The Book of the Living Dead

by John Richard Stephens

  The Professor conducted Mr. Low into the hall. The main staircase, dark and massive, yawned above them, and directly behind it ran the passage referred to by the Professor. It was over twenty feet long, and about midway led past a deep arch containing a door reached by two steps. Jungvort explained that this door formed the entrance to a large room called the Museum, in which Mr. Swaffam senior, who was something of a dilettante, stored the various curios he picked up during his excursions abroad. The Professor went on to say that he immediately followed the figure, which he believed had gone into the Museum, but he found nothing there except the cases containing Swaffam’s treasures.

  “I mentioned my experience to no one. I concluded that I had seen the ghost. But two days after, one of the female servants, coming through the passage in the dark, declared that a man leapt out at her from the embrasure of the Museum door, but she released herself and ran screaming into the servants’ hall. We at once made a search but found nothing to substantiate her story.

  “I took no notice of this, though it coincided pretty well with my own experience. The week after, my daughter Lena came down late one night for a book. As she was about to cross the hall, something leapt upon her from behind and she fainted! Since then she has been ill and the doctor says ‘run down.’” Here the Professor spread out his hands. “So she leaves for a change tomorrow. Since then other members of the household have been attacked in much the same manner, with always the same result, they faint and are weak and useless when they recover.

  “But, last Wednesday, the affair became a tragedy. By that time the servants had refused to come through the passage except in a crowd of three or four—most of them preferring to go round by the terrace to reach this part of the house. But one maid, named Eliza Freeman, said she was not afraid of the Baelbrow Ghost, and undertook to put out the lights in the hall one night. When she had done, and was returning through the passage past the Museum door, she appears to have been attacked, or at any rate frightened. In the grey of the morning they found her lying beside the steps dead. There was a little blood upon her sleeve but no mark upon her body except a small raised pustule under the ear. The doctor said the girl was extraordinarily anemic, and that she probably died from fright, her heart being weak. I was surprised at this, for she had always seemed to be a particularly strong and active young woman.”

  “Can I see Miss Jungvort tomorrow before she goes?” asked Low, as the Professor signified he had nothing more to tell.

  The Professor was rather unwilling that his daughter should be questioned, but he at last gave his permission, and next morning Low had a short talk with the girl before she left the house. He found her a very pretty girl, though listless and startlingly pale, and with a frightened stare in her light brown eyes. Mr. Low asked if she could describe her assailant.

  “No,” she answered, “I could not see him, for he was behind me. I only saw a dark, bony hand, with shining nails, and a bandaged arm pass just under my eyes before I fainted.”

  “Bandaged arm? I have heard nothing of this.”

  “Tut-tut, mere fancy!” put in the Professor impatiently.

  “I saw the bandages on the arm,” repeated the girl, turning her head wearily away, “and I smelt the antiseptics it was dressed with.”

  “You have hurt your neck,” remarked Mr. Low, who noticed a small circular patch of pink under her ear.

  She flushed and paled, raising her hand to her neck with a nervous jerk, as she said in a low voice, “It has almost killed me. Before he touched me, I knew he was there! I felt it!”

  When they left her the Professor apologized for the unreliability of her evidence, and pointed out the discrepancy between her statement and his own.

  “She says she sees nothing but an arm, yet I tell you it had no arms! Preposterous! Conceive a wounded man entering this house to frighten the young women! I do not know what to make of it! Is it a man, or is it the Baelbrow Ghost?”

  During the afternoon when Mr. Low and the Professor returned from a stroll on the shore, they found a dark-browed young man with a bull neck, and strongly marked features, standing sullenly before the hall fire. The Professor presented him to Mr. Low as Harold Swaffam. Swaffam seemed to be about thirty, but was already known as a far-seeing and successful member of the Stock Exchange.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Low,” he began, with a keen glance, “though you don’t look sufficiently high-strung for one of your profession.”

  Mr. Low merely bowed.

  “Come, you don’t defend your craft against my insinuations?” went on Swaffam.“And so you have come to rout out our poor old ghost from Baelbrow? You forget that he is an heirloom, a family possession! What’s this about his having turned rabid, eh, Professor?” he ended, wheeling round upon Jungvort in his brusque way.

  The Professor told the story over again. It was plain that he stood rather in awe of his prospective son-in-law.

  “I heard much the same from Lena, whom I met at the station,” said Swaffam. “It is my opinion that the women in this house are suffering from an epidemic of hysteria. You agree with me, Mr. Low?”

  “Possibly. Though hysteria could hardly account for Freeman’s death.”

  “I can’t say as to that until I have looked further into the particulars,” Swaffam continued. “I have not been idle since I arrived. I have examined the Museum. No one has entered it from the outside, and there is no other way of entrance except through the passage. The flooring is laid, I happen to know, on a thick layer of concrete. And there the case for the ghost stands at present.” After a few moments of dogged reflection, he swung round on Mr. Low, in a manner that seemed peculiar to him when about to address any person. “What do you say to this plan, Mr. Low? I propose to drive the Professor over to Ferryvale, to stop there for a day or two at the hotel, and I will also dispose of the servants who still remain in the house for, say, forty-eight hours. Meanwhile you and I can try to go further into the secret of the ghost’s new pranks?”

  Flaxman Low replied that this scheme exactly met his views. But the Professor protested against being sent away. Harold Swaffam however was a man who liked to arrange things in his own fashion, and within forty-five minutes he and Jungvort departed in the dogcart.

  The evening was lowering, and Baelbrow, like all houses built in exposed situations, was extremely susceptible to the changes of the weather. Therefore, before many hours were over, the place was full of creaking noises as the screaming gale battered at the shuttered windows, and the tree-branches tapped and groaned against walls.

  Harold Swaffam, on his way back, was caught in the storm and drenched to the skin. It was, therefore, settled that after he had changed his clothes he should have a couple of hours’ rest on the smoking-room sofa, while Mr. Low kept watch in the hall.

  The early part of the night passed over uneventfully. A light burned faintly in the great wainscotted hall, but the passage was dark. There was nothing to be heard but the wild moan and whistle of the wind coming in from the sea, and the squalls of rain dashing against the windows. As the hours advanced, Mr. Low lit a lantern that lay at hand, and, carrying it along the passage, tried the Museum door. It yielded, and the wind came muttering through to meet him. He looked round at the shutters and behind the big cases which held Mr. Swaffam’s treasures, to make sure that the room contained no living occupant but himself.

  Suddenly he fancied he heard a scraping noise behind him, and turned round, but discovered nothing to account for it. Finally, he laid the lantern on a bench so that its light should fall through the door into the passage, and returned again to the hall, where he put out the lamp, and then once more took up his station by the closed door of the smoking-room.

  A long hour passed, during which the wind continued to roar down the wide hall chimney, and the old boards creaked as if furtive footsteps were gathering from every corner of the house. But Flaxman Low heeded none of these; he was waiting for a certain sound.

  After a while,
he heard it—the cautious scraping of wood on wood. He leant forward to watch the Museum door. Click, click came the curious dog-like tread upon the tiled floor of the Museum till the thing, whatever it was, paused and listened behind the open door. The wind lulled at the moment, and Low listened also, but no further sound was to be heard, only slowly across the broad ray of light falling through the door grew a stealthy shadow.

  Again the wind rose, and blew in heavy gusts about the house, till even the flame in the lantern flickered, but when it steadied once more, Flaxman Low saw that the silent form had passed through the door, and was now on the steps outside. He could just make out a dim shadow in the dark angle of the embrasure.

  Presently, from the shapeless shadow came a sound Mr. Low was not prepared to hear. The thing sniffed the air with the strong, audible inspiration of a bear, or some large animal. At the same moment, carried on the draughts of the hall, a faint, unfamiliar odor reached his nostrils. Lena Jungvort’s words flashed back upon him—this, then, was the creature with the bandaged arm!

  Again, as the storm shrieked and shook the windows, a darkness passed across the light. The thing had sprung out from the angle of the door, and Flaxman Low knew that it was making its way towards him through the illusive blackness of the hall. He hesitated for a second; then he opened the smoking-room door.

  Harold Swaffam sat up on the sofa, dazed with sleep.

  “What has happened? Has it come?”

  Low told him what he had just seen. Swaffam listened half-smilingly.

  “What do you make of it now?” he said.

  “I must ask you to defer that question for a little,” replied Low.

  “Then you mean me to suppose that you have a theory to fit all these incongruous items?”

  “I have a theory, which may be modified by further knowledge,” said Low. “Meantime, am I right in concluding from the name of this house that it was built on a barrow or burying-place?”

  “You are right, though that has nothing to do with the latest freaks of our ghost,” returned Swaffam decidedly.

  “I also gather that Mr. Swaffam has lately sent home one of the many cases now lying in the Museum?” went on Mr. Low.

  “He sent one, certainly, last September.”

  “And you have opened it,” asserted Low.

  “Yes; though I flattered myself I had left no trace of my handiwork.”

  “I have not examined the cases,” said Low. “I inferred that you had done so from other facts.”

  “Now, one thing more,” went on Swaffam, still smiling. “Do you imagine there is any danger—I mean to men like ourselves?”

  “Certainly; the gravest danger to any person who moves about this part of the house alone after dark,” replied Low.

  Harold Swaffam leant back and crossed his legs.

  “To go back to the beginning of our conversation, Mr. Low, may I remind you of the various conflicting particulars you will have to reconcile before you can present any decent theory to the world?”

  “I am quite aware of that.”

  “First of all, our original ghost was a mere misty presence, rather guessed at from vague sounds and shadows—now we have something that is tangible, and that can, as we have proof, kill with fright. Next Jungvort declares the thing was a narrow, long and distinctly armless object, while Miss Jungvort has not only seen the arm and hand of a human being, but saw them clearly enough to tell us that the nails were gleaming and the arm bandaged. She also felt its strength. Jungvort, on the other hand, maintained that it clicked along like a dog—you bear out this description with the additional information that it sniffs like a wild beast. Now what can this thing be? It is capable of being seen, smelt, and felt, yet it hides itself successfully in a room where there is no cavity or space sufficient to afford covert to a cat! You still tell me that you believe that you can explain?”

  “Most certainly,” replied Flaxman Low with conviction.

  “I have not the slightest intention or desire to be rude, but as a mere matter of common sense, I must express my opinion plainly. I believe the whole thing to be the result of excited imaginations, and I am about to prove it. Do you think there is any further danger tonight?”

  “Very great danger tonight,” replied Low.

  “Very well, as I said, I am going to prove it. I will ask you to allow me to lock you up in one of the distant rooms, where I can get no help from you, and I will pass the remainder of the night walking about the passage and hall in the dark. That should give proof one way or the other.”

  “You can do so if you wish, but I must at least beg to be allowed to look on. I will leave the house and watch what goes on from the window in the passage, which I saw opposite the Museum door. You cannot, in all fairness, refuse to let me be a witness.”

  “I cannot, of course,” returned Swaffam. “Still, the night is too bad to turn a dog out into, and I warn you that I shall lock you out.”

  “That will not matter. Lend me a macintosh, and leave the lantern lit in the Museum, where I placed it.”

  Swaffam agreed to this. Mr. Low gives a graphic account of what followed. He left the house and was duly locked out, and after groping his way round the house, found himself at length outside the window of the passage, which was almost opposite to the door of the Museum. The door was still ajar and a thin band of light cut out into the gloom. Further down the hall gaped black and void. Low, sheltering himself as well as he could from the rain, waited for Swaffam’s appearance. Was the terrible yellow watcher balancing itself upon its lean legs in the dim corner opposite, ready to spring out with its deadly strength upon the passer-by?

  Presently Low heard a door bang inside the house, and the next moment Swaffam appeared with a candle in his hand, an isolated spread of weak rays against the vast darkness behind. He advanced steadily down the passage, his dark face grim and set, and as he came Mr. Low experienced that tingling sensation, which is so often the forerunner of some strange experience. Swaffam passed on towards the other end of the passage. There was a quick vibration of the Museum door as a lean shape with a shrunken head leapt out into the passage after him. Then all together came a hoarse shout, the noise of a fall and utter darkness.

  In an instant, Mr. Low had broken the glass, opened the window, and swung himself into the passage. There he lit a match and as it flared he saw by its dim light a picture painted for a second upon the obscurity beyond.

  Swaffam’s big figure lay with outstretched arms, face downwards, and as Low looked a crouching shape extricated itself from the fallen man, raising a narrow vicious head from his shoulder.

  The match spluttered feebly and went out, and Low heard a flying step click on the boards, before he could find the candle Swaffam had dropped. Lighting it, he stooped over Swaffam and turned him on his back. The man’s strong color had gone, and the wax-white face looked whiter still against the blackness of hair and brows, and upon his neck under the ear, was a little raised pustule from which a thin line of blood was streaked up to the angle of his cheekbone.

  Some instinctive feeling prompted Low to glance up at this moment. Half extended from the Museum doorway were a face and bony neck—a high-nosed, dull-eyed, malignant face, the eye-sockets hollow, and the darkened teeth showing. Low plunged his hand into his pocket, and a shot rang out in the echoing passageway and hall. The wind sighed through the broken panes, a ribbon of stuff fluttered along the polished flooring, and that was all, as Flaxman Low half dragged, half carried Swaffam into the smoking-room.

  It was some time before Swaffam recovered consciousness. He listened to Low’s story of how he had found him with a red angry gleam in his somber eyes.

  “The ghost has scored off me,” he said with an odd, sullen laugh,“but now I fancy it’s my turn! But before we adjourn to the Museum to examine the place, I will ask you to let me hear your notion of things. You have been right in saying there was real danger. For myself I can only tell you that I felt something spring upon me, and I knew no m
ore. Had this not happened I am afraid I should never have asked you a second time what your idea of the matter might be,” he ended with a sort of sulky frankness.

  “There are two main indications,” replied Low. “This strip of yellow bandage, which I have just now picked up from the passage floor, and the mark on your neck.”

  “What’s that you say?” Swaffam rose quickly and examined his neck in a small glass beside the mantelshelf.

  “Connect those two, and I think I can leave you to work it out for yourself,” said Low.

  “Pray let us have your theory in full,” requested Swaffam shortly.

  “Very well,” answered Low good-humouredly—he thought Swaffam’s annoyance natural under the circumstances. “The long, narrow figure which seemed to the Professor to be armless is developed on the next occasion. For Miss Jungvort sees a bandaged arm and a dark hand with gleaming—which means, of course, gilded—nails. The clicking sound of the footstep coincides with these particulars, for we know that sandals made of strips of leather are not uncommon in company with gilt nails and bandages. Old and dry leather would naturally click upon your polished floors.”

  “Bravo, Mr. Low! So you mean to say that this house is haunted by a mummy!”

  “That is my idea, and all I have seen confirms me in my opinion.”

  “To do you justice, you held this theory before tonight—before, in fact, you had seen anything for yourself. You gathered that my father had sent home a mummy, and you went on to conclude that I had opened the case.”