Penguin Book of Indian Ghost Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  The Recording Angel, whose business it is to know all things, must know what sort of life Ranken lived during those weeks at Sammy’s; but there are matters of which it is better for mortals to know little. Whatever he was or had been, he was a man of education and intelligence; how then did he get through these endless days from the hour when the chirupping squirrels—Sammy’s was infested by squirrels—roused him at dawn till the more merciful hour when the unclouded crimson disc of the sun went down into the sea? He drank, no doubt; but he was a man on whom drink took little effect. His conversation could at times, they said, be brilliant; but he is indeed a brilliant talker who can converse for weeks with himself. The Recording Angel must know also what it was that tormented him; what past dreadfulness, what loss or folly, what commission or omission it was that left him fevered and in perpetual unease. That I do not myself know—nor did anybody—but I will wager that it had full play at him during these weeks. He had craved his company, his ‘four’ and he sat alone at Sammy’s from morning till night—and very possibly from night till morning—looking out upon a most beautiful blue and most absolutely empty sea. What weeks these must have been!

  I have said ‘weeks’ repeatedly, and of course it could hardly last for more. However it may be with the dead, the living at least are not called upon to endure hell. Ranken, The Doctor, who was at one time also called The Major, and of whose past no man knows more than that it horrified himself unbearably, took pistol and finished it on the top front veranda of Sammy’s Hotel on the 17th of May, 1901. I don’t know what else he could have done.

  Sammy’s—or rather Sammy’s son, for the original Sammy was long since gathered to his fathers—wept bitterly and not altogether from motives of self-interest. Brent, Hartle and Macrae had loved Ranken after their fashion—Sammy too after his.

  ‘Master always very kind to me,’ wailed Sammy, ‘And always he is coming to our hotel. Always he is bringing friends. Too many peoples coming. Aiyo! Who will come now? Aiyo! How I will live!’

  Four months later came Barrow, the great Sir Alexis of harbour fame, and solved Sammy’s problem among others more considerable.

  II

  Of the enormous, the incredible metamorphosis that befell Kalashi—the piers, groins, moles, jetties, cranes, railway-lines and swinging bridges that emerged out of nothing at the bidding of Sir Alexis—I have no call to write. I am concerned solely with the metamorphosis that befell Sammy’s Hotel.

  The original Sammy was a good, capable, efficient butler; at any rate Maclagan, who was no doubt a man of some discernment, appears to have thought so. His son, on whom the title of Sammy devolved, may even have risen to cook’s matey; but easy days came upon him too young and with fatal results. There being no rent to pay and the staff being furnished almost entirely by the family, quite occasional visitors sufficed to run Sammy’s at a profit; and a single weekend, as conceived by the Four and spent by them, kept all the Sammy’s in comfort and plenty for some time. Those regular weekends, week after week for a couple of years, demoralized Sammy altogether. Moreover, the Four were that beau ideal and delight of the Indian servant—a master who is prepared to establish a procedure and stick to it without deviation for an indefinite period. I imagine the Four’s dinner hardly altered: ‘Clear Soup, Fry Fish, Chops, Malabar Pudding, Ramkin Toast,’ probably served them time after time after time. To drink, whisky and ‘bilewater’. As a result, Sammy had no occasion to learn and never did in fact learn the rudiments of running a hotel. When the Harbour opened and the boom came, he at first expected great things; then found it all rather a nuisance. Strange Europeans appeared, clad and speaking as he had never known; tendering English money; asking for the most impossible and incomprehensible things; grumbling over deficiencies nobody had ever noticed before. It was all work, work, work and never anybody satisfied; and if they paid blindly and one made big money—who wanted all that money? Sammy found himself sighing for the comfortable sufficiency of the old days and for the Four contented with their unvarying routine.

  Then one day came a Parsee gentleman in black alpaca and a strangely-shaped hat; and presently the Bombay syndicate materialized and bought up the place with stock and goodwill. Sammy sold gladly and cheaply on condition that all the Sammy family, their heirs and assigns, were provided with employment in the new hotel for life. These were for the time being Sammy—that is, Sammy II, son of Sammy I—Sammy’s mother, over seventy who had once been ayah to Maclagan’s sister, Sammy’s brother Thambi and his brother-in-law Muni, and Sammy’s son, Sammy III, aged twenty. All these, except the last, had inhabited the ‘Hotel’ since Maclagan left it. The syndicate also took over an aged waiter called Kuppan and some odds-and-ends of syces, malis and the like.

  Now began the great days of Kapil. Over the demolished ruins of Sammy’s there rose the vast facade of the Scandal Bay Mahal. It was a wonder of a place containing English baths and what not; taxis lounged in its yard; its great dining-room, open on three sides, hummed with lunches, teas, dinners. Outside Colombo there was no place like it. Goanese cooks laboured in its kitchens, a ‘European’ manager (but he was Eurasian really) called Bowler strolled round in dignified supervision and Sammy II as head steward presided over its tables.

  Now, if this story is true at all, it must be true throughout; therefore we must suppose that Odd Things went on in the Scandal Bay Mahal from the first. In India Odd Things often do go on for a long time, however, and nobody speaks of them. At all events the first time the Odd Things broke through the surface was one evening after the Mahal had been running for nearly three years; it was the evening when old Crinshaw the planter and his married daughter Mrs Reeve and his grand-nephew young Jack Willis came there to dine.

  As Europeans go in the East, old Crinshaw was very old—quite seventy; and since his daughters married and his wife died he had lived a lost, hermitish life on a rather remote coffee plantation up in the Yevamalais. He was as odd and crotchety as any old man in these conditions has a right to be; but it was never said—at least it never had been said up to that particular night—that there was anything wrong with his head. Personally, I do not believe there was. On the other hand, he was on his way to England for the last time, Mrs Reeve and young Willis looking after him, and the Yevamalai planters had given him rather an expansive send-off and no doubt he was in an excited state. This condition dinner in the unaccustomed glare and glitter of the Scandal Bay Mahal would doubtless not ameliorate; but I doubt if it would account for his springing up suddenly at table, upsetting a good glass of Burgundy, and crying out—

  ‘By God, there’s Ranken! Just going out.’

  Amiable young Willis sprang up too. ‘Shall I try and catch him?’ Then he saw Mrs Reeve’s alarmed eyes and sat down again.

  ‘If that isn’t too provoking,’ piped old Crinshaw, ‘I’d ha’ liked to ha’ seen Ranken. One of the old lot here.’

  Mrs Reeve laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘You must be dreaming, father. Mr Ranken—’

  ‘Dammit, I saw him!’ the old man shrilled. ‘He was sitting at that table with these three other fellows and they all got up and went out together. He’d his back to me or I’d have seen him sooner. I’d know that tousled hair anywhere.’

  Jack Willis sat in silent bewilderment but Mrs Reeve could not keep the tactless anxiety out of her eyes. The old man saw it.

  ‘You think I’m wrong, eh? You think I’m wandering? I’ll show you. Here—you—steward!’

  ‘Mr Ranken stayin’ here now?’

  Sammy never moved a muscle. ‘No, master. No Mr Ranken staying here now.’

  The old man glared at him. ‘You’re wrong. I saw him. You give him my salaams.’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Sammy, ‘I giving master’s message.’

  A quarter of an hour later Mrs Reeve and Willis took old Crinshaw away; by that time he had forgotten about Ranken. (Apparently he forgot about him altogether; on the voyage, where Mrs Reeve watched him narrowly, he gave no further cause for anxiet
y. Nor, so far as I know, ever afterwards).

  Sammy from a corner of the veranda watched the party go; with him stood his brother Thambi, long and long barman at Sammy’s. They spoke together in rapid Malayalam.

  Said Sammy, ‘Old Mr Crinshaw saw our dorai tonight. It is very strange.’

  ‘I saw him all the time,’ said Thambi.

  Sammy snorted. ‘So did I. Of course. But others did not see him. The three with whom he sat down did not see him. Why should the old Crinshaw dorai see?’

  Thambi shrugged, ‘Who knows? He is an old man. He knew our dorai, Ranken dorai, long ago. The old man goes away to England. Perhaps Ranken dorai showed himself.’

  Sammy shook his head. ‘I do not like. If other people see they will not like. Bad, bad.’

  They parted, Thambi muttering, ‘Bad, bad,’ in dreary agreement.

  Sammy said nothing. Thambi said nothing; so it must have been old Kuppan the waiter who chattered. For next morning Sammy was summoned to the presence of a very angry Bowler. Mr Bowler had served some time as a steward in Australia and spoke with a fine blend of chi-chi and Melbourne.

  ‘What’s all this,’ said he, ‘What’s this you all been sayin’? Abaht seein’ dead folks in the ‘otel. Eh?’

  ‘Not folks,’ corrected Sammy slowly, ‘Only our dorai. Only Ranken dorai. Oftentimes he coming.’

  ‘Ye blinkin’ idiot!’ said Mr Bowler. ‘How much arrack you taking drinking, eh?’

  ‘I never drinking arrack,’ said Sammy (which was true; for years he had drunk nothing but the best brandy). ‘But that Ranken dorai sometimes coming.’ He plucked up his courage. ‘Old times, long times ago, that Ranken dorai and three other dorais coming every week. That Ranken dorai always liking to sit four at table. Now sometimes when three gentlemen sitting at a table, that Ranken dorai coming and sitting down beside them.’

  Mr Bowler permitted himself a sneer. ‘Makin’ a fourth, like.’

  ‘Ranken dorai always liking to have four dorais at table,’ persisted Sammy. ‘Now when he see three other dorais, sometimes he coming and sitting down there. I seeing, sometimes my brother seeing. Kuppan also seeing. But these three dorais not seeing. Nobody else seeing. So no troubles coming.’

  Fourth man, eh?’ repeated Mr Bowler. ‘Aw, go to ‘ell. Cheese it, for the love o’ Mike. You give me a pine.’

  Sammy salaamed.

  III

  Those professing a knowledge of psychic affairs—which I do not—have told me that there is a theoretical explanation for the succeeding events at Scandal Bay. It has been put to me like this. Supposing there are a number of men playing billiards together and the balls are in a certain position; there will be a number of angles which everyone will see but there will be one angle which only one man present will see—persuming, that is, that the right man is present. That man could therefore play a shot which none of the others could attempt; but once the shot was played they would all see that the angle had existed, that the shot was ‘on’. So with any given spiritualistic materialization; one single man who for no reason of association, foreknowledge or anything else is just naturally en rapport will be able to see that materialization whether he wishes it or not, whether it wishes it or not. And once he had seen it, others might see it too.

  That is the theory and I daresay there may be something in it. I proceed to narrate events, however—the events that occurred on the night of young Raglan’s dinner-party.

  This was something over a year after old Crinshaw’s disturbing appearance and the Mahal had done better and better in the interval. No guest had made any allusion to a Fourth Man; there was no Fourth Man, never could have been. In Mr Bowler’s memory, however, he remained green and flourishing. Bowler was one of those fortunate individuals whose jokes never pall, whose good stories are always good. Every now and then he would meet Sammy and say—’Seen any spooks today, eh?’

  Sammy was imperturbable. ‘Sometimes I seeing. Only that dorai, that Ranken dorai.’

  ‘An’ your brother seeing an’ all,’ said Bowler. ‘Cor! You mike me ike.’

  Sammy strove mentally; what seemed so natural in Malayalam was so hard to express, sounded so silly in English. Sammy’s English got worse with the years rather than better.

  ‘I think a good thing that dorai coming. Always bringing luck that dorai. Long times ago, old times, that dorai doing me plenty good, always helping this place. I like that dorai to come. I think better he not go away.’

  Mr Alastair Raglan was a young—a very young—man who was coming East to join a bank in Singapore. As a suffering community of fellow-passengers on the boat had realized, he fancied himself. He dressed immaculately and grumbled wearily at everything, giving the impression that in his previous experience perfection itself had been hardly good enough. To women over the few girls on the ship he was a pest. With him were associated throughout the voyage Messrs Palliser and Sweete, concerning whom the only thing important is that Master Palliser was leaving the ship at Kalashi to join a West Coast firm. It was on the strength of this that Master Raglan’s fatigued brain conceived the idea of a dinner-party at Scandal Bay.

  ‘It’ll probably be a putrid dinner,’ he said languidly, ‘but anything’s better than this ship’s garbage.’

  ‘Oh, rather,’ said Master Palliser. Master Sweete yawned.

  Messrs Raglan, Palliser and Sweete reached the Scandal Bay Mahal about eight of the evening and ordered cocktails; they ordered more cocktails. It was an occasion the momentousness of which seemed to increase as the minutes passed; the first of the trio was at grips with reality, was about to launch himself definitely into the East. The East, so far a mere abstraction, was now outside the door. All three young men were a little strung up, a little apprehensive, a little homesick; for which reason they were outwardly more assured, more noisy, more contemptuous than ever. But they had to have their cocktails, as children going into a tunnel must have sweets.

  At last—it was nearly nine—Raglan, the host, stood up. ‘What about a spot of food?’

  He led the way from the veranda into the big open dining-room. Palliser and Sweete followed a little way behind. Sweete was making eyes at a girl in a blue dress and not watching Raglan at all. Palliser, the guest of the evening, had done himself rather well before leaving the ship; admittedly he observed the universe something indistinctly. At all events the three young men seemed to walk into a curious kind of mental fog; not one of them was clear as to whether the three sat down at the table and the fourth man joined them or whether he was already sitting at the table when they reached it. Palliser thought that they all three sat down and there was no fourth man and then suddenly there was; at the moment he put this down to the cocktails.

  The first thing that emerged clearly out of the fog was Raglan calling angrily for the steward. Raglan, apparently, had seen the fourth man at once, all the time.

  ‘Steward! Steward! I say, steward.’ Sammy came hurriedly alongside.

  ‘I reserved this table. Why haven’t you kept it?’ There was no doubt about the fourth man by this time; there he sat, opposite Palliser, eyeing them curiously. People were looking round at Raglan’s outcry; they saw him too.

  The second thing that emerged from the fog was Sammy’s face; it was one mask of inarticulate terror.

  ‘I—I keeping this table,’ he stammered.

  ‘Then why is this gentleman sitting here?’ said Raglan.

  The fourth man spoke. He was dressed in spotless but clearly darzi-made evening dress—the old all-white evening dress that passed out of usage in South India with the nineteenth century. He wore the old-fashioned long-ended white tie. He had a quantity of tousled ruddy hair and a moustache that drooped dissolutely over a slack mouth. He had extraordinary, disconcerting eyes—eyes that looked as if they would shed tears if all possible tears had not been shed long since. His voice was odd—bell-like, with an echo in it.

  ‘I always sit here,’ he said.

  ‘Are you staying in this hotel?’
said Raglan.

  ‘I always stay in this hotel,’ said the fourth man.

  ‘Then I don’t understand—.’ Raglan turned on the shivering steward. ‘If this gentleman—.’

  The fourth man spoke again.

  ‘I’ll go if you like.’ Without giving them time to answer he turned those tortured eyes on Sammy. ‘Am I to go?’ he asked.

  Sammy’s answer was to drop the salver he was carrying with a crash like a gong and to rush into the pantry with a kind of wail.

  ‘Upon my soul—’ began Raglan. He was standing up, very pale, his hands twitching. Everyone in the room was watching by now; people at distant tables were standing up to see what was happening. Far away down the aisle of tables appeared the hurrying figure of Bowler.

  The fourth man fixed Raglan with those intolerable eyes. ‘Shall I go?’ he said.

  Raglan’s assurance had deserted him. He stammered like a schoolboy.

  ‘Perhaps—. If you don’t mind—.’

  Bowler came hurrying up; the fourth man drew himself out of his chair—tall, gaunt, somehow terrible.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’m going.’

  In his white evening dress he walked the whole length of that long room and out through the pillared veranda in the direction of the sea. Everyone in the room saw and watched him go, striding out, his hands in his pockets his eyes looking straight ahead …. Raglan found himself sitting down in his chair.

  ‘A little mistake, Sir,’ Bowler was saying. ‘Had a drop, Sir, perhaps. What will you drink, Sir?’

  ‘I’ve ordered champagne,’ gasped Raglan. ‘Bring it. Quick.’

  For the first time in their young lives those immaculate sticklers for procedure, Messrs Raglan, Palliser and Sweete, committed the unpardonable solecism of drinking champagne with their soup.

  IV

  The immediate result of Master Raglan’s dinner-party was, of course, the departure of Sammy, his brother, his brother-in-law, Sammy III and the old mother. Kuppan would have joined them but he had died the year before; the surviving mali followed Sammy. Sammy’s view of the case, once expressed, was repeated without variation.