CHAPTER II.
Jack and Miss Wishart came to the office at nine. I came at ten. This had to be because I kept later hours than they did. They had spent the hour planning an honest day's work for me. They had not stinted me. It began with answering letters—forty-nine of them, fifteen from tenants. It seemed that whenever a tenant had five minutes to spare he, or she, sat down and dashed off an unpleasant letter to the house agent. Also, they were always “at a loss to understand” something. Sir Marmaduke Ponderbury was “at a loss to understand” why in a well-appointed house there were only three gas brackets in the wine cellars; Lady Pedders was “at a loss to understand” why in a well-appointed house there was no gate to the stairs at the third landing to prEvent her children falling down them; Sir Hector Kilsluthery was “at a loss to understand” why a well-appointed house was not fitted with double windows from top to bottom, back and front.
I was soon grinding my teeth; then I perceived that, if they were “at a loss to understand,” I had better be “unable to see my way.” I replied that I could not see my way to making these structural alterations—a good filling phrase of Miss Wishart's, that—but I gave them permission to make them themselves.
On Jack's suggestion, I signed all the letters “Garth & Thurman.” He said that it would be safer; that if I did not, I might have my tenants bothering me about things out of business hours, whenever they chanced to meet me. I was quite sure that they would, and I jumped at his suggestion. Now, when they tackled me, I could always refer them to Garth & Thurman. It turned out very useful.
The letters done, I wrestled with leases, assessments, and repairing contracts, trying to get the hang of things. Jack assured me that my uncle had paid too much for everything; that I should need fresh contracts, and probably fresh contractors; and it would mean studying dozens of price lists to check them. It was cheerful news.
Then he said: “I've come across one curious thing—Number Nine pays no rent.”
“The deuce it doesn't!” said I. “Well, I suppose it wouldn't. My uncle always told me that it was an unlucky house. It has been on fire; the water pipes burst every winter; the roof will suddenly leak without just cause; and poor little Mrs. Bulkeley committed suicide there by jumping out of a second-floor window. I'm not really surprised that it doesn't pay rent.”
“Yes; here's a letter from the tenant, J. Quintus Scruton, to Siddle & Wodgett, saying that he has arranged with your uncle to have the house rent free; and your uncle has indorsed the letter.”
“I must look into this,” I said, and I reached for my uncle's record, which I had handy on my desk, and turned up Number Nine.
It had, indeed, a black record—eleven tenants in fifteen years.
The last entries ran:
- Tenant: J. Quintus Scruton. Gum millionaire from New Zealand. Age about forty-seven. Widower. No family. Theosophist.
- Servants: Butler, chef, two footmen, housekeeper, and eight other females.
- Vehicles: Nine.
- Lease: Seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at two thousand pounds a year.
- February 30: Painful discovery—the house is haunted.
That was all; no dossier of the ghost, no reason why the gum millionaire paid no rent. We discussed the matter, and came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to write to him demanding prompt payment of the last quarter's rent. Then he would inform us of the reason.
Miss Wishart wrote the letter, and when I had signed it, I struck work for the day. I had a strong feeling at the moment that mine was a delicately poised brain, and that it needed to be accustomed to the strain of work quietly and by slow degrees. I told Jack and Miss Wishart this. Miss Wishart smiled; but Jack said, in a grumbling tone:
“I wanted you to put in a little work at some price lists of house fittings. You ought to go carefully into the matter of house fittings.”
“I will to-morrow,” I said. “And I see that the sooner I acquire a defensive habit of procrastination, the safer I shall be.”
With that I left them.
The next morning, after I had answered thirty-nine letters, I did betake myself to the study of the prices of house fittings; and it was a tedious job. Jack suggested that I should get a more profound understanding of house fittings if I went myself and bought those that I had not been able to refuse my correspondents, and so came to know the house fitting in its lair. After lunch, having answered eleven more letters—four from tenants, which came by the two-o'clock post—I went. After three hours among the house fittings, I came home, a broken man. It seemed to me that house fittings were the study of a lifetime, and that I ought to have begun it the moment I went to Eton.
Richards met me with the information that Mr. J. Quintus Scruton had called to see me on business, and was awaiting me in the library. I was feeling very strongly that I had been house agent enough for one day; but business was business, and I had to see him. As I went up the stairs, it occurred to me that the affair seemed queer; that J. Quintus Scruton might be out after the gullible peer. It seemed a pity that he should not find one. I stuck my eyeglass in my eye, opened my mouth, and went into the library, looking as gullible a young peer as any one could wish to see. I had found the look useful before.
Mr. J. Quintus Scruton rose as I entered. He was a tall, thin, active-looking man, torpedo-bearded, with a deeply lined, brown face, out of which stuck a big, hooked nose. He looked as if he had spent most of his life out of doors in very bad weather. I took rather a dislike to him at the very first sight. The checks of the trousers that he was wearing with his gray morning coat were quite impossible.
“How do you do?” I drawled.
“How do you do, Lord Garthoyle? I am pleased to make the acquaintance of my new landlord,” he said, in a rough, hoarse voice. “I came to see you about a letter that I have received from your house agents—a new firm, apparently demanding the payment of my rent for the last quarter. I gather that you are not aware that I arranged with your uncle to occupy Number Nine rent free.”
“Ya-as, I know that, don't you know?” I bleated. “But it's a funny arrangement, your living in my house rent free. I dare say it suited my uncle; but it doesn't suit me. Why did he make the arrangement?”
He looked at me very hard, he raised one hand, and he said in a very solemn voice:
“Number Nine is haunted; and your uncle thought it better that I, who don't mind ghosts, should live in it rent free than that it should be empty.”
My eyeglass nearly fell out of my eye. I had expected to find something in the way of blackmailing at the bottom of the matter—but spooks! This gum millionaire had pulled my uncle's leg.
“Well, of all the reasons for making any one a present of a house!” I cried, forgetting to drawl.
“I knew it would surprise you, Lord Garthoyle; but haunted it is. And that's a very good reason—a very good business reason, indeed—for not charging any rent for it,” he said earnestly, wagging a finger at me. “It would never do for the newspapers to have columns about a haunted house in Garthoyle Gardens. Your uncle felt that strongly.”
I wanted to hear some more, and I said: “Yes; haunted houses in London are a bit off color.”
“Just so. It would reduce the property to the level of Bloomsbury. I'm glad you see it.”
“I see that. But I don't see why I should let you have the house for nothing, and wear it out, don't you know? If I shut it up for a year or two, the ghosts might get tired of an empty house, and go.”
“No; ghosts don't care whether there's any one in a house or not. They haunt it just the same,” he assured me, more solemnly than ever. “As an earnest theosophist, I have studied these psychic phenomena, and you may take it from me that it is so.”
“All the same, I may as well give this one a chance to get tired and go, don't you know?”
“But an empty house in Garthoyle Gardens—a house empty for months, perhaps years! It injures the rest of the property. It empties other houses. Your uncle saw that very clearly. Why, he asked me—I may say, he begged me—to remain on in Number Nine rent free. He preferred a tenant who paid no rent to no tenant at all.”
“I don't, don't you know? And I can get over that emptiness, all right,” I said. “I'll keep the blinds and curtains and leave it looking inhabited. Either you'll have to pay rent, or you'll have to go.”
He lost his look of persuading me for my own good, and frowned.
“Well, in that case,” he said, “I need not keep my mouth shut about it any longer. I undertook to keep it quiet, of course, and put up with the discomfort. But if I have to pay rent, I do not see why I should not have a thorough investigation of the most interesting phenomenon I have ever come across—an investigation by a committee of experts under the supervision of the Daily Mail.”
It was so near a blackmailing threat that my first thought was to kick him downstairs. My second thought was that, judging from his build and look, it would be an hour's steady work; and I had already done my work for the day. My third thought was that boots were not business. He was certainly playing with his cards upon the table. He had shown me how he had worked upon my uncle's belief in spooks and his fondness for the Gardens. A newspaper ghost story would harm the property; and, what was worse, I should have to answer scores and scores of letters from my leisured tenants about it. I thought of those letters, and I quailed.
But then the rent was two thousand pounds a year; and any one who has had to live on five thousand pounds a year for seven years knows what two thousand pounds a year is. I was not going to give it up without an effort.
I had been sitting looking at Scruton, with my mouth open, while I thought it out. Now I tried another tack.
“Well, I'm not going to pay for this absurd fancy. A ghost in the twentieth century! It's nonsense, don't you know?” I drawled.
“Fancy? Nonsense? Why, out of my twelve servants, only two will sleep in the house. Some sleep in the rooms over the stables; some in lodgings in Green Street. Your uncle did not find it nonsense, Lord Garthoyle. He slept in the haunted room and saw the ghost.”
“Yes. My uncle would; he had leanings that way, don't you know? But, of course, there's no chance of my seeing it. It wouldn't come if I were there, don't you know?” I drawled.
“But you shall see it. It will come, any night you like. It's always there at night!” he cried, in a quite excited way.
I pretended to hesitate; then I said:
“Well, I don't believe I shall see any ghost—but if I do, and if it is a ghost, I'll let you have the house rent free for another year. If I don't, you pay your rent.”
He hesitated a moment; then he said:
“It's a bargain. What night will you come and sleep in the haunted room? How will Saturday night suit you?”
“Saturday night at eleven-thirty. What kind of a ghost is it?”
“It's a woman, who walks, sighing, up and down the room from which Mrs. Bulkeley threw herself. But she's sometimes seen on the stairs. That's what has driven the servants out of the house.”
“A woman that sighs doesn't sound very terrifying.”
“She is, though. She made me sweat with fright,” he said.
And he said it so sincerely that either he was telling the truth, or he was a first-class actor.
I walked down to the front door with him; and I fancied that he was looking pleased with himself, rather as if he had done a good day's work.
“Till Saturday night,” he said solemnly, as he went down the steps.
I went into the office and told Jack Scruton's tale. He howled at it. But when he had grown quiet again, he agreed with me that Scruton could make trouble. The people who can afford a house in Garthoyle Gardens are just the very people who believe in all those psychical phenomena. They support the palmists, the mediums, the crystal gazers, and the clairvoyants. They have nothing else to do. My tenants would fuss like fury; many of them would see ghosts in their own houses. It was much better to jog along quietly with Scruton for a while, and see what did happen, before putting the pressure on him and getting a first-class fuss.
Jack could not understand why a millionaire should stand the inconvenience, why he did not clear out of a house in which servants would not sleep. I had to explain to him that millionaires love to get things cheap—that's how they become millionaires—and a house in Garthoyle Gardens for nothing would tempt any one. Of course, we discussed the question whether Scruton was a millionaire at all. I thought that he was. An ordinary swindler would be more of a gentleman; he would never wear those trousers with a gray morning coat. Jack, too, thought that a swindler would have found a better reason for paying no rent—that a ghost in the twentieth century was too thin. But it seemed to me that the ghost had worked very well with my uncle.
“And, after all,” I said, “one night when I was a child I saw the white lady come down the stairs at Garth Royal, or I fancied I did; it comes to exactly the same thing.”
I did not get much time to think about the ghost during the next few days; letters, price lists, and house fittings kept me too busy. On the Wednesday I played polo at Hurlingham. A piercing June breeze was blowing from the east, and there were squalls of driving drizzle, colder than sleet. I caught a bad cold; and on Saturday night went to Number Nine as hoarse as a crow. I did not know my own voice.
A disagreeable butler, looking like a mute, took me to Scruton. Scruton received me as if I had come to a funeral; and I returned his greeting with hearty sneezes.
“I suppose you've quite made up your mind to go through with it?” asked Scruton, in a gloomy voice.
“Rather!” I said. “Ah-tish-u! Ah-tish-u! Ah-tish-u!”
“Come along, then,” he said. And he led the way upstairs.
He took me up to a front room on the second floor, a large room, rather barely furnished, with two windows. We had each a candle. He said that the electric light had not been installed on this floor, and he never used gas. He paused and looked at me seriously; then he said:
“It doesn't really matter. You won't want much light to see her. I didn't.”
He paused again; then, with a sudden start, he looked over his shoulder.
I started, too, and looked over his shoulder. I saw nothing. Scruton gave a little shiver, and said quickly:
“I think I'll be going. I don't like this room. Good night.”
He slipped quickly out of the door, and I heard him hurry along the corridor and down the stairs.
I felt rather uncomfortable. The candle did not light much of the room, but I set myself to examine it. The walls were not papered, but painted. There was no paneling; and there was not a crack in the surface of the paint. There was no trapdoor in the ceiling. There was a thick Turkey carpet on the floor, and I turned it up for five feet round the edges and made sure that there were no cracks, traps, or loose boards in the floor.
I looked out of the windows for anything in the way of a ladder from the story below, and left up the blinds to let in the moonlight. I locked the door leading to the corridor, and shot the bolt. There was another door in the corner, at the other end of the room, opposite the bed. It opened into an unfurnished dressing room. The door from the corridor into the dressing room was open, and there was no key in it to lock it. The other rooms on the floor were unoccupied. Some of their doors were open, some shut; none were locked.
I locked the door between the dressing room and my bedroom, and shot the bolt over the keyhole.
Well, I was in quite an ordinary room; and no human being could get into it without forcing the door. There was no doubt about that. I should get a genuine ghost—a real physic phenomenon—or I should get nothing at all. Of course, I should get nothing at all.
But I was going to do the thing properly; and I pulled off my coat and waistcoat and collar, took a warm dressing gown from my bag, and put in on. I lay down on the bed, pulled a blanket over me, and waited. Everything was very quiet, except when I sneezed. I began to think about poor Mrs. Bulkeley, and her throwing herself out of the window. I wondered which of the two windows it was. It was an uncomfortable thing to think of, and I tried to think of something else. Then I began to hear noises; boards creaked and made me start; there were footsteps in the corridor—two—and then silence. heard a sob, far away, and then another and another, and was some time making out that it was a cistern gurgling. had firmly made up my mind that it was a jolly uncomfortable room to be in when I fell asleep.
When I awoke, the room was much darker, as if the moon were setting on the other side of the house. I did not want to look around, and was turning over to go to sleep again, when I heard a sigh distinctly.
I jerked myself up on my elbow, and my eyes fell on a figure crossing the room to the farther window. As it came near the window, I saw that it was a woman. I could not see her face, for her long hair fell about it. At the window she turned and sighed. A cold chill ran down my back, and my mouth went dry. She crossed the room nearly to the wall, and turned and sighed, came to the window, turned and sighed again. The cold chills raced down my back, my heart hammered at my ribs, my scalp prickled with the rising hair, and a cold sweat broke out on me. I was seeing what Mrs. Bulkeley had done before she threw herself out of the window!
Paralyzed, I watched her cross and recross the room a dozen times, noiseless but for sighs. A rustle, ever so faint a rustle, would have made her less uncanny somehow.
Presently my heart was not hammering so hard against my ribs. I began to pull myself together; and at last with a great effort I said, in a croaking whisper:
“What is it? What do you want?”
The dead woman never turned her head; she crossed and recrossed the room and sighed.
Suddenly I let off a terrific sneeze.
At the sudden burst of sound, the figure started—just the slightest start.
Slight as it was, it was enough for me. The blood rushed through my veins again, and rage drove it. I gathered myself together noiselessly, flung off the blanket, and sprang clean over the foot of the bed, and across the room. With a shriek, the ghost threw up her arms to ward me off; and I clasped an armful of flesh and blood in a soft, soundless woolen robe.
“You little wretch!” I cried, shaking her till her teeth chattered, for I was furious.
“Don't! Don't! You're hurting me! Let me go!” she cried, struggling.
“Not a bit of it! You want a good whipping!” I cried. “Hanged—hanged if I don't kiss you!”
And I did.
“You brute!” she cried, and slapped my face with a most unwraithlike vigor.
The slap sent me sneezing and sneezing, and she took advantage of it to twist out of my grip. When I had done sneezing, my righteous anger had cooled a little. I laughed, rubbed my stinging cheek, and said:
“And now, my young friend, I'm going to have a look at you.”
I walked to the mantelpiece, struck a match, lighted the candle—and gazed around an empty room.
Not a creak of door, or a click of lock had marked her going. I gasped and rubbed my eyes. Then I examined the doors; both were locked and bolted. I opened them, and looked out into the corridor and the dressing room; they were empty, dark, and silent. I ran to the head of the stairs, and looked down into silent blackness.
I came back into my room and trod on something soft. It was a slipper of knitted wool. No wonder she had been noiseless! My unsophisticated gum millionaire had provided against everything but my sudden leap.
I locked and bolted the doors again, and went to bed. I thought for a while about the ghost—she had had a really charming voice—then I went to sleep. When I was awakened by a knocking at my door, the room was bright with sunshine. The disagreeable butler conducted me to the bathroom. I took the slipper with me. There might be a hunt for it while I was in my bath.
When I had dressed, I made another examination of the walls. There was not a crack in them. I went into the corridor, and examined the outside of them. Then I went into the dressing room. I was just turning back, for I had not unlocked the door into my own room, when an odd thing about the lock caught my eye. It had two handles, a big one and a little one. I turned the little handle, and the woodwork of the door swung open, leaving the lock held in its place by its catch and the shot bolt. I turned the little handle back, and two little bolts shot up out of the top of it. They held the lock in the woodwork of the door. It was a most ingenious device; and it was any odds that no one would think to look at the lock when the door was opened, for it stood back against the wall. I should never have noticed it myself, had I not left the door locked. No wonder my poor uncle had been tricked! What a night he must have had!
I had got all I wanted, and a trifle more, by looking like an idiot. I did not trouble to put my eyeglass in my eye and open my mouth. I came downstairs looking like a peer of ordinary intelligence
Scruton came hurrying out of the library into the hall; and he looked as if he were ready to sympathize deeply.
I said cheerfully:
“Ah, Scruton, good morning! The young woman you employ as ghost is quite kissable, but she has rather large feet.
And I waved the woolen slipper at him.
“Young woman! What young woman? What do you mean?” cried Scruton, and his surprise was very well done.
I laughed and went on down the hall toward the door.
“There was only one young woman in the house last night, the underhouse-maid—Jennings. Where is Jennings, Wheatley?” he asked, turning to the butler.
“I've not seen her this morning, sir. She had gone out when I got up, and she hasn't come back,” said Wheatley; and when I came to look at him, I saw that he had the same New Zealand kind of look as his master. They were both in it.
“Has this wretched girl been playing this ghost trick on us all? It's monstrous! I'll prosecute her!” cried Scruton.
He was a good actor.
“She's an awfully good locksmith, too!” I said gently. “That trick lock on the dressing-room door is a marvel. Send round that rent, please.”
Scruton and his butler gasped at one another. I opened the door, and went down the steps.
Later in the morning came a note from Number Nine. It contained a check for the rent with Scruton's compliments.