Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James

by M. R. James

  “During the day before he died he got me to sit by him all the time, and I could see there was something, and probably something unpleasant, that he was saving up to tell me, and putting it off as long as he felt he could afford the strength—I’m afraid purposely in order to keep me on the stretch. But, at last, out it came.

  “‘Mary,’ he said, ‘Mary, I’ve made my will in John’s favor: he has everything, Mary.’

  “Well, of course that came as a bitter shock to me, for we—my husband and I—were not rich people, and if he could have managed to live a little easier than he was obliged to do, I felt it might be the prolonging of his life. But I said little or nothing to my uncle, except that he had a right to do what he pleased. Partly because I couldn’t think of anything to say, and partly because I was sure there was more to come: and so there was.

  “‘But, Mary,’ he said, ‘I’m not very fond of John, and I’ve made another will in your favor. You can have everything. Only you’ve got to find the will, you see: and I don’t mean to tell you where it is.’ Then he chuckled to himself, and I waited, for again I was sure he hadn’t finished.

  “‘That’s a good girl,’ he said after a time, ‘you wait, and I’ll tell you as much as I told John. But just let me remind you, you can’t go into court with what I’m saying to you, for you won’t be able to produce any collateral evidence beyond your own word, and John’s a man that can do a little hard swearing if necessary.

  “‘Very well then, that’s understood. Now, I had the fancy that I wouldn’t write this will quite in the common way, so I wrote it in a book, Mary, a printed book. And there’s several thousand books in this house. But there! You needn’t trouble yourself with them, for it isn’t one of them. It’s in safe keeping elsewhere: in a place where John can go and find it any day, if he only knew, and you can’t.

  “‘A good will it is: properly signed and witnessed, but I don’t think you’ll find the witnesses in a hurry.’

  “Still I said nothing. If I had moved at all I must have taken hold of the old wretch and shaken him. He lay there laughing to himself, and at last he said:

  “‘Well, well, you’ve taken it very quietly, and as I want to start you both on equal terms, and John has a bit of a purchase in being able to go where the book is, I’ll tell you just two other things which I didn’t tell him. The will’s in English, but you won’t know that if ever you see it. That’s one thing, and another is that when I’m gone you’ll find an envelope in my desk directed to you, and inside it something that would help you to find it, if only you have the wits to use it.’

  “In a few hours from that he was gone, and though I made an appeal to John Eldred about it—”

  “John Eldred? I beg your pardon, Mrs. Simpson—I think I’ve seen a Mr. John Eldred. What is he like to look at?”

  “It must be ten years since I saw him: he would be a thin elderly man now, and unless he has shaved them off, he has that sort of whiskers which people used to call Dundreary or Piccadilly something.”

  “—Weepers. Yes, that is the man.”

  “Where did you come across him, Mr. Garrett?”

  “I don’t know if I could tell you,” said Garrett mendaciously, “in some public place. But you hadn’t finished.”

  “Really I had nothing much to add, only that John Eldred, of course, paid no attention whatever to my letters, and has enjoyed the estate ever since, while my daughter and I have had to take to the lodging-house business here, which I must say has not turned out by any means so unpleasant as I feared it might.”

  “But about the envelope.”

  “To be sure! Why, the puzzle turns on that. Give Mr. Garrett the paper out of my desk.”

  It was a small slip, with nothing whatever on it but five numerals, not divided or punctuated in any way: 11334.

  Mr. Garrett pondered, but there was a light in his eye. Suddenly he “made a face,” and then asked, “Do you suppose that Mr. Eldred can have any more clue than you have to the title of the book?”

  “I have sometimes thought he must,” said Mrs. Simpson, ‘and in this way: that my uncle must have made the will not very long before he died (that, I think, he said himself), and got rid of the book immediately afterward. But all his books were very carefully cataloged: and John has the catalog. And John was most particular that no books whatever should be sold out of the house.

  “And I’m told that he is always journeying about to booksellers and libraries; so I fancy that he must have found out just which books are missing from my uncle’s library of those which are entered in the catalog, and must be hunting for them.”

  “Just so, just so,” said Mr. Garrett, and relapsed into thought.

  No later than next day he received a letter which, as he told Mrs. Simpson with great regret, made it absolutely necessary for him to cut short his stay at Burnstow.

  Sorry as he was to leave them (and they were at least as sorry to part with him), he had begun to feel that a crisis, all-important to Mrs. (and shall we add, Miss?) Simpson, was very possibly supervening.

  In the train Garrett was uneasy and excited. He racked his brains to think whether the press mark of the book which Mr. Eldred had been inquiring after was one in any way corresponding to the numbers on Mrs. Simpson’s little bit of paper. But he found to his dismay that the shock of the previous week had really so upset him that he could neither remember any vestige of the title or nature of the book, or even of the locality to which he had gone to seek it. And yet all other parts of library topography and work were clear as ever in his mind.

  And another thing—he stamped with annoyance as he thought of it—he had at first hesitated, and then had forgotten, to ask Mrs. Simpson for the name of the place where Eldred lived. That, however, he could write about.

  At least he had his clue in the figures on the paper. If they referred to a press mark in his library, they were only susceptible of a limited number of interpretations. They might be divided into 1.13.34, 11.33.4, or 11.3.34. He could try all these in the space of a few minutes, and if any one were missing he had every means of tracing it.

  He got very quickly to work, though a few minutes had to be spent in explaining his early return to his landlady and his colleagues. 1.13.34. was in place and contained no extraneous writing. As he drew near Class II in the same gallery, its association struck him like a chill. But he must go on. After a cursory glance at 11.33.4 (which first confronted him, and was a perfectly new book) he ran his eye along the line of quartos which fills 11.3. The gap he feared was there: 34 was out. A moment was spent in making sure that it had not been misplaced, and then he was off to the vestibule.

  “Has 11.3.34 gone out? Do you recollect noticing that number?”

  “Notice the number? What do you take me for, Mr. Garrett? There, take and look over the tickets for yourself, if you’ve got a free day before you.”

  “Well then, has a Mr. Eldred called again?—The old gentleman who came the day I was taken ill. Come! You’d remember him.”

  “What do you suppose? Of course I recollect of him. No, he haven’t been in again, not since you went off for your ’oliday. And yet I seem to—there now. Roberts’ll know. Roberts, do you recollect of the name of Heldred?”

  “Not arf,” said Roberts. “You mean the man that sent a bob over the price for the parcel, and I wish they all did.”

  “Do you mean to say you’ve been sending books to Mr. Eldred? Come, do speak up! Have you?”

  “Well now, Mr. Garrett, if a gentleman sends the ticket all wrote correct and the secketry says this book may go and the box ready addressed sent with the note, and a sum of money sufficient to deefray the railway charges, what would be your action in the matter, Mr. Garrett, if I may take the liberty to ask such a question?

  “Would you or would you not have taken the trouble to oblige, or would you have chucked the ’ole thing under the counter and—”

  “You were perfectly right, of course, Hodgson—perfectly right: only, would y
ou kindly oblige me by showing me the ticket Mr. Eldred sent, and letting me know his address?”

  “To be sure, Mr. Garrett; so long as I’m not ’ectored about and informed that I don’t know my duty, I’m willing to oblige in every way feasible to my power. There is the ticket on the file. J. Eldred, 11.3.34. Title of work: T-a-l-m—well, there, you can make what you like of it—not a novel, I should ’azard the guess. And here is Mr. Heldred’s note applying for the book in question, which I see he terms it a track.”

  “Thanks, thanks: but the address? There’s none on the note.”

  “Ah, indeed. Well, now … stay now, Mr. Garrett, I ’ave it. Why, that note come inside of the parcel, which was directed very thoughtful to save all trouble, ready to be sent back with the book inside. And if I have made any mistake in this ’ole transaction, it lays just in the one point that I neglected to enter the address in my little book here what I keep.

  “Not but what I dare say there was good reasons for me not entering of it: but there, I haven’t the time, neither have you, I dare say, to go into ’em just now. And—no, Mr. Garrett, I do not carry it in my ’ed, else what would be the use of me keeping this little book here—just a ordinary common notebook, you see, which I make a practice of entering all such names and addresses in it as I see fit to do?”

  “Admirable arrangement, to be sure—but—all right, thank you. When did the parcel go off?”

  “Half-past ten, this morning.”

  “Oh, good; and it’s just one now.”

  Garrett went upstairs in deep thought. How was he to get the address? A telegram to Mrs. Simpson: he might miss a train by waiting for the answer. Yes, there was one other way. She had said that Eldred lived on his uncle’s estate. If this were so, he might find that place entered in the donation-book. That he could run through quickly, now that he knew the title of the book.

  The register was soon before him, and, knowing that the old man had died more than twenty years ago, he gave him a good margin, and turned back to 1870. There was but one entry possible. 1875, August 14th. Talmud: Tractatus Middoth cum comm. R. Nachmanidæ. Amstelod. 1707. Given by J. Rant, D.D., of Bretfield Manor.

  A gazetteer showed Bretfield to be three miles from a small station on the main line. Now to ask the doorkeeper whether he recollected if the name on the parcel had been anything like Bretfield.

  “No, nothing like. It was, now you mention it, Mr. Garrett, either Bredfield or Britfield, but nothing like that other name what you coated.”

  So far well. Next, a timetable. A train could be got in twenty minutes—taking two hours over the journey. The only chance, but one not to be missed. And the train was taken.

  If he had been fidgety on the journey up, he was almost distracted on the journey down. If he found Eldred, what could he say? That it had been discovered that the book was a rarity and must be recalled? An obvious untruth. Or that it was believed to contain important manuscript notes? Eldred would of course show him the book, from which the leaf would already have been removed.

  He might, perhaps, find traces of the removal—a torn edge of a fly-leaf probably—and who could disprove what Eldred was certain to say, that he too had noticed and regretted the mutilation? Altogether the chase seemed very hopeless. The one chance was this. The book had left the library at 10:30: it might not have been put into the first possible train, at 11:20. Granted that, then he might be lucky enough to arrive simultaneously with it and patch up some story which would induce Eldred to give it up.

  It was drawing toward evening when he got out upon the platform of his station, and, like most country stations, this one seemed unnaturally quiet. He waited about till the one or two passengers who got out with him had drifted off, and then inquired of the station-master whether Mr. Eldred was in the neighborhood.

  “Yes, and pretty near too, I believe. I fancy he means calling here for a parcel he expects. Called for it once today already, didn’t he, Bob?” (to the porter).

  “Yes, sir, he did. And appeared to think it was all along of me that it didn’t come by the two o’clock. Anyhow, I’ve got it for him now,” and the porter flourished a square parcel, which—a glance assured Garrett—contained all that was of any importance to him at that particular moment.

  “Bretfield, sir? Yes—three miles just about. Short cut across these three fields brings it down by half-a-mile. There: there’s Mr. Eldred’s trap.”

  A dog-cart drove up with two men in it, of whom Garrett, gazing back as he crossed the little station yard, easily recognized one. The fact that Eldred was driving was slightly in his favor—for most likely he would not open the parcel in the presence of his servant. On the other hand, he would get home quickly, and unless Garrett were there within a very few minutes of his arrival, all would be over. He must hurry; and that he did.

  His short cut took him along one side of a triangle, while the cart had two sides to traverse. And it was delayed a little at the station, so that Garrett was in the third of the three fields when he heard the wheels fairly near. He had made the best progress possible, but the pace at which the cart was coming made him despair. At this rate it must reach home ten minutes before him, and ten minutes would more than suffice for the fulfillment of Mr. Eldred’s project.

  It was just at this time that the luck fairly turned. The evening was still, and sounds came clearly. Seldom has any sound given greater relief than that which he now heard: that of the cart pulling up. A few words were exchanged, and it drove on. Garrett, halting in the utmost anxiety, was able to see as it drove past the stile (near which he now stood) that it contained only the servant and not Eldred. Further, he made out that Eldred was following on foot.

  From behind the tall hedge by the stile leading into the road he watched the thin wiry figure pass quickly by with the parcel beneath its arm, and feeling in its pockets. Just as he passed the stile something fell out of a pocket upon the grass, but with so little sound that Eldred was not conscious of it. In a moment more it was safe for Garrett to cross the stile into the road and pick up—a box of matches.

  Eldred went on, and, as he went, his arms made hasty movements, difficult to interpret in the shadow of the trees that overhung the road. But, as Garrett followed cautiously, he found at various points the key to them—a piece of string, and then the wrapper of the parcel—meant to be thrown over the hedge, but sticking in it.

  Now Eldred was walking slower, and it could just be made out that he had opened the book and was turning over the leaves. He stopped, evidently troubled by the failing light. Garrett slipped into a gate-opening, but still watched.

  Eldred, hastily looking around, sat down on a felled tree-trunk by the roadside and held the open book up close to his eyes. Suddenly he laid it, still open, on his knee, and felt in all his pockets: clearly in vain, and clearly to his annoyance. “You would be glad of your matches now,” thought Garrett. Then he took hold of a leaf, and was carefully tearing it out, when two things happened.

  First, something black seemed to drop upon the white leaf and run down it, and then as Eldred started and was turning to look behind him, a little dark form appeared to rise out of the shadow behind the tree-trunk and from it two arms enclosing a mass of blackness came before Eldred’s face and covered his head and neck. His legs and arms were wildly flourished, but no sound came. Then, there was no more movement. Eldred was alone. He had fallen back into the grass behind the tree-trunk. The book was cast into the roadway.

  Garrett, his anger and suspicion gone for the moment at the sight of this horrid struggle, rushed up with loud cries of “Help!” and so too, to his enormous relief, did a laborer who had just emerged from a field opposite. Together they bent over and supported Eldred, but to no purpose. The conclusion that he was dead was inevitable.

  “Poor gentleman!” said Garrett to the laborer, when they had laid him down, “what happened to him, do you think?”

  “I wasn’t two hundred yards away,” said the man, “when I see Squire Eldred setti
ng reading in his book, and to my thinking he was took with one of these fits—face seemed to go all over black.”

  “Just so,” said Garrett. “You didn’t see anyone near him? It couldn’t have been an assault?”

  “Not possible—no one couldn’t have got away without you or me seeing them.”

  “So I thought. Well, we must get some help, and the doctor and the policeman; and perhaps I had better give them this book.”

  It was obviously a case for an inquest, and obvious also that Garrett must stay at Bretfield and give his evidence.

  The medical inspection showed that, though some black dust was found on the face and in the mouth of the deceased, the cause of death was a shock to a weak heart, and not asphyxiation. The fateful book was produced, a respectable quarto printed wholly in Hebrew, and not of an aspect likely to excite even the most sensitive.

  “You say, Mr. Garrett, that the deceased gentleman appeared at the moment before his attack to be tearing a leaf out of this book?”

  “Yes; I think one of the fly-leaves.”

  “There is here a fly-leaf partially torn through. It has Hebrew writing on it. Will you kindly inspect it?”

  “There are three names in English, sir, also, and a date. But I am sorry to say I cannot read Hebrew writing.”

  “Thank you. The names have the appearance of being signatures. They are John Rant, Walter Gibson, and James Frost, and the date is July 20, 1875. Does anyone here know any of these names?”

  The Rector, who was present, volunteered a statement that the uncle of the deceased, from whom he inherited, had been named Rant.

  The book being handed to him, he shook a puzzled head. “This is not like any Hebrew I ever learned.”

  “You are sure that it is Hebrew?”

  “What? Yes—I suppose … No—my dear sir, you are perfectly right—that is, your suggestion is exactly to the point. Of course—it is not Hebrew at all. It is English, and it is a will.”