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                        TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD




                        TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD

                   _A Record of Personal Experiences
                         of the Supernatural_

                                  BY

                           SIDNEY DICKINSON

                       _With an Introduction By_

                             R. H. STETSON

                       _Professor of Psychology
                           Oberlin College_

                       _And a Prefatory Note By_

                              G. O. TUBBY

                     _Assistant Secretary American
                      Society Psychical Research_

[Illustration: LOGO]

                               NEW YORK
                         DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
                                 1920


                          Copyright, 1920, by

                         DUFFIELD AND COMPANY


                Printed in the United States of America




                               CONTENTS


                                          PAGE

  PREFATORY NOTE                           vii

  INTRODUCTION                               1

  AUTHOR'S PREFACE                           5


 I

  A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS               11

  "A SPIRIT OF HEALTH"                      25

  THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS                41

  THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN                     57


 II

 THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW

  CHAPTER                                 PAGE

     I. THE CONDEMNED                       75

    II. THE CRIME                           83

   III. THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE              96

    IV. THE EXPIATION                      105

     V. THE HOUSE ON THE HILL              116

    VI. ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM          126

   VII. A GHOSTLY CO-TENANCY               141

  VIII. THE DEAD WALKS                     152

    IX. THE GOBLINS OF THE KITCHEN         162

     X. A SPECTRAL BURGLARY                178

    XI. "REST, REST, PERTURBÉD SPIRIT!"    187

   XII. THE DEMONS OF THE DARK             200




PREFATORY NOTE


It is a pleasure to testify that the MS. of this volume of stories has
been submitted with abundant testimonies from the individuals who knew
their author and his facts at first hand, to the American Society for
Psychical Research for approval or disapproval.

No more interesting or better attested phenomena of the kind have come
to our attention, and we have asked that a copy of the MS. be filed
permanently in the Society's archives for preservation from loss. These
accounts by Mr. Dickinson bear internal evidence to their true psychic
origin and to the trained observer scarcely need corroboration or other
external support. They ring true. And they are, in addition, moving
human documents, with a strong literary appeal.

GERTRUDE OGDEN TUBBY,
Asst. Sec., A. S. P. R.

April 5, 1920.




INTRODUCTION


This account of striking and peculiar events by Mr. Sidney Dickinson
is but the fulfillment of an intention of the writer interrupted by
sudden death. Mr. Dickinson had taken careful notes of the happenings
described and, being a professional observer and writer, it was
inevitable that he should preserve the narrative. He had been slow
to prepare it for publication because of the prominent and enabling
part played by his wife in the occurrences. After her death, when an
increasing interest in the subject had developed, it seemed to Mr.
Dickinson that the narrative might be received as he had written it--as
a careful and exact account of most remarkable events. In reverence to
the memory of his wife and out of respect to the friends concerned he
could not present it otherwise to the public.

As the narrative is of some time ago and the principal witnesses
are dead or inaccessible the account must stand for itself; the
endorsement of the American Society for Physical Research testifies
to its intrinsic interest. But the character and personality of
the writer is a vital consideration. Mr. Sidney Dickinson was a
professional journalist and lecturer. After graduation from Amherst in
1874 he served on the Springfield _Republican_ and the San Francisco
_Bulletin_. Later he was prominent as an art and dramatic critic on
the staff of the Boston _Journal_. After extended study of art in
European galleries he lectured before many colleges, universities and
art associations. He spent some years in Australia, where many of the
events of this account took place. While travelling in Europe and
Australia he was correspondent for a number of papers and magazines,
including _Scribner's Monthly_, the New York _Times_, the Boston
_Journal_, and the Springfield _Republican_. During a visit to New
Zealand he was engaged by the Colonial Government to give lectures on
New Zealand in Australia and America.

His work and his associates testify to careful observation and sane
judgment. Mr. Dickinson had an unusual memory, a keen sense of accuracy
and he was cool and practical rather than emotional or excitable. No
one who was much with him in the later days could doubt the entire
sincerity of the man. There could have been no ulterior motive as the
account itself will show. The narrative was written because he felt
that it might well be a contribution of some scientific interest.

R. H. STETSON,
Professor of Psychology,
Oberlin College.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE


These stories are not "founded upon fact"; they _are_ fact. If I may
claim any merit for them it is this--they are absolutely and literally
true. They seem to me to be unusual even among the mass of literature
that has been written upon the subject they illustrate; if they possess
any novelty at all it may be found in the fact that the phenomena they
describe occurred, for the most part, without invitation, without
reference to "conditions," favorable or otherwise, and without
mediumistic intervention.

I have written these stories with no purpose to bolster up any theory
or to strengthen or weaken any belief, and I must say frankly that, in
my opinion, they neither prove nor disprove anything whatsoever. I am
not a believer, any more than I am a sceptic, in regard to so-called
"Spiritualism," and have consistently held to my non-committal attitude
in this matter by refraining, all my life, from consulting a medium or
attending a professional séance. In the scientific study of Psychology
I have a layman's interest, but even that is curious rather than
expectant;--my experience, which I think this book will show to have
been considerable, in the observation of occult phenomena has failed to
afford me anything like a positive clue to their causes or meaning.

In fact, I have long ago arrived at the opinion that any one who
devotes himself to the study of what, for want of a better word, we may
call "supernatural" will inevitably and at last find himself landed in
an _impasse_. The first steps in the pursuit are easy, and seductively
promise final arrival at the goal--but in every case of which I, at
least, have knowledge the course abruptly ends (sometimes sooner,
sometimes later) against a wall so high as to be unscalable, not to be
broken through, extending to infinity on either hand.

That disembodied spirits can at least make their existence known to us
appears to me as a well-approved fact; that they are "forbid to tell
the secrets of their prison-house" is my equally firm conviction. I
am aware that such an opinion can be only personal, and that it is
hopeless to attempt to commend it by satisfactory evidence; those who
have had experiences similar to those which I have recorded (and their
number is much greater than is generally supposed) will understand how
this opinion has been reached--to others it will be inconceivable, as
based upon what seems to them impossible.

If what I have written should seem to throw any light, however faint,
upon the problem of the Mystery of Existence in whose solution some
of the profoundest intellects of the world are at present engaged, my
labor will have been worth the while. I submit the results of this
labor as a record, with a lively sense of the responsibility I assume
by its publication.




TRUE TALES OF THE WEIRD




A MYSTERY OF TWO CONTINENTS


This story, as well as the one that immediately follows it, was first
related to the late Wilkie Collins, the noted English novelist,
with whom I had the good fortune to be acquainted--and who, as all
his intimates know, and as those whose knowledge of him is derived
from his romances may surmise, was an earnest and careful student of
occult phenomena. I placed in his hands all the concurrent _data_
which I could secure, and furnished the names of witnesses to the
incidents--which names are now in possession of the publishers of
this volume--equipped with which he carried out a thorough personal
investigation. The result of this investigation he made known to me,
one pleasant spring afternoon, in his study in London.

"During my life," he said, "I have made a considerable study of the
supernatural, but the knowledge I have gained is not very definite.
Take the matter of apparitions, for instance, to which the two
interesting stories you have submitted to me relate:--I have come to
regard these as subjective rather than objective phenomena, projections
from an excited or stimulated brain, not actual existences. Why, I
have seen thousands of ghosts myself! Many a night, after writing
until two o'clock in the morning, and fortifying myself for my work
with strong coffee, I have had to shoulder them aside as I went
upstairs to bed. These apparent presences were nothing to me, since
I knew perfectly well that their origin was nowhere else than in my
overwrought nerves--and I have come to conclude that most cases of
visions of this sort are to be explained by attributing them to a
temporary or permanent disorganization of the brain of the percipient.
Mind, I do not say _all_ cases--there are many that are not to be set
aside so readily. Again, it is not easy to arrive at the facts in any
given case; even if the observer is honest, he may not have cultivated
the habit of exact statement--moreover, stories are apt to grow by
repetition, and a tendency to exaggerate is common to most of us.
Now and then, however, I have come upon an account of supernatural
visitation which seems an exception to the general run, and upsets my
theories; and I must say that, having from time to time investigated
at least fifteen hundred such instances, the two stories you have
furnished me are of them all the best authenticated."

Some years ago, in the course of a tour of art study which took me
through the principal countries of Europe, I found myself in Naples,
having arrived there by a leisurely progress that began at Gibraltar,
and had brought me by easy stages, and with many stops _en route_,
through the Mediterranean. The time of year was late February, and the
season, even for Southern Italy, was much advanced;--so, in visiting
the Island of Capri (the exact date, I recollect, was February 22) I
found this most charming spot in the Vesuvian Bay smiling and verdant,
and was tempted by the brilliant sunshine and warm breezes to explore
the hilly country which rose behind the port at which I had landed.

The fields upon the heights were green with grass, and spangled with
delicate white flowers bearing a yellow centre, which, while smaller
than our familiar American field-daisies, and held upon more slender
stalks, reminded me of them. Having in mind certain friends in then
bleak New England, whence I had strayed into this Land of Summer, I
plucked a number of these blossoms and placed them between the leaves
of my guide-book--Baedeker's "Southern Italy,"--intending to inclose
them in letters which I then planned to write to these friends,
contrasting the conditions attending their "Washington's Birthday" with
those in which I fortunately found myself.

Returning to Naples, the many interests of that city put out of my head
for the time the thought of letter-writing, and three days later I
took the train for Rome, with my correspondence still in arrears. The
first day of my stay in Rome was devoted to an excursion by carriage
into the Campagna, and on the way back to the city I stopped to see
that most interesting and touching of Roman monuments, the Tomb of
Cecilia Metella. Every tourist knows and has visited that beautiful
memorial--so I do not need to describe its massive walls, its roof (now
fallen and leaving the sepulchre open to the sky) and the heavy turf
which covers the earth of its interior. This green carpet of Nature,
when I visited the tomb, was thickly strewn with fragrant violets, and
of these, as of the daisylike flowers I had found in Capri, I collected
several, and placed them in my guide-book--this time Baedeker's
"Central Italy."

I mention these two books--the "Southern" and the "Central
Italy"--because they have an important bearing on my story.

The next day, calling at my banker's, I saw an announcement that
letters posted before four o'clock that afternoon would be forwarded to
catch the mail for New York by a specially fast steamer for Liverpool,
and hastened back to my hotel with the purpose of preparing, and thus
expediting, my much-delayed correspondence. The most important duty of
the moment seemed to be the writing of a letter to my wife, then living
in Boston, and to this I particularly addressed myself. I described my
trip through the Mediterranean and my experience in Naples and Rome,
and concluded my letter as follows:

"In Naples I found February to be like our New England May, and in
Capri, which I visited on 'Washington's Birthday,' I found the heights
of the island spangled over with delicate flowers, some of which I
plucked, and enclose in this letter. And, speaking of flowers, I
send you also some violets which I gathered yesterday at the Tomb of
Cecelia Metella, outside of Rome--you know about this monument, or,
if not, you can look up its history, and save me from transcribing a
paragraph from the guide-book. I send you these flowers from Naples and
Rome, respectively, in order that you may understand in what agreeable
surroundings I find myself, as compared with the ice and snow and
bitter cold which are probably your experience at this season."

Having finished the letter, I took from the guide-book on "Central
Italy" which lay on the table before me, the violets from the Tomb of
Cecilia Metella, enclosed them, with the sheets I had written, in an
envelope, sealed and addressed it, and was about to affix the stamp,
when it suddenly occurred to me that I had left out the flowers I had
plucked at Capri. These, I then recalled, were still in the guide-book
for "Southern Italy," which I had laid away in my portmanteau as of
no further present use to me. Accordingly I unstrapped and unlocked
the portmanteau, found the guide-book, took out the flowers from Capri
which were still between its leaves, opened and destroyed the envelope
already addressed, added the daisies to the violets, and put the whole
into a new inclosure, which I again directed, stamped, and duly dropped
into the mail-box at the bankers'.

I am insistent upon these details because they particularly impressed
upon my mind the certainty that both varieties of flowers were inclosed
in the letter to my wife. Subsequent events would have been strange
enough if I had not placed the flowers in the letter at all--but the
facts above stated assure me that there is no question that I did so,
and make what followed more than ever inexplicable.

So much for the beginning of the affair--in Italy; now for its
conclusion--in New England.

       *       *       *       *       *

During my year abroad, my wife was living, as I have said, in Boston,
occupying at the Winthrop House, on Bowdoin street--a hotel which has
since, I believe, been taken down--a suite of rooms comprising parlor,
bedroom and bath. With her was my daughter by a former marriage, whose
mother had died at her birth, some seven years before. On the same
floor of the hotel were apartments occupied by Mrs. Celia Thaxter, a
woman whose name is well known in American literature, and with whom my
wife sustained a very intimate friendship. I am indebted for the facts
I am now setting down not only to my wife, who gave me an oral account
of them on my return from Europe, four months later, but also to this
lady who wrote out and preserved a record of them at the time of their
occurrence, and sent me a copy of the same while I was still abroad.

About ten days after I had posted my letter, inclosing the flowers
from Capri and Rome, my wife suddenly awoke in the middle of the
night, and saw standing at the foot of her bed the form of the child's
mother. The aspect of the apparition was so serene and gracious that,
although greatly startled, she felt no alarm; moreover, it had once
before appeared to her, as the reader will learn in the second story
of this series, which, for reasons of my own, I have not arranged in
chronological order. Then she heard, as if from a voice at a great
distance, these words: "I have brought you some flowers from Sidney."
At the next instant the figure vanished.

The visitation had been so brief that my wife, although she at once
arose and lighted the gas, argued with herself that she had been
dreaming, and after a few minutes extinguished the light and returned
to bed, where she slept soundly until six o'clock the next morning.
Always an early riser, she dressed at once and went from her bedroom,
where the child was still sleeping, to her parlor. In the centre of the
room was a table, covered with a green cloth, and as she entered and
happened to glance at it she saw, to her surprise, a number of dried
flowers scattered over it. A part of these she recognized as violets,
but the rest were unfamiliar to her, although they resembled very small
daisies.

The vision of the night before was at once forcibly recalled to her,
and the words of the apparition, "I have brought you some flowers,"
seemed to have a meaning, though what it was she could not understand.
After examining these strange blossoms for a time she returned to her
chamber and awakened the child, whom she then took to see the flowers,
and asked her if she knew anything about them.

"Why, no, mamma," the little girl replied; "I have never seen them
before. I was reading my new book at the table last night until I went
to bed, and if they were there I should have seen them."

So the flowers were gathered up and placed on the shelf above the
fireplace, and during the morning were exhibited to Mrs. Thaxter, who
came in for a chat, and who, like my wife, could make nothing of the
matter.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon of that day the postman called
at the hotel, bearing among his mail several letters for my wife, which
were at once sent up to her. Among them was one that was postmarked
"Rome" and addressed in my handwriting, and with this she sat down as
the first to be read. It contained an account, among other things, of
my experiences in Naples and Rome, and in due course mentioned the
enclosure of flowers from Capri and from the Tomb of Cecilia Metella.
There were, however, no flowers whatever in the letter, although each
sheet and the envelope were carefully examined; my wife even shook her
skirts and made a search upon the carpet, thinking that the stated
enclosure might have fallen out as the letter was opened. Nothing could
be found--yet ten hours before the arrival of the letter, flowers
exactly such as it described had been found on the centre-table!

Mrs. Thaxter was summoned, and the two ladies marvelled greatly. Among
Mrs. Thaxter's friends in the city was a well-known botanist, and she
at once suggested that the flowers be offered for his inspection.
No time was lost in calling upon him, and the flowers were shown
(without, however, the curious facts about them being mentioned), with
the request that he state, if it were possible, whence they came. He
examined them carefully and then said:

"As to the violets, it is difficult to say where they grew, since
these flowers, wherever they may be found in the world (and they are
of almost universal occurrence, through cultivation or otherwise)
may everywhere be very much alike. Certain peculiarities in these
specimens, however, coupled with the scent they still faintly retain
and which is characteristic, incline me to the opinion that they came
from some part of Southern Europe--perhaps France, but more likely
Italy. As to the others, which, as you say, resemble small daisies,
they must have come from some point about the Bay of Naples, as I am
not aware of their occurrence elsewhere."




"A SPIRIT OF HEALTH"




"A SPIRIT OF HEALTH"


It is common, and, in the main, a well-founded objection to belief in
so-called supernatural manifestations, that they seem in general to
subserve no purpose of usefulness or help to us who are still upon
this mortal plane, and thus are unworthy of intelligences such as both
love and reason suggest our departed friends to be. The mummeries and
too-frequent juggleries of dark-séances, and the inconclusive and
usually vapid "communications" that are vouchsafed through professional
mediums, have done much to confirm this opinion, and the possibility of
apparitions, particularly, has been weakened, rather than strengthened,
in the minds of intelligent persons by the machinery of cabinets
and other appliances which seem to be necessary paraphernalia in
"materializing" the spirits of the dead.

That the departed _ever_ reappear in such form as they presented during
life I am not prepared to affirm, even in view of many experiences
of a nature like that which I am about to relate. In the generality
of such cases I am decidedly in agreement with the opinion of the
late Wilkie Collins, as set forth in the preceding story--although I
should be inclined to extend that opinion far enough to include the
admission of the possibility that it was the actual Presence which so
worked upon the mind of the percipient as to cause it to project from
itself the phantom appearance. This may seem somewhat like a quibble
to confirmed believers in apparitions, of whom there are many, and
perhaps it is--while those who are impatient of ingenious psychological
explanations may find in the following story a confirmation of the
conviction which they hold, that the dead may appear in the form in
which we knew them, bringing warning and aid to the living.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is now thirty-one years ago that the wife of my youth, after less
than a year of married life, was taken from me by death, leaving to
me an infant daughter, in whom all the personal and mental traits of
the mother gradually reproduced themselves in a remarkable degree.
Some three years later I married again, and the child, who, during
that period, had been in the care of her grandparents, at regular
intervals, on either side of the house respectively, was taken into the
newly-formed home.

A strong affection between the new mother and the little girl was
established at once, and their relations soon became more like those of
blood than of adoption. The latter, never having known her own mother,
had no memory of associations that might have weakened the influence of
the new wife, and the step-mother, as the years passed and she had no
children, grew to regard the one who had come to her at her marriage as
in very truth her own.

I often thought, when seeing those two together, so fond and devoted
each to each, that if those we call dead still live and have knowledge
of facts in the existence they have left behind, the mother of the
child may have felt her natural yearnings satisfied in beholding their
mutual affection, and even have found therein the medium to extend from
her own sphere the influence of happiness which some may believe they
see exercised in the events that this narrative, as well as others in
the series, describes.

At the time in which these events occurred, I was traveling in Europe,
and my wife and daughter were living in Boston, as stated in the story
with which this book opens. In the adjoining town of Brookline there
resided a lady of wealth and social prominence, Mrs. John W. Candler,
wife of a gentleman who had large railway interests in the South, and
who was, moreover, Representative for his district in the Lower House
of Congress. Mrs. Candler was a woman of rare beauty and possessed
unusual intellectual gifts; she was also a close personal friend of
Mrs. Thaxter, whom I have before mentioned and who introduced her to
my wife--the acquaintance thus formed developing into an affectionate
intimacy that ended only with Mrs. Candler's death, a dozen years
ago. As her husband's business interests and legislative duties
frequently compelled his absence from home, it was Mrs. Candler's
delight to enliven her enforced solitudes by dispensing her large and
unostentatious hospitality to her chosen friends--so that it often
happened that Mrs. Thaxter, and my wife and child, were guests for
considerable periods at her luxurious residence.

One afternoon in mid-winter, Mrs. Candler drove into the city to call
upon my wife, and, finding her suffering from a somewhat obstinate
cold, urged her, with her usual warmth and heartiness, to return home
with her for a couple of days, for the sake of the superior comforts
which her house could afford as compared with those of the hotel. My
wife demurred to this, chiefly on the ground that, as the weather was
very severe, she did not like to take the child with her, since, being
rather delicate that winter although not actually ill, she dared not
remove her, even temporarily, from the equable temperature of the hotel.

While the matter was being discussed another caller was announced in
the person of Miss Mae Harris Anson, a young woman of some eighteen
years, daughter of a wealthy family in Minneapolis, who was pursuing
a course of study at the New England Conservatory of Music. Miss
Anson was very fond of children, and possessed an unusual talent for
entertaining them--and thus was a great favorite of my little daughter,
who hailed her arrival with rapture. This fact furnished Mrs. Candler
with an idea which she immediately advanced in the form of a suggestion
that Miss Anson might be willing to care for the child during my wife's
absence. To this proposal Miss Anson at once assented, saying, in her
lively way, that, as her school was then in recess for a few days, she
would like nothing better than to exchange her boarding-house for a
hotel for a while, and in consideration thereof to act as nursemaid
for such time as might be required of her. It was finally agreed,
therefore, that Miss Anson should come to the hotel the next morning,
prepared for a two or three days' stay;--this she did, and early in
the afternoon Mrs. Candler arrived in her sleigh, and with my wife was
driven to her home.

       *       *       *       *       *

The afternoon and evening passed without incident, and my wife retired
early to bed, being assigned to a room next to Mrs. Candler, and one
that could be entered only through that lady's apartment. The next
morning she arose rather late, and yielding to the arguments of her
hostess, who insisted that she should not undergo the exertion of going
down to breakfast, that repast was served in her room, and she partook
of it while seated in an easy chair at a table before an open fire that
blazed cheerily in the wide chimney-place. The meal finished and the
table removed, she continued to sit for some time in her comfortable
chair, being attired only in dressing-gown and slippers, considering
whether she should go to bed again, as Mrs. Candler had recommended, or
prepare herself to rejoin her friend, whom she could hear talking in
the adjoining room with another member of the household.

The room in which she was sitting had a large window fronting upon the
southeast, and the morning sun, shining from a cloudless sky, poured
through it a flood of light that stretched nearly to her feet, and
formed a golden track across the carpet. Her eyes wandered from one to
another object in the luxurious apartment, and as they returned from
one of these excursions to a regard of her more immediate surroundings,
she was startled to perceive that some one was with her--one who,
standing in the full light that came through the window, was silently
observing her. Some subtle and unclassified sense informed her that
the figure in the sunlight was not of mortal mold--it was indistinct
in form and outline, and seemed to be a part of, rather than separate
from, the radiance that surrounded it. It was the figure of a young
and beautiful woman with golden hair and blue eyes, and from both face
and eyes was carried the impression of a great anxiety; a robe of some
filmy white material covered her form from neck to feet, and bare arms,
extending from flowing sleeves, were stretched forth in a gesture of
appeal.

My wife, stricken with a feeling in which awe dominated fear, lay back
in her chair for some moments silently regarding the apparition, not
knowing if she were awake or dreaming. A strange familiarity in the
face troubled her, for she knew she had never seen it before--then
understanding came to her, and the recollection of photographs, and of
the features of her daughter by adoption, flashed upon her mind the
instant conviction that she was gazing at the mother who died when the
child was born.

"What is it?" she finally found strength to whisper. "Why do you come
to me?"

The countenance of the apparition took on an expression of trouble more
acute even than before.

"The child! The child!"--the cry came from the shadowy lips distinctly,
yet as if uttered at a great distance. "Go back to town at once!"

"But why?" my wife inquired. "I do not understand what you mean."

The figure began to fade away, as if reabsorbed in the light that
enveloped it, but the voice came again as before:--"Go to your room and
look in your bureau drawer!"--and only the sunlight was to be seen in
the spot where the phantom had stood.

For some moments my wife remained reclining in her chair, completely
overcome by her strange vision; then she got upon her feet, and half
ran, half staggered, into the next room where Mrs. Candler and her
companion were still conversing.

"Why, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Candler, "what in the world is the
matter? You are as pale as a ghost!"

"I think I have seen one," panted my wife. "Tell me, has anyone passed
through here into my room?"

"Why, no," her friend replied; "how could anyone? We have both been
sitting here ever since breakfast."

"Then it is true!" cried my wife. "Something terrible is happening in
town! Please, please take me to my rooms at once!"--and she hurriedly
related what she had seen.

Mrs. Candler endeavored to soothe her--she had been dreaming; all must
be well with the child, otherwise Miss Anson would at once inform
them;--moreover, rather than have her brave a ride to town in the
bitter cold of the morning, she would send a servant after luncheon
to inquire for news at the hotel. My wife was not convinced by these
arguments but finally yielded to them; Mrs. Candler gave her the
morning paper as a medium for quieting her mind, and she returned with
it to her room and resumed her seat in the easy chair.

She had hardly begun her reading, however, when the newspaper was
snatched from her hand and thrown to the opposite side of the room, and
as she started up in alarm she saw the apparition again standing in the
sunlight, and again heard the voice--this time in a tone of imperious
command--"Go to your rooms at once and look in your bureau drawer!"
At the utterance of these words the apparition vanished, leaving my
wife so overwhelmed with fear and amazement that for some time she was
powerless to move--then reason and control of action returned to her,
and she was able to regain her friend's room and acquaint her with the
facts of this second visitation. This time Mrs. Candler made no attempt
to oppose her earnest purpose to return to town, the horses and sleigh
were ordered from the stables, my wife hurriedly dressed herself, and
in half an hour both ladies were speeding toward Boston.

When they reached the entrance of the hotel, my wife, whose excitement
had increased greatly during the drive, sprang from the sleigh and
rushed upstairs, with Mrs. Candler close behind her, burst into the
door of her rooms like a whirlwind, and discovered--the child absorbed
in architectural pursuits with a set of building blocks in the middle
of the sitting-room, and Miss Anson calmly reading a novel in a
rocking chair by the window!

The picture thus presented was so serene and commonplace by comparison
with what my wife's agitation had led her to expect, that Mrs. Candler
at once burst out laughing; my wife's face also showed intense
bewilderment--then, crying, "She said 'look in the bureau drawer!'" she
hurried into the bedroom with Mrs. Candler at her heels.

The bureau, a conventional piece of bedroom furniture, stood at the
head of the child's bed, and presented an entirely innocent appearance;
nevertheless my wife went straight up to it, and, firmly grasping the
handles, pulled out the topmost drawer. Instantly a mass of flame
burst forth, accompanied by a cloud of acrid smoke that billowed to
the ceiling, and the whole interior of the bureau seemed to be ablaze.
Mrs. Candler, with great presence of mind, seized a pitcher of water
and dashed it upon the fire, which action checked it for the moment,
and Miss Anson flew into the hall, arousing the house with her cries.
Mrs. Thaxter, who was at the moment coming to my wife's apartment from
her own, hurried in and saw the blazing bureau and the two white-faced
women before it and turned quickly to summon help--employes came
running with an extinguisher, and in five minutes the danger was over.

When the excitement had subsided, an examination was made as to the
cause of the conflagration, with the following result:

My wife, who was a skilful painter in oils, and devoted much of her
time to this employment, was accustomed to keep her colors and brushes
in the upper drawer of the bureau in her bedroom. She had also, and
very carelessly, placed in a corner of the drawer a quantity of loose
rags which had become thoroughly saturated with oil and turpentine from
their use in cleaning her palette and brushes.

I am indebted for the above facts not only to Mrs. Thaxter and Mrs.
Candler, both of whom I have frequently heard relate this story, but,
particularly, to Miss Anson herself, who has been, at the time of
writing this, for several years connected with the editorial staff of
the Minneapolis _Journal_. In a letter which she sent me in response
to my request that she should confirm my recollection, she set forth
clearly the causes of the conflagration in the following words:

"Some time before she [my wife] had put a whole package of matches into
a stewpan, in which she heated water, and set the pan in with these
paints and rags. Then, one night, when in a hurry for some hot water,
she had gone in, in the dark, and forgetting all about the matches, had
dumped them upon the tubes of oil paints when she pulled out the pan.

"Every one of the heads of these matches had been burned off, evidently
through spontaneous combustion. I went through them all, and not one
had been ignited. The rags were burned and the whole inside of the
drawer was charred. The fire could not have been kept under longer than
the following night, and would probably have burned the child and me in
bed, before anyone dreamed there was a fire."




THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS




THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS


Among the "phenomena" which attend the average spiritualistic séance
a favorite one is the apparent production from space of quantities
of flowers--to the supernatural source of which credence or doubt is
given according to the degree of belief or scepticism inherent in the
individual sitters. Having never attended one of these gatherings, I
am not able to describe such an incident as occurs under such
auspices; but the suggestion recalls to my mind two very remarkable
events in which flowers were produced in a seemingly inexplicable
manner, and without the assistance (if that be the right word) of
mediumistic control. In one of these experiences I personally
participated, and in both of them my wife was concerned--therefore I
can vouch for their occurrence.

Some months after the happenings recorded in the two previous
narratives, I was spending the summer following my return from Europe
in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the residence of my father, having
with me my wife and daughter. The mother of the child, who, as I
have said, died in giving her birth, was a resident of the town at
the time of our marriage, and her body reposed in our family's lot in
the cemetery. The circumstance of this bereavement caused the warmest
affections of my father and mother to centre upon my daughter, she
being then their only grandchild.

The little girl was passionately fond of flowers, and her indulgent
grandfather, himself a zealous horticulturist and grower of choice
fruits, had that summer allotted to her sole use a plot six feet square
in his spacious gardens, which became the pride of her heart from the
brilliant array of blooms which she had coaxed to grow in it. Her
favorite flowers were pansies, with the seeds of which she had planted
nearly one-half of the space at her disposal. They had germinated
successfully and flourished amazingly, and at the time of which I write
that part of the bed devoted to them was a solid mass of pansies of
every conceivable variety.

At about four o'clock one afternoon my wife and I set out for a walk
through the famous meadows that stretched away from the back of the
grounds, and on our return, some two hours later, we saw at a distance
the child standing upon the terrace awaiting us, clean and wholesome
in a fresh white frock, and bearing a large bouquet of her favorite
pansies in her hand. As we approached she ran to meet us and extended
the pansies to my wife, saying:--"Mamma, see these lovely pansies! I
have picked them for you from my pansy-bed."

My wife thanked the child and kissed her, and we went upstairs to our
room together to prepare for supper that was then about to be served.
A vase stood on the shelf at one side of the room, and in this, first
partly filling it with water, I placed the bunch of pansies.

After supper I suggested to my wife that we should call upon some
relatives who lived about a quarter of a mile away, and went with
her to our room while she made her preparations for our excursion.
While waiting for her I took from the shelf the vase containing the
pansies, and we examined and commented upon them for some time; then,
her toilette being completed, I restored the vase and flowers to their
former position, and we left the room, and immediately thereafter the
house, together.

       *       *       *       *       *

We found our friends at home and spent a pleasant evening with them,
leaving on our return at about ten o'clock. The night was warm and
perfectly calm, and, as there was no moon, the way was dark save
where, here and there, a street lamp threw about its little circle of
light. As we turned into the street which led to my father's house we
passed under a row of maple trees whose heavy foliage made the darkness
even more profound than we had known it elsewhere, and beside a high
hedge which enclosed the spacious grounds of a mansion that stood at
the corner of the two highways. This hedge extended for a distance
of about fifty yards, and as many feet beyond the point where it
terminated a lighted street lamp dimly illumined the pathway. We were
at a point about midway of the hedge when my wife, who was the nearer
to it, suddenly stopped and exclaimed: "Was it you that gave that pull
at my shawl?" and readjusted the garment--a light fleecy affair--which
I at once observed was half off her left shoulder.

"Why, no," I replied, "I did not touch your shawl. What do you mean?"

"I mean," she answered, "that I felt a hand seize my shawl and try to
draw it away from me."

I pointed out the fact that I could not well have reached her shawl
on the side on which it had been disarranged, and suggested that it
might have caught upon a projecting twig; but although she accepted
this explanation as reasonable she still insisted that she had the
consciousness of some person having laid a hand upon her.

After a few moments we went on, and had left the hedge behind us and
were within a few feet of the street lamp, when my wife stopped a
second time, declaring that her shawl had been seized again. Sure
enough, the garment was as before, lying half off her shoulder, and
this time obviously not because of any projecting twig, since we were
in a perfectly clear space, and could look about us over an area of
several yards in every direction. This we did, puzzled but not alarmed
at the twice-recurring incident; then, on a sudden, my wife seized
my arm with a convulsive grip, and, raising her eyes until I thought
she was looking at the light in the street lamp before us, whispered:
"Heavens! Do you see _that_?"

I followed the direction of her gaze, but could see nothing, and told
her so, in the same breath asking her what she meant.

"It is Minnie!" she gasped (thus uttering the name of my dead wife)
"and she has her hands full of flowers! Oh, Minnie, Minnie, what are
you doing?" and hid her face in her hands. I clasped her in my arms,
thinking she was about to faint, and gazed fearfully above us in a
vain effort to discern the declared apparition--and at the same moment
I felt a shower of soft objects strike upon my upturned face and upon
my straw hat, and saw against the light before me what seemed like
blossoms floating downward to the ground.

As soon as I could quiet my wife's agitation and induce her to look
again for the appearance which she believed she had beheld, but which
she told me had now vanished, I made a search upon the sidewalk for
the objects whose fall I had both felt and seen. They were plainly
evident, even in the dim light, and I gathered up a number of them and
carried them under the lamp for examination. They were pansies, freshly
gathered, and with their leaves and stems damp, as if just taken from
water. Hastening to the house, we went directly to our room, and
lighting the gas looked eagerly toward the shelf where we had left the
vase filled with pansies some three hours before. The vase was there,
half-filled with water, but not a single flower was standing in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day was Sunday and all the family went to morning service
at the church. As my wife and I, with our daughter between us and
following my father and mother at some distance, reached the scene
of our adventure on the previous night, we saw lying on the sidewalk
a half-dozen pansies which we had evidently overlooked, owing to the
dim light in which we had gathered up the others. At sight of them the
little girl dropped my hand, to which she was clinging, and with a cry
of surprise ran to pick them up.

"Why," she exclaimed, "how did these come here? They are the pansies I
picked for mamma yesterday from my pansy bed!"

"Oh, no, dear," I said; "these are probably some other pansies; how can
you tell they came from your bed?"

"Why," she replied, "I know every one of my pansies, and this
one"--holding up a blossom that was of so deep and uniform a purple as
to appear almost black--"I could tell anywhere, for there was no other
in the bed like it."

So she collected all the scattered flowers and insisted on carrying
them to church, and on returning home they were replaced, with
their fellows, in the vase from which they had been so mysteriously
transferred the night before.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has been my purpose, in preparing these stories for publication,
not to permit myself to be led into any attempt to explain them, or
even to embellish them with comment, and thus perhaps weaken what I
desire to present as a plain statement of fact--yet this incident
of the pansies seems to me (although for quite personal reasons) so
touching, and so tender in its suggestions, that I cannot forbear a
word or two concerning it. In thus indulging myself I am aware that
the reader may think he finds a contradiction of the statement I have
made in the preface of this book as to my non-committal attitude
regarding Spiritualism. On this point I can only say that while I am
not convinced as to the origin of the phenomenon, I should find much
comfort if I could with assurance attribute it to a spiritualistic
source. There are doubtless many who will thus refer it, and I write
these lines in sympathy, even if somewhat doubtingly, with their point
of view.

In every way this event stands unique in my experience--in place of its
occurrence, and in all its circumstances. The town was the scene of my
youthful wooing--the street one in which my _fiancée_ and I had walked
and talked a thousand times on the way between my home and hers. To
this town, and to this familiar path, the new wife had come with me,
and with us both the child of _her_ love and sacrifice. Is there no
significance, is there no consolation, not only to myself but to others
who have been bereaved, in this episode? The loving gift of flowers to
her new guardian by the innocent and unconscious child; the approval
of the offering through its repetition, by the apparent spirit of the
mother that bore her!--these things may mean nothing, yet in me whom
they approached so nearly they have strengthened the hope that lives
in every human heart, that the flame of our best and purest affections
shall survive the seeming extinguishment of the grave.

Science, to be sure, has its explanation, and in fairness that
explanation should be heard. To quote an eminent authority who has
favored me with his views on the subject:--"The power that moved the
pansies was a psychic force inherent in the human personality [of
your wife] and exercised without the knowledge or cooperation of the
objective self." (Dr. John D. Quackenbos.)

In other words, it was not the spirit of the dead wife that lifted the
pansies and showered them upon us, but what we must call, for want of
a better term, the living wife's "subliminal self." The vision that
appeared and seemed to be casting the flowers was a freak of the
psychical consciousness--there was no apparition save in my wife's
overwrought imagination.

To quote again: "But that does not preclude the possibility of the
levitation of the pansies, which levitation was accomplished by the
lady herself, however ignorant of the operation of this psychic force
she used objectively. The fact that she was thus objectively ignorant
would be no obstacle to her subjective mind using in the objective
earth-life her own super-sensible attributes and powers."

The principal objection to this argument seems to me to lie in
this:--the pansies did not first fall upon us, and thus, by suggestion
or otherwise, so excite my wife's imagination that she thought she saw
the apparition; the apparition was first manifest, and the rain of
flowers followed. That is to say, an appearance of the immaterial was
followed by a tangible manifestation--there was nothing imaginary about
_that_. Had the conditions been reversed, the fall of the flowers might
very well have excited apprehension of the vision--but I cannot see
where there was any place for fancy in experience of this incident.

       *       *       *       *       *

The second episode to which I have alluded in the opening paragraph
of this narrative occurred in the following winter, and was, in a
certain sense, a sequel to the first. Business took me from my home
in Boston, and during my absence my wife and daughter were invited by
the lady I have already mentioned to spend a few days at her house in
Brookline. Her husband was away on one of his frequent business trips,
leaving with his wife her widowed sister, Mrs. Myra Hall, his daughter,
a girl of eighteen, and a young German lady, Fräulein Botha, whose
acquaintance the hostess had formed abroad, and who at the time was at
the head of the Department of Instruction in Art at Wellesley College.
All these were witnesses, with my wife, of the remarkable event which I
am about to describe.

On the afternoon of the second day of my wife's visit, the child
became suddenly ill, and as evening drew on exhibited rather alarming
symptoms of fever. A physician was summoned who prescribed remedies,
and directed that the patient should be put to bed at once. This was
done, and at about ten o'clock my wife, accompanied by the ladies I
have mentioned, went quietly upstairs to observe her condition before
retiring for the night themselves. The upper floor was reached by a
very broad staircase which branched near the top to give access to the
chambers upon a wide hall, from every part of which one could look down
over a railing upon the floor below--and the room in which the child
lay was about half-way around this hall on the left-hand side.

The ladies entered the chamber and the hostess turned up the gas,
showing the child peacefully slumbering and with forehead and hands
moist with a wholesome perspiration, although her face was still
somewhat flushed. As the night was a bitter cold one in mid-January,
the mistress of the house suggested that some additional covering
should be placed upon the bed, and produced from another room an
eider-down counterpane, covered with scarlet silk, which was carefully
arranged without waking the sleeper. All then left the room and started
downstairs again, the hostess being the last to go out, after lowering
the gas until it showed only a point of light.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were near the bottom of the staircase when my wife suddenly cried
out: "Oh, there is Minnie! She passed up the stairs by me, all in
white, and has gone into the room! Oh, I know something dreadful is
going to happen!"--and she rushed frantically to the upper floor,
followed by the others in a body. At the half-open door of the child's
room they all stopped and listened, not daring for the moment to
enter, but no sound came from within. Then, mustering up courage and
clinging to each others' hands, they went softly in, and the hostess
turned up the gas. With one accord they looked toward the bed, and,
half-blinded by the sudden glare of the gaslight, could not for a
moment credit what their eyes showed them--that the sleeping child was
lying under a coverlet, not of scarlet, as they had left her hardly a
minute before, but of snowy white. Recovering from their astonishment,
an examination revealed the cause of the phenomenon. The scarlet
eider-down counterpane was in its place, but completely covered with
pure white lilies on long stalks, so spread about and lying in such
quantities that the surface of the bed was hidden under their blooms.
By actual count there were more than two hundred of these rich and
beautiful blossoms strewn upon the coverlet, representing a moderate
fortune at that time of year, and probably unprocurable though all the
conservatories in the city had been searched for them.

They were carefully gathered and placed about the house in vases, jugs,
and every other receptacle that could be pressed into service to hold
them, filling the rooms for several days with their fragrance until,
like other flowers, they faded and died.




THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN




THE MIDNIGHT HORSEMAN


On a brilliant moonlit evening in August, 1885, a considerable party
of friends and more or less intimate acquaintances of the hostess
assembled at the summer cottage of Mrs. Thaxter at Appledore Island,
Isles of Shoals. Included in the company were the then editor of the
New York _Herald_, Rev. Dr. Hepworth,--also well known as a prominent
divine and pulpit orator--two of the leading musicians of Boston
(Julius Eichberg and Prof. John K. Paine)--of whom one occupied
a chair in Harvard University,--and, among others, my wife and
myself. The cottage was the charming resort which the visitor would
be led to expect from the well-known refinement and artistic taste
of its occupant, and its interior attractions might well have been
suggested even to the casual passer-by who looked upon its wonderful
flower-garden, wherein seeds of every variety had in spring been
scattered broadcast and in profusion, and now, as autumn approached,
had developed into a jungle of blooms of every conceivable color.

We had some music, as I remember, and after that an interesting
conversation, which, in consequence of the many varied and brilliant
intellects there assembled, took a wide range, coming around finally--I
do not recall by what steps--to occultism, clairvoyance, and the
phenomena of so-called "Spiritualism." In the course of the discussion
of this topic, the editor interested us by a humorous account of some
recent experiences of his own in "table-tipping" and "communications"
by rappings--and incidentally remarked that he believed any assembly
of persons who wished could experience similar phenomena, even though
none of them possessed what it is usual to describe as "mediumistic"
powers. Some one else then suggested that, as our company seemed to
fulfil this condition, the present might be a favorable time to test
the theory--whereupon we all proceeded to the adjoining dining-room
with the view of making experiment by means of the large dinner table
that stood in the middle of it.

(I may here state that although my wife had already had some abnormal
experiences, only Mrs. Thaxter and I were acquainted with the fact, and
even these had come to her unsought in every instance.)

Somewhat to our disappointment, the table failed to show itself
susceptible to any "influence" other than the law of gravitation,
but remained insensible and immovable, even though we sat about it
under approved "conditions" for half an hour or so--lights lowered,
and our imposed hands touching each other in order to form upon it an
uninterrupted "circuit." We finally tired of this dull sport, turned
up the lights, and pushing back our chairs from the table, fell into
general conversation.

Hardly had we done so, when my wife suddenly exclaimed:--"How strange!
Why, the wall of the room seems to have been removed, and I can see
rocks and the sea, and the moonlight shining upon them!" At this
interruption our talk naturally ceased abruptly, and one of us asked
her to describe more in detail what was visible to her.

"It is growing stranger still," she replied. "I do not see the sea any
more. I see a long, straight road, with great trees like elms here and
there on the side of it, and casting dark shadows across it. There are
no trees like those and no such road near here, and I cannot understand
it. There is a man standing in the middle of the road, in the shadow of
one of the trees. Now he is coming toward me and I can see his face in
the moonlight. Why! it is John Weiss!" (naming the Liberal clergyman
and writer whom most of us had known in Boston, and who had died some
five or six years before) "Why, is that you? What are you doing here,
and what does this mean? He smiles, but does not speak. Now he has
turned and gone back into the shadow of the tree again."

After a few moments' pause:--"Now I can see something coming along
the road some distance away. It is a man on horseback. He is riding
slowly, and he has his head bent and a slouch hat over his eyes, so
that I cannot see his face. Now John Weiss steps out of the shadow into
the moonlight; the horse sees him and stops--he rears up in the air
and whirls about and begins to run back in the direction from which he
came. The man on his back pulls him up, lashes him with his whip, turns
him around, and tries to make him go forward. The horse is terrified
and backs again, trying to break away from his rider; the man strikes
him again, but he will not advance.

"The man dismounts and tries to lead the horse, looking about to see
what he is frightened at. I can see his face now very clearly--I should
know him anywhere! John Weiss is walking toward him, but the man does
not see him. The horse does, though, and plunges and struggles, but
the man is strong and holds him fast. Now John Weiss is so close to the
man that he _must_ see him. Oh! Oh! he does see him, and is horribly
frightened! He steps back but John Weiss does not follow--only points
his hand at him. The man jumps on his horse and beats him fiercely
with his whip, and the two fly back down the road and disappear in the
distance. Tell me, John Weiss, what it all means? He smiles again and
shakes his head--now _he_ is gone, too; I can see nothing more."

We were all profoundly impressed by this graphic recital and spent some
time discussing what possible meaning the strange vision could have;
but we were compelled to abandon all efforts to elucidate it, and it
was not until some seven months later that the sequel to the mystery
was furnished--a sequel that for the moment seemed about to offer an
explanation, but, if anything, beclouded the matter even more deeply
than before.

Early in March of the following year a party of eight or ten persons
was dining at the house of Mrs. Candler, in Brookline, already
mentioned in this series, and after dinner went up to the sitting-room
of the hostess, upon the second floor. The weather for a week previous
had been warm and spring-like, but on the day in question a heavy
snowstorm had been raging, which cleared at nightfall, leaving a foot
or so of snow upon the ground. Of the dinner-party only my wife and I
had been at the Isles of Shoals the previous summer when the incident
above narrated had occurred;--but all present were acquainted with the
circumstance, which had been a frequent subject of conversation among
us at our frequent gatherings at one another's houses during the autumn
and winter that had followed.

As I sat near the door and let my eye wander about the apartment, I
idly noticed, among the many souvenirs of foreign travel which it
contained, two Japanese vases set upon brackets in opposite corners,
and about six feet from the floor. These vases were, perhaps, twenty
feet apart--the width of the room. The vase on the bracket at my right
was empty, while the other contained a bunch of "pussy-willows," which
attracted my attention as the usual season for these growths had
not arrived. I commented upon this circumstance to my hostess, who
replied:--"Yes, it is very early for them, is it not? I was driving
yesterday, and was surprised to see a willow-tree bearing those
'pussies' in a sheltered spot beside Jamaica Pond. I had the footman
get down and gather them, and when I reached home I put them in that
vase."

This remark, of course, drew all eyes to the bracket bearing the
vase filled with the "pussies"--which, thereupon and at the instant,
disappeared, leaving the vase in its place, but quite empty; a soft
thud was heard as two or three of the stalks fell upon the carpet
midway between the two brackets, and a rustling sound in the right-hand
corner attracted the attention of all present to the singular fact that
the "pussies" were now standing in the vase on the second bracket as
quietly as if they had been there at the outset.

It is to be noted that no one in the room was within a dozen feet of
either of the two vases, and that neither of them could be reached
by anyone who did not stand upon a chair for the purpose. Moreover,
the room was brilliantly illuminated by several gas-jets. We had
been accustomed to singular happenings in this particular house,
and consequently were amused rather than startled by the whimsical
nature of this one. In discussing it some one suggested that peculiar
influences seemed to be about, and it was agreed to invite them to
further manifestations if possible. Consequently the centre of the
room was cleared and a large table moved into it--around which, after
locking the door that led into the hall, and extinguishing all the
lights but one (which also was turned down to a faint glimmer), we drew
up our chairs and awaited developments. A half-hour passed without
anything whatever happening--whereupon, deciding that conditions were
unfavorable, we relighted all the gas-jets and fell into general
conversation, although leaving the table still in its position in the
middle of the room.

In a few minutes our hostess said:--"Oh, by the way, I want you to see
the new decorations I have had placed in my daughter's room. You know
it is her birthday"--in fact, I believe that evening's dinner party
was in honor of the event--"and I have had her room entirely refitted,
since she is no longer a girl, but a young lady."

So, following her lead, we all trooped away to inspect the new
arrangement. In doing so we passed down the hall for a distance of some
fifty feet, and entered the room in question, which was at the front
of the house and overlooked its extensive grounds. The apartment was
decorated with all the luxury and display of taste that large means and
the command of expert skill could provide, and we spent some time in
examination of its rich and beautiful details.

One item that particularly attracted our attention was a small but very
heavy clock that stood on the mantelpiece, its case of Japanese carved
bronze, and its interior mechanism giving forth a very peculiarly
musical and rapid "tick-tock, tick-tock" as its short pendulum swung to
and fro. It was, in fact, a unique and curious ornament, and all the
members of the party admiringly examined it--for my own part, I was
so struck with its rare character that I stood regarding it after the
others had left the room, and turned from it only when our hostess, who
alone remained, playfully inquired if I intended to study the clock all
night, and, extinguishing the light, passed out into the hall with me.

Returning to the sitting-room, we decided to make some further
experiment, and, again extinguishing the lights and relocking the door
leading into the hall, seated ourselves around the table as before. We
had not been in this position more than a few minutes when there came
a tremendous thump upon the table, like the fall of some heavy object.
Being nearest to the lowered gas-jet which gave the only light to the
room, I jumped up and turned it on to its full capacity--whereupon
everyone present saw standing, in the exact centre of the table, its
"tick-rock, tick-tock" ringing out sonorously, the carved bronze clock
which we had so recently inspected in the distant bedchamber, and
which had been passed in some mysterious fashion along fifty feet of
hall space, and through a shut and locked door, to astonish us by its
present appearance.

       *       *       *       *       *

Forming ourselves into a committee of the whole, we carried the
clock back to its former place, which, it need not be said, we found
unoccupied--then returned to the sitting-room, where, with lowered
lights, we discussed the strange occurrences of the evening. Although
curious to see if any other manifestations would occur, we made no
effort to invite them beyond dimming the lights, and as we found the
room had become rather warm and close, we opened the door into the
hall for the sake of better ventilation. The hall was only partially
lighted, but objects in it were easily visible in comparison with the
almost total darkness that shrouded the sitting-room. Our talk was of
ghosts and of other subjects uncanny to the uninitiated, and might have
seemed unpleasantly interesting to anyone listening to it from the
hall--as we were afterward led to believe was the case.

Directly facing the open door, and the only one of the company so
seated, was my wife--who suddenly startled us all by springing to her
feet and crying out:--"There he is! There is the man I saw at the Isles
of Shoals last summer!"

"What is it?" we inquired; "an apparition?"

"No, no!" she exclaimed; "it is a living man! I saw him look around the
edge of the door and immediately draw back again! He is here to rob the
house! Stop him! Stop him!"--and she rushed out into the hall with the
whole company in pursuit. The servants, who by this time had gone to
bed, were aroused and set to work to examine the lower floors, while we
above searched every room, but in each case without result.

Next to the sitting-room was a large apartment some thirty feet long
by twenty wide, which was used for dancing parties, and dinners
on occasions when many guests were invited. It was at the time
unfurnished, except, I believe, that a few chairs were scattered
about it, and along one side was a row of several windows, before
which hung heavy crimson draperies that completely covered them. We
lighted the gas in this room, but a glance was sufficient to show that
it was unoccupied and afforded no possible place of concealment. I
passed through it, however, and, as I did so, felt a current of cold
air, which I immediately traced, by the swaying of one of the heavy
curtains, to a window which its folds covered.

Going up to the drapery and drawing it aside, I saw that the window
behind it was half open, and on the sill and the stone coping outside
I perceived, in the several inches of snow that covered both, marks
which showed the passage of what was evidently a human body. Reaching
nearly to the window was the slanting roof, formed by heavy plate
glass, of the conservatory, which opened from the dining-room on the
lower floor--and in the snow which covered this was a furrow which
indicated that someone had by this means allowed himself to slide from
the second story to the ground. Further investigation below showed,
by the tell-tale marks in the snow, that the person who had thus
escaped from the house, and who, after gliding down the glass roof of
the conservatory, had fallen sprawling under it, had lost no time in
picking himself up, and making good his escape. The footsteps of a
man running with long strides were traced through the grounds to the
street, two hundred yards away, where they were lost in the confused
tracks of the public highway--and from that time to the present the
mystery has remained unsolved.




THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW




THE HAUNTED BUNGALOW

PREFATORY NOTE


The annals of crime contain few chapters more lurid than those
contributed to them by the record of Frederick Bailey Deeming, who
suffered the extreme penalty of the law on the scaffold of the
Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) jail on the morning of the twenty-third
of May, in the year one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two.

The details of his misdeeds, his trial, and his punishment were set
forth by me at the time in letters to the New York _Times_ and the
Boston _Journal_--of which, as well as of several other publications,
I was accredited correspondent during several years of residence and
travel in Australasia and the South Seas.

In the narrative that follows, so far as it describes atrocities
which shocked the whole English-speaking world, I have endeavored to
subordinate particulars in the presentation of a general effect; my
purpose has been, not to picture horrors, but to suggest the strange
and abnormal personality that lay behind them.

In regard to the peculiar manifestations which followed the criminal's
execution, and for which some undefined influence that survived his
physical extinction seemed, in part at least, to be responsible, I can
advance no opinion.




CHAPTER I

THE CONDEMNED


When I called upon the Colonial Secretary, in the Government Offices
at Melbourne, with a request that I might be allowed to visit the
prisoner as he lay in jail awaiting execution, I was informed that such
permission was contrary to all precedent.

I had sat directly under the eye of the culprit four weary days while
the evidence accumulated that should take away his life. I had watched
his varied changes of expression as the tide of testimony ebbed and
flowed, and finally swelled up and overwhelmed him. I had heard against
him the verdict of "the twelve good men and true" who had sat so long
as arbiters of his fate, and the words of the judge condemning him to
"be hanged by the neck until he was dead," and commending his soul
to the mercy of a God who seemed far aloof from the scheme of human
justice so long and so laboriously planned.

Short shrift had been allowed him. Condemned and sentenced on a
Monday, the date for his act of expiation had been set for the early
morning of the Monday then a scant three weeks away;[1] an appeal
for a respite had been quickly and formally made, and as quickly and
formally disallowed; the days granted for preparation had glided by
with portentous speed, and now but five remained between him and his
introduction to the gallows and the cord.

As a special and gruesome favor I had received one of the few cards
issued for the execution; and it was perhaps due as much to this
fact as to that of my newspaper connections (as already stated) that
the Colonial Secretary finally consented to waive in my interest the
usual rule of exclusion, and handed me his order for my admission to
the jail. I cannot confess to any high exultation when the mandate of
the Secretary, bravely stamped with the Great Seal of the Colony of
Victoria, was placed in my hands--particularly as it was accompanied
by a strict injunction that no public account should be given of the
interview.

"At least," said the Colonial Secretary, "not at present. The trial
has been so sensational, the crimes traced home to this unhappy man so
atrocious, that popular feeling has risen to such a pitch as to make
it desirable to add thereto no new occasion of excitement. Moreover, I
have refused many requests similar to yours from the local newspapers;
you may imagine the position I should find myself in if it became known
that I had discriminated in favor of a foreign journalist--therefore I
rely upon your discretion."

Thus the Colonial Secretary--in consideration of whose injunction I
made no professional use of my opportunity at the time, and report
upon it now only because of its relation to this present record of
events. Not that I asseverate the existence of such a relation, or
theorize upon it even if it were, for the sake of argument, accepted
as containing the nucleus of a mystery that, after many years of
consideration, remains a mystery still.

I was not alone in my visit to the condemned cell in which, heavily
ironed and guarded day and night by the death-watch, Frederick Bailey
Deeming awaited his doom.[2] My wife, who was included in the warrant
from the Colonial Secretary, accompanied me; she who had been my
companion in journeys that had taken me twice around the globe, and
who had shared with me many of the inexplicable experiences to which
I have alluded in my "Preface;" and who, seeming throughout her life
more sensitive than most of us to occult forces that at times appear
to be in operation about us, has since crossed the frontier of the
Undiscovered Country, there to find, perhaps, solution of some of
the riddles that have perplexed both her and me. Intensely human as
she was, and in all things womanly, her susceptibility to weird and
uncomprehended influences must always seem a contradiction--and the
more so since they always came upon her not only without invitation,
but even in opposition to a will of unusual force and sanity, which,
until the incidents occurred that I am about to relate, kept them
measurably in control.

A memento of my interview with the murderer stands before me on the
table as I write:--a memento also of my wife's skill in modeling, on
account of which I had with difficulty induced her to be my companion
on my sinister errand--an impression in plaster of his right hand;
the hand against which had been proved the "deep damnation of the
taking-off" of two women and four children, and in whose lines thus
preserved those learned in such matters profess to discern the record
of other like crimes that have been suspected of him, but could not be
confirmed. I will not weary the reader with the histories that have
been read to me from this grisly document, and no one now may ever
know whether they be true or false:--at all events the hand that made
this impress was duly found guilty of the atrocities I have recorded
against it, and the price that was exacted for them will seem to none
excessive, and to some a world too small.

I remember being much struck at the time with the interest which the
condemned man manifested in assisting me to secure the record. My
warrant from the Colonial Secretary included permission to obtain it,
and the consent of the prisoner followed promptly on the asking. It
came, in fact, with a sort of feverish readiness, and I fancied that
his mind found in the operation some brief respite from the thoughts
that his position, and the swift approach of his fate, forced upon
him. He regarded with intentness the moistening of the plaster, and
its manipulation into the proper degree of consistency; followed
intelligently the instruction to lay his hand with even pressure upon
the yielding mass, and when the cast had hardened, and was passed
through the bars for his inspection, he examined it with an appearance
of the liveliest satisfaction.

"Do those lines mean anything?" he asked.

"Many think so," I replied, "and even profess to read a record from
them. For myself, I am ignorant of the art."

"I have heard of that," he returned. "They call it 'palmistry,' don't
they? I wish you could find out whether they are going to hang me next
Monday. But they'll do that, right enough. I'm thirty-nine now, and my
mother always said I would die before forty. _She_ died a good while
ago--but she keeps coming back. She comes every night, and of late
she comes in the daytime, too. What does she bother me so for? Why
can't she leave me alone?" (glancing over his shoulder.) "She's here
now--over there in the corner. You can't see her? That's queer. Can't
_you_ see her?"--addressing the governor of the jail, who accompanied
me, and who shook his head to the question. "I thought perhaps you
could. But you don't miss much. She ain't pretty to look at, crying all
the time and wringing her hands, and saying I'm bound to be hanged!
I don't mind her so much in the daylight, but coming every night at
two o'clock, and waking me up and tormenting me!--that's what I can't
stand."

"Is this insanity?" I asked the governor as I came away.

"I don't know what it is," he replied. "We all thought at first it was
shamming crazy, and the government sent in a lot of doctors to examine
him; but he seemed sane enough when they talked with him--the only
thing out about him was when he complained of his mother's visits;
just as he did to you. And it is certainly true that he has a sort of
fit about two o'clock every morning, and wakes up screaming and crying
out that his mother is in the cell with him; and talks in a frightful,
blood-curdling way to someone that nobody can see, and scares the
death-watch half out of their wits. Insanity, hallucination, or an
uneasy conscience--it might be any of them; I can't say. Whatever it
is, it seems strange that he always talks about visitations from his
mother, who, as far as I can learn, died quietly in her bed, and never
of apparitions of his two wives and four children whose throats he cut
with a knife held in the hand whose print you've got there under your
arm. Perhaps you won't mind my saying it--but it strikes me you've got
a queer taste for curiosities. I wouldn't be able to sleep with that
thing in the house."

I laughed at the worthy governor's comment; yet, as it turned out, his
words were pregnant with prophecy.




CHAPTER II

THE CRIME


In the month of March, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, the people of
Melbourne were startled by glaring headlines in the morning newspapers
announcing the discovery of a murder in the suburb of Windsor.

During the historic "boom" that started into life all manner of
activities in and about the Victorian capital during the middle and
later "eighties," a great stimulus to building operations had been
felt, not only in the city itself, but also through all the extensive
district outlying it. The suburb of Windsor enjoyed its share in this
evidence of prosperity, and sanguine speculators, viewing through
the glasses of a happy optimism a rush of new inhabitants to the
fortunate city, erected in gleeful haste a multitude of dwellings
for their purchase and occupancy. New streets were laid out across
the former barren stretches of the suburb, and lined on either side
by "semi-detached villas"--imposing as to name, but generally more
or less "jerry-built," and exceedingly modest in their aspect.[3]
These structures were of what we might now call a standardized
pattern--housing two families side by side with a dividing partition
between them, and of a single story, with an attic above. Between each
two connected dwellings (which were fronted by a shallow veranda,
and contained three or four rooms for each resident family) ran a
narrow alley, hardly wide enough for a real separation between one
building and the next, but sufficiently so to justify the description
of "semi-detached" which their inventor, by a happy inspiration, had
applied to them.

The "Great Melbourne Boom"--as I believe it is still referred to as
distinguishing it from all other "booms," of various dimensions, which
preceded or have followed it--spent its force, unfortunately, before
the hopes of the speculators who had ridden into Windsor on its flood
had been realized; and amid the wreck and flotsam that remained to
mark its ebb, some mournful miles of these "semi-detached villas" were
conspicuous.

So complete was the disaster that many of the owners of these
properties paid no further heed to them:--and it was with an emotion
akin to surprise that, on a day in the month and year above mentioned,
the agent of a certain house in Andrew street received a visit from a
woman with a view to renting it. Why the prospective tenant should have
selected this particular "villa" out of the scores of others precisely
like it that lined both sides of this street, is not known--nor might
she herself have had any definite reason for her choice. Perhaps it was
Chance; perhaps Providence--the terms are possibly synonymous:--but at
all events her action proved to be the first and most important of the
threads that wove themselves together in a net to entrap, and bring to
justice, one of the craftiest and most relentless murderers of the age.

The agent, apprised by his visitor of her desire to examine the house,
eagerly prepared to accompany her, but could not find the key. A
search among his records followed; from which the fact resulted that,
in the previous December, he had rented the house to a gentlemanly
stranger, who, in lieu of affording references, had established
confidence by paying three months' rent in advance. In the prevailing
depression of the local real estate business the agent had given so
little attention to his lines of empty properties that he had not since
even visited the house in question--the more so as the period for which
payment had been made was not yet expired. Assured by his visitor,
however, that the house was certainly unoccupied, he went with her to
the door, which he opened with a master-key with which he had equipped
himself.

The house was in good order throughout--in fact it seemed never to
have been occupied. The prospective tenant inspected it carefully and
with approval, and could discover but one objection; she was sure she
noticed a disagreeable odor in the parlor. Her companion (as is natural
to agents with a house to dispose of) failed to detect this:--if it
existed it was doubtless due to the fact that the house had been closed
for some time; he would have it thoroughly aired and overhaul the
drains--after which she could call again. This she agreed to do, gave
the agent her name and address, and departed.

Left to himself, the agent began an investigation. With senses
quickened, perhaps, by the favorable prospect of business, he became
aware that the atmosphere of the parlor was undoubtedly oppressive;
and as he moved about in search of the cause he observed that near the
open fireplace it was positively sickening. Examining this feature of
the room more carefully, he discovered that the hearth-stone had been
forced up at one end, cracking and crumbling the cement in which it
had been set, and from the inch-wide aperture thus formed came forth
a stench so overpowering that he recoiled in horror, and gasping and
strangling, staggered into the open air.

The police authorities were notified, and a mason was sent for with his
tools. The hearth-stone was wrenched from its place, and in the hollow
space beneath, encased in cement, knees trussed up to chin and bound
with cords, lay the body of a young woman--nude save for the mantle of
luxuriant dark hair that partly shrouded her, and with her throat cut
from ear to ear.

       *       *       *       *       *

About a week before Christmas of the previous year, the North German
Lloyd S. S. "Kaiser Wilhelm II." from Bremen to Plymouth _via_ the Suez
Canal and Colombo, debarked its passengers at the port of Melbourne.
Among the second-class contingent who had taken ship at Plymouth were
"Albert Williams" and his wife Emily. They had not been long married,
and their destination was understood by their fellow-passengers to be
Colombo; but on reaching that port they remained on board and continued
to Melbourne. It was remarked that Mrs. Williams, who up to that time
had been the life of the company, fell thereafter under increasing
fits of uneasiness and melancholy--until, at the time of arrival at
Melbourne, she had drawn so far aloof from her former friends of the
passage that none concerned themselves regarding her plans, or even
final destination, in the new land.[4]

No such change, however, was noted in the demeanor of her husband.
He was well to the fore in all the interests and amusements that
offer themselves on shipboard, rallied his wife in no very refined or
considerate terms upon her growing depression, and devoted most of his
spare time to a pet canary, which he had brought aboard in an elaborate
gilt cage; keeping it constantly near him on deck by day, and at night
sharing with it his stateroom.[5]

A month's association with him had not increased the liking of his
fellow-voyagers. The compulsory intimacies engendered by a long journey
by sea afford a trying test of character, and to it the temperament
of the so-called Albert Williams failed satisfactorily to respond.
Strange and contradictory moods were noticed in him. At times he was
morose and "grouchy," at times feverishly jovial and even hilarious,
and the transition from one to the other of these states of mind was
often startlingly abrupt. He seems, indeed, to have "got on the nerves"
of all his associates on the voyage--and so at length it happened that
when he went ashore, carrying the cage and canary solicitously in his
hand and followed by his silent and sad-faced wife, both passengers and
officers were at one in the aspiration that they might never see his
sort again.

Repairing to a "Coffee-Palace"--by which sounding title temperance
hotels in Australia are identified--the couple spent some days in its
respectable retirement; then their belongings were entrusted to a
carrying-company, and were by it conveyed to the "semi-detached villa"
in Windsor. The canary, chirping and fluttering joyously in its cage,
which was promptly hung in the veranda, excited for several days the
mild interest of the neighbors and a few casual passers-by--but of the
people in the house very little was seen. Now and then a gentleman in
smoking-jacket and embroidered velvet cap was observed in the veranda,
feeding and chirruping to the canary, but his companion seems to
have kept herself in complete seclusion. Her murder may, indeed, have
followed swiftly upon her entrance into the house; however that may
be, some ten days later the canary was no longer seen in the veranda,
a carrier came with his cart and took away a quantity of trunks and
boxes, and as he deliberately drove away his employer kept pace with
him on the sidewalk, jauntily swinging the cage with its feathered
occupant in his hand.

The trunks and boxes were taken to an auction-room in Melbourne, where,
after due advertisement, their contents were offered for public sale;
women's garments and jewelry, for the most part, and heterogeneous
odds and ends. The owner of these properties was present when the sale
took place, and seemed much interested in their disposition:--but when
the canary and its cage were offered he suddenly declared that he
would not sell them, and when the auction closed took them away with
him. He subsequently appeared in the town of Sale, several hundred
miles away, and at other remote localities--perhaps with the idea of
misleading possible pursuit or for some other purpose unknown:--but in
all his wanderings he took the canary with him, and by his devotion to
it attracted an attention to himself which had much to do with his
identification when he was finally apprehended.

Returning to Melbourne, where he had before assumed the new _alias_
of "Baron Swanston," he finally disposed of the cage and the canary
to the auctioneer of his former acquaintance. Then he disappeared as
completely as though the earth had opened and engulfed him--his crime
successfully committed and unsuspected, his very name unknown, his
tracks as completely covered as was the nearly decapitated body of his
victim beneath the cemented hearth-stone of the house at Windsor.

But even then the mysterious power of Chance--or Providence--was at
work to his undoing. A peculiarity of many Australian dwellings--a
peculiarity which the hastily-constructed "villas" in Windsor
shared--is found in the fact that they have no cellars. This assists
the work of rapid building, so important when a "boom" is on:--so
the ground upon their sites had simply been levelled, a surface of
cement laid, and the buildings set above it upon a layer of beams
and brickwork. Nothing could be easier, under such a principle of
construction, than to remove the hearth-stone, dig a grave under it
through the thin layer of cement and into the soil below, conceal the
body therein, restore the earth to its place, and fix the stone in
position again.

What emotion the murderer may have felt when, after excavating under
the cement to the depth of about eighteen inches, his tools struck
upon solid rock, and he could dig no further, may be left to the
imagination. Perhaps he felt no emotion whatever, not appreciating the
fatal nature of this check to his plans. At all events he had no choice
but to accept the situation, crowd the body into the shallow space, and
by pouring cement about it and the covering hearth-stone insure the
lasting secrecy of the crime. He may have been ignorant, too, of the
enormous expansive power of the gases released by decomposition, which
under ordinary conditions might have been absorbed by the covering and
underlying soil:--here, however, with solid rock below, they struggled
in their close confinement until their barrier at its weakest point
gave way, and forcing up the hearth-stone disclosed to the world the
horror that it had concealed.

And here is the strangest circumstance of all. Although it had been
known to a few surveyors and builders, and to certain owners of
buildings that had been erected, that a large part of the land on
which the suburb was built rested upon a rock formation, examinations
that were made subsequent to the discovery of the murder showed that
at no point did this impenetrable foundation approach nearly to the
surface of the soil, save under this particular house of the tragedy!
Ages ago this flat table of stone had been laid down--and to the
dwelling fortuitously built upon it, with hundreds of others lying
empty about it for him to choose, the murderer had been guided across
fifteen thousand miles of sea, there to prepare for himself detection
not only for one crime, but for the other even more heinous which had
so briefly preceded it.




CHAPTER III

THE FLIGHT AND CAPTURE


Prominent among the many commonplaces current among men is the one that
"truth is stranger than fiction," and the other that Life, in building
up her dreams, employs "situations" which the boldest playwright would
hesitate to present upon the stage. Yet the lines that Life lays down
for her productions are, in the main, closely followed by those who are
ranked as among the world's greatest dramatists. She, like them, leads
up to a climax by a mass of incidents that may severally be trivial,
but combine together with tremendous weight; she follows farce with
tragedy, and lightens tragedy with comedy; she brings her heroes in
touch with clowns, her lovers with old women and comic countrymen--and
in the complexities of her plots mingles them together so bewilderingly
that the wonder and interest of the audience are kept vigorously alive
until the curtain's fall.

So in this sordid Windsor tragedy she introduces between the first
and third acts a second, where the tension is relaxed and the milder
interest of Romance appears.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not the purpose of the murderer to remain near the scene,
or even in the country, of his crime:--he was a shrewd as well as
merciless villain, and he turned his face towards Sydney, evidently
with the intention of taking a steamer then about to sail for San
Francisco, and sinking his identity in the vast areas and amid the
swarming millions of the United States.

Nemesis accompanied him, but in the disguise of Cupid. On the coastwise
steamer by which he traveled to Sydney was a young woman by the name of
Rounsfell, who was returning to her home in the interior of New South
Wales from a visit to her brother near the border-line between Victoria
and South Australia. She was about eighteen years of age, and from an
interview I later had with her I estimated her as an attractive and
modest girl, not strikingly intellectual, but of kindly disposition and
affectionate nature. To her the fugitive, introducing himself by his
latest-assumed name, paid regardful court, and relieved the tedium of
the voyage by devoted attentions; and when the boat arrived at Sydney,
where she was to remain a few days, he escorted her to one hotel and
saw to her satisfactory accommodation, while he himself, with admirable
delicacy, took up quarters at another. During her stay he continued his
attentions with equal respect and assiduity; his attitude, as she told
me afterward, was more like that of an elder brother than a lover--this
attitude being confirmed by judicious advice and counsel, and even
by moral admonition:--as when he gently chided her for her confessed
fondness for dancing, sagely implying that he regarded this form of
amusement as one of the most insidious wiles of the Adversary.

It was at Coogee, on the shores of the beautiful harbor of Sydney, that
this chaste and improving courtship culminated in his asking her to
marry him. He was a man of wealth, he told her, a mining engineer by
profession, and with several lucrative positions in Australia at the
moment waiting upon his selection. To these practical considerations he
added the plea of his devotion. He had "lately lost his wife" (delicate
euphemism!) he said, and stirred her sympathies by eloquent and
tearful descriptions of the lonely and unsatisfactory life he led in
consequence of this bereavement--the hollowness of which life he felt
more acutely than ever now that she had crossed his path. She was, as
I have said, a tender-hearted girl, and what more natural than that
she should willingly incline her ear to words which every woman loves
to hear?--the more so when they were uttered by a man whose history
indicates him to have inherited all the persuasiveness of the original
Serpent in dealings with the sex, and who, as my interview with him in
the condemned cell caused me to remark, possessed one of the sweetest
and most sympathetic voices I ever heard in human throat.

It would be no discredit to Miss Rounsfell if she had accepted him then
and there; but it speaks well for her prudence and self-command that
she asked for delay in giving her answer until she could lay the matter
before her parents. To this he promptly assented, adding the suggestion
that he should accompany her to her home, and give her friends an
opportunity to become acquainted with him. This plan was carried out,
and the successful conquest of the daughter was completed by the
capitulation of the family; the engagement was formally announced, and
the joyful contract sealed by the installation upon the hand of the
_fiancée_ of the costly diamond ring so lately worn by the woman whose
mutilated body was at the moment mouldering under the hearth-stone at
Windsor.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ecstasy of the betrothal inspired a consideration of ways and means
to hasten the wedding. The ardent lover pleaded for the celebration
of the nuptials without further ado; but his more prudent mistress
urged the possession of a home, and definite employment as surety of
maintaining it. This point conceded, the question arose as to what
particular section of the Colonies seemed to offer the most attractive
opportunities. The bride-elect objected to New South Wales as being
too near home (she had always been a home-body, and wished to see
the world); Victoria, also, was not to her taste for some other
feminine but conclusive reason; Western Australia had just begun to
come into notice as likely to become one of the world's greatest
gold-producers--there, it seemed to her, was the land of promise for a
young and experienced mining-engineer.

This opinion prevailed, and the fugitive, abandoning any idea he may
have had of escaping to America, set out for the new El Dorado; and in
a few weeks his _fiancée_ was cheered by a letter giving news of his
arrival at Southern Cross--a mining-camp some hundred and fifty miles
in the interior--where he had secured the post of manager for a company
which owned a rich deposit, and where he was already preparing for her
coming. Thus some weeks passed, until another letter came informing
her that a house had been secured and fitted up for her, and enclosing
sufficient funds for her journey. She replied, fixing the date of
her departure from Sydney, and on the day appointed took train for
Melbourne, intending to continue thence to Albany by sea.

Arriving at Melbourne the following morning--where by chance she took
a room in the same "Coffee Palace" to which her prospective bridegroom
had resorted upon his arrival from England--she despatched a note to a
young man who was a long-time friend of her family, and when he called
in the evening went out with him for a stroll through the city. As they
passed the office of _The Age_ newspaper on Collins street, they saw an
excited crowd surrounding the bulletin-board, and crossed the roadway
to read the announcement that it bore. As her eyes rested upon it, Miss
Rounsfell gave a piercing shriek, and fell senseless upon the ground.

The announcement upon the board was this:

"BARON SWANSTON, THE WINDSOR MURDERER, ARRESTED AT SOUTHERN CROSS."

Taken to her hotel and revived with difficulty, she told her
sensational story, with which the newspapers of the whole country were
filled next day; then, broken and trembling, she returned to her home,
there to remain until summoned again to Melbourne to give her testimony
at the trial which took place a month later.

Most strangely had it happened that by her unwitting influence the
criminal career of Frederick Bailey Deeming had been brought to an end.
Had she consented to live, after her anticipated marriage, in New South
Wales or Victoria, he might never have been apprehended. In these two
colonies--except for the seeming impossibility of the murdered body
being discovered--he might have come and gone without suspicion; his
only peril being the almost negligible one that some associate of his
voyage from England, or one of the very few persons in Melbourne who
had seen him with his former wife, might encounter him and inquire
as to his changed name and partner:--but the extrication of himself
from such an entanglement would have been merely a stimulating mental
exercise to Deeming, whose record, as searched after his latest crime
was known and the hue-and-cry was on his trail, shows him to have been
a most accomplished swindler, and a man of singular address in all
forms of deceit.

In these comparatively populous sections, too, the free and wide
circulation of newspapers would have brought immediate warning, by
announcement of the discovery of the Windsor murder, of the danger he
was in, and thus have aided his escape; for it was not until several
days after the body was found that its identity was revealed, and many
more before any clue was found to Deeming's whereabouts. With railways
extending to ports in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and
Queensland, his opportunities for quitting the country quickly and
secretly were numerous; and once away before the search for him had
even been started, the chance of capturing him would have been poor
indeed.

In Western Australia, whither Miss Rounsfell had been innocently
instrumental in sending him, the situation was entirely different.
No railways connect the colony with the others, and ingress and
egress are alike possible only by sea. Moreover, being the latest of
the Colonies in which the old English system of penal-transportation
was abolished, and still harboring many of the former subjects of
that _régime_, Western Australia at this time maintained through its
police a close system of espionage over all who arrived or departed
by the few seaports of the district. Thus did the murderer walk into
a _cul-de-sac_; and when the pursuit (by an extraordinarily sagacious
piece of deductive work on the part of the Melbourne detectives, which
it would interfere with the purpose of this narrative to describe)
reached Albany, the officers, armed with warrants for his arrest
and learning from the local police records that a man such as they
described had "gone up country" and had not returned, had only to
endure the tedious desert journey to Frazer's gold-mines at Southern
Cross, and apprehend him in the very house he had prepared for his
awaited bride.




CHAPTER IV

THE EXPIATION


Run to earth, and captured like a rabbit at the end of its burrow, the
murderer was brought to Albany, and shipped to Melbourne by the liner
"Ballaarat." As a relief from the general lack of events of interest
that marked his return progress, it may be noted that the train on
which he traveled from Freemantle to Albany, was stormed at York by
an indignant populace, who voiced the sentiment universally pervading
all the Colonies against his atrocities by a determined effort to
visit a rude, if original, form of justice upon him by tearing him to
pieces between two bullock-teams, and were dissuaded with difficulty
from this intention by a display of revolvers by his guards. His
feelings were outraged also on the steamer, where he expressed himself
as much distressed by the light and profane conversation of certain
unregenerate marines who were on their way to the Australian station,
and strongly rebuked them therefor:--thus illustrating anew the strange
contradiction in his nature which was before shown in his reproach
of Miss Rounsfell's fondness for dancing. In fact, all who at various
times came in contact with him--including and ending with his guardians
in the Melbourne jail--remarked upon his scrupulousness of language and
nicety of conduct.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have gone thus at some length into a description of this monster
and his crimes for two reasons:--in the first place because it seemed
essential to show the causes of the repulsion and horror which his very
name inspired, and thus to place the reader in a position to appreciate
the effect upon the popular mind of later incidents which I am about to
record; and, in the second place, because the close study which I was
able to give alike to the man and his deeds convinced me that his case
was one possessing far more interest for the psychologist than even the
criminologist.

The ingenious Sir William S. Gilbert, in the song of the sentimental
police sergeant in "The Pirates of Penzance," wherein it is recited that

"When the enterprizing burglar isn't burgling, When the cutthroat isn't
occupied with crime, He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling, And
listens to the merry village chime"--

voiced a truth which has been marked in the cases of many malefactors.
It has been observed of Deeming that, in the intervals of swindling,
lying and homicide by which his career is chiefly remembered, he
bristled like a copybook with virtuous and noble sentiments--nor is
his sincerity to be doubted in their utterance. It is unquestionable
that he was a man of singular address and subtlety--not only among
men skilled in business affairs and experienced in reading character.
He was a clever mechanic, and able to adapt himself quickly and
efficiently to any occupation:--as is shown by the fact that although
there is nothing in his history to indicate that he had had any
previous experience in mine-management, he more than fulfilled all the
requirements laid upon him at Southern Cross, increased the output of
gold by ingenious inventions, and was esteemed by the company as the
most capable manager it had ever had. He had a marked, if imperfectly
developed, fondness for music and literature, and although his
conversation included many grammatical solecisms, it was effective and
often eloquent. His taste in dress, although rather flamboyant in the
matter of jewelry, of which he always wore a profusion, was noticeably
correct--the frock-coat, light trousers and perfectly-fitting
patent-leather shoes which he wore at his trial were evidently from the
hands of the best London outfitters, and would have graced (as they
doubtless had done) the fashionable afternoon parade which is a feature
of Melbourne's Collins Street.

The anomaly that is suggested by these established facts regarding
him is of minor interest, however, in comparison with more striking
contradictions that were remarked after his capture. It was my
fortune to have a place near him at the inquest which resulted in
his commitment for trial, as well as at the trial itself that duly
followed. Popular feeling against him was so intense and violent that
the authorities did not dare to land him at the steamboat pier, but
smuggled him aboard a tug when the "Ballaarat" entered the harbor, and
brought him ashore at the suburb of St. Kilda, whence he was hurried in
a closed cab to the Melbourne jail. Brought into the court where the
inquest was held, his appearance was so brutal and revolting that a
murmur of horror and disgust arose at his entrance which the judge and
officers with difficulty quelled.

There was in his deeply-lined and saturnine face no indication of an
understanding of his position. His lips were drawn in a sardonic
sneer, and his eyes--steely, evil and magnetic--glistened like those
of the basilisk as he looked boldly and with a sort of savage bravado
at the faces about him. He disdained to pay any attention to the
proceedings, and was seemingly deaf to the testimony that was advanced
against him by more than thirty witnesses. Yet he evinced a lively,
if contemptuous, interest in minor details, and audibly expressed his
views regarding them. When the canary that had played so singular a
part in his Australian experiences was produced, still in its ornate
gilded cage, he cried out: "Hullo! here comes the menagerie! Why don't
the band play?" Of a reporter taking notes at a table near him he
remarked that "he wrote like a hen," commented upon the weak utterance
of a certain witness that "he had no more voice than a consumptive
shrimp," and interjected ribald criticisms on the words of the judge
that were fairly shocking under the circumstances.

When, at the termination of the proceedings, the judge ordered his
commitment for trial, and stated that a rescript would be issued
against him for the wilful murder of his wife, Emily Williams, he
shouted, in a shrill, cackling, strident sort of voice: "And when you
have got it, you can put it in your pipe and smoke it!"--looking about
with a demoniac grin as if expecting applause for an effective bit of
repartee. As the constables seized him and dragged him to the door,
his eyes fell upon a comely young woman standing on the edge of the
crowd, who regarded him with horrified amazement. Breaking away from
the officers, he danced up to her, chucked her under the chin, and with
his leering face close to hers ejaculated: "O, you ducky, ducky!" and
disappeared amid the cries of the scandalized lookers-on.

       *       *       *       *       *

I do not know what the emotions of other attendants on the trial may
have been, but I remember my own mental attitude as one of distaste
that my duties as a correspondent required my presence. To see one
weak human being contending for his life against the organized and
tremendous forces of the Law is always a pitiful and moving spectacle;
in this case, with recollections of the repulsive incidents of the
inquest in mind, one nerved oneself for some scene of desperation and
horror. The dock, surrounded by a spiked railing and already guarded
by a posse of white-helmeted constables, stood in the centre of the
courtroom, its platform, elevated some three feet from the floor,
being furnished with a trap-door that communicated with the cells
below by a spiral iron staircase, which the prisoner must ascend. The
audience watched this trap-door in somewhat that state of hesitating
eagerness with which a child awaits the spring of a jack-in-the-box,
not knowing what grotesque or terrifying thing may appear:--and when it
lifted, and the murderer stepped to his place beneath the thousand-eyed
gaze that was fastened upon him, a murmur in which amazement was the
dominant note ran through the room.

My own first feeling was that my eyesight was playing me a trick;
my second, that by some change of program of which I had not
been informed, the trial of Deeming had been postponed. In this
frock-coated, well-groomed and gentlemanly person in the dock there
was no trace whatever of the ruffian who had been the central figure
of the inquest. In age he seemed to have dropped some twenty years;
his manner was perfect, showing no trace either of apprehension or
bravado:--in short, the impression he conveyed (as I described it in my
correspondence at the time) was of a young clergyman of advanced views
presenting himself to trial for heresy, rather than of one of the most
brutal murderers of his generation. This impression prevailed during
the four days his trial lasted; only once or twice could one detect in
his eye the former flash of implacableness and ferocity. It was not
as if he made an effort to keep himself in control, but rather as if
he were a man with two strongly opposed and antagonistic sides to his
nature, of which one or the other might manifest itself without any
conscious exercise of will.

It was also evident to anyone who could observe him dispassionately
that the details of the murder, as they were brought out in the
testimony, were all as news to _him_:--and when, in the address he made
to the jury before it retired to consider its verdict, he admitted
knowledge of the subsidiary facts brought out (as to his acquaintance
with Miss Rounsfell, for example), but swore he was as innocent as
he was incapable of the murder of his wife, I, for one, believed him
sincere, although I could perceive in the faces about me that I was
alone in that opinion. A suggestion that this man might illustrate the
phenomenon of "dual personality" and should be subjected to hypnotic
suggestion at the hands of qualified experts, rather than have swift
condemnation measured out to him, would doubtless have been received
with derision by the hard-headed audience that was the real jury in
the case; but I felt at the time, and feel now even more strongly,
that if Frederick Bailey Deeming had been tried in a country where
psychological aberrations have been the subject of study, he would have
been committed, not to the hangman, but to a lifelong restraint wherein
science might have gained from his extraordinary personality much
valuable knowledge.

The man whose life was choked out of him on the gallows three weeks
later was the man of the inquest, not the man of the trial--and in
this fact is some occasion for satisfaction. He was more subdued, as
though he appreciated--as any other animal might do--what the sinister
preparations for his ending meant:--but when, as he hung beneath the
open trap, the death-cap was lifted from his face, there were plainly
to be seen the hard and brutal lines about his mouth, and the wolfish
sneer upon his lips, which one could not but feel, with something like
a shudder, had distinguished his features in the commission of the
atrocities for which at last he had paid such insufficient price as
society could exact.

       *       *       *       *       *

The scaffold of the Melbourne jail is a permanent structure with
several traps; and across and above it runs a heavy beam, its ends
fixed in the solid masonry of the walls, and the greater part of its
length scarred and grooved by the chafing of the ropes which, from time
to time, have given despatch to the souls of several hundred murderers.
As I looked up at this fearsome tally-stick, I turned to the oldest
warder of the jail, a man of nearly seventy years, who had been present
at my interview with Deeming a few days before, and who now stood
beside me.

"I want to ask you a question," I said, "unless your official position
may prevent your answering it."

"What is it, sir?" he inquired.

"You have been for many years a warder here, and must have seen many
men under sentence of death."

"Yes," he replied. "I was first here in the bushranging days, and have
been here ever since. I fancy I have seen two hundred men depart this
life by the route of that gallows."

"Then," said I, "you should be a good judge of the character and
mental state of a man who is awaiting a death of that sort. Here is my
question:--What is your opinion of Deeming?"

"Mad, sir," replied the warder. "Mad as a March hare."

This verdict might be qualified, but I believe it to be essentially
just.




CHAPTER V

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL


In beginning this chapter I find myself facing a dilemma--one not
so puzzling as that which gave Hamlet pause, and evoked his famous
soliloquy, and yet like it, too, in that it forces me to hesitate
before the mystery of the Unseen. Thus far my story has the support of
incontrovertible facts and permanent and referable legal and criminal
records; I must now cut loose from these, and trust my weight upon
the assertion that the last half of my narrative, which I now launch
upon, is in every detail and particular as true as the first. In
the stress of the responsibility thus assumed it might seem natural
to marshall about me such facts and persons as I might invoke as
corroborative witnesses. Of these there are not a few:--but although
there is (sometimes) "wisdom in a multitude of counsellors," conviction
in the actuality of truth in narrations of so-called "supernatural"
phenomena is as likely as otherwise to be befogged in exact proportion
to the size of their "cloud of witnesses." Therefore I have, after
reflection, decided to "take the stand" myself and unsupported, and to
throw myself upon the mercy of the court--my readers--in so doing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus, then, I shall not reveal the exact location of The House on the
Hill, nor the name of the owner, from whom, for a year, I rented it.
It is doubtful that he be now living, for he was a man of advanced age
when he left his house in my hands, and departed with his two unmarried
daughters (themselves of mature years) for a twelve-months' tour in
Europe. On his return I handed him the keys without any reference to
the strange occurrences that had come to me from my bargaining with
him:--nor do I know to this day whether he had similar experiences
after my departure, or even whether they may have enlivened him and
his family prior to my tenancy. His evident anxiety to lease the house
for a time (I took it furnished, and at a rental absurdly low--in
fact, just one-half his original demand) may have had no special
significance, although I often fancied afterwards that I had found a
reason for it:--but on consideration I decided not to refer to certain
features of the house that he had failed to enumerate as among its
attractions, and to restore him without remark to their renewal--if he
knew of them--or to discover them for himself--if he did not.

It is probable that few of my readers have spent a year in a "haunted
house"--I use this expression, although it defines nothing, for want
of a better:--but those who cherish such an experience will understand
why, on the one hand, I did not wish to alarm an elderly gentleman and
his amiable daughters, or "give a bad name," as the saying is, to his
property; and why, on the other, I did not care to run the risk of
living in his recollection, and in the minds of his neighbors to whom
he might relate my story, as a person of feeble intellect, if not a
lunatic outright. But I would give a good deal to know what _he_ knew
about that house.

A circumstance that I took no note of at the time, but which afterwards
seemed to have a possible significance, occurred at the house one
evening when I had called to complete negotiations by signing the lease
and going through other formalities precedent to taking possession.
The owner had told me that one of his reasons for desiring a change of
scene for a time was that his wife had died three months before after a
lingering illness that had completely worn out his daughters as well
as himself:--and when the business of his final evening was completed,
the younger woman uttered this strange remark:--"Well, it will be a
relief not to see mother about all the time!"--and was immediately
checked by her sister. I had before noted her as a nervous-mannered,
somewhat anæmic-looking person, and her observation touched my mind too
lightly to leave any impression upon it.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was nothing at all peculiar in the appearance of the house. It
stood upon a breezy hill-top in the outskirts of one of Melbourne's
most attractive suburbs; the train from town landed me, every evening,
at the village station, and a ten-minute walk up a rather steep road
brought me comfortably to home and dinner. The house was a delightful
one when you got to it. It occupied a corner lot, and had extensive
grounds around it; there was a large orchard at the rear, filled with
grape-vines, and pear, lemon, and fig trees--although none of them did
much in the matter of bearing. There were two trees in the front yard
that gave profusely of pomegranates (a decorative fruit, but one whose
edible qualities always seemed to me greatly overrated); there were
spacious flower beds on both sides of the building, and the nearest
neighbors were at least two hundred yards away. On the other side of
the street which ran in front of the house was a large, unimproved lot
which gave a touch of the country by the presence in it of several
ancient gum trees, in which the "laughing jackasses" cackled and
vociferated both morning and evening:--and when my wife and I, and the
gentleman of Scottish ancestry and of advanced middle-age, whom, as our
best of friends, we had induced to share the enterprise with us, looked
about upon these things on the first afternoon of our occupancy, we
pronounced them all "very good."

The house was not a large one, comprising six living-rooms and a
kitchen, besides a bath and a commodious storeroom and pantry. It was
of the bungalow pattern, a type which is a favorite one in Australia,
where the high average temperature of the year makes coolness and
airiness prime essentials in a dwelling. It had no cellar, but was
raised above the ground upon brickwork, thus forming a dry air-chamber
below, and above its single story was a low, unfinished attic, which
afforded another air-space, and stretched without partitions from
front to back of the house. There was no floor to this attic, and
on the only occasion when I explored it, I had to crawl from beam to
beam, the pointed roof being so low that I could barely stand upright
even under its ridgepole. The only means of access to this part of the
house was a ladder, which could be brought into the bathroom, and from
which could be raised a light trap-door in the ceiling. A veranda ran
along the front of the house, and a wide hall extended, without turn or
obstruction, from front to back. On one side of this hall--beginning
from the veranda--were the parlor, dining-room, bedroom, and pantry;
on the other, my wife's bedroom, the bathroom, our friend's room, a
"spare-room," and the kitchen:--while a few yards behind the house
stood a one-story structure, fitted up as a laundry. The "spare-room"
here mentioned I furnished as a smoking-room; and further equipped it
by building a bench across the space before the single window, whereat
I employed myself now and then in preparing the skins of birds of which
I was making a collection, and which I either shot myself in frequent
excursions into the country, or which were sent to me by agents, both
whites and "blackfellows," whom I employed in various parts of the
Colonies.

One, and perhaps the most peculiar, feature of the bungalow remains
to be described. This was a small apartment, about five feet square,
between the bathroom and our friend's room (but without any means of
direct communication with either), and entered only by a narrow door
which swung outward into the hall. It was unlighted, and was provided
with air by a ventilator at the end of a shaft which was carried
through the ceiling into the attic and ended in the roof. Its floor
was of thickly-laid concrete, and in its centre, and occupying nearly
the whole ground space, was a sunken portion about two feet deep,
and equipped with wooden racks upon which boxes of butter, pans of
milk, and various receptacles containing similar perishable articles
of food were accommodated. This chamber was of real use in a country
where--at the time at least--ice was scarce and expensive, and where
summer temperatures of a hundred and ten degrees in the shade might be
expected; since, being placed in a part of the house which was wholly
removed from the direct rays of the sun, the air in it was always cool
and dry. I am particular in describing this room because of a strange
incident that later occurred in it.

The house was well, almost luxuriously, furnished. The parlor
contained a fine piano, and several pictures of merit adorned the
walls; heat (seldom necessary in that mild climate except on rainy
days in autumn and winter) was furnished to this and other rooms
by open fireplaces, and vases and other _bric-a-brac_ stood upon
the mantels; the bed and table linen was all of excellent quality,
there was a sufficiency of crockery and glass and silverware and
culinary utensils:--and as we sat down to our inauguratory dinner, and
contrasted our condition with the three years' previous experience
of travel and steamer and hotel life in all parts of Australia, New
Zealand, Tasmania and the Fiji Islands, we congratulated each other
that we had found a "home" indeed.

We set about forthwith to improve our temporary property. On one side
of the house, and separated from it by a fence that inclosed the
lawn and flower gardens, was a grassy "paddock" that might formerly
have pastured a horse or a cow. As we had no use for either of these
animals, we turned this space into a poultry yard, and populated it
with chickens, ducks and geese--which thrived amazingly, and in due
time furnished us all the eggs and poultry required for our table.
Our friend (by nature and early training an ardent horticulturist,
but whose energies in that science had for many years enjoyed no
opportunity for exercise in the soil of the Melbourne Stock Exchange,
of which he was a member) joyously took the flower gardens under his
control, and achieved miracles therein. It was delightful, as I sat
in the shady veranda on the hot Saturday afternoons, with a steamer
chair to loll in, and a pipe and cooling drink at hand, to contemplate
his enthusiasm as he delved and sweated to prepare new ground for the
gorgeous blooms which he coaxed from the willing soil--at the same time
extolling my own sagacity in asking him to share the place with us; to
which he would respond in appropriate language. Our household was so
small that we were not exposed to the annoyances of the "servant-girl"
problem:--our friend and I lunched in town, and a capable woman who
lived nearby assisted my wife in cooking and serving our dinners,
and attended to the duties of house-cleaning--returning to her own
home when her work was accomplished, and leaving us to ourselves in
the evenings. We were near enough to town to run in for theatres and
concerts whenever we were so minded, and on Sundays did some modest
entertaining:--in short, we settled into a phase of existence as
nearly Arcadian as is often possible under modern conditions of
civilization, and although it seemed likely to be commonplace and
uneventful, we were in mood to find it all the more desirable and
pleasant on that account. That the most startling experiences of our
lives were soon to come upon us never entered our heads, and for some
six weeks we lived in serenity and happiness amid surroundings that day
by day grew more attractive.




CHAPTER VI

ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM


My interview with the murderer, as described in the first chapter, took
place upon a Thursday. The next day was one of the general holidays
that are so profusely celebrated in Australia:--I do not remember the
occasion, but it is safe to assume that some important horse race was
to be run at Flemington--the Epsom of the Antipodes. At all events, I
took advantage of the opportunity to go into the country with my gun
on a collecting trip, and returned at night with a fine assortment of
cockatoos, parrots and other brilliantly plumaged or curious birds
which make the Colonies a paradise for the ornithologist.

The day following--Saturday--opened with a heavy rain, and a strong
wind off the sea. I had no particular business to call me to town, and,
anyhow, all activities and occupations would cease at noon in deference
to the usual weekly half-holiday. Moreover, I had several hours' work
before me in removing and preserving the skins of the birds I had
shot; so I suppressed the faint voice of duty that suggested that I
might find something of importance awaiting me in Melbourne, and after
breakfast sat down to the congenial labor of my taxidermist's bench.
Our friend departed for the Stock Exchange, and my wife and I were left
alone in the house.

I had no more than made the preliminary incision in the breast of a
purple lorrikeet when the doorbell rang. Answering the summons I found
in the veranda a black-haired, sallow-faced individual, his garments
sodden with rain, who offered for my purchase and perusal "The History
and Last Confession of Frederick Bailey Deeming," for "the small price
of sixpence." More in commiseration for the wretched and bedraggled
appearance of the vendor than from any other motive (for I was already
acquainted with the "History," and gave no credence to any announcement
that a "Confession" had been made) I bought the pamphlet and returned
to my room. Finding, as I had suspected, that this piece of literature
contained no new facts whatever, and was totally lacking in anything
even the most remotely suggesting confession, I threw it into the fire
that blazed on the hearth and took up my interrupted work.[6]

The incident of the water-soaked vendor and his pamphlet had had the
effect, however, of turning my reflections into a very unpleasant
channel. In spite of all efforts to apply myself to the task in hand,
the thought of the despairing man in the condemned cell, my visit to
him two days before, and my anticipated presence at his execution
within forty-eight hours, pressed upon my spirit with a weight which
I found it impossible to lift. An incident which had occurred on
the previous day had also added a certain element of pathos to the
situation.

During my absence a letter had come to my wife through the morning
mail, which, to her astonishment and disquiet, proved to have been
written by the murderer. It ran as follows:

"H. M. Gaol
   "Melbourne
      "18-5-92

"DEAR MADAM:

"I beg to tender you my sincere thanks for your extreme kindness on my
behalf, in trying to get Miss Rounsefell to come and see me. I assure
you that if she had come I could have died happy, as it is I shall die
most unhappy. I am very sorry indeed that you did not find her as kind
and as Christian like as yourself. Again thanking you,

"I beg to remain
   "Most respectfully yours
      "B. SWANSTON.

"you may show Miss Rounsefell this if you wish. B. S."

This remarkable document, from a man at the moment standing on the
brink of eternity, greatly disturbed (as I have said) its recipient;
but she did not hesitate. As the letter intimates, she had already, in
pursuance of a promise she was almost compelled to make through the
earnest plea of the murderer when she saw him in the condemned cell,
seen Miss Rounsfell (this is the correct spelling of the name, not
that used by the writer of the above letter) with the lack of success
that the letter suggests. Now, however, she determined to see the girl
again:--and showing her the letter, she urged her to see the man--or at
the least write to him--and grant her pardon to a dying creature who
seemed to have no hope of pardon elsewhere, either here or hereafter.
The interview was a touching one:--Miss Rounsfell was deeply affected,
and (greatly to her credit, I think) consented to undertake in person
the charitable mission that she had been asked to perform. But her
brother so strenuously opposed the idea--even to the minor extent of
writing--that she was compelled to abandon it; and Deeming went to his
death without the consolation that he had so simply and eloquently
craved.

Thus in many ways I had been brought into this tragical affair much
more intimately than I liked, and I could not keep my mind away from
it. The day itself added to the gloom that fell upon me. The storm
had steadily increased in violence since early morning; rain fell in
torrents, and the wind roared and whined alternately about the house;
the heavy clouds that passed close overhead cast upon the earth a
series of shifting shadows as their substance thickened or thinned
under the rending force of the gale--if the Powers of Darkness ever
walk abroad by day, they could hardly find an occasion more eerie and
fitting than this. Yet no such suggestion occurred to me:--I could hear
the rattle of dishes in the kitchen and the voice of my wife in song
as she attended to her household duties; I lighted my pipe as another
means of affording the companionship that I somehow craved, and for an
hour or so applied myself assiduously to the task in hand.

I was seated facing the window, my back to the open door that led into
the hall. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, I heard behind
me a long and dismal groan. "A-a-ah!"--thus it came; a woman's voice,
apparently, and with an indescribable but certain accent in it of
mental or physical pain. It is no exaggeration to say that this awful
and ghastly sound froze me where I sat; I could feel my hair move upon
my scalp, and a chill, as though I had been dashed with ice-water, ran
up and down my spine. For a moment an inexpressible horror possessed
me--then I felt my blood, which seemed on the instant to have stopped
in its course, flow again in my veins, and with a mighty effort I arose
and faced the open door. There was nothing there--nor in the dim hall,
into which I shortly ventured:--I removed my slippers and silently
explored every room; still nothing to be seen, and the only sound the
splash of rain, and of the wind that sobbed and muttered around the
house. I crept to the kitchen and peeped in cautiously:--my wife was
quietly engaged in her work, and I was glad to think that she had heard
nothing. Indeed, her undisturbed demeanor encouraged the opinion I
had begun to form, that some peculiar effect of the wind in the open
fireplace or the chimney of my room was responsible for the sound I had
heard.

Yet I was by no means satisfied with this explanation:--the cry
was too human, the distress it evidenced too poignant, to be thus
counterfeited, and as I returned to my bench, it was with full
expectation that I should hear it again. I was not disappointed. In
a few moments it came, more distinct and lugubrious than before, and
seemingly within the very room itself; and as I whirled about to
confront I knew not what, the groan was repeated, coming from the empty
air before me and dying away in an unutterably sad and plaintive sigh.

I made another swift and noiseless survey of the house, but it was as
resultless as before, and regained my room much shaken, I will confess,
but still unwilling to admit that the sounds could not be referred to
natural causes. But I found no solution that convinced me. I might have
attributed their first occurrence to hallucination, but the second
hearing weakened that hypothesis--the groan and the following sigh
were inimitably those of an old woman, who was either at the point of
death or overwhelmed with distress of mind and body. This resemblance
was absolute, and I sat for some time revolving the strange thing in
my mind. I thought of relating my experience to my wife, but feared to
alarm her, and finally went back to my birds.

Almost immediately there came for the third time that ghastly wail and
sigh--so close to my ear that, had any living person uttered them, his
face must almost have touched my own. I am not ashamed to say that the
effect upon me was so unmanning and terrible that I uttered a cry of
horror and fell backward with the chair I sat in, and lay sprawling on
the floor. At the same instant I heard my wife scream from the kitchen;
and as I gathered myself up and ran to her, I saw her standing with her
back against the wall, staring with horrified eyes, and with a look of
repulsion and fear upon her face, at something invisible to me, on the
other side of the room. I rushed to her and grasped her hands:--they
were cold as ice, and her fixed and rigid gaze into what to me was
emptiness, frightened me beyond measure.

"In heaven's name," I cried, "what is it?"

"It is Deeming's mother," she answered, in a whisper I could hardly
hear.

"Deeming's mother!"--I echoed her words:--"How do you know it is
Deeming's mother?"

"I saw her with him in his cell at the jail," she replied.

"Then what he said was true, that his mother comes back to trouble him?"

"Yes, it _was_ true; and now she comes to _me_! Go away!" she cried,
addressing something _I_ could not see. "I cannot help you; why do you
torment me! Ah!"--with a sigh of relief--"she has gone!" and she sank
exhausted into a chair.

We had a long and memorable talk after that, which I will briefly
summarize. My wife had not heard the groans that had been audible
to me until their second repetition; then the sound that had seemed
beside my ear came at the same instant close to hers, and her cry that
joined with mine had been wrung from her by the sight of the apparition
which on the instant presented itself to her. This was not the first
time, however, that it had appeared:--it had closely followed upon the
receipt of Deeming's letter the day before, and its cries of distress
and appeals for help had been so agonizing that it was as much on that
account as because of the plea of the murderer himself that she had
decided to see Miss Rounsfell again.

The apparition did not reappear that day, and there was no recurrence
of the wailing lamentations--but we were soon to have further
experience of them for all that.

The storm spent itself during the late afternoon, and was succeeded
by a beautiful evening. The wind was still high, and the sky filled
with broken masses of clouds, through which the full moon waded
heavily:--and as my wife and I descended the hill, soon after dinner,
to the railway station on our way to keep an engagement to call upon
the Consul-General of the United States at his residence at St. Kilda,
we agreed that the night was just such a one as might inspire Doré in
some one of his fantastic compositions. After the day's gruesome events
we had hesitated about leaving our friend alone during our absence;
but we finally united upon the opinion which my wife advanced, that
as she seemed to be the sole object of the apparition's visit, he was
not likely to be molested. So we left him (albeit with some misgiving)
comfortably seated before the dining-room fire in a large easy-chair,
and with his pipe and a new novel for company, and took our departure.

It was after midnight when we returned. The gale had blown itself out,
and the moon looked down upon a world that seemed resting in sleep
after the turmoil of the day. My wife went at once to her room to lay
aside her outer garments and I repaired, with much curiosity and a
little apprehension stirring me, to the dining-room.

I found our friend as we had left him, book in hand and with
his smoked-out pipe lying on a table beside him. He was not
alone, however--our two dogs--a wire-haired Scotch terrier and
a fox-terrier--which I had as usual chained up for the night in
their kennels at the back of the house, were dozing together on the
hearth-rug.

"Hullo!" I exclaimed; "what are those dogs doing here? You know they
are never allowed to come into the house."

"Well," our friend replied. "I felt lonely, and so I brought them in to
keep me company."

"That's an odd idea," I rejoined. "I thought your book and pipe would
be society enough. Besides, there is plenty of 'Scotch' and soda on the
sideboard."

"I tried that, too," he confessed. "But, do you know? this has been
the most infernally unpleasant evening I ever spent in my life. The
wind has been making the most uncanny noises--I would swear there were
people moving all over the house if I did not know I was the only
person in it. I have been all over the place a dozen times, but could
find nothing. At last I couldn't stand it; so I unchained and brought
in the dogs. Somehow they didn't seem to have much use for the place--I
had to drag them in by their collars."

"They knew they had no right to be here," I commented. "The matter with
_you_ is, you've been smoking too much, and got your nerves on edge.
Come and help me put up the dogs before my wife sees them, or you'll
'get what for,' as your English expression is."

This office performed, we returned to the dining-room, where I
suggested a "Scotch-and-soda" before retiring for the night, and
together at the sideboard we prepared each a modest potion. As we
touched glasses to a good sleep and happy awakening, there sounded from
the air behind us that weird and terrible cry! My friend's face turned
ashen on the instant and his glass fell from his hand and lay shattered
on the hardwood floor.

"My God!" he cried; "did you hear _that_?"

I was startled, of course, but the morning's experience, reinforced by
anticipation of some such happening, had steeled my nerves.

"Did I hear _what_?" I asked. "Look here, old man, you are certainly in
a queer way to-night. What _should_ I hear?--everything is as quiet as
death."

"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, looking at me incredulously
and with alarm still in his face, "that you did not hear that awful
groan?"--but meanwhile I had filled another tumbler for him, which he
hastily emptied, although the glass rattled against his teeth as he
drank.

"Come, come!" I said; "go to bed, and you will be all right in the
morning;"--but the words had but left my lips when, right between us as
it seemed, there swelled again upon the air that utterance of anguish,
followed by the dying cadence of a sigh.

"There!--there!--there!" stammered my companion:--"did you hear it
_then_?"

"Yes, I did," I replied; "and the first time as well. Is that what has
disturbed you to-night?"

"No, not exactly that--nothing so awful; but all sorts of strange
noises; I can't describe them. I say--what kind of a house _is_ this? I
have always believed the stories of haunted houses were bally nonsense;
but in heaven's name what does all this mean?"

I was unable to enlighten him:--and although I called my wife from her
room and described to him our morning's experience with the voices,
I thought it best to keep the feature of the apparition a secret. In
fact, he never did learn of it, or of many other things that did not
come directly to his personal apprehension. What he _did_ see and hear,
in the months that followed, was bad enough, God knows!--and I am
convinced that one of the reasons (and that not the least considerable)
which prevented him from leaving us on any one of a dozen different
occasions, and ourselves from abandoning the house outright, was the
consideration (on his part) that it would be unseemly for one of his
nation to confess himself inferior in pluck to an American, and (on
ours) that we should be untrue to all our country's traditions if we
permitted a Britisher to see us in retreat.

This reason may seem extreme, and even fantastical; but it has its
weight in explaining why--at the outset, at least--we held our ground.
In the long discussion which followed, that night, it was evident that
each party was urgent that the other should suggest abandonment of the
premises. Neither, however, would broach the subject, and we separated
for bed at last with the implied understanding that we were to remain.




CHAPTER VII

A GHOSTLY CO-TENANCY


Such was the first manifestation of a Possession which held the
house for more than nine months. That we endured it is to me now
sufficient cause for wonder, and the reasons why we did so (reasons
which presented themselves by degrees) may require some explanation.
It must be said that with the exception of a few visitations which I
shall duly describe, there were no occasions so terrifying as those
which happened on the day of the storm. Moreover, as my wife and I
had made acquaintance in former years with many inexplicable things
and had never seen any serious results come from them, our attitude
toward these new phenomena was one compact more of curiosity than
anything else. The experience could hardly be called agreeable, but it
was strange and unusual, and we wanted to find out what it all meant.
We never _did_ find out, by the way, but the anticipation (which was
constant) that we should, kept us interested.

The amiable reader may be disposed to credit us with unusual courage,
but we never looked at the matter in that light. Besides the influence
of national pride which I have mentioned as supporting both our friend
and ourselves, there was also the consideration that we had covenanted
for the house for a year, and had paid the first six-months' rent in
advance--and Yankee and Scottish thrift alike moved us to desire our
money's worth; and although we might hope to annul our bargain if we
could plead that the dwelling was infested with rats, we had doubts as
to our standing in court in case we should set up a defense that it
was overrun with ghosts. Moreover, we liked our quarters so well that
we could not make up our minds to leave them merely because an unseen
co-tenantry insisted on sharing them with us; therefore we remained,
and in time even managed to extract some entertainment from the quips
and cranks that were more or less constantly going on.

A saving feature of the situation was the fact that the manifestations
were not continuous, and rarely occurred--until near the end of
our term--at night. This, I think, must be set down as an unusual
circumstance, but it was one that brought us considerable relief. It
need not be pointed out, for example, how much less terrifying it is
to hear muffled footsteps and the rustle of women's garments up and
down the hall by daylight than in darkness, and to see, under the
same conditions, chairs and light tables shifted about in apparent
accordance with some invisible person's notion of their proper
arrangement. It is somewhat disquieting, to be sure, when walking
through the hall, to hear the bell above one's head break out in
rattling clangor, and, looking through the wide-open front door, to
perceive that no visible visitor was at the other end of the wire:--and
in spite of many former experiences, we could not restrain ourselves
from jumping in our seats when, at dinner, all the doors in the house
would slam in rapid succession with a violence that set the dishes
dancing on the board. And the singular thing about this performance
was that although the sound was unmistakably that of banging doors,
the doors themselves seemed to have no part in it. More than once
we arranged them in anticipation of this manifestation, leaving
some closed, some wide open, and some ajar at various angles which
we carefully noted. Presently would come the expected thunderous
reverberations--and running from the dining-room we would find every
door precisely as we had left it.

Occasionally, what seemed like a rushing wind would sweep through
the hall between the wire-screened doors at either end of the house,
although a glance out of the window showed that the leaves of the
trees in the yard were pendent and lifeless in an utter calm:--and
this circumstance reminds me of a curious thing that was several times
repeated.

We rarely used the parlor, which, as I have said, was on the right
of the hall as one entered the house, with windows giving upon the
veranda. To the decorations of this room which had been left by our
landlord, we had made some considerable additions--photographs of
New Zealand scenery, curios and wall hangings from Fiji, and other
such matters. Now and then would break out in that room a racket as
though a dozen devils were dancing the tarantelle, accompanied by a
sound as of a maëlstrom of wind whirling in it. We never had courage
to enter while the disturbance was in progress--in fact we had no
time to do so, as it always ended within a few minutes; but when we
opened the door after the noise had subsided, we invariably found the
same condition of affairs--every article in the room that belonged
to _us_ piled in a heap on the floor, and all the possessions of the
absent family standing or hanging undisturbed in their usual places.
We were disposed to regard this demonstration as a gentle hint that
our continuation in the house was not desired, and that the "spooks,"
as we came familiarly to call them, had in furtherance of this idea
gathered together such of our belongings as they could reach in order
to facilitate our packing up for departure. But we paid no heed to the
implied suggestion, restored the room to its former condition, and in a
short time this particular form of annoyance was discontinued.

These were minor occurrences, and I am not relating them with any
reference to the order in which they came. As they seem to belong
to the general run of phenomena that have been frequently noticed
in accounts of "haunted houses"--so called--I will not dwell upon
them; merely observing that the effort to produce them was entirely
misplaced if its purpose was to frighten us, and in any case unworthy
of any intelligent source. I more than once announced this opinion in
a loud tone of voice when the rustlings and footfalls, and their often
accompanying groans and sighs became too persistent, or wearisome in
their lack of variety--and it was curious to see how effective this
remonstrance always was. A dead silence would immediately ensue, and
for hours, and sometimes even for days, the house would be as orderly
and commonplace as possible.

It is my recollection that the mother of Deeming (if, indeed, she it
were) made no further appearance after her son's execution. She seems
to have expressed herself in one supreme and futile appeal for help,
and then to have gone to her place. Several others followed her, whom
I could hear from time to time as they moved about, and whom my wife,
whose clearness of sight in these matters I never shared, described
as an old woman, another much younger, and a girl-child some four
or five years of age. They never attempted any communication with
us; in fact, they seemed quite unaware of our presence; and were
evidently not concerned in any of the bizarre and seemingly meaningless
manifestations that were continually going on. We fancied that the
shade of the elder woman was that of the former mistress of the house,
whose death, as I have already noted, had occurred therein some three
months before we took possession:--but as she ignored us entirely, we
respected her seeming disinclination to a mutual introduction, and
left her to go to and fro in the way she preferred. This way was not
altogether a pleasant one. She wore a black gown, my wife said, with
a neckerchief of some white material--the rustle of her gown, which I
could plainly hear, indicated that it was of silk; she seemed unhappy
(we thought it might be that she did not understand the absence of her
husband and daughters) and was forever sighing softly and wringing her
hands. The younger woman (the two never seemed to be conscious of each
others' existence--if that is the right word) was in a state of evident
discomfort also, although she was always silent, and appeared to be
constantly in search of something she could not find.

Altogether we found these shadowy guests of ours a rather cheerless
company; but as we had had no voice in inviting them, and feared that
their departure (if they should accept any intimation from us that it
was desired) might make room for others even more objectionable, we
were fain to adapt ourselves to the situation that was forced upon us.
The child-ghost, however, was of quite different disposition. She had
something with her that seemed to take the place of a doll, and would
sit with it by the hour in a corner of the room where we all were,
at times crooning to it in a queer, faraway, but still quite audible
voice. It was a "creepy" thing to hear, but strangely sweet and
musical, for all that. On rarer occasions she would sing to herself
a song, but one in which no words could be distinguished; in all her
utterances, indeed, there was never anything that sounded like speech.
She was not quite sure of herself in this song. Now and then she would
strike a wrong note; then silence for a moment, and she would begin the
song again. As she reached the note at which she had before stumbled,
she would pause, then take the note correctly, give a pleased little
laugh, and go on successfully to the end.

This extraordinary performance was repeated on many occasions. One
bright Sunday afternoon I was sitting in talk with my wife in her
room, when this weird chant started up in the farthest corner. I
listened through the whole of the usual rendition--the beginning, the
false note, the return for a new trial, the note rightly struck, the
satisfied laugh, and so on to the conclusion. Then the thing began all
over again.

I said, rather impatiently: "Don't sing that again! Can't you see that
we want to talk?"

"Oh, you shouldn't have said that!" remonstrated my wife. "She has gone
away"--and in fact the song had stopped, and it was many days before we
heard it again.

I have not particularly mentioned our friend in this recital of minor
happenings, although he had his share in most of them, and carried
himself throughout in a plucky and admirable manner. We were very fond
of him, as he evidently was of us to endure adventures with us which
he must have found uncongenial, to say the least--he being a man of
quiet tastes, and one not prone to go out of his way in search for
excitement. An incident that happened one night, however, came very
near to ending his residence with us.

At about eight o'clock of an evening in June (the time of year when the
days are at their shortest in that latitude), he and I were smoking
and chatting in my "den," my wife being in her own room at the front
of the house. All at once the two dogs who were chained in the back
yard broke out in a terrific chorus of barking. They were ordinarily
very quiet animals, and whenever they gave tongue (which was only when
some tradesman or other person came upon the premises by the back gate)
it was merely by a yelp or two to inform us that they were attending
to their duty as guardians. On this occasion, however, one might have
thought there were a dozen dogs behind the house instead of two:--they
seemed fairly frantic, and there was a strange note in their voices
such as I had never heard before.

"What on earth is the matter with those dogs?" I exclaimed. "One might
think they were being murdered."

"They are certainly tremendously excited about something," my companion
rejoined:--"let's go out and see what the trouble is"--and he was out
of the room, and unlocking the back door, before I could leave my
easy-chair to accompany him. As I reached the hall I was just in time
to see the large pane of groundglass with which the upper half of the
outside door was fitted, fly inward--shattered into a thousand pieces
by a jagged fragment of rock as large as my fist, which whizzed by my
friend's head with such force that it went by me also, and brought up
against the front door at the other end of the hall. My companion, who
had escaped death or a serious injury by the smallest possible margin,
fell back against the wall with his hands over his face, which had been
cut in several places by the flying glass; but he quickly recovered
himself, and when I had hastened back to my room and provided myself
with a revolver, we rushed together into the open air. Nothing was to
be seen, nor could we hear a sound. We went into the street, which was
lighted by scattered gas lamps, and listened for retreating footsteps,
but the street was vacant as far as we could see in both directions,
and the silence of the night was like that of the grave. We dragged
the dogs out of the kennels to which they had retreated, and turned
them loose in the hope that their peculiar intelligence would enable
them to guide us to some lurking miscreant in the shrubbery about the
yard or amid the trees and vines in the obscurity of the orchard:--but
they were trembling as if in abject fear, we could get no help from
them, and when released they bolted into their kennels again and hid
themselves in the straw at the farthest corners. It was evident that
they had seen something that terrified them greatly, but what it was
we could only surmise. The Scotch terrier was a gentle creature, and
his evident alarm did not so much surprise me. The fox-terrier, on the
other hand, was full of "bounce" and confidence, and nothing in canine
or human shape had any terrors for him. When it came to devils, that
might be another matter--an idea that passed through my mind at the
time, but did not then find lodgment. It was strengthened in view of
another incident which occurred later, and which I shall describe in a
subsequent chapter.




CHAPTER VIII

THE DEAD WALKS


The incident of the flying stone and the broken glass much disquieted
us, and furnished matter of anxious discussion for several days. It
gave us the first hint we had received that the influences that seemed
to be busy about us included any of a malign or violent nature, and
inspired a lively apprehension of other sinister happenings of which it
might be the forerunner. There was, of course, the doubt as to whether
the affair might not be due to human agency; had it stood by itself, no
other idea would have occurred to us:--but although we tried to satisfy
ourselves that some reckless or malicious person was the culprit, the
attendant circumstances seemed to point away from that opinion. The
force with which the missile was hurled indicated that no mischievous
boy could have aimed it, while it appeared incredible that any man
would take the risk of passing the clamorous dogs and crossing the wide
yard to take a point-blank shot at the door--as the direct course of
the stone showed had been done. Nor could it have been thrown from
any considerable distance:--the laundry outhouse before mentioned,
was not more than thirty feet from the door and protected it from any
attack outside that limit. It was the behavior of the dogs, however,
that puzzled us the most. Instead of welcoming our coming, as would
naturally have been the case, they shrunk from the touch of our hands
and gave no heed to our voices, but shook and shivered as if in an ague
fit.

In spite of these facts, the event so much smacked of the material, and
was so opposed in its nature to anything else that had happened, that
we hesitated to attribute it to the agency of unseen powers; and as the
week that followed was free of any alarming incident we decided to keep
it out of the debit column of our account with the "spooks," and give
them the credit of having had no part in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was, I think (although I am uncertain about the exact date) about
a fortnight after the stone-throwing episode, that I came home one
afternoon much earlier than usual; and as my wife met me at the door
I saw at once that look upon her face which had on several occasions
advised me that something quite out of the ordinary had happened
during my absence. It is hardly necessary for me to mention, in view
of the record already made of the experience she had shared with me
in that ill-omened house, that among her notable characteristics
were high courage and self-control. On this occasion, however, her
appearance alarmed me greatly. There was a presence of fear upon her;
she was _distraite_ and nervous, despite her evident effort to appear
unconcerned; and the strange expression which I had often seen when her
gaze seemed to follow the movements of shapes invisible to my grosser
sense, still clouded her eyes.

I did not at once question her, although I was consumed with curiosity,
and tried to quiet her evident, although suppressed, excitement by
talking of the commonplace incidents of my day in town. But it was
apparent that she did not hear a word I said:--indeed, her attitude and
manner were as of one who listened to another voice than mine; and I
soon lapsed into silence and sat watching her with a growing anxiety.

Suddenly the obsession with which she seemed to be contending passed
away:--she turned impulsively to me and cried:

"We must leave this house! I have endured all I can! I will not remain
here another day!"

"I knew that something was wrong the moment I saw you," I said.
"Something very bad has happened--do you want to tell me what it is?"

"Oh, I cannot, I cannot!" she exclaimed. "It is too horrible; it would
frighten you to death if I should tell you!"

"Anything that you have gone through, I ought to be able to hear of,"
I replied. "I think you had better tell me your story, and get it off
your mind, before our friend comes home."

"Oh, he must never know it!" she cried. "Promise me that you will not
tell him!"

"Of course I will not tell him, if you do not wish it," I assented.
"And now let me know what has alarmed you."

During our conversation I had imagined all sorts of terrifying
incidents as having occurred--but my wife's next words sent a shiver
through me.

"Deeming has been here," she said.

"Deeming!" I exclaimed; "that devil!"

"Yes," she replied. "He did not try to harm me, but if there is a Hell
he came from it. Oh, he is so wretched and unhappy! In spite of the
horror of seeing him, I was never so sorry for any creature in all my
life. Just to look at him was enough to make me know what is meant by
'the torments of the damned'--such awful suffering! I shall never get
his sad and frightful face out of my mind!"--and she covered her face
with her hands, as if still seeing the terrific vision that she had
described.

When she had partially recovered her composure, she began at the
beginning and told me the whole story. It so impressed me that, even
at this distance of time, I remember perfectly every detail of the
narration, and almost its every word, and with this recollection I set
it down.

"It was about an hour before you came home," she began, "and I was
sewing at the front window of my room, when I heard the latch of the
gate click. I looked up, and saw that someone was coming into the yard.
It was a man--a peddler, I thought--and I went to the door to tell him
that I did not wish to buy anything. The door was open, although the
outside screen door was shut and bolted. I had no idea at all that it
was not a living human being; but when I got to the door and looked
at the figure, which was standing just inside the gate and facing the
house, I knew it was nothing that belonged to _this world_. It was
misty and indistinct, and I could not make out any details of face or
costume, except that the clothes seemed mean and cheap.

"I don't know how long I stood there," she continued, after a pause;
"but by-and-by the Thing began to come toward me up the walk. It didn't
seem exactly to walk--it just _moved_, I cannot tell you how; and as it
got nearer, although I couldn't distinguish the features, I began to
see the clothes quite clearly."

"What were the clothes like?" I here interrupted.

"They were the strangest-looking things I ever saw on anybody," she
replied. "There was no style or fit to them, and they seemed more
like clothes made of flour sacks than anything else--very coarse
and ungainly. And an odd thing about them was that they had queer
triangular black designs on them here and there. But the cap the figure
wore was the strangest thing of all:--it was of dingy white cloth and
fitted close to the head, and it had a sort of flap hanging down behind
almost to the shoulders:--what did you say?"--for I had uttered a
sudden ejaculation.

"Nothing," I replied:--"please go on."

"Well," she continued, "the figure came up to the two steps leading to
the veranda, and I think, it would have come up to the door; but I
said, 'Stop!' and it stood still where it was. It was still indistinct,
and I felt as though it strained my eyes to see it; the face was vague,
and did not seem like any face I had ever seen before.

"I said: 'Who are you, and what do you want?'

"The Thing held out something it had in its hand, but I couldn't make
out what it was, and made the strangest reply. It said: 'Madame, do you
want to buy some _soap_?'"

"Gracious powers!" I exclaimed:--"It was Deeming?--and he asked you to
buy _soap_?"

"I did not know it was Deeming until later," replied my wife; "but I
have told you what he said in his exact words. What could he mean by
offering to sell me soap?"

"I have an idea about that which I will tell you of presently. But
first let me hear the rest of the story."

"Well," she went on, "I told him I did not want any soap. 'But,' he
said, 'I must sell some, and I beg of you to buy it'--and when I again
refused, his voice took on the saddest, most pathetic tone, and he
said: 'I thought you would. You were kinder to me when you saw me in
the jail.' 'I never saw you before in my life!' I said--for truly I
did not recognize him even then; but he said: 'Oh, yes, you have, and
you tried to get Miss Rounsfell to come and see me.' 'What!' I cried;
'are you Deeming?'--and he said: 'Yes, madame, I am that unfortunate
man.'

"I don't quite know what I said after that. I felt as though I should
die of fright, and I think I screamed to him to go away, that the
thought of his dreadful crimes horrified me so that I could not look
at him, and that he must never come to me again. He looked at me
reproachfully and turned away. I watched him go to the gate, open it
as anyone might have done, and close it after him--then he vanished
instantly, the moment he had got into the street. But I know he'll be
back! He is suffering, and I am the only one he can reach. I don't know
what he wants, but I cannot see him again. It will kill me or drive me
mad if we stay here!"

       *       *       *       *       *

I certainly felt that I had parted with my own wits by the time this
astounding tale was concluded. It was so awful in its facts and in its
suggestions, its details combined in such a mixture of the hideous and
the grotesque, that I looked anxiously at my wife in the fear that
what I personally knew to have taken place in the house had upset her
mind, and produced this dreadful hallucination. But how to attribute
to hallucination certain items in the story which referred to facts
with which _I_ was acquainted, but of which she was ignorant until her
experience of the afternoon had revealed them to her?

At her express desire I had told her nothing of the execution which I
had witnessed, and she had strictly refrained from reading about it
in the newspapers:--yet she had described accurately, and in all its
details, the garb he wore on the scaffold--the uncouth trousers and
jacket of sacking, stamped with the "Broad Arrow" that marked both it
and its wearer to be the property of the Crown, and the ghastly "death
cap," with its pendent flap behind which was pulled forward and dropped
over his face just before the trap was sprung!

And the _soap_!--that, as I explained to her, seemed the most gruesome
feature of all. My theory regarding it may have been fanciful:--yet
what was this poor bedeviled ghost more likely to have with him than a
sample of the material that had been used upon the rope that hung him,
to make it smooth and pliant, and swift of action in the noose?

But why had he wished to sell it, and what help could he hope to gain
thereby? He had evidently come, not to frighten, but to crave relief
from some distressed condition, and when he failed to gain it he had
gone away disappointed, but in sorrow rather than in anger.

When morning came, after a night of which we spent the greater part in
discussion of this new and disconcerting development, my wife surprised
me by saying that she had changed her mind about leaving the house, and
had decided to remain. I strongly remonstrated against her exposing
herself to a more than possible danger, but she continued firm in her
resolution--said she was convinced that the apparition had no purpose
to harm or even alarm her, and that it might be her duty, as it would
certainly be her effort, if it came again, to ascertain the cause of
its disquiet, and, if possible, remove it.

This decision caused me great uneasiness for several days:--but as the
spectre did not return I began to think that its first visit was also
its last, and began to interest myself anew in the cantrips with which
the house goblins continued to amuse themselves and mystify us.




CHAPTER IX

THE GOBLINS OF THE KITCHEN


Among the things that impressed us amid the general goings-on about
the house was the evidence of a certain sort of humor in the makeup
of the influences that were seemingly responsible for them. That
this humor did not particularly appeal to our taste, I must admit;
it seemed distinctly lacking in subtlety, and suggested that its
authors might be the spirits of certain disembodied low comedians of
the bladder-and-slapstick variety. To some such agency, at least, we
came to attribute the phenomena of the slamming doors, jingling door
bell, and occasional upsetting of the parlor; and from time to time
other things occurred to break this monotony of elfish sprightliness,
and to show us that our spookish friends were not mere creatures of
routine, but were full of waggish resource. The indoor incidents that
I have already narrated may seem to have borne the ancient ghostly--or
"poltergeistic"--trademark, and to have been contrived and employed
after a conventional and long-approved plan:--but if there is anywhere
a Shadowland Patent Office, the originators of the pranks I am about
to describe should be enjoying its protection for their ingenious
inventions.

I was sitting in my room at about noon, one day, awaiting a call to the
luncheon which my wife was preparing. Suddenly I heard her call out
from the front hall: "Come here, quick! I have something queer to show
you!" I went out at once, and found her standing at the door of the
dark chamber I have previously described, wherein we were accustomed to
keep milk, butter, and other such provisions, for the sake of coolness.

"Look in there," said my wife--and I looked in accordingly; but I
observed nothing unusual, and so reported.

"Look up," she said again. I did so, and saw a large milk pan resting
motionless in the air just under the ceiling several feet above my head
and just beneath the perforated opening of the ventilator. I naturally
inquired how it had got there.

"I hardly know," replied my wife; "the thing was done so quickly. The
pan is full of milk, and was resting on the floor of the hollow space
when I came to get some of the milk for our lunch. I had taken up the
pan, when it was snatched from my hands and floated up to the place
where you now see it."

"This is something new," I remarked, "and rather interesting. I hope
the spooks are not drinking the milk"--and as I spoke, the pan began
deliberately to descend. When it was within reach I caught hold of the
handle on each side, and tried to accelerate its motion. It stopped
immediately, and although I employed considerable force I could not
budge it. (The effect was not at all as if I were pulling against a
physical force like my own; the pan was as immovable and inert as
though it were a component part of the masonry of the chamber about
it.) I stood aside, therefore; whereupon it began to float down again,
and shortly settled in its former place on the floor, touching it so
lightly that the contact did not cause even a ripple upon the surface
of the milk. We tasted that milk very carefully before venturing to use
it for our repast, but found nothing wrong with it.

       *       *       *       *       *

A few evenings after the episode of the levitating milk pan, we all
three went into Melbourne after dinner to attend the theatre. After the
performance and while on the way to our train we passed a cook-shop, in
whose window was displayed a quantity of roasted duck and teal, the
game season then being at its height. They looked so appetizing that I
was moved to go in and purchase a pair of teal for a shilling or two
(these birds were astonishingly plentiful, and correspondingly cheap
in Australia at the time), had them put into a paper box, and carried
them home with the view to a light supper before we should go to bed.
As it seemed hardly worth while to use the dining-room, we went into
the kitchen; where I put the teal on a platter and prepared to carve
them while my wife was arranging the plates and necessary cutlery. The
carving knife was in its usual place in the knife-box, but I could not
find the fork that went with it, and so remarked.

"Why," said my wife, "it's there with the knife, of course." She spoke
with conviction and authority, for among her conspicuous traits was a
love for orderliness in all things pertaining to the household.

Nevertheless, the fork was _not_ there; nor could we find it, although
we overhauled everything in the cupboard in search for it. Meanwhile
our friend, actuated by the laudable purpose of keeping out of the way
of our preparations, was standing near the door, with his hands in his
pockets.

"I see it!" he suddenly exclaimed, and withdrawing one hand from its
confinement, he pointed upward. My eye followed the direction thus
indicated, and I also saw the missing utensil:--it was stuck into the
upper part of the window casing, just under the ceiling, and a folded
paper was impaled upon its tines. I got upon the table and took the
fork from its position. It required considerable force to do so, for
the tines were deeply imbedded in the woodwork. Then I unfolded the
paper. It was about four inches square, and drawn upon it, with much
spirit and a strict adherence to the principles of realism in art, were
a skull and crossbones. These were done in a red medium which at first
we thought was blood, but which we finally decided to be ink, since it
retained its color for weeks, and did not darken, as blood would have
done. There was no writing whatever on the sheet; therefore we had no
reason to regard it as an attention from the "Black Hand"--another
reason being that we had never heard of the "Black Hand" at that time.
We had no red ink in the house, nor any paper like that upon which the
design was drawn--and nothing ever occurred to throw any light on the
matter.

This incident--like that of the hurled stone--seemed so palpably
referable to human agency that it revived the rather feeble hope
we had from time to time entertained that we might, after all, be
the victims of some ingenious trickery. Therefore our friend and I
devoted one afternoon to a close search of the house, outhouse, and
the premises generally, particularly exploring the dusty attic for
concealed machinery--in short, for anything that might give a clue
to the mystery. We emerged from the attic looking like a couple of
sweeps, but this was the only result achieved; nor did we accomplish
anything else in all our investigations. As for the attic, nobody could
get into it otherwise than by bringing the ladder into the house from
the outhouse and raising it to the trap-door in the ceiling of the
bathroom. As to outside origin of the various pranks that had been
played upon us, we could see no way in which they could be performed
in view of the fact that we had every facility to observe the approach
of any mischief-maker:--since we had a wide street on two sides of us,
and the houses on each of the other two sides were at least a hundred
yards away. The fact that most of the "manifestations" with which we
had been favored had occurred in the daytime added to the puzzle; the
only two things that we could explain as perhaps the work of beings
like ourselves (the episodes of the thrown stone and of the fork) had
occurred under the cover of darkness:--therefore, hoping that, with
these data to go upon, we might get to the cause of our annoyances, we
set a trap with the hope that if any practical joker were at work, he
might walk into it.

In furtherance of this purpose I sent my wife and our friend to the
theatre, a few evenings later, accompanying them to the railway station
after extinguishing all the lights in the house in order to create
the impression in the mind of any possible watcher of our movements
that we were all three equally on pleasure bent in town, and returning
by a devious route which finally brought me by a scramble over the
orchard fence to the back door. I quietly let myself into the house,
arranged an easy chair at a point where I could command the hall in
both directions, and sat down amid utter darkness, with my revolver
in my jacket pocket and my shot gun, heavily charged in both barrels,
across my knees. I was fully determined to test the materiality--or
otherwise--of any shape that might present itself, by turning my
artillery loose thereon without any preliminary word of challenge; but
although my vigil lasted until midnight, I was obliged to report to my
returning companions that nothing whatever had happened.

I may add that that evening was the longest and least agreeable I ever
experienced.

       *       *       *       *       *

It may be that the incident with which I shall close this rather
rambling chapter was promoted by the same humorists who devised
the conceit of the floating milk pan, and was employed as a means
of enabling us to recognize therein the authors of the former
whimsicality. The two pleasantries seemed, at all events, to have been
conceived in the same spirit, and although both were equally odd and
purposeless, the superior elaborateness of the second distinctly showed
an advance over the first, and gained our applause accordingly. There
was no connection between these episodes in point of time; in fact, the
second occurred several months after the first, in the hottest part of
the year.

Our friend being a Briton by birth and an Australian by adoption, he
had enjoyed rather a narrow experience in dietetics, particularly in
the vegetable line. During the early part of our housekeeping we had
found much difficulty in securing for our table any garden delicacies
outside the conventional list of potatoes, "vegetable marrow," and
cauliflower--until Providence brought to our back door an amiable
Chinese huckster, who, with several compatriots, had established a
small truck-farm in the neighborhood. Earnest representations regarding
our vegetableless conditions inspired his interest, and the promise of
good prices awakened his cupidity; and as a result of the agreement of
these motives it was not long before our table greatly improved.

And I cannot help saying--although this is a digression--that our
often-expressed words of satisfaction to our purveyor stimulated him to
produce and bring to us everything of the best that he could raise. In
his way he was an artist, with an artist's craving for praise--so that
now and then he would appear with a gift of some new product for us to
try, and occasionally with a small packet of choice tea or some other
Celestial delicacy, for which he would invariably refuse payment.

"You should not bring me these things," my wife said to him one day.
"You can't afford them."

"Me likee bling 'em," he replied. "An' me likee _you_. You no ploud.
Mos' lady too ploud"--and swinging his baskets to his shoulder he
departed.

It was my wife's delight to tempt our friend's appetite with all sorts
of culinary novelties, which the new and more liberal order of things
allowed her to prepare. With true British conservatism he would venture
gingerly upon an unfamiliar dish, admit it "wasn't half bad," and end
by eating as much of it as both of us others together. It was finally
discovered that a particularly effective way of appeal to his nature
was through the medium of baked stuffed tomatoes:--of these he seemed
never to have enough, and, as a consequence, they were frequently
upon our bill-of-fare during the summer. It seems incredible--and
lamentable--that a man should have got well into the fifties without
ever having eaten a baked stuffed tomato:--such, however, was our
friend's unhappy case, and my wife made strenuous efforts to ameliorate
it.

"I have a treat for you to-night," she said to our friend. "Guess what
it is."

"Baked stuffed tomatoes," he responded promptly--and baked stuffed
tomatoes it was.

"Now," continued my wife, "you two men must eat your dinner in the
kitchen to-night. The woman who cooks for me is ill to-day, and you
will have to take pot-luck. I have let the fire in the stove go out,
and have been using the gas range; so you will find the kitchen cooler
than the dining-room, and by eating there you will save me work,
besides."

So we went into the kitchen, where we found the table already laid for
us.

"Before we sit down," said my wife, turning smilingly to our friend,
"I am going to show you the treat you were so clever in guessing. But
you are not to have it at once; that will come after the cold meat. The
tomatoes are nice and hot, and I have put them in here to keep them
from cooling too fast:"--and with these words she kneeled upon the
floor and opened the iron door which shut in a wide but shallow cavity
in the masonry that formed the base of the open fireplace.

This fireplace was an unusual feature in a modern kitchen, and we,
at least, had never put it to any use. It projected slightly into
the room, and on the sides of it, and against the wall in each case,
were, respectively, the cook stove and gas range. Under its hearth,
and but a few inches above the level of the room, was the hollow space
I have mentioned--I believe it was what is sometimes called a "Dutch
oven"--eight inches high, perhaps, two feet wide, and eighteen inches
deep. From this space my wife partly drew out for our inspection
an iron baking pan, in which an even dozen of deliciously cooked,
golden-and-red, crumb-stuffed tomatoes were sociably shouldering each
other:--then, after hearing our expressions of satisfaction with their
appearance, she pushed the pan back again, closed the iron door, and
sat down with us to dinner.

The table stood against the wall, directly under the window. My wife
was seated at the end next to the fireplace, I was opposite her,
and our friend was at the side, his back to the hall door and his
face to the window. Thus he and my wife were each within two feet of
the fireplace and the chamber under it, and the iron door guarding
our treasure was in direct range of my own eyes from the position I
occupied.

Having despatched the earlier portions of the repast, my wife arose,
removed the used dishes to a side table, set others in their places,
and with the remark: "Now for the tomatoes!" swung open the iron door
under the fireplace. The interior, however, was absolutely empty:--the
tomatoes, and the heavy baking pan that had held them, had disappeared!

Our friend and I sprang from our chairs in astonishment and
incredulity--but the fact was undoubted; the treat which had been so
much anticipated had been snatched, as it were, from our very lips.
Our friend turned from one to the other of us a face so comically set
between wonder and disappointment that I burst out laughing in spite of
myself. But my ill-timed levity was promptly checked by my wife, who
was at the moment giving a competent imitation of a lioness robbed of
her whelps.

"Oh!" she cried, seemingly addressing nothing in particular, although
she might have felt--as I did--that she was speaking to a derisive
audience; "that is too bad of you! To steal my tomatoes, when I worked
over them so long! Bring them back instantly!" But they remained
invisible, and over all a sarcastic silence brooded. Then she turned
upon us unfortunate men.

"Have you been playing me a trick?" she demanded. "Do _you_ know what
has become of those tomatoes?" "Certainly not"--this to both questions.
Neither of us had moved from his chair since we sat down to dinner
and she had shown us the pan and its contents. Nor had she, for that
matter, except when she had risen to change the dishes, and even then
she had not left the room.

All that could be said was that the tomatoes had been exhibited, and
then had been shut up again behind the door. There was no possible
doubt about that--it was equally certain that they had vanished.
Very well, then let us search for them! This we did, and with great
thoroughness, all over the house, and in every part of the grounds;
the outhouse at the back was also carefully inspected. I even got the
ladder and went, in turn, upon the roofs of both structures, looked
down the chimneys:--"nothing doing" (to employ an Oriental expression
not then, unhappily, in use); nowhere any trace of the missing pan or
of the tomatoes.

We gave it up finally, and went back to our dessert and coffee. My
wife refused to be satisfied that the tomatoes were actually gone. She
was constantly getting up to open the iron door and view the emptiness
behind it--as if she expected the apparent dematerialization of the pan
and tomatoes to be reversed,--while our friend looked on with an aspect
of forced resignation.

I left them after a time, and went out for an after-dinner smoke on the
back doorstep. I had hardly lighted my pipe when I heard a cry blended
of two voices in the kitchen--a shriek from my wife, and a mildly
profane ejaculation from our friend. Rushing in, I saw an astonishing
sight--our friend, with staring eyes and blanched face, supporting
himself against the table as if staggered by a blow, my wife kneeling
in front of the open iron door beneath the fireplace, and the baking
pan and its dozen tomatoes lying before her on the floor!

It was some time before I could get a coherent account of what had
happened. It was finally developed, however, that after I had left the
room the conversation continued on the inexplicable conduct of the
tomatoes. "I can't believe they are not there!" my wife asserted, and,
for the dozenth time or so, she again knelt on the floor and again
opened the door.

"I was standing right behind her," said our friend, "and saw her swing
the door open, but there was nothing inside. At the same instant I
heard a thump on the floor, and there the whole outfit was, just in
front of her. I don't know where the things came from--perhaps down the
chimney:--at any rate, one moment there was nothing there; the next,
the pan and the tomatoes were on the floor."

After we had regained our composure we considered what we should do
with the tomatoes. Our friend said he didn't think _he_ wanted any of
them, and I confessed to an equal indifference--so capricious, and
often influenced by slight circumstances, is the appetite!

My wife, as usual, settled the matter. "Take them away!" she said.
"Throw them into the garbage barrel!"--which was accordingly done;
melancholy end of a culinary triumph! Yet we ought at least to have
tasted those tomatoes: under the title "_tomato à la diable_" they
might have found a place in the cook books.




CHAPTER X

A SPECTRAL BURGLARY


I cannot but consider it an interesting circumstance that the varied
happenings in the House on the Hill seemed to arrange themselves into
two rather strictly defined classes--the sportive and the terrible--and
that the respective influences responsible for them appeared
carefully to refrain from interfering with each others' functions or
prerogatives. As among our earthly acquaintances we number some who are
entirely deficient in appreciation of the ridiculous, and others so
flippant as to have no sense of the serious, so, it seemed to us, the
unseen friends who so diversely made their presence known were in like
manner to be differentiated.

In this connection another singular fact is to be noted. While
the clownish performers in the juggling of the milk pan, the
prestidigitation of the baked stuffed tomatoes, and other such
specialties, always remained invisible, even to my wife, what I may
call the more dramatic manifestations were accompanied by apparitions
that were the evident actors in them. It also occurred to us that if
the "acts" that were staged for our benefit were to be regarded as
presenting what passed for entertainment in the Dark World, there must
be drawn there, as here, a sharp line of distinction between vaudeville
and "the legitimate;" incidentally, too, it would seem that ghostly
audiences were like many in the flesh in their capacity for being
easily entertained.

However that may be, we somehow came to the opinion that while the more
impressive of the phenomena with which we were favored appeared to be
due to the action of beings that had aforetime been upon the earth--for
in every such case the attending spectres were to be identified as
_simulacra_ of persons whose previous existence was known to some one
(and generally all) of us,--the tricksy antics that seemed to come
from Nowhere might find their impulse in elementary entities or forces
which had not yet exercised their activities upon the earth plane (and,
indeed, might never be intended to do so), and thus had never assumed
a material form. I do not put this forward as a theory, but simply as
a passing impression that lightly brushed our minds:--and to repel
the temptation of being led into the seductive regions of speculation,
I will re-assume my _rôle_ as a mere narrator of facts and describe a
quite inexplicable affair that occurred near the close of our tenancy.

       *       *       *       *       *

The bedroom which I have before described as being at the front of the
house, with two windows overlooking the veranda, was occupied at night
by my wife and myself. Between the windows was a ponderous mahogany
dressing table, surmounted by a large mirror. This article of furniture
was so broad that it extended on either side beyond the inner casing of
the windows, and so heavy that it required the united strength of both
of us to move it--as, during the cleaning of the room, we sometimes had
to do. The windows were protected by wire screens, secured by stout
bolts which were shot into sockets in the woodwork, and fitted flush
with the surface of the outer window casing. In February--the time of
which I am writing--the weather was at its hottest, and we slept at
night with the windows open, trusting our security to the strong wire
screens.

One morning, after an untroubled night's sleep, I awoke soon after
sunrise, and from my place in bed, nearest the window, looked lazily
out upon the day. Still half-asleep, I lay for some time without noting
anything unusual; but as my sensibilities revived I observed that the
screen was missing from the left-hand window, and that the dressing
table, instead of standing in its usual place against the wall, was
turned half-way around, and projected at right angles into the room. I
was out of bed in an instant, and at the window--looking out of which
I saw the screen lying flat on the floor of the veranda. I went out
and examined it. It was uninjured, and the bolts still projected from
either side to show that they had not been drawn; but two deep grooves
in the woodwork of the casing indicated that the screen had been
dragged outward from its place. How this damage could have been done
to the stout casing, without marring in the least the comparatively
light frame of the screen, I could by no means understand--particularly
as there was no possible way by which one could get a hold upon the
outside of the screen except by the use of screws or gimlets to act as
holds for one's hands; and of these there were no marks whatever.

I had made this examination so quietly that I had not awakened my
wife:--now, however, I returned to the bedroom and aroused her.

Her first thought, on seeing the condition of affairs, was that
burglars had visited us:--my idea had been the same until I had
observed the peculiar facts that I have just noted. Tacitly accepting
this theory for the moment, I assisted her in making an inventory of
our portable valuables. While I satisfied myself that my purse and
watch were safe, my wife took her keys from under the pillow (where
she always kept them at night) and went to the dressing table, in one
of whose drawers was her jewel box. The drawer was locked, and so was
the jewel box, and the latter, on being opened, seemed to hold all its
usual contents intact.

"No," she said, after mentally checking off the various articles;
"everything is here; nothing has been taken. Wait! I am wrong; one
thing is missing. Do you remember that rhinestone brooch in the shape
of a butterfly you bought for me one evening in Paris, four years ago?"

"Why, yes," I replied; "I got it in a shop under the arcades on the
Rue de Rivoli, and paid five francs for it. You don't mean to say that
the thieves, or our friends the 'spooks,' or whoever it may be, have
taken that trifle and left your diamond rings and other things really
valuable untouched!"

Yet such appeared to be the case--the cheap and unimportant brooch was
the only thing unaccounted for, nor had anything else been disturbed
throughout the house. It seemed incredible that any burglar who had
passed merely the kindergarten stage of schooling in his profession
could have been deceived into supposing that this commonplace _article
de Paris_ had any value; besides, why should _this_ have been taken
and the real jewelry that lay with it in the same box have been left?
And how had it been extracted from the locked box inside the locked
dressing table? The keys of both were on the same ring under my wife's
pillow, and although a robber might extract them without awaking her,
it seemed unreasonable to suppose he would take the additional risk
of replacing them when he had completed his work. But for these and
other questions that presented themselves we could find no satisfactory
answers.

We ate our breakfast in a state of mild expectation that the brooch
might be returned as mysteriously as it had been taken. The adventure
seemed to be constructed on lines similar to those laid down in the
affair of the baked stuffed tomatoes, and we were disposed to credit
it to the same agency;--but if the sprites who were responsible for the
former prank had contrived this later one also, they either intended to
carry it no further, or were preparing a different _dénouement_. This
last conjecture proved to be the true one, but we had to wait a long
time for the fact to be developed.

We gave our "spooks" sufficient time to consummate their joke (if,
indeed, they were responsible for it), and finally concluding that
they were not inclined to embrace the opportunity, we again took under
consideration the burglar theory, and I went to the local police
station to report the occurrence. Two heavyweight constables returned
with me to the house and gravely inspected the premises. Their verdict
was speedy and unanimous:--"Housebreakers." There had been similar
breakings-and-enterings in the town recently--therefore the facts were
obvious. I showed them the drawer and jewel box, and described the
singular and modest spoil of the supposed thieves; I also exhibited the
unmarred frame of the screen and the scarred window casing, and asked
them how they explained _that_. This puzzled them, but they fell back
easily upon the obvious and practical. "Housebreakers," they repeated.
"We shall make a report"--and marched away as ponderously as they had
come. I did not acquaint them with the goings-on in that house for
a year past:--had I done so, my prompt apprehension as a suspicious
character would doubtless have followed.

       *       *       *       *       *

In July of the following year I went from Philadelphia, where I was
then living, to spend a few days with my wife at Savin Rock (near New
Haven, Connecticut), where I had rented a cottage for the summer. The
morning after my arrival I was awakened by my wife, who had risen but
the moment before, and who, as I opened my eyes, exclaimed excitedly:
"Look! Look at what is on the bureau!" Following with my eyes the
direction of her pointed finger, I saw upon the bureau the pin-cushion
into which I had stuck my scarf pin the night before, beside which, and
in the centre of the cushion, appeared the butterfly brooch which I had
last previously seen in Australia, sixteen months before!

"Where did you find it?" I asked, forgetting for the moment, and in my
half-awake condition, the incident in which it had figured as above
described.

"I didn't find it," my wife replied; "it is less than a minute ago that
I saw it. It was not on the pin cushion last night; how in the world
did it come here?"--"And from where?"--thus I completed the question.

Neither of us had any reply to this:--so I merely advanced the
suggestion that it was pleasant to think that our spookish friends had
not altogether forgotten us, although on our part we had no desire to
cultivate their better acquaintance. This expression of sentiment may
have had its effect:--at any rate, with the return of the brooch came
an end to the mystery of "The House on the Hill."




CHAPTER XI

"REST, REST, PERTURBÉD SPIRIT!"


I think it was because such lighter incidents as those that I have
described in the two preceding chapters were freely introduced among
more weighty happenings, and thus gave a certain measure of relief from
them, that we managed to fill out our term in the House on the Hill.
Absurd and impish as the general run of these performances was, there
was still an element of what I may almost call intimacy in them--a sort
of appeal, as it were, to look upon the whole thing as a joke; which,
while they caused us amazement, brought us no real alarm. Much as has
been attributed to the influence of fear, I believe curiosity to be the
stronger passion; and few days passed without a fillip being given to
our interest by some new absurdity, while events of graver suggestion
were few and far between.

I need not say that the affair which had been most sinister and
disquieting was the coming to my wife of the evident apparition of
Deeming. This visitation had been so awful and unearthly that by
tacit agreement we had not spoken of it since the afternoon of its
occurrence:--yet I had never been able to get it out of my mind, and
every day I spent in town was darkened by forebodings of what might
happen at home before my return. Each night as I came in sight of the
house I looked anxiously for the figure of my wife standing on the
veranda to welcome me, and each night I drew a breath of relief as I
saw in her serene and smiling face that my apprehensions had been vain;
and so I came by degrees to dismiss my fears in the conviction that
that uneasy spirit had been laid at last.

But this comforting assurance suddenly failed me, when, one evening
about two weeks after the ghost's first coming, I read in my wife's
eyes that it had appeared again. Yet, greatly to my relief, I saw no
fear in them, but, rather, an expression of pity. Her manner was quiet
and composed, but I was sure she had been weeping.

"Yes," she said, in reply to my anxious inquiries; "Deeming has been
here, and I have been crying. Oh, that poor tortured, despairing
soul!--he is in Hell, and one infinitely worse than that we were taught
to believe in; a Hell where conscience never sleeps, and where he
sees what he might have been--and now never can be! He frightened me
terribly at first, but I know he tried not to do so, and now I am glad
he came, for I believe I have helped him, although I cannot understand
how. I feel weak and faint, for I have been under a great strain, but
I shall be better now that you have come home--and I know, too, that I
shall never see him again. Come into my room, and I will tell you all
about it:"--and when I had done so, and had tried, with some success,
to quiet the agitation that, in spite of her words, still possessed
her, she told me the amazing story of her experience.

"It was about eleven o'clock this forenoon," she began, "and I was
alone in the house--in the kitchen. I had been airing the house, and
all the doors and windows were open, although the screens were in
place. All at once I heard the back gate creak as it always does when
it opens, and 'Schneider' and 'Tokio'" (such were the names of our two
dogs) "who were loose in the yard, barking at somebody. I supposed it
was the butcher or the grocery man and looked out the back door--and
just then the dogs came tearing by with their tails between their legs,
and disappeared around the corner of the house. The next instant I
saw a man standing just inside the gate. He was not looking at me,
but his eyes seemed to be following the flight of the dogs; then they
turned to meet mine, and I saw that it was Deeming. I shut the back
door instantly and locked it--then ran to the front door and fastened
_that_; I wanted to close and bolt the windows, too, but did not dare
do so, for I was afraid I might look out of any one of them and see
him. I prayed to God that he might go away, but he did not. I stood in
the hall and saw him move by outside the window of your room. By-and-by
he passed the dining-room window on the other side of me as I stood
there, having gone completely around the house. But he did not look in.

"I did not see anything more of him for some time, and I began to
think that he had given up trying to communicate with me, and had gone
away again. I finally went into the bedroom and peeped out into the
veranda. He was there, standing near and facing the door! He did not
seem to notice me, and I watched him for some time. He was dressed just
as he had been before, and looked the same; but I could see him much
more clearly than the first time, and if I had not known who it was, I
should have thought it was a living man.

"I don't know how it was, but as I stood watching him I found that I
wasn't afraid of him at all. He looked so sad and pitiful, and stood
there so patiently, that I began to feel as I might toward some poor
beggar; he seemed just like one, waiting for something to eat. Then I
thought how he had pleaded the other day for assistance, and how I had
turned him away--and although it was like death to face him again, I
went into the hall and opened the door.

"The screen door was closed and locked, and we looked at each other
through it. I could see every detail of the figure's face and dress as
it stood there in the bright sunlight:--it was within three feet of me,
and it was Deeming's without a shadow of a doubt.

"I don't know how long I stood there. I seemed to be in another world,
and in a strange atmosphere which he may have brought with him. I had
to make a strong effort, but finally succeeded in seeing and thinking
clearly, and as he only looked appealingly at me and seemed not to be
able to say anything, I was the first to speak.

"'I know who you are, this time,' I said. 'I told you never to come
here again. Why have you done so?'

"'Madame,' he replied, 'I have come for help.'

"'I told you the other day I could do nothing for you,' I said.

"'But you can, if you will,' he answered, 'and there is nobody else I
can reach. Don't be afraid of me--I won't hurt you. I need some one to
show me Christian charity, and I thought you were kind and would help
me.'"

"'Christian charity!'" I exclaimed, interrupting the recital for the
first time: "was _that_ what he said?"

"Those were his exact words," said my wife; "and it seemed almost
blasphemy for such a creature to use them."

"They seem to me," I commented, "more like one of those stock phrases
of which nearly every man has some, of one sort or another. Do you
remember, in the letter Deeming wrote to you from the jail when you
could not induce Miss Rounsfell to come to see him, how he said he was
sorry you did not find her 'as Christianlike as yourself?' It may be
a small point, but this appeal to your 'Christian charity' seems to
confirm your belief that it was the apparition of Deeming that made it
to you to-day. But what happened then?"

"Well," said she, taking up the thread of her story, "while he was
saying this he kept his eyes on mine--great, pleading eyes like those
of a dog:--they made me think he was trying to say things for which he
could not find words, and--I don't know why--I began to feel sorry for
him.

"'I don't understand at all what you mean,' I said. 'Your awful crimes
horrify me, and I can hardly bear to look at you. Why should you
distress me as you do?'

"'I don't want to distress you,' he replied, 'but I must get out of
this horrible place!'

"'What do you mean by "this horrible place"? I cannot understand you.'

"'I can't make you understand,' he said. 'They won't let me.' I don't
know what he meant by 'they,' but I thought it was some beings that
controlled him, though I could see nothing. Then he went on in a long,
confused talk which I could only partly follow.

"The substance of what he said was this, as nearly as I could gather
it. His body was buried in quicklime in a criminal's unmarked grave;
I think he said under the wall of the jail, but of this I am not
sure--and as long as a trace of it remained he was tied down to the
scenes of his crime and punishment. If he could only find some one who
would pity him, and show it by 'an act of Christian charity'--he used
the expression again--his term of suffering here would be shortened,
and he could 'go on;' that was the way he put it, although he did not
seem to know what it meant. His talk was vague and rambling, and seemed
to me very incoherent; but his distress was plain enough, and when he
stopped speaking (which was not for some time, for he kept going back
and repeating as if he were trying to make his meaning clearer) I had
lost all feeling except that here was a creature in great trouble, and
that I ought to help him if I could.

"When he had finished I asked him how I could show him the 'Christian
charity' he had spoken about.

"'By giving me something,' he replied, 'and being sorry for me when you
give it.'

"'I _am_ sorry for you,' I said. 'Isn't that enough?'

"'No,' he answered, 'that isn't enough. You might have done it if you
had bought the soap from me the other day.'

"'So it is money you want?' I asked.

"'Yes,' he said, 'money will do, or anything else that you value.'

"'Will you stay where you are until I can get some?' I asked:--and he
said, yes, he would stay where he was.

"So I went into my room and took some money from my purse, and went
back and showed it to him; there was a half-crown, a shilling and some
coppers--there they are, on the dressing table beside you."

"So you did not give them to him, after all?" I inquired, taking up the
coins and examining them.

"Oh, yes, I did," replied my wife; "and that is the strangest part of
the whole thing.

"As I said, I showed him the money and asked him if that would do; and
he said it would.

"Then I said: 'I am not going to open this door. How can I give these
coins to you?'

"'You don't need to open it,' he answered. 'There is a hat rack there
behind you, with a marble shelf in it--put them on that shelf.'

"I stepped back to the hat rack and put the money on the shelf,
watching him all the time. I glanced at the coins an instant as I laid
them down, and when I looked at the door again there was nobody there.
I instantly turned to the hat rack again, but the shelf was bare--the
coins had disappeared, too!

"I rushed to the door to unlock it and run into the street, for I
thought Deeming had got into the house:--but just as I had my hand on
the key I heard his voice in front of me.

"'Don't be afraid,' the voice said. 'I haven't moved.'

"'But how did you get the money?' I asked.

"'You wouldn't understand if I should tell you,' replied the voice.

"'But I can't see you!' I exclaimed.

"'No,' said the voice, 'and you never will again. I have gone on.'

"'But you are not going away with my money, are you?' I asked. 'Do you
need it now?'

"'No,' the voice replied, 'I do not need it. You gave it to me because
you pitied me--I have no more use for it.'

"'Can you give it back to me?' I asked.

"'I _have_ given it back,' said the voice. 'Look on the hat rack.'

"I heard something jingle behind me, and as I turned around I saw the
coins all lying on the shelf again."

       *       *       *       *       *

The conclusion of this prodigious history found me in a state very
nearly approaching stupefaction. It was not so much the facts
themselves which it embodied as the suggestions they inspired that
appalled me, and the glimpse they seemed to afford of mysteries the
human race has for ages shrinkingly guessed at, chilled me to the
marrow of my bones. "Can such things be?" was the question I asked
myself again and again as I struggled to regain my composure:--and
although this experience seemed a natural and fitting sequence in the
drama that had been enacted in that house under my own eyes, I am free
to say I could not on the instant credit it.

My wife detected my hesitation at once, and said:

"I see you cannot believe what I have told you, and I do not wonder at
it:--but it is true, for all that."

"I know you think so," I replied; "and in view of the very many other
strange events you have taken part in--and I with you in a number of
them--I ought to have no doubts. But this is the most staggering thing
I ever heard of. Are you sure you were not dreaming?"

"Well," she said, with a laugh, "I am not in the habit of dreaming at
eleven o'clock on a bright, sunny morning, and when I have the care of
the house on my hands. And then, the dogs:--do you think _they_ were
dreaming, too?"

"Ah, yes!" I exclaimed; "what about the dogs?"

"I told you," she replied, "how they ran to the gate, barking, and then
suddenly turned tail and rushed away in a panic as soon as they saw
what was there. When Deeming had gone, I went out to look after them,
but for a long time I could not find them. I called and I coaxed, but
to no purpose. Finally I discovered them out in the farthest corner of
the paddock, under the thick bushes, crowded together in a heap, and
trembling as though they had been whipped. I had to crawl in and drag
them out, but I couldn't induce them to come near the house; at last I
had to carry them in, and all the afternoon they have stuck close to me
as though they felt the need of protection. It is only half an hour ago
that I got them into their kennels and chained them up. You had better
go out and see them."

I did so, and found one kennel empty, and both dogs lying close
together (as the length of their chains allowed them to do) in the
straw of the other. I had never seen them do this before, since each
was very jealous of intrusion by the other upon his quarters, and
I was impressed by the circumstance. The poor brutes still showed
unmistakable evidences of terror, whimpered and whined and licked my
hand as I petted them, and set up a concerted and agonized howl of
protest when I left them. There was no doubt whatever that they had
been horribly frightened--if not by the ghost of Deeming, by what?--it
was certainly no merely physical agitation that their actions showed.




CHAPTER XII

THE DEMONS OF THE DARK


True to his promise, Deeming did not reappear, nor was there any
subsequent manifestation that seemed referable to him. To what new
plane he had "gone on," and whether to one higher or lower, we could
only guess; the door that had closed upon his exit had evidently shut
in forever (as had been our experience in certain other like cases)
a mystery to which, for a moment, we had almost felt we were about
to hold the key. Of the problem of the future life we had a hint of
the terms of the solution, but the answer vanished before we could
set it down below the ordered figures of the sum. Such, I believe,
has been, is, and will be the constant fortune of all who venture far
into the _penetralia_ of the unseen. Now and then there seems to be an
illumination--but it is not the radiance of discovered truth:--it is
the lightning flash that warns away the profane intruder, and if defied
it blasts him in body or in mind.

It was because of this conviction that my wife and I, although having
experience during many years of incomprehensible occurrences whose
narration, should I set it down, would fill many books like this,
steadfastly refrained from allowing ourselves to assume a mental
attitude that might, so to speak, encourage them. Far from finding
the influences (whatever they were--and on this point we were careful
to make no inquiry, and never formulated any theory) reluctant to
invitation to display themselves, we were at times compelled to offer
strenuous opposition to their approach:--even a passive receptivity to
strange phenomena was not free from peril, and our previous knowledge
of the unbalancing of more than one inquiring mind that had pursued the
subject of the occult with too great a temerity had convinced us that
"that way danger lies"--and a very grave danger, too.

To that danger we ourselves, as I believe, finally came to be exposed
in our life in the House on the Hill:--not because we were lured to
seek out the origin and nature of the forces about us, and thus gave
ourselves up to their influence, but because the more or less constant
exercise of that influence could not fail to have that effect, in spite
of ourselves:--and it is to show how, as it seemed, and why, this
effect--at first unsuspected--grew toward its sinister culmination,
that I undertake the writing of this final chapter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meantime, I may say that the incidents attending the two spectral
appearances that I have recorded, gave us occasion for much curious
speculation, in which there was a certain relief in indulging
ourselves. The garments from the wardrobe of the hangman; was the
murderer doomed to go through all Eternity in this hideous attire?
The offered sale of soap; is the occupation of "drummer" or "bagman"
practiced beyond the Styx, and for what ghostly manufacturers are
orders solicited? Was the soap a sample? Was it for the toilette or
the laundry? What was its price per cake, and was there any discount
by the box? Then the shade's appeal for "Christian charity," and the
acceptance of it in the tangible form of coin of the realm! The money
was returned again, but had it meanwhile been entered in some misty
ledger to the credit of its temporary bearer? If deposits are made, and
balance-sheets issued in the Dark World, then might Deeming's account
seem to be heavily overdrawn. Dealing in phantom money, and liquidating
of shadowy notes-of-hand!--do we carry with us into the Beyond not
only our characters and personalities (as some believe) but also our
occupations and ways of doing business? If Deeming's discarnated action
was thus to be explained, he must have been in Hell, indeed!

Reflections such as these may strike the reader as flippant, but
they were among the natural results of the circumstances. There was
something so personal and intimate in these mid-day visits of the
apparition, it was itself so seemingly tangible and even human, and
in its expressions of thought and manifestations of emotion seemed to
have experienced so slight an essential change from the conditions
with which the living man had been acquainted, that there was little
to excite horror in the event, after all. If the phantom had imparted
to us no information, it had at least given us a hint that there was
progress in the realms of the hereafter, and had awakened a vague
belief that at the end of all there might be pardon. This suggestion
was tenuous and elusive; but it was afforded, nevertheless, and I still
cling to the hope that it inspired.

       *       *       *       *       *

In writing this strange chronicle I have not attempted to set down all
our experiences in that house of mystery, but only such as have seemed
to me unusual, or representative of the manifestations as a whole.
There were certain other phenomena so vague and evasive that I am
unable to find words whereby to describe their nature or to convey the
impression they caused:--all that I can say of them is that they seemed
to invite us to an inquiry into some secret which the house contained,
and to beckon to the success of such an investigation. We often
discussed this apparent suggestion, but never acted upon it:--chiefly
because, as I think, we were not at all sure it was not of subjective,
rather than objective, origin--the natural result of the mental ferment
which such a protracted series of weird happenings might be expected
to cause. Moreover, as everything that had so far occurred had been
without any conscious encouragement on our part, we felt some fear
(as I have intimated above) of what might befall us if we endeavored
to place ourselves completely _en rapport_ with the agencies that
seemed to be at work about us. Therefore we maintained as well as we
could our isolated and non-conductive position, and refrained from all
encouragement to the suggestions that were more and more forcibly borne
in upon us that we should seek an understanding of the meaning of the
things that had so much disturbed us.

Yet I cannot refrain from stating my conviction that the phenomena
which I have endeavored to describe in these pages had their origin,
not in any disturbed or morbid condition of the mind in any of the
three persons who were affected by them, but in some undiscovered cause
local and peculiar to the place of their occurrence. If this were not
the case, it seems singular that manifestations of a like nature did
not present themselves at other times and in other places. Any such
persistent and startling incidents as those that were displayed in the
House on the Hill were, happily, foreign elsewhere both to my wife's
experience and to my own--such other influences as have seemed to come
about us having apparently been unaffected by conditions of period and
locality, and being almost always of a mild and gentle nature.

Whether our tacit refusal to seek a solution of the mystery that had
so long brooded over us had anything to do with the even more serious
and startling events that occurred during the final period of our
residence, I cannot tell. I have often thought so:--at all events this
record would be incomplete without setting them down.

It is not to be denied that the adventures in which we had participated
for nearly a year, came finally to have a serious effect upon us, both
physically and mentally. Our curiosity and interest had long ago become
sated, and of late we had felt the slow but steady growth of something
like apprehension:--an apprehension even more acute than that which
might be inspired by any definite occasion for fear, since it looked
forward to uncertainties for which there seemed to be no definition.
But the days passed slowly by until only two weeks remained before the
expiration of our lease, and, since the incident of the brooch which I
have described, nothing seriously untoward had occurred.

Yet we had lately been conscious that the character of the influence
that had so long possessed our habitation seemed to be undergoing a
change. I cannot describe this change except to say that it took the
form of an ominous quiescence. The elfish entities whose cantrips had
served more to amuse and mystify than to annoy us, seemed suddenly
to have abandoned the premises as if retiring before some superior
approach, and the wraiths of the women and the child were no more seen
or heard about the rooms or in the hall:--instead of these, we vaguely
recognized the presence of a mighty force, which made itself manifest
neither to the eye nor the ear, but was evident through some latent or
inner sense whose function was to apprehend it. I cannot explain how
the impression was conveyed, but we somehow knew that this presence was
malignant and foreboded harm; and a disturbing uneasiness grew upon us
rather than diminished as time elapsed, and everything remained upon
the surface serene and calm.

While the familiar occurrences to which we had been accustomed never
lost their sense of strangeness, the present cessation of them seemed
more uncanny still; we had an uneasy and growing sense of something
serious being about to happen, and often expressed to each other our
common feeling of alarm. The circumstance that disquieted us most was
that, whereas nearly all the events in which we had shared hitherto had
taken place by day, this new obsession was felt chiefly at night:--it
seemed to enwrap the house in an equal degree with the gathering
darkness, and each evening at sundown we lighted every gas-jet, and sat
or moved about together under the influence of an urgent craving for
companionship. We were like spectators sitting in a theatre between
two acts of a compelling performance; behind the lowered curtain a
situation was preparing whose nature we could not guess; we apprehended
rather than perceived that the stage was being reset, the scenery
shifted, a new development provided for--and we feared beyond measure
to see the curtain lift again, as we felt assured it would.

The climax came at last, and in a sudden and awful manner. Our nameless
apprehension had caused us, of late, to spend as many evenings as
possible abroad--visiting friends and acquaintances, or attending
entertainments in the city. Returning late one night from the theatre,
our friend and I went into the dining-room, while my wife retired to
her chamber to prepare for bed. We had been chatting a few moments when
we heard a piercing shriek from my wife's room; and rushing in we were
horrified to see her standing close against the wall, her face white
and drawn with terror, apparently striving to free herself from some
being that held her firmly in its clutches. Her aspect was so unearthly
that we stood for a moment literally frozen on the threshold:--then
she seemed to be lifted up bodily and thrown across the bed, where she
lay with eyes protruding, and hands frantically tearing at her throat
as if trying to free herself from some powerful grip that was choking
her. We rushed to her and raised her to a sitting position, but she was
torn from us again and again, and from the gasping and throttled sounds
that came from her throat we felt that she was dying. We cried out
in incoherent frenzy to her unseen tormentors to be gone, and struck
wildly at the air as if there were about her palpable objects of our
blows. This dreadful struggle lasted for several minutes; at times we
apparently prevailed, again we were overwhelmed:--finally the influence
seemed to pass, and I laid her back upon the pillows, still panting and
trembling but no longer suffocating, as she whispered: "Thank God, they
have gone!"

This experience had been so frightful, and so foreign to all others
that had befallen us, that I found myself reluctant to refer it to
unnatural agencies, and tried to explain it as a fit of some kind by
which my wife had been attacked--although I knew that she had never had
such a seizure in all her life, and was in perfect physical and mental
health. Moreover, when she soon complained of her throat hurting her, I
looked more closely, and with amazement saw upon both sides of her neck
the marks that no one could have mistaken as other than those left by
the fingers of a pair of powerful hands!

At this sight the little courage that remained to me abandoned me
entirely, and I could see that our friend was equally unmanned. "We
must leave this house!" we exclaimed in the same breath:--and as we
spoke my wife cried out: "Oh! they are here again!" and at once the
ghastly combat was renewed.

This time our friend and I made no effort to fight against the
demons--if such they were; we seized the half-conscious woman in our
arms, and partly carried, partly dragged her out of the house. The
Possession seemed to leave her at the door, and the fresh air soon
revived her. But there was no going back for any of us that night. It
was late summer, and the air was warm:--so, bareheaded, and with my
wife guarded between her two male protectors, we walked the deserted
streets until the rising of the sun gave us courage to return home.

I shall not forget those hours of midnight and early morning:--the
serene and amethyst-colored Australian sky strewn with star-dust
and set with twinkling constellations, and the dark earth about
us--across which, as from time to time we approached the house from
which we had been expelled, the light from its windows and from its
open door gleamed balefully. All was silent within, but we feared the
lurking presence and dared not enter, and after one or two returns
remained only within view of it until daybreak was well advanced.
Our conversation throughout the vigil need not be recorded, but the
reader may guess its import:--the awful experience through which we
had passed had brought powerfully to our minds the thought of Deeming
in the feature of the throttling hands, since in all his murders there
was evidence upon the throats of his victims that strangulation had
preceded the operation of the knife. But my wife opposed this grisly
suggestion:--it was not the shade of the murderer, she affirmed,
that had attacked her, although she could give no description of her
assailants--they were dark, formless shapes--resembling neither man nor
beast; things more felt than seen, even to her.

Yet in spite of this assurance, when I re-entered the house and saw
in its usual place above my writing table the plaster mould which I
had carried from the murderer's cell in the Melbourne jail, I recalled
with a new appreciation of their appositeness the words of the worthy
governor.

Whatever the influence was that had appalled us, we had not sufficient
courage to oppose it, and so hastened our preparations for departure
that we finally quitted the house a week before our lease expired;
and within a month saw the shores of Australia fade behind us as our
steamer turned its prow toward Aden, Suez, and Marseilles. There was
one recurrence of the phenomenon I have just described during the last
few nights of our possession, but we evaded it by taking to the street
again, and again passing the night therein.

It was on a sunny morning in early March--the month answering in
the inverted seasons of the Antipodes to September of northern
latitudes--that we turned the key that locked us out for the last time
from that house of shadows. As we reached the street we turned with
one accord to look back upon it:--how inviting it appeared in the
brilliant sunshine, amid its attractive surroundings of grassy lawn
set with shrubs in flower, its smiling orchard and garden! We looked
into one another's faces, and each saw therein the reflection of his
own thoughts:--there was the relief such as they feel who awake from an
oppressive dream; yet the place had been our home!


THE END




FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is in accordance with the terms of the English law in capital
cases:--whereby a condemned prisoner is allowed two Sundays to live
after the pronouncement of his sentence, and is executed on the morning
following the second. Thus Deeming had the longest respite possible
under the statute--twenty days. The shortest lease of life (fifteen
days) would be allowed to a prisoner who had been sentenced on Saturday.

[2] This was the murderer's real name, as disclosed by investigations
in England among relatives and acquaintances living there. His
execution was, as the warrant for it recited, "upon the body of Albert
Williams," this being the _alias_ under which he came to Australia, as
described later.

[3] This activity in building (which is still seen in concrete form
in the palatial Parliament Buildings and other costly structures of
Melbourne) was largely inspired by the published calculations of an
enthusiastic statistician on the future growth of the Colonies:--which
were, in effect, that by 1951 their population would be thirty-two
millions, and by 2001, one hundred and eighty-nine millions!--some
eighty per cent in excess of that of the United States at present. It
speaks loudly for Australian enterprise that these Windsor builders,
as well as many others, took such prompt measures to provide for this
increase.

[4] This woman (_née_ Emily Lydia Mather) was the daughter of John
and Dove Mather, respected residents of Rainhill, a small town near
Liverpool, England. To this town came Deeming, under his _alias_ of
"Williams," representing himself as an officer in the Indian army who
had been sent to England to purchase supplies therefor. This claim he
strengthened by occasionally appearing in a resplendent uniform--which
seems to have been of his own invention--and reciting his many exploits
"in the imminent deadly breach;" confirming also his free assertions
of the possession of large wealth of his own by liberal expenditures
in all directions. No such splendid personage had ever before been
seen in quiet Rainhill, and the whole town succumbed to the glamor
of it--including Miss Mather and her parents, whose acquaintance the
fascinating officer somehow made, and followed up by a respectful but
ardent courtship of the daughter. An engagement between the pair was
soon announced and a valuable diamond ring, as well as other gifts of
jewelry and rich attire, was bestowed by the prospective bridegroom
upon the bride-to-be:--and although the celebration of the wedding was
announced for so early a date as to cause some unfavorable gossip, the
fact was condoned in view of the military necessity of a speedy return
to India.

At this point Williams--to use the name by which he was then
known--encountered what to any less bold and unscrupulous villain would
have been a decided check:--this in the form of a letter from his then
living legal wife, whom, with his four children by her, he had some
time before deserted, and who--in some manner unknown--had now traced
him to Rainhill. This letter, it is believed, announced her intention
of descending upon him:--at any rate, with characteristic audacity, he
gave out the information that his _sister_ and her children were coming
to live in Rainhill, and that he had received a letter asking him to
rent a house for them. He secured a house accordingly; but expressed
dissatisfaction with the somewhat worn wooden floor of the kitchen--and
as the owner demurred to undertake the expense of a cement floor,
Williams said he knew about such things, and would do the job himself,
and ordered the necessary materials and tools. When, and by what means,
the woman and children arrived in Rainhill, seems to be somewhat of a
mystery:--that they _did_ arrive is shown by the fact that after the
Windsor murder had come to light, and the identity of the victim was
discovered by a curious chain of circumstances too long to find place
in this narrative, the skilfully-laid cement floor with which the old
wooden floor had been replaced was torn up, and the half-decapitated
bodies of the five were found embedded in it. Those who are curious in
such matters may see this tragedy depicted at Madame Toussaud's, London.

[5] This detail--of a murderer carrying about with him a canary as a
companion--is effectively employed by the late Frank Norris in his
California novel, "McTeague." As that story was published in 1903,
eleven years after the execution of Deeming,--he, like McTeague, a
wife-murderer,--the source of Norris' idea would seem obvious.

[6] I had good personal reasons for discrediting any rumor that Deeming
had made confession, for the reason that, with the sanction of the
authorities in his case, and assisted by his own counsel, I had made
every effort to secure it myself--and had failed. When the matter
was suggested to Deeming, and he was assured that the money that was
offered to him for his memoirs would be paid to Miss Rounsfell as some
slight recognition of the wrong he had done her, he eagerly assented;
and being supplied with pens (quill--for not the least article in
steel was allowed him) he went to work, and in a few days had turned
out a large amount of manuscript. Examination of it, however, was
disappointing. It began encouragingly, and there were lucid passages
in it; but as a whole it was utterly incoherent--and to those who had
dispassionately studied the man, an undoubted proof of his insanity.




                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

--Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.





End of Project Gutenberg's True Tales of the Weird, by Sidney Dickinson