Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  Her interview with the great pearl-expert proved a very simple matter. She went straight to Dufane’s, and told the first person she saw that she was bringing some pearls from Muffen’s in Boston to Dr Schwartz for valuation. She had not meant to deceive her inter-locutor, but he gathered the natural impression that she was in the employ of the Boston jewelers, and she was shown in to Dr Schwartz at once. He took the pearls and gave her an appointment for the next afternoon at two o’clock.

  Leaving the great store she took, for the first time in her life, what she called ‘herdic’, or four-wheeler cab, and was driven to the Grand Union Hotel. After dinner there, being tired, she said her prayers and retired at eight o’clock.

  The next morning dragged. She had arisen, according to her habit, bright and early, made her bed, eaten breakfast at an hour when no one else except an early-starting commercial traveler or two was in the dining-room, and was engaged in addressing picture-postal cards when the hotel chambermaid came in about ten o’clock. The maid gasped and beat hasty retreat, never before had she known a guest to ‘do’ her room herself!

  Miss Abby, somewhat appalled at the prices in the hotel dining-room, took her lunch at a small restaurant, and shortly thereafter went to keep her appointment at Dufane’s.

  She was agreeably surprised on entering that great store to be addressed by name. Wondering somewhat at this distinction, she followed her guide to the sanctum of the pearl-expert. Here a surprising exercise was taking place. It was a good-sized room, up three flights in the elevator, and it was filled with men; filled almost uncomfortably. There were men with beards and men without; tall, thin men, and short, fat men. She counted nineteen, though she could not be certain she had included them all, for they kept moving about in the most extraordinary way. Little groups and knots of men kept forming, breaking up, and re-forming again. Everybody seemed to be talking in every imaginable language, including the Scandinavian! But this was only the impression she got on her arrival. The talking and the group-shifting stopped abruptly at her arrival, and everybody present turned to stare at her. Miss Abby had never been so embarrassed in her life! Then Dr Schwartz rescued her and showed her to a seat at the end of the long table which ran down the length of the big room.

  The pearl-expert coughed slightly and said, ‘Will you please oblige us, Miss Tucker, by telling us about this necklace; and first, if you please, how it came into your possession?’

  Miss Abby told them.

  When she finished her brief and matter-of-fact recital there was a moment of silence, silence that is like the calm before the storm. Then the storm broke. A kind of roaring hum burst forth simultaneously from the throats of all the men present. Everyone was talking at once; nobody listening. Miss Abby tried to listen, but it was too much for her. She was completely nonplussed for the very first time in her life. It seemed to her that some of these men whom she had never seen or heard of before were shouting at her! It was dreadful! It was like being plunged suddenly into a meeting in a madhouse. The little groups formed afresh, only more rapidly now. Men gesticulated, and shouted at the tops of their voices. Two dark-skinned gentlemen who gesticulated more than any of the others seemed at one moment to be about to begin a duel, but they ended this demonstration very queerly, Miss Abby thought, by clasping each other in their arms and kissing each other! A phlegmatic gentleman with a thick, guttural accent, was waddling up and down the whole length of the room, much like a caged polar-bear, and waving his arms like flails all the time. He was rumbling, in his deep voice, ‘incredible, incredible, incredible,’ over and over again.

  Even Dr Schwartz, to whom she looked as her anchor in this tumultuous sea – even Dr Schwartz was waving his arms about, and shouting with the rest!

  It occurred to the distracted Miss Abby that perhaps she was going to faint. While she was wondering, Dr Schwartz, who had waved his arms and shouted, after all, to some purpose, succeeded in establishing something like quiet. ‘Gentlemen, Gentlemen !’ he was shouting.

  At last he prevailed, and in the comparative silence which ensued he addressed Miss Abby a second time: ‘You will understand,’ he said, ‘my dear lady, that an event like this does not occur every day among jewelers. These gentlemen and I have all examined your wonderful necklace. We are unanimous in our opinion. There is indeed no room for doubt. This necklace is unique. Not one of us was aware of its existence, that is for the past two centuries, since it disappeared from the British Museum, in eighteen hundred and one. There is, I may inform you, really no criterion by which it may be properly valued. Will you look here for a moment; look through this glass – ah, here is the adjustment – yes, like that. Do you see?’

  Miss Abby saw. It came abruptly into focus as she turned gingerly the adjustment-screw in the great magnifying instrument which stood upon the table, below the sight of which the tiny, gilt clasp was held in place by small clamps. She saw, but she could not speak. For she was petrified. The inscription, far too fine even to be noticed without the aid of a powerful magnifying agent, read:

  ELIZABETH, FROM RALEIGH

  Miss Abby took a deep, deliberate breath, and read it aloud, slowly, in a tiny, clear and perfectly audible voice, not at all like her ordinary voice, in the midst of a dead silence. Miss Abby felt again as though she were going to faint. She could not be sure; she had never fainted before! But she needed air, badly, just then. She did not faint. She was too much interested to faint just then!

  She listened very carefully to Dr Schwartz, who seemed to be speaking in a very muffled, distant voice. He was saying:

  ‘ . . . So that Dufane and Company are prepared, in case you are willing to dispose of this necklace, to pay the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. We feel bound to inform you, however, that if you care to hold it – your title is undoubtedly clear – and decide to offer it to the British Museum, it is not unlikely that . . . ’

  Miss Abby did not wish to hear any more. She had heard enough, she thought. With lightning-like rapidity she reviewed the various estimates upon the value of the necklace: ‘Sixteen bob.’ – ‘Well, I should be inclined to think, about five hundred dollars.’ – that was Mr Leverett. Then Mr Hay: ‘We are prepared . . . to give you our cheque for six thousand . . . ’ And now – ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!’ And it had cost her twelve shillings, twelve shillings, bargained for; argued over! She straightened up in her chair, and looked Dr Schwartz in the eye.

  ‘I will accept your offer,’ she said simply. Then the bedlam broke out afresh. Men were crowding about her, pressing towards her . . . She fainted for the first – and last – time in her life.

  The next evening she arrived home, tired out. The hotel bill had been rather more than she had anticipated, and with that and the railway fares nearly all her ready money was gone. In fact, she arrived at her boarding-house with precisely eight cents in coins and a certified cheque for two hundred and fifty-thousand dollars.

  The first thing she did after removing her gloves, was to get a cup of tea. She needed the tea badly. When she had drunk it she noticed a large letter ‘L’ in the bottom of the cup. It looked rather like the shape of Lucerne outlined in its lights in the evening as one gazed down upon that city from the heights of Mt Pilatus – as Miss Abby had, in fact, looked down upon it three months previously. She sighed, reminiscently, and laid down her teacup.

  In her bedroom she found a letter on the bureau. The postmark was Bellow’s Falls. She opened and read it. It was from Mr Leverett. He wrote to ask if he might have the privilege of coming over soon to call upon her. He suggested the next Sunday afternoon, if she were not otherwise engaged then. Miss Abby was not otherwise engaged. ‘I’ll have those custom duties to pay,’ she thought, irrelevantly, as she finished her letter.

  She stood there in her bedroom with her letter in her hand. The eight cents and the certified cheque lay before her, side by side on the mean little bureau which had served her now continuously for some thirteen years. Miss Abby looked bac
k over those thirteen years with her mind’s eye, looked back, and shuddered. They had been dreary years, those thirteen. Then she ventured to look forward into the possible future – a tiny peep. She glanced appraisingly at the bureau and about her room and out the window. Then, without so much as removing her hat, she read Mr Leverett’s letter through a second time, and glanced down at the coins and the cheque.

  Miss Abby looked up from the very end of her letter, where Mr Leverett had signed his name, modestly, without any flourish, and in the glass. She caught herself blushing.

  ‘I believe I shall marry him,’ said she, in a whisper, and started to take the pins out of her hat.

  The Trap

  It was on a certain Thursday morning in December that the whole thing began with that unaccountable motion I thought I saw in my antique Copenhagen mirror. Something, it seemed to me, stirred – something reflected in the glass, though I was alone in my quarters. I paused and looked intently, then, deciding that the effect must be a pure illusion, resumed the interrupted brushing of my hair.

  I had discovered the old mirror, covered with dust and cobwebs, in an outbuilding of an abandoned estate-house in Santa Cruz’s sparsely settled Northside territory, and had brought it to the United States from the Virgin Islands. The venerable glass was dim from more than two hundred years’ exposure to a tropical climate, and the graceful ornamentation along the top of the gilt frame had been badly smashed. I had had the detached pieces set back into the frame before placing it in storage with my other belongings.

  Now, several years later, I was staying half as a guest and half as a tutor at the private school of my old friend Browne on a windy Connecticut hillside – occupying an unused wing in one of the dormitories, where I had two rooms and a hallway to myself. The old mirror, stowed securely in mattresses, was the first of my possessions to be unpacked on my arrival; and I had set it up majestically in the living-room, on top of an old rosewood console which had belonged to my great-grandmother.

  The door of my bedroom was just opposite that of the living-room, with a hallway between; and I had noticed that by looking into my chiffonier glass I could see the larger mirror through the two doorways – which was exactly like glancing down an endless, though diminishing, corridor. On this Thursday morning I thought I saw a curious suggestion of motion down that normally empty corridor – but, as I have said, soon dismissed the notion.

  When I reached the dining-room I found everyone complaining of the cold, and learned that the school’s heating-plant was temporarily out of order. Being especially sensitive to low temperatures, I was myself an acute sufferer; and at once decided not to brave any freezing schoolroom that day. Accordingly I invited my class to come over to my living-room for an informal session around my grate-fire – a suggestion which the boys received enthusiastically.

  After the session one of the boys, Robert Grandison, asked if he might remain; since he had no appointment for the second morning period. I told him to stay, and welcome. He sat down to study in front of the fireplace in a comfortable chair.

  It was not long, however, before Robert moved to another chair somewhat farther away from the freshly replenished blaze, this change bringing him directly opposite the old mirror. From my own chair in another part of the room I noticed how fixedly he began to look at the dim, cloudy glass, and, wondering what so greatly interested him, was reminded of my own experience earlier that morning. As time passed he continued to gaze, a slight frown knitting his brows.

  At last I quietly asked him what had attracted his attention. Slowly, and still wearing the puzzled frown, he looked over and replied rather cautiously: ‘It’s the corrugations in the glass – or whatever they are, Mr Canevin. I was noticing how they all seem to run from a certain point. Look – I’ll show you what I mean.’

  The boy jumped up, went over to the mirror, and placed his finger on a point near its lower left-hand corner.

  ‘It’s right here, sir,’ he explained, turning to look toward me and keeping his finger on the chosen spot.

  His musclar action in turning may have pressed his finger against the glass. Suddenly he withdrew his hand as though with some slight effort, and with a faintly muttered ‘Ouch.’ Then he looked at the glass in obvious mystification.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, rising and approaching.

  ‘Why – it – ’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘It – I – felt – well, as though it were pulling my finger into it. Seems – er – perfectly foolish, sir, but – well – it was a most peculiar sensation.’ Robert had an unusual vocabulary for his fifteen years.

  I came over and had him show me the exact spot he meant.

  ‘You’ll think I’m rather a fool sir,’ he said shamefacedly, ‘but – well, from right here I can’t be absolutely sure. From the chair it seemed to be clear enough.’

  Now thoroughly interested, I sat down in the chair Robert had occupied and looked at the spot he selected on the mirror. Instantly the thing ‘jumped out at me’. Unmistakably, from that particular angle, all the many whorls in the ancient glass appeared to converge like a large number of spread strings held in one hand and radiating out in streams.

  Getting up and crossing to the mirror, I could no longer see the curious spot. Only from certain angles, apparently, was it visible. Directly viewed, that portion of the mirror did not even give back a normal reflection – for I could not see my face in it. Manifestly I had a minor puzzle on my hands.

  Presently the school gong sounded, and the fascinated Robert Grandison departed hurriedly, leaving me alone with my odd little problem in optics. I raised several window-shades, crossed the hallway, and sought for the spot in the chiffonier mirror’s reflection. Finding it readily, I looked very intently and thought I again detected something of the ‘motion’. I craned my neck, and at last, at a certain angle of vision, the thing again ‘jumped out at me’.

  The vague ‘motion’ was now positive and definite – an appearance of torsional movement, or of whirling; much like a minute yet intense whirlwind or waterspout, or a huddle of autumn leaves dancing circularly in an eddy of wind along a level lawn. It was, like the earth’s, a double motion – around and around, and at the same time inward, as if the whorls poured themselves endlessly toward some point inside the glass. Fascinated, yet realizing that the thing must be an illusion, I grasped an impression of quite distinct suction, and thought of Robert’s embarrassed explanation: ‘I felt as though it were pulling my finger into it.’

  A kind of slight chill ran suddenly up and down my backbone. There was something here distinctly worth looking into. And as the idea of investigation came to me, I recalled the rather wistful expression of Robert Grandison when the gong called him to class. I remembered how he had looked back over his shoulder as he walked obediently out into the hallway, and resolved that he should be included in whatever analysis I might make of this little mystery.

  Exciting events connected with that same Robert, however, were soon to chase all thoughts of the mirror from my consciousness for a time. I was away all that afternoon, and did not return to the school until the five-fifteen ‘Call-over’ – a general assembly at which the boys’ attendance was compulsory. Dropping in at this function with the idea of picking Robert up for a session with the mirror, I was astonished and pained to find him absent – a very unusual and unaccountable thing in his case. That evening Browne told me that the boy had actually disappeared, a search in his room, in the gymnasium, and in all other accustomed places being unavailing, though all his belongings – including his outdoor clothing – were in their proper places.

  He had not been encountered on the ice or with any of the hiking groups that afternoon, and telephone calls to all the school-catering merchants of the neighborhood were in vain. There was, in short, no record of his having been seen since the end of the lesson periods at two-fifteen; when he had turned up the stairs toward his room in Dormitory Number Three.

  When the disappearance was fully realized, the resulti
ng sensation was tremendous throughout the school. Browne, as headmaster, had to bear the brunt of it; and such an unprecedented occurrence in his well-regulated, highly-organized institution left him quite bewildered. It was learned that Robert had not run away to his home in western Pennsylvania, nor did any of the searching-parties of boys and masters find any trace of him in the snowy countryside around the school. So far as could be seen, he had simply vanished.

  Robert’s parents arrived on the afternoon of the second day after his disappearance. They took their trouble quietly, though of course they were staggered by this unexpected disaster. Browne looked ten years older for it, but there was absolutely nothing that could be done. By the fourth day the case had settled down in the opinion of the school as an insoluble mystery. Mr and Mrs Grandison went reluctantly back to their home, and on the following morning the ten days’ Christmas vacation began.

  Boys and masters departed in anything but the usual holiday spirit; and Browne and his wife were left, along with the servants, as my only fellow-occupants of the big place. Without the masters and boys it seemed a very hollow shell indeed.

  That afternoon I sat in front of my grate-fire thinking about Robert’s disappearance and evolving all sorts of fantastic theories to account for it. By evening I had acquired a bad headache, and ate a light supper accordingly. Then, after a brisk walk around the massed buildings, I returned to my living-room and took up the burden of thought once more.

  A little after ten o’clock I awakened in my armchair, stiff and chilled, from a doze during which I had let the fire go out. I was physically uncomfortable, yet mentally aroused by a peculiar sensation of expectancy and possible hope. Of course it had to do with the problem that was harassing me. For I had started from that inadvertent nap with a curious, persistent idea – the odd idea that a tenuous, hardly recognizable Robert Grandison had been trying desperately to communicate with me. I finally went to bed with one conviction unreasoningly strong in my mind. Somehow I was sure that young Robert Grandison was still alive.