by Lamb, Hugh;
Even as he did so the scene changed again; it was night once more, and the miser wended her way upstairs. From below, Graham Coulton fancied he watched her toiling wearily from step to step. She had aged strangely since the previous scenes. She moved with difficulty; it seemed the greatest exertion for her to creep from step to step, her skinny hand traversing the balusters with slow and painful deliberateness. Fascinated, the young man’s eyes followed the progress of that feeble, decrepit woman. She was solitary in a desolate house, with a deeper blackness than the darkness of night waiting to engulf her.
It seemed to Graham Coulton that after that he lay for a time in a still, dreamless sleep, upon awakening from which he found himself entering a chamber as sordid and unclean in its appointments as the woman of his previous vision had been in her person. The poorest labourer’s wife would have gathered more comforts around her than that room contained. A four-poster bedstead without hangings of any kind – a blind drawn up awry – an old carpet covered with dust, and dirt on the floor – a rickety washstand with all the paint worn off it – an ancient mahogany dressing table, and a cracked glass spotted all over – were all the objects he could at first discern, looking at the room through that dim light which oftentimes obtains in dreams.
By degrees, however, he perceived the outline of someone lying huddled on the bed. Drawing nearer, he found it was that of the person whose dreadful presence seemed to pervade the house, What a terrible sight she looked, with her thin white locks scattered over the pillow, with what were mere remnants of blankets gathered about her shoulders, with her claw-like fingers clutching the clothes, as though even in sleep she was guarding her gold!
An awful and a repulsive spectacle, but not with half the terror in it of that which followed. Even as the young man looked he heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs. Then he saw first one man and then his fellow steal cautiously into the room. Another second, and the pair stood beside the bed, murder in their eyes.
Graham Coulton tried to shout – tried to move, but the deterrent power which exists in dreams only tied his tongue and paralysed his limbs. He could but hear and look, and what he heard and saw was this: aroused suddenly from sleep, the woman started, only to receive a blow from one of the ruffians, whose fellow followed his lead by plunging a knife into her breast.
Then, with a gurgling scream, she fell back on the bed, and at the same moment, with a cry, Graham Coulton again awoke, to thank heaven it was but an illusion.
III
‘I hope you slept well, sir.’ It was William, who, coming into the hall with the sunlight of a fine bright morning streaming after him, asked this question: ‘Had you a good night’s rest?’
Graham Coulton laughed, and answered:
‘Why, faith, I was somewhat in the case of Paddy, “who could not slape for dhraming.” I slept well enough, I suppose, but whether it was in consequence of the row with my dad, or the hard bed, or the cheese – most likely the bread and cheese so late at night – I dreamt all the night long, the most extraordinary dreams. Some old woman kept cropping up, and I saw her murdered.’
‘You don’t say that, sir?’ said William nervously.
‘I do, indeed,’ was the reply. ‘However, that is all gone and past. I have been down in the kitchen and had a good wash, and I am as fresh as a daisy, and as hungry as a hunter; and, oh, William, can you get me any breakfast?’
‘Certainly, Master Graham, I have brought round a kettle, and I will make the water boil immediately. I suppose, sir’ – this tentatively – ‘you’ll be going home to-day?’
‘Home!’ repeated the young man. ‘Decidedly not. I’ll never go home again till I return with some medal hung to my coat, or a leg or arm cut off. I’ve thought it all out, William. I’ll go and enlist. There’s a talk of war; and, living or dead, my father shall have reason to retract his opinion about my being a coward.’
‘I am sure the admiral never thought you anything of the sort, sir,’ said William. ‘Why, you have the pluck of ten!’
‘Not before him,’ answered the young fellow sadly.
‘You’ll do nothing rash, Master Graham; you won’t go ’listing, or aught of that sort, in your anger?’
‘If I do not, what is to become of me?’ asked the other. ‘I cannot dig – to beg I am ashamed. Why, but for you, I should not have had a roof over my head last night.’
‘Not much of a roof, I am afraid, sir.’
‘Not much of a roofl’ repeated the young man. ‘Why, who could desire a better? What a capital room this is,’ he went on, looking around the apartment, where William was now kindling a fire; ‘one might dine twenty people here easily!’
‘If you think so well of the place, Master Graham, you might stay here for a while, till you have made up your mind what you are going to do. The landlord won’t make any objection, I am very sure.’
‘Oh! nonsense; he would want a long rent for a house like this.’
‘I daresay; if he could get it,’ was William’s significant answer.
‘What do you mean? Won’t the place let?’
‘No, sir. I did not tell you last night, but there was a murder done here, and people are shy of the house ever since.’
‘A murder! What sort of a murder? Who was murdered?’
‘A woman, Master Graham – the landlord’s sister; she lived here all alone, and was supposed to have money. Whether she had or not, she was found dead from a stab in her breast, and if there ever was any money, it must have been taken at the same time, for none ever was found in the house from that day to this.’
‘Was that the reason your wife would not stop here?’ asked the young man, leaning against the mantleshelf, and looking thoughtfully down on William.
‘Yes, sir. She could not stand it any longer; she got that thin and nervous no one would have believed it possible; she never saw anything, but she said she heard footsteps and voices, and then when she walked through the hall, or up the staircase, someone always seemed to be following her. We put the children to sleep in that big room you had last night, and they declared they often saw an old woman sitting by the hearth. Nothing ever came my way,’ finished William, with a laugh; ‘I was always ready to go to sleep the minute my head touched the pillow.’
‘Were not the murderers discovered?’ asked Graham Coulton.
‘No, sir; the landlord, Miss Tynan’s brother, had always lain under the suspicion of it – quite wrongfully, I am very sure – but he will never clear himself now. It was known he came and asked her for help a day or two before the murder, and it was also known he was able within a week or two to weather whatever trouble had been harassing him. Then, you see, the money was never found; and, altogether, people scarce knew what to think.’ ‘Humph!’ ejaculated Graham Coulton, and he took a few turns up and down the apartment. ‘Could I go and see this landlord?’
‘Surely, sir, if you had a hat,’ answered William, with such a serious decorum that the young man burst out laughing.
‘That is an obstacle, certainly,’ he remarked, ‘and I must make a note do instead. I have a pencil in my pocket, so here goes.’
Within half an hour from the dispatch of that note William was back again with a sovereign; the landlord’s compliments, and he would be much obliged if Mr. Coulton could ‘step round.’
‘You’ll do nothing rash, sir,’ entreated William.
‘Why, man,’ answerd the young fellow, ‘one may as well be picked off by a ghost as a bullet. What is there to be afraid of?’
William only shook his head. He did not think his young master was made of the stuff likely to remain alone in a haunted house and solve the mystery it assuredly contained by dint of his own unassisted endeavours. And yet when Graham Coulton came out of the landlord’s house he looked more bright and gay than usual, and walked up the Lambeth road to the place where Wiliam awaited his return, humming an air as he paced along.
‘We have settled the matter,’ he said. ‘And now if the dad wants his son fo
r Christmas, it will trouble him to find him.’
‘Don’t say that, Master Graham, don’t,’ entreated the man, with a shiver; ‘maybe after all it would have been better if you had never happened to chance upon Vauxhall Walk.’
‘Don’t croak, William,’ answered the young man; ‘if it was not the best day’s work I ever did for myself I’m a Dutchman.’
During the whole of that afternoon, Graham Coulton searched diligently for the missing treasure Mr. Tynan assured him had never been discovered. Youth is confident, and self opinionated, and this fresh explorer felt satisfied that, though others had failed, he would be successful. On the second floor he found one door locked, but he did not pay much attention to that at the moment, as he believed if there was anything concealed it was more likely to be found in the lower than the upper part of the house. Late into the evening he pursued his researches in the kitchen and cellars and old-fashioned cupboards, of which the basement had an abundance.
It was nearly eleven, when, engaged in poking about amongst the empty bins of a wine cellar as large as a family vault, he suddenly felt a rush of cold air at his back. Moving, his candle was instantly extinguished, and in the very moment of being left in darkness he saw, standing in the door-way, a woman, resembling her who had haunted his dreams overnight.
He rushed with outstretched hands to seize her, but clutched only air. He relit his candle, and closely examined the basement, shutting off communication with the ground floor ere doing so. All in vain. Not a trace could he find of living creature – not a window was open – not a door unbolted.
‘It is very odd,’ he thought, as, after securely fastening the door at the top of the staircase, he searched the whole upper portion of the house, with the exception of the one room mentioned.
‘I must get the key of that to-morrow,’ he decided, standing gloomily with his back to the fire and his eyes wandering about the drawing-room, where he had once again taken up his abode.
Even as the thought passed through his mind, he saw standing in the open doorway a woman with white dishevelled hair, clad in mean garments, ragged and dirty. She lifted her hand and shook it at him with a menacing gesture, and then, just as he was darting towards her, a wonderful thing occurred.
From behind the great mirror there glided a second female figure, at the sight of which the first turned and fled, uttering piercing shrieks as the other followed her up the stairs.
Sick almost with terror, Graham Coulton watched the dreadful pair as they fled upstairs past the locked room to the top of the house.
It was a few minutes before he recovered his self possession. When he did so, and searched the upper apartments, he found them totally empty.
That night, ere lying down before the fire, he carefully locked and bolted the drawing-room door; before he did more he drew the heavy settle in front of it, so that if the lock were forced no entrance could be affected without considerable noise.
For some time he lay awake, then dropped into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened suddenly by a noise as if of something scuffling stealthily behind the wainscot. He raised himself on his elbow and listened, and, to his consternation, beheld seated at the opposite side of the hearth the same woman he had seen before in his dreams, lamenting over her gold.
The fire was not quite out, and at the moment shot up a last tongue of flame. By the light, transient as it was, he saw that the figure pressed a ghostly finger to its lips, and by the turn of his head and the attitude of its body seemed to be listening.
He listened also – indeed, he was too much frightened to do aught else; more and more distinct grew the sounds which had aroused him, a stealthy rustling coming nearer and nearer – up and up it seemed, behind the wainscot.
‘It is rats,’ thought the young man, though, indeed, his teeth were almost chattering in his head with fear. But then in a moment he saw what disabused him of that idea – the gleam of a candle or lamp through a crack in the panelling. He tried to rise, he strove to shout – all in vain; and, sinking down, remembered nothing more till he awoke to find the grey light of an early morning stealing through one of the shutters he had left partially unclosed.
For hours after his breakfast, which he scarcely touched, long after William had left him at mid-day, Graham Coulton, having in the morning made a long and close survey of the house, sat thinking before the fire, then, apparently having made up his mind, he put on the hat he had bought, and went out.
When he returned the evening shadows were darkening down, but the pavements were full of people going marketing, for it was Christmas Eve, and all who had money to spend seemed bent on shopping.
It was terribly dreary inside the old house that night. Through the deserted rooms Graham could feel that ghostly semblance was wandering mournfully. When he turned his back he knew she was flitting from the mirror to the fire, from the fire to the mirror; but he was not afraid of her now – he was far more afraid of another matter he had taken in hand that day.
The horror of the silent house grew and grew upon him. He could hear the beating of his own heart in the dead quietude which reigned from garret to cellar.
At last William came; but the young man said nothing to him of what was in his mind. He talked to him cheerfully and hopefully enough – wondered where his father would think he had got to, and hoped Mr. Tynan might send him some Christmas pudding. Then the man said it was time for him to go, and, when Mr. Coulton went downstairs to the hall-door, remarked the key was not in it.
‘No,’ was the answer, ‘I took it out to-day, to oil it.’
‘It wanted oiling,’ agreed William, ‘for it worked terribly stiff.’ Having uttered which truism he departed.
Very slowly the young man retraced his way to the drawing-room, where he only paused to lock the door on the outside; then taking off his boots he went up to the top of the house, where, entering the front attic, he waited patiently in darkness and in silence.
It was a long time, or at least it seemed long to him, before he heard the same sound which had aroused him on the previous night – a stealthy rustling – then a rush of cold air – then cautious footsteps – then the quiet opening of a door below.
It did not take as long in action as it has required to tell. In a moment the young man was out on the landing and had closed a portion of the panelling on the wall which stood open; noiselessly he crept back to the attic window, unlatched it, and sprung a rattle, the sound of which echoed far and near through the deserted streets, then rushing down the stairs, he encountered a man who, darting past him, made for the landing above; but perceiving that way of escape closed, fled down again, to find Graham struggling desperately with his fellow.
‘Give him the knife – come along,’ he said savagely; and next instant Graham felt something like a hot iron through his shoulder, and then heard a thud, as one of the men, tripping in his rapid flight, fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom.
At the same moment there came a crash, as if the house was falling, and faint, sick, and bleeding, young Coulton lay insensible on the threshold of the room where Miss Tynan had been murdered.
When he recovered he was in the dining-room, and a doctor wsa examining his wound.
Near the door a policeman stiffly kept guard. The hall was full of people; all the misery and vagabondism the streets contain at that hour was crowding in to see what had happened.
Through the midst two men were being conveyed to the station-house; one, with his head dreadfully injured, on a stretcher, the other handcuffed, uttering frightful imprecations as he went.
After a time the house was cleared of the rabble, the police took possession of it, and Mr. Tynan was sent for.
‘What was that dreadful noise?’ asked Graham feebly, now seated on the floor, with his back resting against the wall.
‘I do not know. Was there a noise?’ said Mr. Tynan, humouring his fancy, as he thought.
‘Yes, in the drawing-room, I think; the key is in my pocket.’ Still h
umouring the wounded lad, Mr. Tynan took the key and ran upstairs.
When he unlocked the door, what a sight met his eyes! The mirror had fallen – it was lying all over the floor shivered into a thousand pieces; the console table had been borne down by its weight, and the marble slab was shattered as well. But this was not what chained his attention. Hundreds, thousands of gold pieces were scattered about, and an aperture behind the glass contained boxes filled with securities and deeds and bonds, the possession of which had cost his sister her life.
‘Well, Graham, and what do you want?’ asked Admiral Coulton that evening as his eldest born appeared before him, looking somewhat pale but otherwise unchanged.
‘I want nothing,’ was the answer, ‘but to ask your forgiveness. William has told me all the story I never knew before; and, if you let me, I will try to make it up to you for the trouble you have had. I am provided for,’ went on the young fellow, with a nervous laugh; ‘I have made my fortune since I left you, and another man’s fortune as well.’
‘I think you are out of your senses,’ said the Admiral shortly.
‘No, sir, I have found them,’ was the answer; ‘and I mean to strive and make a better thing of my life than I should ever have done had I not gone to the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.’