It was natural that I should dispose my effects in the rooms least
likely to be used by Lithway. I took over his discarded up-stairs study,
and, with a bedroom next door, was very comfortable. He assured me that
he had no reason to suppose I should ever be disturbed in either room.
Moving his own things, he said, had been purely a precautionary measure
in behalf of Mrs. Jayne. Curiously enough, I was perfectly sure that his
first statement was absolutely true and his second absolutely false.
Only the first one, however, seemed to be really my affair. I could
hardly complain.
Lithway did seem changed; but I have such an involuntary trick of
comparing my rediscovered friends with the human beings I have most
recently been seeing that I did not take the change too seriously. He
was perfectly unlike the Yucatan Indians; but, on reflection, why
shouldn’t he be, I asked myself. Probably he had always been just like
that. I couldn’t prove that he hadn’t. Yet I did think there was
something back of his listlessness other than mere prolonged grief for
his wife. Occasionally, I confess, I thought about the ghost in this
connection.
One morning I was leaving my sitting-room to go down to Lithway’s
library. The door of the room faced the staircase to the third story,
and as I came out I could always see, directly opposite and above me, a
line of white banisters that ran along the narrow third-story hall.
Mechanically, this time, I looked up and saw--I need not say, to my
surprise--a burly negro leaning over the rail looking down at me. The
servants were all white, and the man had, besides, a very definite look
of not belonging there. He didn’t, in any way, fit into his background.
I ran up the stairs to investigate. When I got just beneath him, he
bent over towards me with a malicious gesture. All I saw, for an
instant, was a naked brown arm holding up a curious jagged knife. The
edge caught the little light there was in the dim hall as he struck at
me. I hit back, but he had gone before I reached him--simply ceased to
be. There was no Cheshire-cat vanishing process. I was staring again
into the dim hall, over the white banisters. There were no rooms on that
side of the hall, and consequently no doors.
A light broke in on me. I went down-stairs to Lithway. “I’ve seen your
ghost,” I said bluntly.
What seemed to be a great relief relaxed his features. “You have! And
isn’t she extraordinary?”
“She?”
“You say you’ve seen her,” he went on hurriedly.
“Her? _Him_, man--black as Tartarus. And he cut me over the head.”
“There?” Lithway drew his finger down the place.
“Yes. How did you know? I don’t feel it now.”
“Look at yourself.”
He handed me a mirror. The slash was indicated clearly by a white line,
but there was no abrasion.
“That is very interesting,” I managed to say; but I really did not half
like it.
Lithway looked at me incredulously. “She has never had a weapon before,”
he murmured.
“She? This was a man.”
“Oh, no!” he contradicted. “That’s impossible.”
“He was a hairy brute and full-bearded besides,” I calmly insisted.
Lithway jumped up. “My God! there’s some one in the house.” He caught up
a revolver. “Let us go and look. He’ll have made off with the silver.”
“Look here, Lithway,” I protested. “I tell you this man wasn’t real. He
vanished into thin air--like any other ghost.”
“But the ghost is a woman.” He was as stupid as a child about it.
“Then there are two.” I didn’t really believe it, but it seemed clear
that we could never settle the dispute. Each at least would have to
pretend to believe the other for the sake of peace.
“Suppose you tell me about your ghost,” I suggested soothingly. But
Lithway was dogged, and we had to spend an hour exploring the house and
counting up Lithway’s valuables. Needless to say, there was no sign of
invasion anywhere. At the end of the hour I repeated my demand. The scar
was beginning to fade, I noted in the mirror, though still clearly
visible.
“Suppose you tell me about _your_ ghost. You never have, you know.”
“I’ve only seen her a few times.”
“Where?”
“Leaning over the banisters in the third-floor hall.”
“What is she like?”
“A slip of a girl. Rather fair and drooping, but a strange look in her
eyes. Dressed in white, with a blue sash. That’s all.”
“Does she speak?”
“No; but she waves a folded paper at me.”
“What time of day have you seen her?”
“About eleven in the morning.”
The clocks were then striking twelve.
“Well,” I ventured, “that’s clearly the ghost’s hour. But the two of
them couldn’t be more different.”
He made me describe the savage again. The extraordinary part of it was
that, in spite of his baffling blackness, I could do so perfectly. He
was as individual to me as a white man--more than that, as a friend. He
had personality, that ghost.
“What race should you say he was?”