He thought he had saved or gained enough to buy a roadside inn on which he had long cast eyes of affectionate regard—not in London, but not too far out: a delightful inn, where holiday-makers always stopped for refreshment, and sometimes for the day; an inn with a pretty old-fashioned garden filled with fruit trees and vegetables, with a grass-plot around which were erected little arbours, where people could have tea or stronger stimulants; a skittle-ground, where men could soon make themselves very thirsty; and many other advantages tedious to mention. He had the purchase-money in his pocket, and, having paid a deposit, was proceeding to settle the affair, merely diverging from his way to call on a young widow he meant to make Mrs. Davis—a charming woman, who, having stood behind a bar before, seemed the very person to make the Wheatsheaf a triumphant success. He was talking to her sensibly, when suddenly she amazed him by saying, in a sharp, hurried voice, “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!” three times over.
The request seemed so strange that he stood astounded, and then awoke to hear the same words repeated.
“Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!” someone said distinctly in Mr. Murray’s room, the door of which stood open, and then all was quiet.
Only half awake, Davis sprang from his bed and walked across the floor, conceiving, so far as his brain was in a state to conceive anything, that his senses were playing him some trick.
“You won’t?” said the voice again, in a tone which rooted him to the spot where he stood; “and yet, as we are never to meet again, you might Kiss me once,” the voice added caressingly, “only once more.”
“Who the deuce has he got with him now?” thought Davis; but almost before the question was shaped in his mind there came a choked, gasping cry of “Unloose me, tigress, devil!” followed by a sound of desperate wrestling for life.
In a second, Davis was in the room. Through the white blinds light enough penetrated to show Mr. Murray in the, grip apparently of some invisible antagonist, who seemed to be strangling him.
To and fro, from side to side the man and the unseen phantom went swaying in that awful struggle. Short and fast came Mr. Murray’s breath, while making one supreme effort, he flung his opponent from him and sank back across the bed exhausted.
Wiping the moisture from his forehead, Davis, trembling in every limb, advanced to where his master lay, and found he was fast asleep!
Mr. Murray’s eyes were wide open, and he did not stir hand or foot while the man covered him up as well as he was able, and then looked timidly around, dreading to see the second actor in the scene just ended.
“I can’t stand much more of this,” Davis exclaimed, and the sound of his own voice made him start.
There was brandy in the room which had been left overnight, and the man poured himself out and swallowed a glass of the liquor. He ventured to lift the blind and look at the floor, which was wet, as though buckets of water had been thrown over it, while the prints of little feet were everywhere.
Mr. Davis took another glass of brandy. That had not been watered.
“Well, this is a start!” he said in his own simple phraseology. “I wonder what the governor has been up to?”
For it was now borne in upon the valet’s understanding that this warning was no shadow of any event to come, but the tell-tale ghost of some tragedy which could never be undone.
Chapter Six
Found Drowned
After such a dreadful experience it might have been imagined that Mr. Murray would be very ill indeed; but what we expect rarely comes to pass, and though during the whole of Sunday and Monday Davis felt, as he expressed the matter, “awfully shaky,” his master appeared well and in fair spirits.
He went to the Cathedral, and no attendant footsteps dogged him. On Monday he accompanied his grandmother to Losdale Court, where he behaved so admirably as to please even the lady on whose favour his income depended. He removed to a furnished house Mrs. Murray had taken, and prepared to carry out her wishes. Day succeeded day and night to night, but neither by day nor night did Davis hear the sound of any ghostly voices or trace the print of any phantom foot.
Could it be that nothing more was to come of it—that the mystery was never to be elucidated but fade away as the marks of dainty feet had vanished from floor, pavement, steps, and platform?
The valet did not believe it; behind those signs made by nothing human lay some secret well worth knowing, but it had never been possible to know much about Mr. Murray.
“He was so little of a gentleman” that he had no pleasant, careless ways. He did not leave his letters lying loose for all the world to read. He did not tear up papers, and toss them into a waste-paper basket. He had the nastiest practice of locking up and burning; and though it was Mr. Davis’s commendable custom to collect and preserve unconsidered odds and ends as his master occasionally left in his pockets, these, after all, were trifles light as air.
Nevertheless, as a straw shows how the wind blows, so that chance remark anent Chertsey Station made by Gage promised to provide a string on which to thread various little beads in Davis’ possession.
The man took them out and looked at them: a woman’s fall—white tulle, with black spots, smelling strongly of tobacco-smoke and musk; a receipt for a bracelet, purchased from an obscure jeweller; a Chertsey Lock ticket; and the return half of a first-class ticket from Shepperton to Waterloo, stamped with the date of the day before they left London.
At these treasures Davis looked long and earnestly.
“We shall see,” he remarked as he put them up again; “there I think the scent lies hot.”
It could not escape the notice of so astute a servant that his master was unduly anxious for a sight of the London papers, and that he glanced through them eagerly for something he apparently failed to find—more, that he always laid the print aside with a sigh of relief. Politics did not seem to trouble him, or any public burning question.
“He has some burning question of his own,” thought the valet, though he mentally phrased his notion in different words.
Matters went on thus for a whole week. The doctor came and went and wrote prescriptions, for Mr. Murray either was still ailing or chose to appear so. Davis caught a word or two which had reference to the patient’s heart, and some shock. Then he considered that awful night, and wondered how he, who “was in his sober senses, and wide awake, and staring,” had lived through it.
“My heart, and a good many other things, will have to be considered,” he said to himself. No wages could pay for what has been put upon me this week past. I wonder whether I ought to speak to Mr. Murray now?”
Undecided on this point, he was still considering it when he called his master on the following Sunday morning. The first glance at the stained and polished floor decided him. Literally it was interlaced with footprints. The man’s hand shook as he drew up the blind, but he kept his eyes turned on Mr. Murray while he waited for orders, and walked out of the room when dismissed as though such marks had been matters of customary occurrence in a nineteenth century bedroom.
No bell summoned him back on this occasion. Instead of asking for information, Mr. Murray dropped into a chair and nerved himself to defy the inevitable.
Once again there came a pause. For three days nothing, occurred; but on the fourth a newspaper and a letter arrived, both of which Davis inspected curiously. They were addressed in Mr. Savill’s handwriting, and they bore the postmark “Shepperton.”
The newspaper was enclosed in an ungummed wrapper, tied round with a piece of string. After a moment’s reflection Davis cut that string, spread out the print, and beheld a column marked at top with three blue crosses, containing the account of an inquest held at the King’s Head on a body found on the previous Sunday morning, close by the “Tumbling Bay.”
It was that of a young lady who had been missing since the previous Friday week, and could
only be identified by the clothes.
Her mother, who, in giving evidence, frequently broke down, told how her daughter on the evening in question went out for a walk and never returned. She did not wish to go, because her boots were being mended, and her shoes were too large. No doubt they had dropped off. She had very small feet, and it was not always possible to get shoes to fit them. She was engaged to be married to the gentleman with whom she went out. He told her they had quarrelled. She did not believe he could have anything to do with her child’s death; but she did not know what to think. It had been said her girl was keeping company with somebody else, but that could not be true. Her girl was a good girl.
Yes; she had found a bracelet hidden away among her girl’s clothes, and she could not say how she got the seven golden sovereigns that were in the purse, or the locket taken off the body; but her girl was a good girl, and she did not know whatever she would do without her, for Lucy was all she had.
Walter Grantley was next examined, after being warned that anything he said might be used against him.
Though evidently much affected, he gave his evidence in a clear and straightforward manner. He was a clerk in the War Office. He had, against the wishes of all his friends, engaged himself to the deceased, who, after having some time professed much affection, had latterly treated him with great coldness. On the evening in question she reluctantly came out with him for a walk; but after they passed the Ship she insisted he should take a boat. They turned and got into a boat. He wanted to go down the river, because there was no lock before Sunbury. She declared if he would not row her up the river, she would go home.
They went up the river, quarrelling all the way. There had been so much of this sort of thing that after they passed through Shepperton Lock he tried to bring matters to a conclusion, and asked her to name a day for their marriage. She scoffed at him and asked if he thought she meant to marry a man on such a trumpery salary. Then she insisted he should land her; and after a good deal of argument he did land her; and rowed back alone to Halliford. He knew no more.
Richard Savill deposed he took a boat at Lower Halliford directly after the last witness, with whom he was not acquainted, and rowed up towards Chertsey, passing Mr. Grantley and Miss Heath, who were evidently quarrelling. He went as far as Dumsey Deep, where, finding the stream most heavily against him, he turned, and on his way back saw the young lady walking slowly along the bank. At Shepperton Lock he and Mr. Grantley exchanged a few words, and rowed down to Halliford almost side by side. They bade each other good-evening, and Mr. Grantley walked off in the direction of Walton where it was proved by other witnesses he arrived at eight o’clock, and did not go out again till ten, when he went to bed.
All efforts to trace what had become of the unfortunate girl proved unavailing, till a young man named Lemson discovered the body on the previous Sunday morning close by the Tumbling Bay. The coroner wished to adjourn the inquest, in hopes some further light might be thrown on such a mysterious occurrence; but the jury protested so strongly against any proceeding of the sort, that they were directed to return an open verdict.
No one could dispute that the girl had been “found drowned,” or that there was “no evidence to explain how she came to be drowned.”
At the close of the proceedings, said the local paper, an affecting incident occurred. The mother wished the seven pounds to be given to the man “who brought her child home,” but the man refused to accept a penny. The mother said she would never touch it, when a relation stepped forward and offered to take charge of it for her.
The local paper contained also a leader on the tragedy, in the course of which it remarked how exceedingly fortunate it was that Mr. Savill chanced to be staying at the Ship Hotel, so well known to boating-men, and that he happened to go up the river and see the poor young lady after Mr. Grantley left her, as otherwise the latter gentleman might have found himself in a most unpleasant position. He was much to be pitied, and the leader-writer felt confident that every one who read the evidence would sympathize with him. It was evident the inquiry had failed to solve the mystery connected with Miss Heath’s untimely fate, but it was still competent to pursue the matter if any fresh facts transpired.
“I must get to know more about all this,” thought Davis as he refolded and tied up the paper.
Chapter Seven
Davis Speaks
If there be any truth in old saws, Mr. Murray’s wooing was a very happy one. Certainly it was very speedy. By the end of October he and Miss Ketterick were engaged, and before Christmas the family lawyers had their hands full drawing settlements and preparing deeds. Mrs. Murray disliked letting any money slip out of her own control, but she had gone too far to recede, and Mr. Ketterick was not a man who would have tolerated any proceeding of the sort.
Perfectly straightforward himself, he compelled straightforwardness in others, and Mrs. Murray was obliged to adhere to the terms proposed when nothing seemed to her less probable than that the marriage she wished ever would take place. As for the bridegroom, he won golden opinions from Mr. Ketterick. Beyond the income to be insured to his wife and himself, he asked for nothing. Further he objected to nothing. Never before, surely, had man been so easily satisfied.
“All I have ever wanted,” he said, “was some settled income, so that I might not feel completely dependent on my grandmother. That will not be secured, and I am quite satisfied.”
He deferred to Mr. Ketterick’s opinions and wishes. He made no stipulations.
“You are giving me a great prize,” he told the delighted father, “of which I am not worthy, but I will try to make her happy.”
And the gentle girl was happy: no tenderer or more devoted lover could the proudest beauty have desired. With truth he told her he “counted the days till she should be his.” For he felt secure when by her side. The footsteps had never followed him to Losdale Court. Just in the place that of all others he would have expected them to come, he failed to see that tiny print. There were times when he even forgot it for a season; when he did remember it, he believed, with the faith born of hope, that he should never see it again.
“I wonder he has the conscience,” muttered Mr. Davis one morning, as he looked after the engaged pair. The valet had the strictest ideas concerning the rule conscience should hold over the doings of other folks, and some pleasingly lax notions about the sacrifices conscience had a right to demand from himself. “I suppose he thinks he is safe now that those feet are snugly tucked up in holy ground,” proceeded: Davis, who, being superstitious, faithfully subscribed to all the old formulae. “Ah! He doesn’t know what I know—yet;” which last word, uttered with much gusto, indicated a most unpleasant quarter of an hour in store at some future period for Mr. Murray.
It came one evening a week before his marriage. He was in London, in his grandmother’s house, writing to the girl he had grown to love with the great, entire, remorseful love of his life, when Davis, respectful as ever, appeared, and asked if he might speak a word. Mr. Murray involuntarily put his letter beneath some blotting-paper, and, folding his hands over both, answered, unconscious of what was to follow, “Certainly.”
Davis had come up with his statement at full-cock, and fired at once.
“I have been a faithful servant to you, sir.”
Mr. Murray lifted his eyes and looked at him. Then knew what was coming. “I have never found fault with you, Davis,” he said, after an almost imperceptible pause.
“No, sir, you have been a good master—a master I am sure no servant who knew his place could find a fault with.”
If he had owned an easy mind and the smallest sense of’ humour—neither of which possessions then belonged to Murray—he might have felt enchanted with such a complete turning of the tables; but as matters stood, he could only answer, “Good master as I have been, I suppose you wise to leave my service. Am I right, Davis?”
“Well, sir, you are right and you are wrong. I do not want to leave your service just yet. It may not be quite convenient to you for me to go now; only I want to come to an understanding.”
“About what?” Mr. Murray asked, quite calmly; though he could feel his heart thumping hard against his ribs, and that peculiar choking sensation which is the warning of what in such cases must come some day.
“Will you cast your mind back, sir, to a morning in last August, when you called my attention to some extraordinary footprints on the floor of your room?”
“I remember the morning,” said Mr. Murray, that choking sensation seeming to suffocate him. “Pray go on.”
If Davis had not been master of the position, this indifference would have daunted him; as it was, he again touched the trigger, and fired this: “I know all!”
Mr. Murray’s answer did not come so quick this time. The waters had gone over his head, and for a minute he felt as a man might if suddenly flung into a raging sea, and battling for his life. He was battling for his life with a wildly leaping heart. The noise of a hundred billows seemed dashing on his brain. Then the tempest lulled, the roaring torrent was stayed, and then he said interrogatively, “Yes?”
The prints of those phantom feet had not amazed Davis more than did his master’s coolness.
“You might ha’ knocked me down with a feather,” he stated, when subsequently relating this interview. “I always knew he was a queer customer, but I never knew how queer till then.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Murray, which reply quite disconcerted his valet.
“I wouldn’t have seen what I have seen, sir,” he remarked, “not for a king’s ransom.”
“No?”
“No, sir, and that is the truth. What we both saw has been with me at bed and at board, as the saying is, ever since. When I shut my eyes I still feel those wet feet dabbling about the room; and in the bright sunshine I can’t help shuddering, because there seems to be a cold mist creeping over me.”
The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack: 25 Classic Ghost Stories Page 9
