Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/tomossingtonsgho00marsrich
(the University of California
[Illustration: "'Listen! Can't you hear him crying now? Can't you see
the ghost?'" (_To face p_. 35)]
TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST
BY
RICHARD MARSH
_Author of_
_"The Beetle: a Mystery"; "The Duke and the Damsel";_
_"The Crime and the Criminal," &c., &c_.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HAROLD PIFFARD
London
JAMES BOWDEN
10, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1898
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. A NEW PUPIL.
II. THERE'S A CONSCIENCE.
III. TWO LONE, LORN YOUNG WOMEN.
IV. IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.
V. A REPRESENTATIVE OF LAW AND ORDER.
VI. THE LONG ARM OF COINCIDENCE.
VII. BRUCE GRAHAM'S FIRST CLIENT.
VIII. MADGE ... AND THE PANEL.
IX. THE THING WHICH WAS HIDDEN.
X. MADGE FINDS HERSELF IN AN AWKWARD SITUATION.
XI. UNDER THE SPELL.
XII. TOM OSSINGTON's LAWYER.
XIII. AN INTERRUPTED TREASURE HUNT.
XIV. THE CAUSE OF THE INTERRUPTION.
XV. THE COMPANION OF HIS SOLITUDE.
XVI. TWO VISITORS.
XVII. THE KEY TO THE PUZZLE.
XVIII. MADGE APPLIES MORE STRENGTH.
XIX. THE WOMAN AND THE MAN.
XX. THE FORTUNE.
TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST
CHAPTER I
A NEW PUPIL
The first of the series of curious happenings, which led to such a
surprising and, indeed, extraordinary denouement, occurred on the
twelfth of October. It was a Monday; about four-thirty in the
afternoon. Madge Brodie was alone in the house. The weather was dull,
a suspicion of mist was in the air, already the day was drawing in.
Madge was writing away with might and main, hard at work on one of
those MSS. with which she took such peculiar pains; and with which the
editors for whom they were destined took so little. If they would only
take a little more--enough to read them through, say--Madge felt sure
they would not be so continually returned. Her pen went tearing away
at a gallop--it had reached the last few lines--they were finished.
She turned to glance at the clock which was on the mantelshelf behind
her.
"Gracious!--I had no idea it was so late. Ella will be home in an
hour, and there is nothing in the place for her to eat!"
She caught up the sheets of paper, fastened them together at the
corner, crammed them into an envelope, scribbled a note, crammed it in
after them, addressed the envelope, closed it, jumped up to get her
hat, just as there came a rat-tat-tat at the hall-door knocker.
"Now, who's that? I wonder if it is that Miss Brice come for her
lesson after all--three hours late. It will be like her if it is--but
she sha'n't have it now. We'll see if she shall."
She caught up her hat from the couch, perched it on her head, pushed a
pin through the crown.
"If she sees that I am just going out, I should think that even she
will hardly venture to ask me to give her a lesson three hours after
the time which she herself appointed."
As she spoke she was crossing the little passage towards the front
door.
It was not Miss Brice--it was a man. A man, too, who behaved somewhat
oddly. No sooner had Madge opened the door, than stepping into the
tiny hall, without waiting for any sort of invitation, taking the
handle from her hand, he shut it after him with considerably more
haste than ceremony. She stared, while he leaned against the wall as
if he was short of breath.
He was tall; she only reached to his shoulder, and she was scarcely
short. He was young--there was not a hair on his face. He was dressed
in blue serge, and when he removed his felt hat he disclosed a
well-shaped head covered with black hair, cut very short, with the
apparent intention of getting the better of its evident tendency to
curl at the tips. His marked feature, at that moment, was his obvious
discomposure. He did not look as if he was a nervous sort of person;
yet, just then, the most bashful bumpkin could not have seemed more
ill at ease. Madge was at a loss what to make of him.
"I'm feeling a little faint."
The words were stammered out, as if with a view of explaining the
singularity of his bearing--yet he did not appear to be the kind of
individual who might be expected to feel "a little faint," unless
nature belied her own handwriting. The strength and constitution of a
Samson was written large all over him. It seemed to strike him that
his explanation--such as it was--was a little lame, so he stammered
something else.
"You give music lessons?"
"Yes, we do give music lessons--at least, I do."
"You? Oh!--You do?"
His tone implied--or seemed to imply--that her appearance was hardly
consistent with that of a giver of music lessons. She drew herself a
little up.
"I do give music lessons. Have you been recommended by one of my
pupils?"
She cast her mind over the scanty list to ascertain which of them
might be likely to give such a recommendation. His stumbling answer
saved her further trouble on that score.
"No, I--I saw the plate on the gate, so I--I thought I'd just come in
and ask you to give me one."
"Give you a music lesson?"
"Yes, if you wouldn't mind."
"But"--she paused, hardly knowing what to say. She had never
contemplated giving lessons to pupils of this description. "I never
have given lessons to a--gentleman. I supposed they always went to
professors of their own sex."
"Do they? I don't know. I hope you don't mind making an exception in
my case. I--I'm so fond of music." Suddenly he changed the subject.
"This is Clover Cottage?"
"Yes, this is Clover Cottage."
"Are you--pardon me--but are you Miss Ossington?"
"Ossington? No--that is not my name."
"But doesn't some one of that name live here?"
"No one. I never heard it before. I think there must be some mistake."
She laid her hand on the latch--by way of giving him a hint to go. He
prevented her opening it, placing his own hand against the door;
courteously, yet unmistakably.
"Excuse me--but I hope you will give me a lesson; if it is only of a
quarter of an hour, to try what I can do--to see if it would be worth
your while to have me as a pupil. I have been long looking for an
opportunity of taking lessons, and when I saw your plate on the gate I
jumped at the chance."
She hesitated. The situation was an odd one--and yet she had already
been for some time aware that young women who are fighting for daily
bread have not seldom to face odd situations. Funds were desperately
low. She had to contribute her share to the expenses of the little
household, and that share was in arrear. Of late MSS. had been coming
back more monotonously than ever. Pupils--especially those who were
willing to pay possible prices--were few and far between. Who was she,
that she should turn custom from the door? It was nothing that this
was a stranger--all her pupils were strangers at the beginning; most
of them were still strangers at the end. Men, she had heard, pay
better than women. She might take advantage of this person's sex to
charge him extra terms--even to the extent of five shillings a lesson
instead of half a crown. It was an opportunity she could not afford to
lose. She resolved to at least go so far as to learn exactly what it
was he wanted; and then if, from any point of view, it seemed
advisable, to make an appointment for a future date.
She led the way into the sitting room--he following.
"Are you quite a beginner?" she asked.
"No, not--not altogether."
"Let me see what you can do."
She went to a pile of music which was on a little table, for the
purpose of selecting a piece of sufficient simplicity to enable a tyro
to display his powers, or want of them. He was between her and the
window. In passing the window he glanced through it. As he did so, he
gave a sudden start--a start, in fact, which amounted to a positive
jump. His hat dropped from his hand, and, wholly regardless that he
was leaving it lying on the floor, he hurried backwards, keeping in
the shadow, and as far as possible from the window. The action was so
marked that it was impossible it should go unnoticed. It filled Madge
Brodie with a sense of shock which was distinctly disagreeable. Her
eyes, too, sought the window--it looked out on to the road. A man, it
struck her, of emphatically sinister appearance, was loitering
leisurely past. As she looked he stopped dead, and, leaning over the
palings, stared intently through the window. It was true that the
survey only lasted for a moment, and that then he shambled off again,
but the thing was sufficiently conspicuous to be unpleasant.
So startled was she by the connection which seemed to exist between
the fellow's insolence and her visitor's perturbation that, without
thinking of what she was doing, she placed the first piece she came
across upon the music-stand--saying, as she did so:
"Let me see what you can do with this."
Her words were unheeded. Her visitor was drawing himself into an
extreme corner of the room, in a fashion which, considering his size
and the muscle which his appearance suggested, was, in its way,
ludicrous. It was not, however, the ludicrous side which occurred to
Madge; his uneasiness made her uneasy too. She spoke a little sharply,
as if involuntarily.
"Do you hear me? Will you be so good as to try this piece, and let me
see what you can make of it."
Her words seemed to rouse him to a sense of misbehaviour.
"I beg your pardon; I am afraid you will think me rude, but the truth
is, I--I have been a little out of sorts just lately." He came briskly
towards the piano; glancing however, as Madge could not help but
notice, nervously through the window as he came. The man outside was
gone; his absence seemed to reassure him. "Is this the piece you wish
me to play? I will do my best."
He did his best--or, if it was not his best, his best must have been
something very remarkable indeed.
The piece she had selected--unwittingly--was a Minuet of Mozart's. A
dainty trifle; a pitfall for the inexperienced; seeming so simple, yet
needing the soul, and knowledge, of a virtuoso to make anything of it
at all. Hardly the sort of thing to set before a seeker after music
lessons, whose acquaintance with music, for all she knew, was limited
to picking out the notes upon the keyboard. At her final examination
she herself had chosen it, first because she loved it, and, second,
because she deemed it to be something which would enable her to
illustrate her utmost powers at their very best.
It was only when he struck the first few notes that she realised what
it was she had put in front of him; when she did, she was startled.
Whether he understood what the piece was there for--that he was being
set to play it as an exhibition of his ignorance rather than of his
knowledge--was difficult to say. It is quite possible that in the
preoccupation of his mind it had escaped him altogether that the sole
excuse for his presence in that room lay in the fact that he was
seeking lessons from this young girl. There could be no doubt whatever
that at least one of the things that he had said of himself was true,
and that he did love music; there could be just as little doubt that
he already was a musician of a quite unusual calibre--one who had been
both born and made.
He played the delicate fragment with an exquisite art which filled
Madge Brodie with amazement. She had never heard it played like that
before--never! Not even by her own professor. Perhaps her surprise was
so great that, in the first flush of it, she exaggerated the player's
powers.
It seemed to her that this man played like one who saw into the very
depths of the composer's soul, and who had all the highest resources
of his art at his command to enable him to give a perfect--an
ideal--rendering. Such an exquisite touch! such masterly fingering!
such wondrous phrasing! such light and shade! such insight and such
execution! She had not supposed that her cheap piano had been capable
of such celestial harmony. She listened spellbound--for she, too, had
imagination, and she, too, loved music. All was forgotten in the
moment's rapture--in her delight at hearing so unexpectedly sounding
in her ears, what seemed to her, in her excitement, the very music of
the spheres. The player seemed to be as oblivious of his surroundings
as Madge Brodie--his very being seemed wrapped up in the ecstasy of
producing the quaint, sweet music for the stately old-time measure.
When he had finished, the couple came back to earth, with a rush.
With an apparent burst of recollection his hands came off the
keyboard, and he wheeled round upon the music-stool with an air of
conscience-stricken guilt. Madge stood close by, actually quivering
with a conflict of emotions. He met her eyes--instantly to avert his
own. There was silence--then a slight tremor in her voice in spite of
her effort to prevent it.
"I suppose you have been having a little jest at my expense."
"A jest at your expense?"
"I daresay that is what you call it--though I believe in questions of
humour there is room for wide differences of opinion. I should call it
something else."
"I don't understand you."
"That is false."
At this point-blank contradiction, the blood showed through his sallow
cheeks.
"False?"
"Yes, false. You do understand me. Did you not say that you had been
for some time seeking for an opportunity to take lessons in music?"
"I--I----"
Confronted by her red-hot accusatory glances, he stammered, stumbled,
stopped.
"Yes?--go on."
"I have been seeking such an opportunity."
"Indeed? And do you wish me to suppose that you believed that
you--you--could be taught anything in music by an unknown creature who
fastened a plate announcing lessons in music, to the palings of such a
place as this?"
He was silent--looking as if he would have spoken, but could not. She
went on:
"I thank you for the pleasure you have given me--the unexpected
pleasure. It is a favourite piece of mine which you have just
performed--I say 'performed' advisedly. I never heard it better played
by any one--never! and I never shall. You are a great musician. I?--I
am a poor teacher of the rudiments of the art in which you are such an
adept. I am obliged by your suggestion that I should give you lessons.
I regret that to do so is out of my power. You already play a thousand
times better than I ever shall--I was just going out as you came in. I
must ask you to be so good as to permit me to go now."
He rose from the music stool--towering above her higher and higher.
From his altitude he looked down at her for some seconds in silence.
Then, in his deep bass voice, he began, as it seemed, to excuse
himself.
"Believe me----"
She cut him short.
"I believe nothing--and wish to believe nothing. You had reasons of
your own for coming here; what they were I do not know, nor do I seek
to know. All I desire is that you should take yourself away."
He stooped to pick up his hat. Rising with it in his hand, he glanced
towards the window. As he did so, the man who had leaned over the
palings came strolling by again. The sight of this man filled him with
his former uneasiness. He retreated further back into the room--all
but stumbling over Miss Brodie in his haste. In a person of his
physique the agitation he displayed was pitiful. It suggested a degree
of cowardice which nothing in his appearance seemed to warrant.
"I--I beg your pardon--but might I ask you a favour?"
"A favour? What is it?"
"I will be frank with you. I am being watched by a person whose
scrutiny I wish to avoid. Because I wished to escape him was one
reason why I came in here."
Madge went to the window. The man in the road was lounging lazily
along with an air of indifference which was almost too marked to be
real. He gave a backward glance as he went. At sight of Madge he
quickened his pace.
"Is that the man who is watching you?"
"Yes, I--I fancy it is."
"You fancy? Don't you know?"
"It is the man."
"He is shorter than you--smaller altogether. Compared to you he is a
dwarf. Why are you afraid of him?"
Either the question itself, or the tone in which it was asked, brought
the blood back into his cheeks.
"I did not say I was afraid."
"No? Then if you are not afraid, why should you have been so anxious
to avoid him as to seek refuge, on so shallow a pretext, in a
stranger's house?"
The intruder bit his lip. His manner was sullen.
"I regret that the circumstances which have brought me here are of so
singular and complicated a character as to prevent my giving you the
full explanation to which you may consider yourself entitled. I
am sorry that I should have sought refuge beneath your roof as I
own I did; and the more so as I am compelled to ask you another
favour--permission to leave that refuge by means of the back door."
She twirled round on her heels and faced him.
"The back door!"
"I presume there is a back door?"
"Certainly--only it leads to the front."
Again he bit his lip. His temper did not seem to be improving. The
girl's tone, face, bearing, were instinct with scorn.
"Is there no means of getting away by the back without returning to
the front?"
"Only by climbing a hedge and a fence on to the common."
"Perhaps the feat will be within my powers--if you will allow me to
try."
"Allow you to try! And is it possible that you forced your way into
the house on the pretence of seeking lessons in music, when your real
motive was to seek an opportunity of evading pursuit by means of the
back door?"
"I am aware that the seeming anomaly of my conduct entitles you to
think the worst of me."
"Seeming anomaly!" She laughed contemptuously. "Pray, sir, permit me
to lead the way--to the back door."
She strode off, with her head in the air; he came after, with a brow
as black as night. At the back door they paused.
"I thank you for having afforded me shelter, and apologise for having
sought it."
She looked him up and down, as if she were endeavouring, by mere force
of visual inspection, to make out what kind of a man he was.
"I want to ask you a question. Answer it truthfully, if you can. Is
the man in front a policeman?"
He started with what seemed genuine surprise.
"A policeman! Good heavens, no."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. He's very far from being a policeman--rather, if
anything, the other way." What he meant to infer, she did not know;
but he laughed shortly, "What makes you ask such a thing?"
She was holding the door open in her hand. He had crossed the
threshold and stood without. Malice--and something else--gleamed in
her eyes.
"Because," she answered, "I wondered if you were a thief."
With that she slammed the door in his face and turned the key. Then,
slipping into the kitchen which was on her left, keeping the door on
the jar, remaining well in the shadow, she watched his proceedings
through the window.
For a moment he stayed where she had left him standing, as if rooted
to the spot. Then, with an exaggerated courtesy, taking off his hat,
he bowed to the door. Turning, he marched down the garden path, his
tall figure seeming more gigantic than ever as she noted how straight
he held himself. In a twinkling he was over the fence and hedge. Once
on the other side, he shook his fist at Clover Cottage.
The watcher in the kitchen clenched her teeth as she perceived the
gesture.
"Ungrateful creature! And to think that a man who has the very spirit
of music in his soul, and who plays the piano like an angel, should be
such a wretch! That a monster seven feet high, who looks like a
combination of Samson and Goliath rolled into one, should be such a
coward and a cur--afraid of a pigmy five foot high! I hope I've seen
the last of him. If I have any more such pupils I shall have to shut
up shop. Now perhaps I shall be allowed to post my MS. and run across
to Brown's to get a chop for Ella's tea."
With that she passed from the back to the front. Outside the front
door she paused to look around her and take her bearings, half
doubtful as to whether any more dubious strangers might not be in
sight.
The only person to be seen was the man whose presence had proved so
disconcerting to her recent visitor. He had reached the corner of the
street, and, turning, strolled slowly back towards Clover Cottage. He
gave one quick, shifty glance at her as she came out, but beyond that
he took--or appeared to take--no notice of her appearance.
"Now, I wonder," she said to herself, "who you may be. Your friend,
who, for all I know, is now running for his life across the common,
said you were no policeman--and, I am bound to say, you don't look as
if you were; he added that, if anything, you were rather the other
way. If, by that, he meant you were a thief, I'm free to admit you
look your profession to the life. I wonder if it would be safe to run
across to Brown's while you're about;--not that I'm afraid of you, as
I'll prove to your entire satisfaction if you only let me have the
chance. Only you seem to be one of those agreeable creatures who, if
they are only sure that a house is empty, and there's not even a girl
inside, can enact to perfection the part of area sneak; and neither
Ella nor I wish to lose any of the few possessions which we have."
While she hesitated a curious scene took place--a scene in which the
gentleman on the prowl played a leading rôle.
The road in which Clover Cottage stood was bisected on the right and
left by other streets, within a hundred yards of the house itself. On
reaching the corner of the street on the left, the gentleman on the
prowl, as we have seen, had performed a right-about-face, and returned
to the cottage. As he advanced, a woman came round the corner of the
street, upon the right. He saw her the instant she appeared, and the
sight had on him an astonishing effect. He stopped, as if petrified;
stared, as if the eyes were starting from his head; gave a great gasp;
turned; tore off like a hunted animal; dashed round the corner on the
left; and vanished out of sight. Having advanced to within a few feet
of where Madge was standing, she was a close spectator of his singular
behaviour. As she looked to see what had been the exciting cause, half
expecting that her recent visitor had come back and that the tables
had been turned, and the gentleman on the prowl had played the coward
in his turn, the woman who had come round the other corner had already
reached the cottage. Pushing the gate unceremoniously open, she strode
straight past Madge, and, without a with-your-leave or by-your-leave,
marched through the open door into the hall beyond.
As Madge eyed her with mingled surprise and indignation she exclaimed,
with what seemed unnecessary ferocity--
"I've come to see the house."