"Well, then, my uncle went into the garden, and got his gun, but,
of course, it wasn't there, and Scroggins said he didn't believe
it."
"Didn't believe what? Who's Scroggins?"
"Scroggins! Oh, why he was the other man, you know--it was his wife."
"WHAT was his wife--what's SHE got to do with it?"
"Why, that's what I'm telling you. It was she that found the hat.
She'd come up with her cousin to London--her cousin was my sister-
in-law, and the other niece had married a man named Evans, and
Evans, after it was all over, had taken the box round to Mr.
Jacobs', because Jacobs' father had seen the man, when he was
alive, and when he was dead, Joseph--"
"Now look here, never you mind Evans and the box; what's become of
your uncle and the gun?"
"The gun! What gun?"
"Why, the gun that your uncle used to keep in the garden, and that
wasn't there. What did he do with it? Did he kill any of these
people with it--these Jacobses and Evanses and Scrogginses and
Josephses? Because, if so, it was a good and useful work, and we
should enjoy hearing about it."
"No--oh no--how could he?--he had been built up alive in the wall,
you know, and when Edward IV spoke to the abbot about it, my sister
said that in her then state of health she could not and would not,
as it was endangering the child's life. So they christened it
Horatio, after her own son, who had been killed at Waterloo before
he was born, and Lord Napier himself said--"
"Look here, do you know what you are talking about?" we asked him
at this point.
He said "No," but he knew it was every word of it true, because his
aunt had seen it herself. Whereupon we covered him over with the
tablecloth, and he went to sleep.
And then Uncle told us a story.
Uncle said his was a real story.
THE GHOST OF THE BLUE CHAMBER
(My Uncle's Story)
"I don't want to make you fellows nervous," began my uncle in a
peculiarly impressive, not to say blood-curdling, tone of voice,
"and if you would rather that I did not mention it, I won't; but,
as a matter of fact, this very house, in which we are now sitting,
is haunted."
"You don't say that!" exclaimed Mr. Coombes.
"What's the use of your saying I don't say it when I have just said
it?" retorted my uncle somewhat pettishly. "You do talk so
foolishly. I tell you the house is haunted. Regularly on
Christmas Eve the Blue Chamber [they called the room next to the
nursery the 'blue chamber,' at my uncle's, most of the toilet
service being of that shade] is haunted by the ghost of a sinful
man--a man who once killed a Christmas wait with a lump of coal."
"How did he do it?" asked Mr. Coombes, with eager anxiousness.
"Was it difficult?"
"I do not know how he did it," replied my uncle; "he did not
explain the process. The wait had taken up a position just inside
the front gate, and was singing a ballad. It is presumed that,
when he opened his mouth for B flat, the lump of coal was thrown by
the sinful man from one of the windows, and that it went down the
wait's throat and choked him."
"You want to be a good shot, but it is certainly worth trying,"
murmured Mr. Coombes thoughtfully.
"But that was not his only crime, alas!" added my uncle. "Prior to
that he had killed a solo cornet-player."
"No! Is that really a fact?" exclaimed Mr. Coombes.
"Of course it's a fact," answered my uncle testily; "at all events,
as much a fact as you can expect to get in a case of this sort.
"How very captious you are this evening. The circumstantial
evidence was overwhelming. The poor fellow, the cornet-player, had
been in the neighbourhood barely a month. Old Mr. Bishop, who kept
the 'Jolly Sand Boys' at the time, and from whom I had the story,
said he had never known a more hard-working and energetic solo
cornet-player. He, the cornet-player, only knew two tunes, but Mr.
Bishop said that the man could not have played with more vigour, or
for more hours in a day, if he had known forty. The two tunes he
did play were "Annie Laurie" and "Home, Sweet Home"; and as
regarded his performance of the former melody, Mr. Bishop said that
a mere child could have told what it was meant for.
"This musician--this poor, friendless artist used to come regularly
and play in this street just opposite for two hours every evening.
One evening he was seen, evidently in response to an invitation,
going into this very house, BUT WAS NEVER SEEN COMING OUT OF IT!"
"Did the townsfolk try offering any reward for his recovery?" asked
Mr. Coombes.
"Not a ha'penny," replied my uncle.
"Another summer," continued my uncle, "a German band visited here,
intending--so they announced on their arrival--to stay till the
autumn.
"On the second day from their arrival, the whole company, as fine
and healthy a body of men as one could wish to see, were invited to
dinner by this sinful man, and, after spending the whole of the
next twenty-four hours in bed, left the town a broken and dyspeptic
crew; the parish doctor, who had attended them, giving it as his
opinion that it was doubtful if they would, any of them, be fit to
play an air again."
"You--you don't know the recipe, do you?" asked Mr. Coombes.
"Unfortunately I do not," replied my uncle; "but the chief
ingredient was said to have been railway refreshment-room pork-pie.
"I forget the man's other crimes," my uncle went on; "I used to
know them all at one time, but my memory is not what it was. I do
not, however, believe I am doing his memory an injustice in
believing that he was not entirely unconnected with the death, and
subsequent burial, of a gentleman who used to play the harp with
his toes; and that neither was he altogether unresponsible for the
lonely grave of an unknown stranger who had once visited the
neighbourhood, an Italian peasant lad, a performer upon the barrel-
organ.
"Every Christmas Eve," said my uncle, cleaving with low impressive
tones the strange awed silence that, like a shadow, seemed to have
slowly stolen into and settled down upon the room, "the ghost of
this sinful man haunts the Blue Chamber, in this very house.
There, from midnight until cock-crow, amid wild muffled shrieks and
groans and mocking laughter and the ghostly sound of horrid blows,
it does fierce phantom fight with the spirits of the solo cornet-
player and the murdered wait, assisted at intervals, by the shades
of the German band; while the ghost of the strangled harpist plays
mad ghostly melodies with ghostly toes on the ghost of a broken
harp.
Uncle said the Blue Chamber was comparatively useless as a
sleeping-apartment on Christmas Eve.
"Hark!" said uncle, raising a warning hand towards the ceiling,
while we held our breath, and listened; "Hark! I believe they are
at it now--in the BLUE CHAMBER!"