"Waal?" clanked the awful voice.
"My dear woman," he burst out finally, "there"s been something awful--"
So far his desperation took him, but no farther. He positively stuck at the substantive.
"Oh! there hasn"t been nothin"," she said slowly still peering at him.
"I reckon you"ve only seen and heard what the others did. I never can keep folks on this floor long. Most of "em catch on sooner or later--that is, the ones that"s kind of quick and sensitive. Only you being an Englishman I thought you wouldn"t mind. Nothin" really happens; it"s only thinkin" like."
Shorthouse was beside himself. He felt ready to pick her up and drop her over the banisters, candle and all.
"Look there," he said, pointing at her within an inch of her blinking eyes with the fingers that had touched the oozing blood; "look there, my good woman. Is that only thinking?"
She stared a minute, as if not knowing what he meant.
"I guess so," she said at length.
He followed her eyes, and to his amazement saw that his fingers were as white as usual, and quite free from the awful stain that had been there ten minutes before. There was no sign of blood. No amount of staring could bring it back. Had he gone out of his mind? Had his eyes and ears played such tricks with him? Had his senses become false and perverted?
He dashed past the landlady, out into the pa.s.sage, and gained his own room in a couple of strides. Whew! . . . the part.i.tion no longer bulged.
The paper was not torn. There was no creeping, crawling thing on the faded old carpet.
"It"s all over now," drawled the metallic voice behind him. "I"m going to bed again."
He turned and saw the landlady slowly going downstairs again, still shading the candle with her hand and peering up at him from time to time as she moved. A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall and over the ceiling.
Without hesitating a moment, Shorthouse threw himself into his clothes and went out of the house. He preferred the storm to the horrors of that top floor, and he walked the streets till daylight. In the evening he told the landlady he would leave next day, in spite of her a.s.surances that nothing more would happen.
"It never comes back," she said--"that is, not after he"s killed."
Shorthouse gasped.
"You gave me a lot for my money," he growled.
"Waal, it aren"t my show," she drawled. "I"m no spirit medium. You take chances. Some"ll sleep right along and never hear nothin". Others, like yourself, are different and get the whole thing."
"Who"s the old gentleman?--does he hear it?" asked Jim.
"There"s no old gentleman at all," she answered coolly. "I just told you that to make you feel easy like in case you did hear anythin". You were all alone on the floor."
"Say now," she went on, after a pause in which Shorthouse could think of nothing to say but unpublishable things, "say now, do tell, did you feel sort of cold when the show was on, sort of tired and weak, I mean, as if you might be going to die?"
"How can I say?" he answered savagely; "what I felt G.o.d only knows."
"Waal, but He won"t tell," she drawled out. "Only I was wonderin" how you really did feel, because the man who had that room last was found one morning in bed--"
"In bed?"
"He was dead. He was the one before you. Oh! You don"t need to get rattled so. You"re all right. And it all really happened, they do say.
This house used to be a private residence some twenty-five years ago, and a German family of the name of Steinhardt lived here. They had a big business in Wall Street, and stood "way up in things."
"Ah!" said her listener.
"Oh yes, they did, right at the top, till one fine day it all bust and the old man skipped with the boodle--"
"Skipped with the boodle?"
"That"s so," she said; "got clear away with all the money, and the son was found dead in his house, committed soocide it was thought. Though there was some as said he couldn"t have stabbed himself and fallen in that position. They said he was murdered. The father died in prison.
They tried to fasten the murder on him, but there was no motive, or no evidence, or no somethin". I forget now."
"Very pretty," said Shorthouse.
"I"ll show you somethin" mighty queer any-ways," she drawled, "if you"ll come upstairs a minute. I"ve heard the steps and voices lots of times; they don"t pheaze me any. I"d just as lief hear so many dogs barkin".
You"ll find the whole story in the newspapers if you look it up--not what goes on here, but the story of the Germans. My house would be ruined if they told all, and I"d sue for damages."
They reached the bedroom, and the woman went in and pulled up the edge of the carpet where Shorthouse had seen the blood soaking in the previous night.
"Look thar, if you feel like it," said the old hag. Stooping down, he saw a dark, dull stain in the boards that corresponded exactly to the shape and position of the blood as he had seen it.
That night he slept in a hotel, and the following day sought new quarters. In the newspapers on file in his office after a long search he found twenty years back the detailed story, substantially as the woman had said, of Steinhardt & Co."s failure, the absconding and subsequent arrest of the senior partner, and the suicide, or murder, of his son Otto. The landlady"s room-house had formerly been their private residence.
KEEPING HIS PROMISE
It was eleven o"clock at night, and young Marriott was locked into his room, cramming as hard as he could cram. He was a "Fourth Year Man" at Edinburgh University and he had been ploughed for this particular examination so often that his parents had positively declared they could no longer supply the funds to keep him there.
His rooms were cheap and dingy, but it was the lecture fees that took the money. So Marriott pulled himself together at last and definitely made up his mind that he would pa.s.s or die in the attempt, and for some weeks now he had been reading as hard as mortal man can read. He was trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed conclusively he did not understand the value of either. For no ordinary man--and Marriott was in every sense an ordinary man--can afford to drive the mind as he had lately been driving his, without sooner or later paying the cost.
Among the students he had few friends or acquaintances, and these few had promised not to disturb him at night, knowing he was at last reading in earnest. It was, therefore, with feelings a good deal stronger than mere surprise that he heard his door-bell ring on this particular night and realised that he was to have a visitor. Some men would simply have m.u.f.fled the bell and gone on quietly with their work. But Marriott was not this sort. He was nervous. It would have bothered and pecked at his mind all night long not to know who the visitor was and what he wanted.
The only thing to do, therefore, was to let him in--and out again--as quickly as possible.
The landlady went to bed at ten o"clock punctually, after which hour nothing would induce her to pretend she heard the bell, so Marriott jumped up from his books with an exclamation that augured ill for the reception of his caller, and prepared to let him in with his own hand.
The streets of Edinburgh town were very still at this late hour--it was late for Edinburgh--and in the quiet neighbourhood of F---- Street, where Marriott lived on the third floor, scarcely a sound broke the silence. As he crossed the floor, the bell rang a second time, with unnecessary clamour, and he unlocked the door and pa.s.sed into the little hallway with considerable wrath and annoyance in his heart at the insolence of the double interruption.
"The fellows all know I"m reading for this exam. Why in the world do they come to bother me at such an unearthly hour?"
The inhabitants of the building, with himself, were medical students, general students, poor Writers to the Signet, and some others whose vocations were perhaps not so obvious. The stone staircase, dimly lighted at each floor by a gas-jet that would not turn above a certain height, wound down to the level of the street with no pretence at carpet or railing. At some levels it was cleaner than at others. It depended on the landlady of the particular level.
The acoustic properties of a spiral staircase seem to be peculiar.
Marriott, standing by the open door, book in hand, thought every moment the owner of the footsteps would come into view. The sound of the boots was so close and so loud that they seemed to travel disproportionately in advance of their cause. Wondering who it could be, he stood ready with all manner of sharp greetings for the man who dared thus to disturb his work. But the man did not appear. The steps sounded almost under his nose, yet no one was visible.
A sudden queer sensation of fear pa.s.sed over him--a faintness and a shiver down the back. It went, however, almost as soon as it came, and he was just debating whether he would call aloud to his invisible visitor, or slam the door and return to his books, when the cause of the disturbance turned the corner very slowly and came into view.
It was a stranger. He saw a youngish man short of figure and very broad.
His face was the colour of a piece of chalk and the eyes, which were very bright, had heavy lines underneath them. Though the cheeks and chin were unshaven and the general appearance unkempt, the man was evidently a gentleman, for he was well dressed and bore himself with a certain air. But, strangest of all, he wore no hat, and carried none in his hand; and although rain had been falling steadily all the evening, he appeared to have neither overcoat nor umbrella.
A hundred questions sprang up in Marriott"s mind and rushed to his lips, chief among which was something like "Who in the world are you?" and "What in the name of heaven do you come to me for?" But none of these questions found time to express themselves in words, for almost at once the caller turned his head a little so that the gas light in the hall fell upon his features from a new angle. Then in a flash Marriott recognised him.