Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  “Then she cried out,” Gudgeon finished the tale, “and I bundled on my night-gown and came to her, and stayed by her the same as the night before.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “Naught at all. Come morning I told Rector, and he said ’twas the same like Cock Lane, and so he was so good as to send to you, sir, and I beg you’ll study this out.”

  “Sir, I’ll do so.” Dr. Johnson prowled about the room, knocking and tapping on the wainscot.

  “Hark,” he said, “hear how hollow the panelling sounds over against the other room, and how thick where the house wall gives on the garden.” He sounded the side walls. Behind the bed the wall was thick; but opposite, the panelling resounded hollowly.

  “This is no house wall,” said he, looking questioningly at Gudgeon.

  “That is so, sir,” replied Gudgeon, “’tis but a partition, for we dwell in but half a house, and Mr. Harkebus the surgeon has the other half. But come, sir, let us leave the lass to rest.”

  He led us to a lower room, where his buxom wife sat plying her needle. Beside the fire sat a gaunt woman, so bony and long that I knew her at once for Gudgeon’s sister. Her skinny fingers impelled her knitting needles in jerks. She bobbed her head at us, but said nothing.

  “Well, sir,” said the wife crisply, “I hope you have spoke seriously to Mally and made her see her duty.”

  “She’ll never sleep again,” said the thin woman abruptly. Her voice was deep and hollow, like a tired man’s. “She’ll never sleep again till the ghost is laid that haunts this house.”

  Dr. Johnson looked at the craggy features attentively.

  “What ghost, ma’am?”

  “There’s more than one ghost could haunt this house,” muttered she.

  “The house has a history, then?”

  The woman made no reply. Gudgeon answered for her.

  “’Twas from this house that the Master of the Clothworkers’ Company was led, and with him the priest he was harbouring, in the troubled times of Elizabeth. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.”

  The gaunt woman gave a snort.

  “’Tis never him,” she asserted, “for the spectre Mall saw was all in one piece.” Dr. Johnson looked surprized at this specimen of close metaphysical reasoning.

  “The Clothworkers sold the house,” continued Gudgeon, “though their hall is so close at hand; but he who bought it fared no better. ’Twas gutted in the great fire; he refurbished the shell, and built the second door and turned it into two houses, as part of his daughter’s portion; but in the end they say the same daughter’s husband was the death of him, and the house got a bad name. In my memory, in the years I’ve lived hereabouts as sexton of All Hallows Staining, it has been let to a parcel of riff-raff.”

  “Riff-raff indeed,” snorted the buxom wife, “and in my opinion that Harkebus is the worst with his wine-bibber’s nose and his anatomies. Depend upon it, if the house is haunted indeed, you may thank Mr. Harkebus and his body-snatchers.”

  “There was another,” said the thin sister in her hollow voice, “brought up from the river in the same basket, not above two days since. Drowned he was, and now Harkebus has got him.”

  “You see!” said Mrs. Gudgeon, and bit off an end of thread.

  “’Tis never him,” said the gaunt woman, “though I grant them that’s drowned do walk. But this is never him—’cause why? ’Cause this one is dry and in his shroud, ’stead of coming a-dripping and all over seaweed. The drowned anatomy will haunt Mr. Harkebus, as like as not. He’ll haunt him in the garret where he cuts them up, he will, dripping river-water and river-weed.”

  “Hold your tongue, Pall,” said Gudgeon sharply.

  “I hope,” said Dr. Johnson seriously, “that Miss Gudgeon does not talk in this strain to Miss Mally.”

  “Oh, don’t she, though,” exclaimed Mrs. Gudgeon, adding not quite under her breath, “Old crow!”

  “I know,” exclaimed Miss Gudgeon, her voice rising to a rusty screech, “I know who lived in this house in his prosperity, ay and Mally’s sleeping in his very bed. I know who lived in this house till they hanged him.”

  “This sort of thing,” frowned Dr. Johnson, “must be powerfully unsettling for the child.”

  “Who, Miss Gudgeon?” I asked eagerly, unable to restrain my curiosity. “Who lived here till they hanged him?”

  “Ah!” said Miss Gudgeon. She beckoned me mysteriously to a tall press that stood in the corner. Scrabbling in rags, she drew forth an untidy, much-thumbed pile of broadsheets. Lugging them to the firelight, she squatted awkwardly down beside them and began to turn them over. Dr. Johnson peered over her shoulder, and chuckled.

  “Why,” said he, “my friend Thomas Percy should see these broadsheets. He’d call them treasure trove, and make them into a fourth volume of reliques of ancient poetry. The Diceys, eh? Why, these are great specimens of their art. What’s this? A ballad! A True and Perfect Relation from the Faulcon at the Bankeside: of the strange and wonderful aperition of one Mr. Powel a Baker lately deceased, and of his appearing in several shapes, both at Noon-day and at night, with the several speeches which past between the spirit of Mr Powel and his maid Jone and divers Learned men who went to alay him and the manner of his appearing to them in the Garden upon their making a circle, and burning of wax Candels and Jenniper wood, lastly how it vanished. Small wonder Mally sees things in shrouds! What would you have us do, Miss Gudgeon? Make a circle and burn jenniper wood?”

  Miss Gudgeon tossed her head, and went on turning over the coarse grey paper of the broadsheets. I picked up one at random: A Terrible and True Relation of one Melcher a Cut-purse who being taken at his Trade, for the which he was hanged at Tyburn, was expeditiously cut down and conveyed thence by his Friends; and being by GOD’s Mercy restor’d, doth to this day ply the trade of a WATERMAN, a very notable example of GOD’s just Judgements. 1661. God save the King.

  “God save Melcher!” I added, laughing heartily.

  Dr. Johnson scanned the crude rhymes of Melcher’s recrudescence, as Miss Gudgeon with a triumphant nod and a cadaverous smile handed me still another ballad. I read out the title:

  “An Account of the notorious Highway-man, Viz. WHITE WILL by Name; with his Compact with the Devil, in token whereof he was mark’d with the Divil’s Fingers, as many can attest; his Robberies on the Great North Road; his Scheam to commence Gentleman beyond the seas; with the manner of his taking, and how he was turned off at Tyburn, and his last dying Words of Repentance. 1768.”

  “Last dying words of repentance!” said Gudgeon contemptuously. “I saw him turned off. He never said a word. Jack Ketch was in a hurry, and turned him off and bundled him away to the indignation of the holiday-makers.”

  “Ah,” said Miss Gudgeon. “White Will! ’Twas here in this very house he set up for a gentleman before they took him; and many’s the time I’ve seen him at All Hallows Staining, wearing his Mechlin lace and a ring on his thumb.”

  “Indeed, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, wearying of the subject. “Well, Mr. Gudgeon, as to the strange manifestations in the back room—”

  “The house is haunted,” cried Miss Gudgeon, breaking in, “and ’tis White Will that haunts it. My niece has seen him plainly.” She held a bony finger on the margin of the ballad and nodded triumphantly. I read out the stanza she indicated:

  “He was prenticed to the Devil

  Which same doth appear,

  The Devil’s claws upon his cheek

  In scarlet doth appear

  The which with daubs of white clay

  He made to disapear.”

  “A fustian verse,” cried the learned critick in disgust.

  “Nevertheless it was so,” insisted Miss Gudgeon, “and my niece saw him walking in his shroud, with his face all white, except for the marks of fingers.”

  “Why, so she did,” said Gudgeon slowly.

  Even Dr. Johnson looked impressed.

  “Well, well, Miss Gudgeon,” he s
aid thoughtfully, “if you dwelt upon this knight of the road and his fate in your niece’s presence, perhaps all is explained. Nevertheless, I would ask the privilege of watching tonight in Miss Mally’s room, with my astute friend Mr. Boswell, to ascertain whether White Will will submit himself to philosophick scrutiny or no.”

  “I’ll watch with you,” cried Miss Gudgeon.

  “And I,” said Mrs. Gudgeon; “you will have need of a person of sense about you.”

  “Why, ’tis better so,” assented Dr. Johnson, much to my surprize. “Do you join our wake too, Mr. Gudgeon; and pray, could not you perswade your neighbour the surgeon to make one? Say to him that we desire the presence of a medical man.”

  “I will try,” replied Gudgeon, “but indeed his temper is uncertain, and I cannot vouch for him.”

  Nevertheless, Mr. Harkebus readily consented to make one; we found him drinking hot tea by the fire when we returned to Mincing Lane after supper. Miss Gudgeon was embroidering her theory of the apparition’s identity into his inattentive ear.

  “Yes, yes, you may be right, ma’am,” said Mr. Harkebus absently, eating bread-and-butter. His hot red eye was sardonick. Portly Mrs. Gudgeon regarded him with aversion.

  “Pray, ladies,” said Dr. Johnson, “do you be so kind as to repair to the child’s chamber and see that all is ready for the night. Be particular to search the child and the bedstead and make sure that she has no way of producing these noises by mechanical means.”

  “You may count upon me,” replied Mrs. Gudgeon grimly. “The chit shan’t diddle me, you may be sure.”

  Dr. Johnson shook his head as the two women mounted the stair with determined tread.

  “I hope for the child’s sake,” he observed to me in a low tone, “that these manifestations are indeed of supernatural origin, and not a wilful freak of her own. ’Twill go hard with her if she is caught out by her stepmother.”

  “Think you the child is mad?” I murmured in reply.

  “Perhaps rather the bony spinster. The events of the night will show,” replied my philosophical friend. “If ’tis the stepmother, there’s method in it.”

  Upon summons from above, we men mounted the creaking stair and solemnly took our places in a circle of chairs about the bed. The white-faced child lay wide-eyed in the middle of the great bed. It was the watchers who drowsed as the silent minutes passed. The dark-panelled walls seemed to advance and recede into darkness as somnolence overtook me in that silent circle; when suddenly the silence was broken by a sharp triple knock, thrice repeated. The child moaned; someone in the circle drew in a sibilant breath. Sitting beside the bed, Dr. Johnson reached for Mally’s hand.

  “Bozzy,” he said to me in a low voice across the bed, “take the child’s hand in yours; and let every one of us stretch out his hands to his neighbours.”

  I took Mally’s small cold hand in mine, and accepted in the other palm the bony fingers of Miss Gudgeon. The darkness was intense. Dr. Johnson called our names around the circle. Unless two sitting together lied in concert, we now knew that Dr. Johnson, Mr. Harkebus, Mrs. Gudgeon, Gudgeon, his sister, and I sat finger to finger in the darkened room, with the moaning girl in the bed closing the circle. The triple raps came again, more insistent.

  “This is no trickery,” muttered Mr. Harkebus hoarsely.

  “’Tis an unquiet spirit,” said the hollow voice of Miss Gudgeon. “We must alay it.”

  “We must speak to it,” said Mr. Harkebus, “and ’twill answer by rapping. ’Twas so in Cock Lane.”

  “Why, then, I will speak to it,” said Dr. Johnson sturdily, “and let it make answer, rapping once for yes and twice for no.”

  “Once for yes and twice for no,” repeated the surgeon in as firm a voice. “So be it. You shall speak first, Dr. Johnson.”

  “Then say,” cried Dr. Johnson in an awful voice, “whether you be a human thing?”

  In the tense silence a single rap sounded. Miss Gudgeon’s bony fingers tensed in mine. Her words came in a rush.

  “Whether you be—” her voice stuck in her throat—“White Will?” My scalp prickled at the awful import of her question, and the chill ran down my spine in flakes as the single sharp rap answered Yes.

  I wet my lips with my tongue. No power in earth or heaven could have kept me from asking the question I had so often posed in vain. I gasped it out as if I had been running:

  “Whether you seek our prayers?”

  The two raps came immediately, quick and negligent. I felt rebuked, and enquired no further.

  “Then what do you seek?” asked Gudgeon in his deep tones. A perfect volley of raps seemed to echo from every corner of the darkened room.

  “We must ask according to the method,” said Dr. Johnson, “as thus: is something to be done by us, or by one of us?” The single rap was almost crisp in reply.

  “Which of us?” whispered Mrs. Gudgeon, so far drawn in that she no longer scoffed at Mally’s spectre. A sharp rap sounded.

  “It said Yes,” murmured the rigid spinster. “Yes to what?”

  “Perhaps,” suggested the surgeon, “Mrs. Gudgeon is to do something.” There was an encouraging knock.

  “Alone?—Oh, I couldn’t,” gasped the frightened matron. Two negative knocks cut her off.

  “Not alone,” interpreted Mr. Harkebus. “With Gudgeon?” Rap. “And Miss Gudgeon?” Rap. “And Miss Mally?” Rap. “And Dr. Johnson?” Rap. Rap. “And Mr. Boswell?” Raprap.

  “And,” added Dr. Johnson, “Mr. Harkebus?” Rap … rap.

  “So,” said the surgeon, “it is something all who dwell in this house must do to alay the spectre of White Will. What must they do—leave it?” There was a tremendous heavy rap, and then a long silence.

  “Why,” says Gudgeon heavily at last, “how can I do that? Where can I go?” There were no more rappings, but suddenly the charged silence was broken by a series of low moans, that rose in a crescendo to a blood-curdling wail, and then broke off in the horrible gasps of a man strangling in a noose.

  “Indeed, Gudgeon, I’ll not live in this house another night,” cried his wife in terror. “You may e’en pack my boxes in the morning, for with you or without you, out I go before another night falls.”

  “Look to the child,” cried Dr. Johnson, “she can stand no more.”

  He struck a light. The ladies hastened to burn a feather under the unconscious child’s nose, and in the flurry to fetch hartshorn and a hot brick for the feet the first horror of the night’s experience passed. Dr. Johnson was firm that the house must be emptied before the next day’s twilight. Just as firmly he stipulated that the child was not to be left alone until she could be moved from the house altogether. He drank early tea by her bedside, and had the satisfaction of seeing her fall into a natural sleep before he left her.

  We came out of the house into the sunrise, and took leave of Dr. Harkebus on the step. He looked redder than ever in the dawn light; but for the events of the night he had the most respectably philosophical open mind.

  “I am perswaded, sir,” said he, “that this is no trickery, but a genuine communication; and I hold that in obeying the behest of the rapping spirit Gudgeon shows the truest regard for the welfare of all.”

  “It is strange,” mused Dr. Johnson, “that you were never disturbed by the rappings.”

  “Nay, sir, they could have no meaning for me, because White Will was never a tenant on this side. I have lived here for many years.”

  “You may be right, sir,” said Dr. Johnson. “Well, I wish you good morning and good repose.”

  The portly old man bowed with what grace he could muster, and entered his house.

  “’Tis a gentle body-snatcher,” said I as we strolled along, “and a well-instructed one. But who is this disarrayed youth who seems bent on accosting us?”

  The lad in question was a well-made tall-standing youth in the blue apron of an apprentice, and he barred our way at the mouth of Mincing Lane.

  “What has gone wrong with Mal
ly Gudgeon,” he cried, “that the whole medical fraternity must watch with her till morning?”

  “So, George Tucker,” cries Dr. Johnson, “you spy on Mally Gudgeon.”

  “Call it what you will, she needs watching over,” replied the lad with spirit. “What has the old witch done to her?”

  “Miss Gudgeon?” enquired I.

  “Miss Gudgeon is our friend. Not Miss Gudgeon; the stepmother, the cold fish who hates her, the enemy that parted us when we were as good as wed, for lack of ten pounds to buy my indenture with. What has happened to Mally?”

  “Walk along with us,” said Dr. Johnson. “Mally is well, and she is in no danger. But if you have a hammer and nails you may do Mally a service tonight.”

  “I’ll do it with all my heart.”

  “Then bring them under cover of darkness, and a stout crow to boot, to Mally’s chamber. Come around by Fenchurch Street and take care that nobody marks you. I will engage that the door shall be unlocked. You must steal in quietly as soon as you shall see Gudgeon and his women-folk depart.”

  “I will be there,” promised the carpenter’s apprentice.

  As dusk was falling Dr. Johnson and I put Mally Gudgeon and her relatives into a coach and saw them off for their new lodgings. Then we strolled without hurry around the corner into Fenchurch Street, where George Tucker joined us with his tools wrapped in a blue cloth; and so we slipped into the churchyard of All Hallows Staining. Tucker looked uneasily about him, and seemed as if he mightily wished to cross himself, if truth were known, and so did I too; but Dr. Johnson led the way without faltering. I gave him a leg up, and he got his decent brown small-cloathes easily over the wall, and so we slipped into the deserted house by the back passage, and bolted the door behind us.

  It took all my friend’s intrepidity to hearten me as we stole noiselessly into the haunted room and huddled against the wall in the dark. We sat so without moving for hours, it seemed, while the chimes of All Hallows told the quarters, and my knees prickled because they were asleep and my spine prickled because I was afraid. But nothing rapped, and nothing cried out in the night like a man being hanged. I was beginning to think that we had exorcised the spirit after all, and my eyelids were drooping shut, when there was a screeching sound like a rat in the wainscot, and when I opened my eyes the wall had melted, and It was standing in the air above the level of my eyes. It was swathed in something whitish. It held a corpse-candle in its hand, and I could see its eyes glitter, and the marks of three red fingers stretching along the cheek from the ear. Then it came down and walked on the floor, and bent over the bed, and I heard a rending sound like body-snatchers riving open a coffin. My tongue clove to my palate, and my head swam.