by Michael Cox
Johnson caught his breath sharply and stood stock still. Then, after a few seconds' hesitation, he found his courage, and turned to investigate. The stairs, he saw to his utter amazement, were empty; there was no one. He felt a series of cold shivers run over him, and something about the muscles of his legs gave a little and grew weak. For the space of several minutes he peered steadily into the shadows that congregated about the top of the staircase where he had seen the figure, and then he walked fast—almost ran, in fact—into the light of the front room; but hardly had he passed inside the doorway when he heard someone come up the stairs behind him with a quick bound and go swiftly into his bedroom. It was a heavy, but at the same time a stealthy footstep—the tread of somebody who did not wish to be seen. And it was at this precise moment that the nervousness he had hitherto experienced leaped the boundary line, and entered the state of fear, almost of acute, unreasoning fear. Before it turned into terror there was a further boundary to cross, and beyond that again lay the region of pure horror. Johnson's position was an unenviable one.
'By Jove! That was someone on the stairs, then,' he muttered, his flesh crawling all over; 'and whoever it was has now gone into my bedroom.' His delicate, pale face turned absolutely white, and for some minutes he hardly knew what to think or do. Then he realized intuitively that delay only set a premium upon fear; and he crossed the landing boldly and went straight into the other room, where, a few seconds before, the steps had disappeared.
'Who's there? Is that you, Mrs Monks?' he called aloud, as he went, and heard the first half of his words echo down the empty stairs, while the second half fell dead against the curtains in a room that apparently held no other human figure than his own.
'Who's there?' he called again, in a voice unnecessarily loud and that only just held firm. 'What do you want here?'
The curtains swayed very slightly, and, as he saw it, his heart felt as if it almost missed a beat; yet he dashed forward and drew them aside with a rush. A window, streaming with rain, was all that met his gaze. He continued his search, but in vain; the cupboards held nothing but rows of clothes, hanging motionless; and under the bed there was no sign of anyone hiding. He stepped backwards into the middle of the room, and, as he did so, something all but tripped him up. Turning with a sudden spring of alarm he saw—the kit-bag.
'Odd!' he thought. 'That's not where I left it!' A few moments before it had surely been on his right, between the bed and the bath; he did not remember having moved it. It was very curious. What in the world was the matter with everything? Were all his senses gone queer? A terrific gust of wind tore at the windows, dashing the sleet against the glass with the force of small gunshot, and then fled away howling dismally over the waste of Bloomsbury roofs. A sudden vision of the Channel next day rose in his mind and recalled him sharply to realities.
There's no one here at any rate; that's quite clear!' he exclaimed aloud. Yet at the time he uttered them he knew perfectly well that his words were not true and that he did not believe them himself. He felt exactly as though someone was hiding close about him, watching all his movements, trying to hinder his packing in some way. 'And two of my senses,' he added, keeping up the pretence, 'have played me the most absurd tricks: the steps I heard and the figure I saw were both entirely imaginary.'
He went back to the front room, poked the fire into a blaze, and sat down before it to think. What impressed him more than anything else was the fact that the kit-bag was no longer where he had left it. It had been dragged nearer to the door.
What happened afterwards that night happened, of course, to a man already excited by fear, and was perceived by a mind that had not the full and proper control, therefore, of the senses. Outwardly, Johnson remained calm and master of himself to the end, pretending to the very last that everything he witnessed had a natural explanation, or was merely delusions of his tired nerves. But inwardly, in his very heart, he knew all along that someone had been hiding downstairs in the empty suite when he came in, that this person had watched his opportunity and then stealthily made his way up to the bedroom, and that all he saw and heard afterwards, from the moving of the kit-bag to—well, to the other things this story has to tell—were caused directly by the presence of this invisible person.
And it was here, just when he most desired to keep his mind and thoughts controlled, that the vivid pictures received day after day upon the mental plates exposed in the courtroom of the Old Bailey, came strongly to light and developed themselves in the dark room of his inner vision. Unpleasant, haunting memories have a way of coming to life again just when the mind least desires them—in the silent watches of the night, on sleepless pillows, during the lonely hours spent by sick and dying beds. And so now, in the same way, Johnson saw nothing but the dreadful face of John Turk, the murderer, lowering at him from every corner of his mental field of vision; the white skin, the evil eyes, and the fringe of black hair low over the forehead. All the pictures of those ten days in court crowded back into his mind unbidden, and very vivid.
'This is all rubbish and nerves,' he exclaimed at length, springing with sudden energy from his chair. 'I shall finish my packing and go to bed. I'm overwrought, overtired. No doubt, at this rate I shall hear steps and things all night!'
But his face was deadly white all the same. He snatched up his field-glasses and walked across to the bedroom, humming a music-hall song as he went—a trifle too loud to be natural; and the instant he crossed the threshold and stood within the room something turned cold about his heart, and he felt that every hair on his head stood up.
The kit-bag lay close in front of him, several feet nearer to the door than he had left it, and just over its crumpled top he saw a head and face slowly sinking down out of sight as though someone were crouching behind it to hide, and at the same moment a sound like a long-drawn sigh was distinctly audible in the still air about him between the gusts of the storm outside.
Johnson had more courage and will-power than the girlish indecision of his face indicated; but at first such a wave of terror came over him that for some seconds he could do nothing but stand and stare. A violent trembling ran down his back and legs, and he was conscious of a foolish, almost a hysterical, impulse to scream aloud.
That sigh seemed in his very ear, and the air still quivered with it. It was unmistakably a human sigh.
'Who's there?' he said at length, finding his voice; but though he meant to speak with loud decision, the tones came out instead in a faint whisper, for he had partly lost the control of his tongue and lips.
He stepped forward, so that he could see all round and over the kit-bag. Of course there was nothing there, nothing but the faded carpet and the bulging canvas sides. He put out his hands and threw open the mouth of the sack where it had fallen over, being only three parts full, and then he saw for the first time that round the inside, some six inches from the top, there ran a broad smear of dull crimson. It was an old and faded blood stain. He uttered a scream, and drew back his hands as if they had been burnt. At the same moment the kit-bag gave a faint, but unmistakable, lurch forward towards the door.
Johnson collapsed backwards, searching with his hands for the support of something solid, and the door, being further behind him than he realized, received his weight just in time to prevent his falling, and shut to with a resounding bang. At the same moment the swinging of his left arm accidentally touched the electric switch, and the light in the room went out.
It was an awkward and disagreeable predicament, and if Johnson had not been possessed of real pluck he might have done all manner of foolish things. As it was, however, he pulled himself together, and groped furiously for the little brass knob to turn the light on again. But the rapid closing of the door had set the coats hanging on it a-swinging, and his fingers became entangled in a confusion of sleeves and pockets, so that it was some moments before he found the switch. And in those few moments of bewilderment and terror two things happened that sent him beyond recall over the boundary into t
he region of genuine horror—he distinctly heard the kit-bag shuffling heavily across the floor in jerks, and close in front of his face sounded once again the sigh of a human being.
In his anguished efforts to find the brass button on the wall he nearly scraped the nails from his fingers, but even then, in those frenzied moments of alarm—so swift and alert are the impressions of a mind keyed-up by a vivid emotion—he had time to realize that he dreaded the return of the light, and that it might be better for him to stay hidden in the merciful screen of darkness. It was but the impulse of a moment, however, and before he had time to act upon it he had yielded automatically to the original desire, and the room was flooded again with light.
But the second instinct had been right. It would have been better for him to have stayed in the shelter of the kind darkness. For there, close before him, bending over the half-packed kit-bag, clear as life in the merciless glare of the electric light, stood the figure of John Turk, the murderer. Not three feet from him the man stood, the fringe of black hair marked plainly against the pallor of the forehead, the whole horrible presentment of the scoundrel, as vivid as he had seen him day after day in the Old Bailey, when he stood there in the dock, cynical and callous, under the very shadow of the gallows.
In a flash Johnson realized what it all meant: the dirty and much-used bag; the smear of crimson within the top; the dreadful stretched condition of the bulging sides. He remembered how the victim's body had been stuffed into a canvas bag for burial, the ghastly, dismembered fragments forced with lime into this very bag; and the bag itself produced as evidence—it all came back to him as clear as day ...
Very softly and stealthily his hand groped behind him for the handle of the door, but before he could actually turn it the very thing that he most of all dreaded came about, and John Turk lifted his devil's face and looked at him. At the same moment that heavy sigh passed through the air of the room, formulated somehow into words: 'It's my bag. And I want it.'
Johnson just remembered clawing the door open, and then falling in a heap upon the floor of the landing, as he tried frantically to make his way into the front room.
He remained unconscious for a long time, and it was still dark when he opened his eyes and realized that he was lying, stiff and bruised, on the cold boards. Then the memory of what he had seen rushed back into his mind, and he promptly fainted again. When he woke the second time the wintry dawn was just beginning to peep in at the windows, painting the stairs a cheerless, dismal grey, and he managed to crawl into the front room, and cover himself with an overcoat in the armchair, where at length he fell asleep.
A great clamour woke him. He recognized Mrs. Monks's voice, loud and voluble.
'What! You ain't been to bed, sir! Are you ill, or has anything 'appened? And there's an urgent gentleman to see you, though it ain't seven o'clock yet, and-'
'Who is it?' he stammered. 'I'm all right, thanks. Fell asleep in my chair, I suppose.'
'Someone from Mr. Wilb'rim's, and he says he ought to see you quick before you go abroad, and I told him-'
'Show him up, please, at once,' said Johnson, whose head was whirling, and his mind was still full of dreadful visions.
Mr Wilbraham's man came in with many apologies, and explained briefly and quickly that an absurd mistake had been made, and that the wrong kit-bag had been sent over the night before.
'Henry somehow got hold of the one that came over from the courtoom, and Mr. Wilbraham only discovered it when he saw his own lying in his room, and asked why it had not gone to you,' the man said.
'Oh!' said Johnson stupidly.
'And he must have brought you the one from the murder case instead, sir, I'm afraid,' the man continued, without the ghost of an expression on his face. 'The one John Turk packed the dead body in. Mr Wilbraham's awful upset about it, sir, and told me to come over first thing this morning with the right one, as you were leaving by the boat.'
He pointed to a clean-looking kit-bag on the floor, which he had just brought. 'And I was to bring the other one back, sir,' he added casually.
For some minutes Johnson could not find his voice. At last he pointed in the direction of his bedroom. 'Perhaps you would kindly unpack it for me. Just empty the things out on the floor.'
The man disappeared into the other room, and was gone for five minutes. Johnson heard the shifting to and fro of the bag, and the rattle of the skates and boots being unpacked.
'Thank you, sir,' the man said, returning with the bag folded over his arm. 'And can I do anything more to help you, sir?'
'What is it?' asked Johnson, seeing that he still had something he wished to say.
The man shuffled and looked mysterious. 'Beg pardon, sir, but knowing your interest in the Turk case, I thought you'd maybe like to know what's happened-'
'Yes.'
'John Turk killed hisself last night with poison immediately on getting his release, and he left a note for Mr. Wilbraham saying as he'd be much obliged if they'd have him put away, same as the woman he murdered, in the old kit-bag.'
'What time—did he do it?' asked Johnson.
'Ten o'clock last night, sir, the warder says.'
SOURCES
The stories have been arranged in chronological order of publication. Usually this means a story's first appearance in a magazine; but where this information is either not known to the present editors or is not applicable, the date of first publication in book form is given. Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated.
'The Old Nurse's Story' by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65). First published in Household Words (Christmas Number, 1852); reprinted in Lizzie Leigh, and Other Tales (Chapman & Hall, 1855).
'An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street' by J[oseph] S[heridan] Le Fanu (1814-73). First published in the Dublin University Magazine (Dec. 1853); first reprinted in Madam Crowl's Ghost, ed. M. R. James (Bell & Co., 1923).
'The Miniature' by John Yonge Akerman (1803-76). From Legends of Old London (Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 1853). 'The Last House in C-Street' by Dinah Mulock(Mrs Craik, 1826-87).
First published in Fraser's Magazine (Aug. 1856); reprinted in Nothing New Tales (Hurst & Blackett, 2 vols., 1857).
'To be Taken with a Grain of Salt' by Charles Dickens (1812-70). First published in All the Year Round (Christmas Number, 1865) as a companion to Rosa Mulholland's 'Not to be Taken at Bed-time'.
'The Botathen Ghost' by R. S. Hawker (1803-75). First published in All the Year Round (18 May 1867); reprinted in The Prose Works of Rev. R. S. Hawker, ed. J. S. Godwin (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood & Sons, 1893).
'The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth' by Rhoda Broughton (1840-1920). First published in Temple Bar (Feb. 1868); reprinted in Tales for Christmas Eve (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1872; London: Bentley, 1873).
'The Romance of Certain Old Clothes' by Henry James (1843-1916). First published in the Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 1868); reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1875).
'Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse', Anon. A Stable for Nightmares, the Christmas Number of Tinsleys' Magazine for 1868.
'Reality or Delusion?' by Mrs Henry Wood (nee Ellen Price, 1814-87). First published in The Argosy, owned and edited by Mrs. Henry Wood (Dec. 1868); reprinted in Johnny Ludlow, First Series (Bentley, 3 vols., 1874), with minor textual variations. The text followed here is 1874.
'Uncle Cornelius His Story' by George MacDonald (1824-1905). First published in St Paul's Magazine (Jan. 1869); reprinted in Works of Fancy and Imagination (Strahan & Co., 10 vols., 1871), Vol. X.
'The Shadow of a Shade' by Tom Hood (1835-74). First published in Frozen In, a series of stories related in a snow-storm, Bow Bells Annual (Christmas 1869).
'At Chrighton Abbey' by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915). First published in Belgravia (May 1871); reprinted in Milly Darrell, and Other Tales (John Maxwell, 3 vols., 1873).
'No Living Voice' by Thomas Street Millington (1821-1906?). Pu
blished anonymously in Temple Bar (Apr. 1872). The story is ascribed to Millington, a clergyman whose output included adventure stories for boys, in the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals.
'Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman' by Wilkie Collins (1824-89). First published (as 'The Clergyman's Confession') in The Canadian Monthly (Aug-Sept. 1875); reprinted in Little Novels (Chatto & Windus, 3 vols., 1887).
'The Story of Clifford House', Anon. Published in The Mistletoe Bough (Christmas 1878), edited by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It is tempting to suppose the story was written by Miss Braddon herself, but there is no evidence to support the ascription.