by Bill Crider
“You are right,” said Scrooge. “I have not slept well of late.”
As usual, Holmes’ analysis of the caller’s condition seemed quite simple when he explained it, but I suspect that few men would have been able to reach the same conclusions from the clues that Holmes had observed.
“Now,” said Holmes, “perhaps our visitor will have a seat and be so good as to tell us his name.”
Removing his hat and seating himself opposite Holmes, the man said, “My name is Franklin Scrooge.”
“Of Scrooge and Marley?” Holmes asked.
“The same. You have heard of my firm?”
“Certainly,” responded Holmes. “As Watson could tell you, I have an interest in all the more sensational crimes of our little country. Isn’t that right, Watson?”
It was of course true. Holmes, while his knowledge of ordinary things like literature and philosophy was virtually nil, had an immense store of facts to hand relating to sensational literature. He in fact seemed to have an intimate acquaintance with every appalling and dreadful crime committed within the last century.
Mr. Scrooge was puzzled. “I know of no crime in connection with Scrooge and Marley.”
“Let me then enlighten you,” said Holmes. “I take it that you are related to one of the founders?”
“Yes. Ebenezer Scrooge was my uncle. My great uncle, that is.”
“And what of Marley?”
“Well, Marley died. That was the beginning of the whole confounded muddle in which I find myself. At least I believe that to be so.”
“Let us not get our stories out of order,” said Holmes. “Marley first. He died. Is that not correct?”
“Yes. Marley was dead. There can be no doubt about that.”
“And how did he die?”
Mr. Scrooge started to answer. His mouth was halfway open. But then he closed it. “I … well, I don’t believe that anyone ever said.”
“No, I suppose not. And yet your uncle, your great uncle, was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, was he not?”
“I believe that is correct. But all that was long ago. What of it?”
“It is suggestive, is it not?” asked Holmes. “A man dies, and yet the cause of his death is never revealed. His business partner, the one who stands to gain the most—the one who stands to gain all—is never questioned. He was, as I understand the facts, a man quite well known for his avarice, and he inherited all the business.” Holmes paused. “But, as you say, that was long ago. That is not why you came here. Why, by the way, did you come?”
I could see that Holmes had introduced the topic of the uncle, the great uncle, to give our visitor some time to compose himself. He was now breathing quite regularly, and his face was composed. The lines beside his mouth, while still visible, had softened and receded into the flesh. He looked at me, then back at Holmes, sighed, and said, “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes gave a barking laugh. “I most certainly do not. Ghosts do not exist any more than other creatures of occult legend—vampires, say, or werewolves. To believe otherwise is utter lunacy.”
Our visitor looked at the floor. “I was afraid that you would say so. You reject the idea out of hand?”
“Or course,” Holmes responded. “And so you should as well.”
Scrooge looked up and turned to me. “Dr. Watson?”
“Are you asking about my beliefs, or about my services as a physician? I do not generally treat nervous maladies.”
“A malady I may have,” said Scrooge. “I do not deny it. And yet I have seen … things.”
“Ghosts?” asked Holmes.
“Yes, and worse than ghosts. Would you at least listen to my story? I do not ask that you believe it.”
Holmes had little patience with people who presume they have seen things, ghosts in particular, and would ordinarily have told our visitor to leave at once. However, with no case of interest having come his way of late, he had been idle for several days, and while he might not have hoped for much, he told Scrooge to continue.
“Thank you, Mr. Holmes! You do not know what I have suffered for the past two nights. It has been terrible, I assure you. But I must begin with my great uncle, Ebenezer Scrooge. He was, as you seem already to know, the sole legatee of the late Jacob Marley, and when he took over as sole proprietor of the firm of Scrooge and Marley, a quite strange thing happened to him. It is the same thing that has been happening to me.”
“The ghosts,” said Holmes.
“Yes. The ghosts. My uncle was a greedy, grasping man, Mr. Holmes, but something happened that transformed him. It was the ghosts.”
“Or perhaps his guilt over the untimely death of his partner.”
“It could have been the effects of guilt. You see, when he went home one night, at just about this time of the year, he put his key into the lock of his door, and by chance he glanced at the knocker. But he did not see the knocker. He saw … Marley’s face!”
Scrooge brought a handkerchief out of his coat and wiped his face, which had begun to perspire. I looked over at our fire, but it was burning low, and the room was hardly warm.
“When he looked again,” Scrooge continued, “the knocker was merely a knocker again, and my uncle went inside the house and eventually went to bed. It was later that night that Marley’s ghost appeared.”
To my surprise, Holmes was leaning forward in his chair, his gray eyes a-gleam with excitement. “Did your uncle describe to you the process by which the knocker became Marley’s face?”
“No. But that was not the strangest thing. When Marley’s ghost appeared to him, my uncle … floated in the air of his room.” Scrooge held up a hand as if to still a protest that neither Holmes nor I had made. “That is what he told me. And the air was filled with noise and numberless phantoms.”
“And you believed his story?”
“That was forty years ago or more. I was quite young at the time, and impressionable, but even then I thought it was just a story. Especially when he told the rest, about the other ghosts that visited him, ghosts that helped him pass through the very walls of his rooms and out into the streets. Ghosts that helped him see the past and the future.”
“And what became of these ghosts?” asked Holmes.
“One of them he smothered with an extinguisher-cap, like a candle.”
“A very small ghost,” observed Holmes.
“It was not small. But it … dwindled somehow.”
“And the other ghosts?”
“One of them simply disappeared. The other transformed into a bedpost.”
“And your uncle insisted that he saw these ghosts? That he floated through the air, that he passed through the very walls?”
“He did.”
I felt it was time for me to speak as a physician. “And what did your uncle have for dinner the night he saw these ‘ghosts’? Could they not have been the result of a bit of undigested beef or a scrap of cheese? Perhaps a morsel of underdone fowl?”
“I would that it were so,” said Franklin Scrooge, “and for a long time I believed that his visions were caused by nothing more, not that it mattered, for the visions, whatever might have been their cause, changed my uncle’s life. They changed him from a miser into a philanthropist, from a skinflint into a virtual spendthrift, from one who believed Christmas to be a humbug into a man who loved that season more than any other. Previous to his seeing the ghosts, he tried to insist that his employees work even on Christmas day, but that certainly changed. He had never had much to do with our family before that time, but from that Christmas forward he lavished us with his gifts and his attentions.”
“So it seems that the results of his experiences were beneficial,” I said.
“In his case, yes. But in my own … . “
“Your own?” prompted Holmes, eyes gleaming.
“In my own case, I fear for my life. For, you see, the ghosts are now visiting me.”
“Ah,” Holmes muttered.
“These are very deep waters indeed. Pray go on with your most interesting story, Mr. Scrooge.”
I was so surprised that I am afraid I may have muttered something or other under my breath. Sherlock Holmes finding interest in a ghost story? It seemed incredible. Both Holmes and our visitor looked at me strangely. I smiled and said, “Yes, please do go on.”
Mr. Scrooge resumed his tale by saying, “For two nights now, I have been visited by ghosts, or what I believe must be ghosts. Call them that or phantoms or apparitions—call them what you will. To me, they are ghosts.”
“Hooded figures?” asked Holmes. “Gibbering, sheeted specters with eyes of flame? Describe them for us, please. And be as detailed as you can.”
Scrooge shook his head. “They were nothing like the usual idea of ghosts. There were no sheets. They were more like the knocker on my uncle’s door.”
“The door knocker that became the face of Marley,” said Holmes.
“Yes, exactly. Although in my case it was not a knocker. It was the doorknob.”
“And what did it become?”
“The face of my great uncle, Ebenezer Scrooge. It was strange, most horribly strange, but as I put my key into the lock of my door, the knob above my hand seemed to elongate, as if it were made of clay. And then it twisted itself into the very face of my uncle and floated before my eyes. Then it became a doorknob again.”
“And for how long did it float before you?” asked Holmes.
“Why, I do not know,” said Scrooge, as if this were the first he had thought of it. “It might have been a few seconds, or it might have been an hour. It has only just occurred to me, but I have no idea of the time that passed.”
Holmes nodded as if he had suspected as much. “Please continue, then, Mr. Scrooge.”
Scrooge passed a hand over his face and said, “Late that night, as I was preparing for bed, the curtains of my window began to sway and writhe. Eventually they assumed the shape of some kind of creature that I cannot really begin to describe. Somehow, I felt that the thing was speaking to me, and I opened the window. The creature passed outside, and beckoned me. I knew at that instant that I could fly.”
“But you could not, of course,” Holmes said.
“No, although I must have tried. I have no recollection of launching myself through the window, but it seems that I did. I landed on the roof in a heap and slid for several yards over the rough shingles. I would have pitched into the street had I not been able to grasp the chimney and stop my progress. I managed somehow to crawl back to the window and pull myself shivering into the room. My nightshirt was damp, and I was extremely chilled. I got into my bed, but I was so terrified that I hardly slept.
“The next morning, I seemed a little better, and I did well throughout the day, conducting my business with precision and acumen. But that evening, at about eight o’clock, the gas flame in my room began to flicker and fade, and then it became the face of my father. It wavered in front of me and seemed to be trying to speak, but I heard nothing. That is, I heard nothing until I heard the tolling of midnight on the clock down the hall.”
“The face hovered before you for four hours?” asked Holmes.
“So it must have been, although I could not give an accounting of the time. It might have been seconds, for all I knew of its passing. As I had the previous evening, I tried to forget the incident. I got into my bed, but I had not been there long before the room seemed to expand around me, getting larger and larger while the bed got smaller and smaller. Soon it was as if the walls had spread so far from me that I could barely see them. It was as if the room itself had become as large as all of London, or as if the bed and I had become as small as a pea. I believe that I must have screamed at that point, and when I did, the walls rushed inward upon me with the speed of a courser; but before they reached me, I fell asleep or into a faint.”
Here our visitor paused once more to wipe his face with his handkerchief. He put it away and then said, “You must help me, Mr. Holmes. I fear that I am losing my mind or that the ghosts will somehow destroy me.”
“In your uncle’s case, did anyone else see the ghosts of which he told you?”
“No, or if so, he never told me of any witnesses.”
“And has no one else seen the strange apparitions that appeared to you?”
“I am a widower,” said Scrooge. “My wife died ten years ago, and since that time I have been a man of solitary habits and have lived alone. No one else saw what I have seen. But I know that I have seen it.”
“I am sure that you know what you have seen,” said Holmes. “And I will do what I can to help you.”
I was astonished. Never would I have believed that Holmes could allow himself an interest in a story that seemed so fantastically unreal. Ghosts? Doorknobs that transformed themselves into faces? These were the very kinds of tales that Holmes abominated.
However, he seemed to have a genuine concern for our visitor, and he assured him that he would do all he could to assist him.
“You must, of course, be perfectly frank with me,” he told Scrooge. “And you must answer all my questions, no matter how odd they may seem to you.”
“I have heard of your methods, as I said. I will answer whatever you might ask.”
“Good,” said Holmes. “First of all, tell me about your place of business. How many employees do you have, and what is their character?”
“I employ seven men, including my clerk. All have worked for me for quite some time, five years at the least. The clerk, Timothy Cratchit, has been with me ever since I inherited the business from my uncle, and a more loyal employee I should never hope to have. His father served before him as clerk for my uncle just as faithfully. As to the others, their character is beyond reproach, with the possible exception of one Randall Tomkins, who is a fine man when sober but who on occasion is most decidedly not sober. On those occasions, which are unfortunately not infrequent, he does not appear at the firm of Scrooge and Marley.”
“Very well,” Holmes said, and I was gratified to hear his next question, which seemed to reflect his attention to my own earlier theory. “What meals do you eat, and where do you take them?”
“I rise early and break my fast with a slice of bread and an apple. I take lunch in the Bull and Boar, just around the corner from my office, and I often take dinner there as well, though there are other places where I dine when the mood is on me. Should I name them?”
“That is not necessary at present. Do you take tea?”
“Certainly. That is a daily ritual at the firm of Scrooge and Marley. Are you of the belief that some clot of cream or dab of biscuit is causing the appearance of these ghosts?”
“That remains to be seen. Tomorrow, Dr. Watson and I will visit you at your offices. As for today, I recommend that you go home and rest. Do not allow yourself any visitors. Should any come, simply tell them that you are unwell. I do not believe that your ghosts will visit you on a Sunday.”
“I am afraid that you are taking me lightly,” Scrooge said, mistaking Holmes’s comment for a joke.
“On the contrary,” said Holmes. “I assure you that I am taking you most seriously indeed. You have asked for my help and advice. If you do not choose to follow it, than I cannot accept your case.”
Scrooge rose and settled his hat on his head. “I will do what you say. At what time will you arrive tomorrow?”
“As to that, I am not yet sure. But we will be there at one time or another. You may count on it.”
“I will,” said Scrooge, and then he left our quarters.
“I am most surprised at you, Holmes,” said I when Scrooge was gone. “I had assumed that you had no curiosity about ghosts.”
Holmes was rummaging round, searching for the Persian slipper where his tobacco was kept. “And you were quite correct in your assumption. Considering the fact that ghosts do not exist, it would be difficult to develop an interest in them. Ah, here it is.”
He filled his pipe, and when he got it going
to his satisfaction, he said, “We will be visiting the offices of Scrooge and Marley tomorrow afternoon. I am sorry to have presumed of you, Watson, that you would accompany me. I should have asked. But you will go, won’t you?”
“Of course,” said I. “I’m sure it will be as enlightening as any venture on which I have accompanied you.”
“Good old Watson,” said Holmes, a wreath of smoke surrounding him. “I knew that I could count on you. And you may want to take your revolver. It is best to be prepared.”
“I hardly think that a revolver would be much use against a ghost,” I said.
“Indeed,” said Sherlock Holmes.
The next day was dark with clouds, and cold enough to crack stones. A thick, greasy fog slid around the buildings and rolled down the streets. Holmes and I spent the day indoors, I reading a book of memoirs written by one of my fellows from the Afghanistan campaign, Holmes going through his commonplace books and reading in some of the many volumes of chemical and criminal lore that he kept in a jumble about our rooms. Finally, at about half-past three, he said, “It is time to pay our visit to the firm of Scrooge and Marley, Watson. Are you prepared?”
I patted the pocket of my jacket where I had secreted my revolver earlier in the day. “Yes, Holmes. I believe that I am.”
We shouldered into heavy coats and wrapped our scarves around our necks. Holmes put on a travelling cap with earflaps, and I chose a black bowler. Both of us wore warm gloves.
What with the fog, the clouds, and the lateness of the hour, it was quite dark by the time we descended to Baker Street. The Christmas crowds were bustling about, but the people were subdued by the brutal weather, and the sounds of their voices were distorted by the thick murk. In the distance we could hear someone faintly singing a carol, and the gaslights were rosy gold smears.
“Do you know where we are going, Holmes?” I asked.
“To the firm of Scrooge and Marley.”
“I meant the direction.”
“I looked it up in my directory. It is not far from here, and I doubt that we can find a cab in this weather, so we must walk. Stay by my side, and you will not get lost.”