"Dear Sir," he read, "this is to let you know that I must give you a month"s notice as from Tuesday the 13th. For a long time I"ve felt the place too big for me, but when Jane Parfit, and Emma Laidlaw go off with scarcely as much as an "if you please," after frightening the wits out of the other girls, so that they can"t turn out a room by themselves or walk alone down the stairs for fear of treading on half-frozen toads or hearing it run along the pa.s.sages at night, all I can say is that it"s no place for me. So I must ask you, Mr. Borlsover, sir, to find a new housekeeper that has no objection to large and lonely houses, which some people do say, not that I believe them for a minute, my poor mother always having been a Wesleyan, are haunted.
"Yours faithfully, Elizabeth Merrit.
"P.S.-I should be obliged if you would give my respects to Mr. Saunders. I hope that he won"t run no risks with his cold."
"Saunders," said Eustace, "you"ve always had a wonderful way with you in dealing with servants. You mustn"t let poor old Merrit go."
"Of course she shan"t go," said Saunders. "She"s probably only angling for a rise in salary. I"ll write to her this morning."
"No; there"s nothing like a personal interview. We"ve had enough of town. We"ll go back to-morrow, and you must work your cold for all it"s worth. Don"t forget that it"s got on to the chest, and will require weeks of feeding up and nursing."
"All right. I think I can manage Mrs. Merrit."
But Mrs. Merrit was more obstinate than he had thought. She was very sorry to hear of Mr. Saunders"s cold, and how he lay awake all night in London coughing; very sorry indeed. She"d change his room for him gladly, and get the south room aired. And wouldn"t he have a basin of hot bread and milk last thing at night? But she was afraid that she would have to leave at the end of the month.
"Try her with an increase of salary," was the advice of Eustace.
It was no use. Mrs. Merrit was obdurate, though she knew of a Mrs. Handyside who had been housekeeper to Lord Gargrave, who might be glad to come at the salary mentioned.
"What"s the matter with the servants, Morton?" asked Eustace that evening when he brought the coffee into the library. "What"s all this about Mrs. Merrit wanting to leave?"
"If you please, sir, I was going to mention it myself. I have a confession to make, sir. When I found your note asking me to open that desk and take out the box with the rat, I broke the lock as you told me, and was glad to do it, because I could hear the animal in the box making a great noise, and I thought it wanted food. So I took out the box, sir, and got a cage, and was going to transfer it, when the animal got away."
"What in the world are you talking about? I never wrote any such note."
"Excuse me, sir, it was the note I picked up here on the floor on the day you and Mr. Saunders left. I have it in my pocket now."
It certainly seemed to be in Eustace"s handwriting. It was written in pencil, and began somewhat abruptly.
"Get a hammer, Morton," he read, "or some other tool, and break open the lock in the old desk in the library. Take out the box that is inside. You need not do anything else. The lid is already open. Eustace Borlsover."
"And you opened the desk?"
"Yes, sir; and as I was getting the cage ready the animal hopped out."
"What animal?"
"The animal inside the box, sir."
"What did it look like?"
"Well, sir, I couldn"t tell you," said Morton nervously; "my back was turned, and it was halfway down the room when I looked up."
"What was its color?" asked Saunders; "black?"
"Oh, no, sir, a grayish white. It crept along in a very funny way, sir. I don"t think it had a tail."
"What did you do then?"
"I tried to catch it, but it was no use. So I set the rat-traps and kept the library shut. Then that girl Emma Laidlaw left the door open when she was cleaning, and I think it must have escaped."
"And you think it was the animal that"s been frightening the maids?"
"Well, no, sir, not quite. They said it was-you"ll excuse me, sir-a hand that they saw. Emma trod on it once at the bottom of the stairs. She thought then it was a half-frozen toad, only white. And then Parfit was washing up the dishes in the scullery. She wasn"t thinking about anything in particular. It was close on dusk. She took her hands out of the water and was drying them absent-minded like on the roller towel, when she found that she was drying someone else"s hand as well, only colder than hers."
"What nonsense!" exclaimed Saunders.
"Exactly, sir; that"s what I told her; but we couldn"t get her to stop."
"You don"t believe all this?" said Eustace, turning suddenly towards the butler.
"Me, sir? Oh, no, sir! I"ve not seen anything."
"Nor heard anything?"
"Well, sir, if you must know, the bells do ring at odd times, and there"s n.o.body there when we go; and when we go round to draw the blinds of a night, as often as not somebody"s been there before us. But as I says to Mrs. Merrit, a young monkey might do wonderful things, and we all know that Mr. Borlsover has had some strange animals about the place."
"Very well, Morton, that will do."
"What do you make of it?" asked Saunders when they were alone. "I mean of the letter he said you wrote."
"Oh, that"s simple enough," said Eustace. "See the paper it"s written on? I stopped using that years ago, but there were a few odd sheets and envelopes left in the old desk. We never fastened up the lid of the box before locking it in. The hand got out, found a pencil, wrote this note, and shoved it through a crack on to the floor where Morton found it. That"s plain as daylight."
"But the hand couldn"t write?"
"Couldn"t it? You"ve not seen it do the things I"ve seen," and he told Saunders more of what had happened at Eastbourne.
"Well," said Saunders, "in that case we have at least an explanation of the legacy. It was the hand which wrote unknown to your uncle that letter to your solicitor, bequeathing itself to you. Your uncle had no more to do with that request than I. In fact, it would seem that he had some idea of this automatic writing, and feared it."
"Then if it"s not my uncle, what is it?"
"I suppose some people might say that a disembodied spirit had got your uncle to educate and prepare a little body for it. Now it"s got into that little body and is off on its own."
"Well, what are we to do?"
"We"ll keep our eyes open," said Saunders, "and try to catch it. If we can"t do that, we shall have to wait till the bally clockwork runs down. After all, if it"s flesh and blood, it can"t live for ever."
For two days nothing happened. Then Saunders saw it sliding down the banister in the hall. He was taken unawares, and lost a full second before he started in pursuit, only to find that the thing had escaped him. Three days later, Eustace, writing alone in the library at night, saw it sitting on an open book at the other end of the room. The fingers crept over the page, feeling the print as if it were reading; but before he had time to get up from his seat, it had taken the alarm and was pulling itself up the curtains. Eustace watched it grimly as it hung on to the cornice with three fingers, flicking thumb and forefinger at him in an expression of scornful derision.
"I know what I"ll do," he said. "If I only get it into the open I"ll set the dogs on to it."
He spoke to Saunders of the suggestion.
"It"s jolly good idea," he said; "only we won"t wait till we find it out of doors. We"ll get the dogs. There are the two terriers and the under-keeper"s Irish mongrel that"s on to rats like a flash. Your spaniel has not got spirit enough for this sort of game." They brought the dogs into the house, and the keeper"s Irish mongrel chewed up the slippers, and the terriers tripped up Morton as he waited at table; but all three were welcome. Even false security is better than no security at all.
For a fortnight nothing happened. Then the hand was caught, not by the dogs, but by Mrs. Merrit"s gray parrot. The bird was in the habit of periodically removing the pins that kept its seed and water tins in place, and of escaping through the holes in the side of the cage. When once at liberty Peter would show no inclination to return, and would often be about the house for days. Now, after six consecutive weeks of captivity, Peter had again discovered a new means of unloosing his bolts and was at large, exploring the tapestried forests of the curtains and singing songs in praise of liberty from cornice and picture rail.
"It"s no use your trying to catch him," said Eustace to Mrs. Merrit, as she came into the study one afternoon towards dusk with a step-ladder. "You"d much better leave Peter alone. Starve him into surrender, Mrs. Merrit, and don"t leave bananas and seed about for him to peck at when he fancies he"s hungry. You"re far too softhearted."