading up to it. At the
foot he wheeled aside sharply to the window; he had a sick dread of
looking through the small panes--why he could not have told.
When at last he found courage to look he saw that there was a small
round table set just under the window--a work-table to all appearance;
one of those things with lots of little compartments all round and a lid
in the middle which shut over a well-like cavity for holding pieces of
needlework. He remembered that his mother had one--thirty years before.
Round the edge of the table was gripped a small, delicate hand. Gilbert
Dent’s eyes ran from this bloodless hand and slim wrist to a shoulder
under a coarse stuff bodice--to a rather wasted throat, which was bare
and flung back.
So this was the end--before the beginning. He saw her. She was dead;
twisted on the floor with a ghastly face turned up toward the ceiling,
and stiff fingers caught in desperation round the work table.
He stumbled away along the path and into the lane.
For a long time he could not realize the horror of this thing. The
influence of the decayed house hung over him--nothing seemed real. It
was quite dark when he moved away from the gate, and went in the
direction of the nearest police station. That she was dead--this woman
whose very name he did not know although she influenced him so
powerfully--he was certain; one look at the face would have told anyone
that. That she was murdered he more than suspected. He had seen no blood
about; there had been no mark on the long, bare throat, and yet the word
rushed in his ears, “Murder.”
Later on he went back with a police officer.
They broke into the house and entered the room. It was in utter
darkness, of course, by now. Dent, his fingers trembling, struck a
match. It flared round the walls and lighted them for a moment before he
let it fall on the dusty floor.
The policeman began to light his lantern and turned it stolidly on the
window. He had no reason for delay; he was eager to get to the bottom of
the business. His professional zeal was whetted; this promised to be a
mystery with a spice in it.
He turned the light full on the window; he gave a strange, choked cry,
half of rage, half of apprehension. Then he went up to Gilbert Dent, who
stood in the middle of the room with his hands before his eyes, and took
his shoulder and shook it none too gently.
“There ain’t nobody,” he said.
Dent looked wildly at the window--the recess was empty except for the
work-table. The woman was gone.
They searched the house; they minutely inspected the garden. Everything
was normal; everything told the same mournful tale--of desertion, of
death, of long empty years. But they found no woman, nor trace of one.
“This house,” said the policeman, looking suspiciously into the lawyer’s
face, “has been empty for longer than I can remember. Nobody’ll live in
it. They do say something about foul play a good many years ago. I don’t
know about that. All I do know is that the landlord can’t get it off his
hands.”
It was doubtful if Gilbert Dent heard one word of what the man was
saying. He was too stunned to do anything but creep home--when he was
allowed to go--and let himself stealthily into his own house with a
latch key; he was afraid even of himself. He did not go to bed that
night.
As for the mystery of the woman, the matter was allowed to drop; it
ended--officially. There was a shrug and a grin at the police station.
The impression there was that the lawyer had been drinking--that the
dead woman in the empty room was a gruesome freak of his tipsy brain.
* * * * *
A week or so later Dent called on his brother Ned--the one near relation
he had. Ned was a doctor; perhaps he was a shade more matter-of-fact
than Gilbert; at all events, when the latter told his story of the house
and the woman, he attributed the affair solely to liver.
“You are overworked”--the elder brother looked at the younger’s yellow
face. “An experience of this nature is by no means uncommon. Haven’t you
heard of people having their pet ‘spooks’?”
“But this was a real woman,” he declared. “I--I, well, I was in love
with her. I had made up my mind to marry her--if I could.”
Ned gave him a keen, swift glance.
“We’ll go to Brighton to-morrow,” he said, with quiet decision. “As for
your work, everything must be put aside. You’ve run completely down. You
ought to have been taken in hand before.”
They went to Brighton, and it really seemed as if Ned was right, and
that the woman at the window had been merely a nervous creation. It
seemed so, that is, for nearly three weeks, and then the climax came.
It was in the twilight--she had always been part of it--that Gilbert
Dent saw her again; the woman that he had found lying dead.
They were walking, the two brothers, along the cliffs.
The wind was blowing in their faces, the sea was booming beneath the
cliff. Ned had just said it was about time they turned back to the hotel
and had some dinner, when Gilbert with a cry leapt forward to the very
edge of the flat grass path on which they were strolling. The movement
was so sudden that his brother barely caught him in time. They
struggled and swayed on the very edge of the cliff for a second;
Gilbert, possessed by some sudden frenzy, seemed resolved to go over,
but the other at last dragged him backward, and they rolled together on
the close, thick turf.
At this point Gilbert opened his eyes and tried to get on his feet.
“Better?” asked his brother, cheerfully, holding out a helping hand.
“Strange! The sea has that effect on some people. Didn’t think that you
were one of them.”
“What effect?”
“Vertigo, my dear fellow.”
“Ned,” said the other solemnly, “I saw her. It is not worth your while
to try to account for anything. I have been inclined to think that you
were right--that she, the woman at the window, was a fancy, that I had
fallen in love with a creation of my own brain; but I saw her again
to-night. You must have seen her yourself--she was within a couple of
feet of you. Why did you not try and save her? It was nothing short of
murder to let her go over like that. I did my best.”
“You certainly did--to kill us both,” said Ned, grimly.
Gilbert gave him a wild look.
After luncheon Ned persuaded him to rest--watched him fall asleep, and
then went out.
In the porch of the hotel he was met by a waiter on his return who told
him that Gilbert had left about a quarter of an hour after he had
himself gone out.
Directly he heard this he feared the worst; having, as is usual in such
cases, a very hazy idea of what the worst might be. Of course he must
follow without a moment’s delay; but a reference to the time-table told
him that there was not another train for an hour, and that was slow.
It was already getting dusk when he arrived there. He felt certain that
Gilbert would go there. He got to the end of the lane and walked up it
slowly, examining every house. There would be no difficulty in
recognizing the one he wanted; Gilbert had described it in detail more
than once.
He stood outside the loosely hanging gate at last, and stared through
the darkness at the shabby stucco front and rank garden.
He went down a flight of steps to the back door, and finding it
unfastened, stepped into a stone passage. It was one of the problems of
the place that he should have avoided the main entrance door with a
half-admitted dread, and that, only half admitting still, he was afraid
to mount the long flight of stone stairs leading from the servants’
quarters. However, he pulled himself together and went up to the room.
It was quite dark inside. He heard something scuttle across the floor;
he felt the grit and dust of years under his feet. He struck a
match--just as Gilbert had done--and looked first at the recess in which
the window was built. The match flared round the room for a moment and
gave him a flash picture of his surroundings. He saw the stripes of
gaudy paper moving almost imperceptibly, like tentacles of some sea
monster, from the wall; he saw a creature--it looked like a rat--scurry
across the floor from the window to the great mantelpiece of hard white
marble.
If he had seen nothing more than this.
He saw in detail all that the first match had flashed at him. He saw his
brother lying on the floor; a ghastly coincidence, his hand was caught
round the edge of the work-table as hers had been. The other hand was
clenched across his breast; there was a look of great agony on his face.
A dead face, of course. This was the end of the affair. He was lying
dead by the window where the woman had sat every night at dusk and
smiled at him.
The second match went out; the brother of the dead man struck a third.
He looked again and closely. Then he staggered to his feet and gave a
cry. It rang through the empty rooms and echoed without wearying down
the long, stone passages in the basement.
Gilbert’s head was thrown back; his chin peaked to the ceiling. On his
throat were livid marks. The doctor saw them distinctly; he saw the grip
of small fingers; the distinct impression of a woman’s little hand.
* * * * *
The curious thing about the whole story--the most curious thing,
perhaps--is that no other eye ever saw those murderous marks. So there
was no scandal, no chase after the murderer, no undiscovered crime. They
faded; when the doctor saw his brother again in the full light and in
the presence of others his throat was clear. And the post mortem proved
that death was due to natural causes.
So the matter stands, and will.
But where the house and its overgrown garden stood runs a new road with
neat red and white villas.
Whatever secret it knew--if any--it kept discreetly.
Ned Dent is morbid enough to go down the smart new road in the twilight
sometimes and wonder.
THE PHANTOM HAG.
The other evening in an old castle the conversation turned upon
apparitions, each one of the party telling a story. As the accounts grew
more horrible the young ladies drew closer together.
“Have you ever had an adventure with a ghost?” said they to me. “Do you
not know a story to make us shiver? Come, tell us something.”
“I am quite willing to do so,” I replied. “I will tell you of an
incident that happened to myself.”
Toward the close of the autumn of 1858 I visited one of my friends,
sub-prefect of a little city in the center of France. Albert was an old
companion of my youth, and I had been present at his wedding. His
charming wife was full of goodness and grace. My friend wished to show
me his happy home, and to introduce me to his two pretty little
daughters. I was feted and taken great care of. Three days after my
arrival I knew the entire city, curiosities, old castles, ruins, etc.
Every day about four o’clock Albert would order the phaeton, and we
would take a long ride, returning home in the evening. One evening my
friend said to me:
“To-morrow we will go further than usual. I want to take you to the
Black Rocks. They are curious old Druidical stones, on a wild and
desolate plain. They will interest you. My wife has not seen them yet,
so we will take her.”
The following day we drove out at the usual hour. Albert’s wife sat by
his side. I occupied the back seat alone. The weather was gray and
somber that afternoon, and the journey was not very pleasant. When we
arrived at the Black Rocks the sun was setting. We got out of the
phaeton, and Albert took care of the horses.
We walked some little distance through the fields before reaching the
giant remains of the old Druid religion. Albert’s wife wished to climb
to the summit of the altar, and I assisted her. I can still see her