by Ruskin Bond
Savelsan looked incredulously into Nare-Jones' face, and laughed.
"What's wrong with you? You look queer."
Nare-Jones laughed too; he was already ashamed of the last ten minutes.
Harland was meantime examining the metal calf.
"It's a Bengali image," he said, "It's been knocked about a good bit, by Jove! You say it blew out of the shrubbery?"
"Like a bit of paper, I give you my word, though there was not a breath of wind going," admitted Nare-Jones.
"Seems odd, don't yet know?" remarked Harland carelessly, "Now you two fellows had better begin; I'll mark."
Nare-Jones happened to be in form that night, and Savelsan became absorbed in the delightful difficulty of giving him a sound thrashing.
Suddenly Savelsan paused in his stroke.
"What's the sin's that?" he asked.
They stood listening. A thin, broken crying could be heard.
"Sounds like green plover," remarked Nare-Jones chalking his cue.
"It's a kitten they've shut up somewhere," said Harland.
"That's a child, and in the deuce of a fright, too," said Savelsan. "You'd better go and tuck it up in its little bed, Harland," he added, with a laugh.
Harland opened the door. There could no longer be any doubt about the sounds; the stifled shrieks and thin whimpering told of a child in the extremity of pain and fear.
"It's upstairs," said Harland. "I'm going to see."
Nare-Jones picked up a lamp and followed him.
"I stay here," said Savelsan sitting down by the fire.
In the hall the two men stopped and listened again. It is hard to locate a noise, but this seemed to come from the upper landing.
"Poor little beggar!" exclaimed Harland, as he bounded up the staircase. The bedroom doors opening on the square central landing above were all locked, the keys being on the outside. But the crying led them into a side passage which ended in a single room.
"It's in here, and the door's locked," said Nare-Jones. "Call out and see who's there."
But Harland was set on business. He flung his weight against the panel, and the door burst open, the lock ricochetting noisily into a corner. As they passed in, the crying ceased abruptly
Harland stood in the centre of the room, while Nare-Jones held up the light to look round.
"The dickens!" exclaimed Harland exhaustively.
The room was entirely empty.
Not so much as a cupboard broke the smooth surface of the walls, only the two low windows and the door by which they had entered.
"This is the room above the billiard-room, isn't it?" said Nare-Jones at last.
"Yes. This is the only one I have not had furnished yet. I thought I might—?
He stopped short, for behind them burst out a peal of harsh, mocking laughter, that rang and echoed between the bare walls.
Both men swung round simultaneously, and both caught a glimpse of a tall, thin figure in black, rocking with laughter in the doorway, but when they turned it was gone. They dashed out into the passage and landing. No one was to be seen. The doors were locked as before, and the staircase and hall were vacant.
After making a prolonged search through every corner of the house, they went back to Savelsan in the billiard-room.
"What were you laughing about? What is it anyway?" began Savelsan at once.
"It's nothing. And we didn't laugh," replied Nare-Jones definitely.
"But I heard you," insisted Savelsan. "And where's the child?"
"I wish you'd go up and find it," returned Harland grimly, "We heard the laughing and saw, or thought we saw, a man in black—"
"Something like a priest in a cassock," put in Nare-Jones.
"Yes, like a priest," assented Harland, "but as we turned he disappeared."
Savelsan sat down and gazed from one to the other of his companions.
"The house behaves as if it was haunted," he remarked; "only there is no such thing as an authenticated ghost outside the experiences of the Psychical Research Society. I'd ask the Society down if I were you, Harland. You never can tell what you may find in these old houses."
"It's not an old house," replied Harland. "It was built somewhere about '40. I certainly saw that man; and, look to it, Savelsan, I'll find out who or what he is. That I swear! The English law makes no allowance for ghosts—nor will I."
"You'll have your hands full, or I'm mistaken," exclaimed Savelsan, grinning. "A ghost that laughs and cries in a breath, and rolls battered images about your front door, is not to be trifled with. The night is young yet—not much past eleven. I vote for a peg all round and then I'll finish off Jones."
Harland, sunk in a fit of sullen abstraction, sat on a settee, and watched them. On a sudden he said:
"It's turned beastly cold."
"There's a beastly smell, you mean," corrected Savelsan crossly, as he went round the table. He had made a break of forty and did not want to be interrupted. "The draught is from the window."
"I've not noticed it before this evening," said Harland, as he opened the shutters to make sure.
As he did so the night air rushed in heavy with the smell as of an old well that has not been uncovered for years, a smell of slime and unwholesome wetness. The lower part of the window was wide open and Harland banged it down.
"It's abomible!" he said, with an angry sniff. "Enough to give us all typhoid."
"Only dead leaves," remarked Nare-Jones. "There are the rotten leaves of twenty winters under the trees and outside this window. I noticed them when we came over on Tuesday."
"I'll have them cleared away to-morrow. I wonder how Thomas came to leave this window open," grumbled Harland, as he closed and bolted the shutter. "What do you say—forty-five?" and he went over to mark it up.
The game went on for some time, and Nare-Jones was lying across the table with the cue poised, when he heard a slight sound behind him. Looking round he saw Harland, his face flushed and angry, passing softly—wonderfully softly for so big a man, Nare-Jones remembers thinking—along the angle of the wall towards the window.
All three men unite in declaring that they were watching the shutter, which opened inwards as if thrust by some furtive hand from outside. At the moment Nare-Jones and Savelsan were standing directly opposite to it on the further side of the table, while Harland crouched behind the shutter intent on giving the intruder a lesson.
As the shutter unfolded to its utmost the two men opposite saw a face pressed against the glass, a furrowed evil face, with a wide laugh perched upon its sinister features.
There was a second of absolute stillness, and Nare-Jone's eyes met those other eyes with the fascinated horror of a mutual understanding, as all the foul fancies that had pursued him in the avenue poured back into his mind.
With an uncontrollable impulse of resentment, he snatched a billiard ball from the table and flung it with all his strength at the face. The ball crashed through the glass and through the face beyond it! The glass fell shattered, but the face remained for an instant peering and grinning at the aperture, then as Harland sprang forward it was gone.
"The ball went clean through it!" said Savelsan with a gasp.
They crowded to the window, and throwing up the sash, leant out. The dank smell clung about the air, a boat-shaped moon glimmered between the bare branches, and on the white drive beyond the shrubbery the billiard ball could be seen a shining spot under the moon. Noting more.
"What was it?" asked Harland.
" 'Only a face at the window,' " quoted Savelsan with an awkward attempt at making light of his own scare. "Devilish queer face too, eh, Jones?"
"I wish I'd got him!" returned Harland frowning. "I'm not going to put up with any tricks about the place, don't yer know?"
"You'd bottle any tramp loafing around," said Nare-Jones.
Harland looked down at his immense arms outlined in his shirtsleeves.
"I could that," he answered. "But this chap—did you hit him?'
&nbs
p; "Clean through the face! Or, at any rate, it looked like it" replied Savelsan, as Nare-Jones stood silent.
Harland shut the shutter and poked up the fire.
"It's a cursed creepy affair!" he said, "I hope the servants won't get hold of this nonsense. Ghosts play the very mischief with a house. Though I don't believe in them myself," he concluded.
Then Savelsan broke out in an unexpected place.
"Nor do I—as a rule," he said slowly. "Still, you know it is a sickening idea to think of a spirit condemned to haunt the scene of its crime waiting for the world to die."
Harland and Nare-Jones looked at him.
"Have a whisky neat," suggested Harland, soothingly. "I never knew you taken that way before."
Nare-Jones laughed out. He says he does not know why he laughed nor why he said what follows.
"It's this way," he said. "The moment of foul satisfaction is gone for ever, yet for all time the guilty spirit must perpetuate its sin—the sin that brought no lasting reward, only a momentary reward experienced, it may be, centuries ago, but to which still clings the punishment of eternally rehearsing in loneliness, and cold, and gloom, the sin of other days. No punishment can be conceived more horrible. Savelsan is right."
"I think we've had enough about ghosts," said Harland, cheerfully, "let's go on. Hurry up, Savelsan."
"There's the billiard ball," said Nare-Jones. "Who'll go fetch?"
"Not I," replied Savelsan promptly. "When that—was at the window, I felt sick."
Nare-Jones nodded. "And I wanted to bolt!" he said emphatically.
Harland faced about from the fire.
"And I, though I saw nothing but the shutter, I—hang it!—don't yet know—so did I! There was panic in the air for a minute. But I'm shot if I'm afraid now," he concluded doggedly, "I'll go."
His heavy animal face was lit with courage and resolution.
"I've spent close upon five thousand pounds over this blessed house first and last, and I'm not going to be done out of it by any infernal spiritualism!" he added, as he took down his coat and pulled it on.
"It's all in view from the window except those few yards through the shrubbery," said Savelsan. "Take a stick and go. Though, on second thoughts, I bet you a fiver you don't."
"I don't want a stick," answered Harland. "I'm not afraid—not now—and I'd meet most men with my hands."
Nare-Jones opened the shutters again; the sash was low and he pushed the window up, and leant far out.
"It's not much of a drop," he said, and slung his legs out over the lintel; but the night was full of the smell, and something else. He leapt back into the room. "Don't go, Harland!"
Harland gave him a look that set his blood burning.
"What is there, after all, to be afraid of in a ghost?" he asked heavily.
Nare-Jones, sick with the sense of his own newly-born cowardice, yet entirely unable to master it, answered feebly:
"I can't say, but don't go."
The words seemed inevitable, though he could have kicked himself for hanging back.
There was a forced laugh from Savelsan.
"Give it up and stop at home, little man," he said.
Harland merely snorted in reply, and laid his great leg over the window ledge. The other two watched his big, tweed-clad figure as it crossed the grass and disappeared into the shrubbery.
"You and I are in a preposterous funk," said Savelsan, with unpleasant explicitness, as Harland, whistling loudly, passed into the shadow.
But this was a point on which Nare-Jones could not bring himself to speak at the moment. Then they sat on the sill and waited. The moon shone out clearly above the avenue, which now lay white and undimmed between its crowding trees.
"And he's whistling because he's afraid," continued Savelsan.
"He's not often afraid," replied Nare-Jones shortly; "besides, he's doing what neither of us were very keen on."
The whistling stopped suddenly. Savelsan said afterwards that he fancied he saw Harland's huge, grey-clad shoulders, with uplifted arms, rise for a second above the bushes.
Then out of the silence came peal upon peal of that infernal laughter, and, following it, the thin pitiful crying of the child. That too ceased, and an absolute stillness seemed to fall upon the place.
They leant out and listened intently. The minutes passed slowly. In the middle of the avenue the billiard ball glinted on the gravel, but there was no sign of Harland emerging from the shrubbery path.
"He should be there by now," said Nare-Jones anxiously.
They listened again; everything was quiet. The ticking of Harland's big watch on the mantelpiece was distinctly audible.
"This is too much," said Nare-Jones. 'I'm going to see where he is."
He swung himself out on the grass, and Savelsan called to him to wait, as he was coming also. While Nare-Jones stood waiting, there was a sound as of a pig grunting and rooting among the dead leaves in the shrubbery.
They ran forward into the darkness, and found the shrubbery path. A minute later they came upon something that tossed and snorted and rolled under the shrubs.
"Great Heavens!" cried Nare-Jones, "it's Harland!"
"He's breaking somebody's neck," added Savelsan, peering into the gloom.
Nare-Jones was himself again. The powerful instinct of his profession—the help-giving instinct, possessed him to the exclusion of every other feeling.
"He's in a fit—just a fit," he said in matter of fact tones, as he bent over the struggling form; "that's all."
With the assistance of Savelsan, he managed to carry Harland out into the open drive. Harland's eyes were fearful, and froth hung about his blue puffing lips as they laid him down upon the ground. He rolled over, and lay still, while from the shadows broke another shout of laughter.
"It's apoplexy. We must get him away from here," said Nare-Jones. "But, first, I'm going to see what is in those bushes."
He dashed through the shrubbery, backwards and forwards. He seemed to feel the strength of ten men as he wrenched and tore and trampled the branches, letting in the light of the moon to its darkness. At last he paused, exhausted.
"Of course, there's nothing," said Savelsan wearily. "What did you expect after the incident of the billiard ball?"
Together, with awful toil, they bore the big man down the narrow avenue, and at the lodge gates they met the carriage.
Some time later the subject of their common experiences at Medhans Lea was discussed amongst the three men. Indeed, for many weeks Harland had not been in a state to discuss any subject at all, but as soon as he was allowed to do so, he invited Nare-Jones and Savelsan to meet Mr. Flaxman Low, the scientist, whose works on psychology and kindred matters are so well known at the Metropole, to thresh out the matter.
Flaxman Low listened with his usual air of gentle abstraction, from time to time making notes on the back of an envelope. He looked at each narrator in turn as he took up the thread of the story. He understood perfectly that the man who stood furthest from the mystery must inevitably have been the self-centred Savelsan; next in order came Nare-Jones, with sympathetic possibilities, but a crowded brain; closest of all would be big, kindly Harland, with more than one strong animal instinct about him, and whose bulk of matter was evidently permeated by a receptive spirit.
When they had ended, Savelsan turned to Flaxman Low.
"There you have the events, Mr. Low. Now, the question is how to deal with them."
"Classify them," replied Flaxman Low.
"The crying would seem to indicate a child," began Savelsan, ticking off the list on his fingers; "the black figure, the face at the window, and the laughter are naturally connected. So far I can go alone. I conclude that we saw the apparition of a man, possibly a priest, who had during his lifetime illtreated a child, and whose punishment it is to haunt the scene of his crime."
"Precisely—the punishment being worked out under conditions which admit of human observation," returned Flaxman Low. "As for the child
the sound of crying was merely part of the mise-en-scène. The child was not there."
"But that explanation stops short of several points. Now about the suggestive thoughts experienced by my friend, Nare-Jones; what brought on the fit in the case of Mr. Harland, who assures us that he was not suffering from fright or other violent emotion; and what connection can be traced between all these things and the Bengali image?" Savelsan ended.
"Let us take the Bengali figure first," said Low. "it is just one of those discrepant particulars which, at first sight, seem wholly irreconcilable with the rest of the phenomena, yet these often form a test point, by which our theories are proved or otherwise." Flaxman Low took up the metal calf from the table as he spoke. "I should be inclined to connect this with the child. Observe it. It has not been roughly used; it is rubbed and dinted as a plaything usually is. I should say the child may have had Anglo-Indian relations."
At this, Nare-Jones bent forward, and in his turn examined the figure, while Savelsan smiled his thin, incredulous smile.
"These are ingenious theories," he said; "but we are really no nearer to facts, I am afraid."
"The only proof would be an inquiry into the former history of Medhans Lea; if events had happened there which would go to support this theory, why, then—But I cannot supply that information since I never heard of Medhans Lea or the ghost until I entered this room."
"I know something of Medhans Lea," put in Nare-Jones. "I found out a good deal about it before I left the place. And I must congratulate Mr. Low on his methods, for his theory tallies in a wonderful manner with the facts of the case. The house was long known to be haunted. It seems that many years ago a lady, the widow of an Indian officer, lived there with her only child, a boy, for whom she engaged a tutor, a dark-looking man, who wore a long black coat like a cassock, and was called 'the Jesuit' by the country people.
"One evening the man took the boy out into the shrubbery. Screams were heard, and when the child was brought in he was found to have lost his reason. He used to cry and shriek incessantly, but was never able to tell what had been done to him as long as he lived. As for this metal calf, the mother probably brought it with her from India, and the child used it as a toy, perhaps, because he was allowed no others. Hullo!" In handling the calf, Nare-Jones had touched some hidden spring, the head opened, disclosing a small cavity, from which dropped a little ring of blue beads, such as children make. He held it up. "This affords good proof."