THE COUGH
A CASE OF HAUNTING IN REGENCY SQUARE, BRIGHTON
I know a man called Harrison. So, in all probability, do you; so, in
all probability, do most people. But it is not everyone, I imagine,
that knows a Harrison who delights in the Christian name of Pelamon,
and it is not everyone that knows a Pelamon Harrison who indulges in
psychical research. Now some people think that no one unless he be a
member of the Psychical Research Society can know anything of ghosts.
That is a fallacy. I have met many people who, although they have had
considerable experience in haunted houses, have never set a foot in
Hanover Square; and, vice versa, I have met many people who, although
they have been members of the Psychical Research Society, have assured
me they have never seen a ghost. Pelamon Harrison belongs to the former
category. He is by vocation a gentleman undertaker, and he lives in
Sussex. Some years ago, after the publication of my novel _For Satan's
Sake_, which was very severely criticised in certain of the religious
denominational papers, Pelamon Harrison, championing my cause, wrote
me rather an interesting letter. I went to see him, and ever since
then he has not only supplied me with detailed information of all the
hauntings he has come across, but he has at times sent me accounts of
his own experiences. This is one of them.
Pelamon was seated in his office one day reading Poe, when the
telephone at his elbow started ringing.
"Hullo!" said Pelamon. "Who's there?"
"Only me--Phoebe Hunt," was the reply. (Phoebe Hunt was Pelamon
Harrison's housekeeper.)
"Anything the matter?" Pelamon asked anxiously. "What is it?"
"Oh, nothing," Mrs. Hunt replied, "only a rather queer-looking
gentleman has just called and seemed most anxious to see you. He says
he has been told about you by Mr. Elliot O'Donnell, and he wants you to
go at once to a house in Regency Square, Brighton, No. --. He says it
is very badly haunted."
"What's his name?" Pelamon demanded.
"Nimkin," Mrs. Hunt answered, and she very carefully spelt the
name--"N I M K I N."
"I'll think it over," Pelamon said, "and if I'm not home by seven
o'clock, don't expect me till the morning." He then rang off, and
thinking it was time he did some work, he took up his account book.
Try as he would, however, he could not keep his mind from wandering.
Something kept whispering in his ear "Nimkin," and something kept
telling him that his presence was urgently needed in Regency Square.
At last, unable to stand it any longer, he threw down his pen and,
picking up his hat and coat, hurried off to the railway station.
At seven o'clock that evening he stood on the pavement immediately in
front of No. -- Regency Square. All the blinds were down, and this
circumstance, combined with an atmosphere of silence and desolation,
told him that the house was no longer inhabited. Somewhat perplexed,
he asked the servant next door if she could tell him where Mr. Nimkin
lived.
"Not in Heaven," the girl replied tartly. "He did live in No. -- till
his wife died, but after that he went to live on the other side of the
town. He died himself a few days ago, and I believe his funeral took
place this afternoon."
"And No. -- where his wife died is now empty," Pelamon observed.
"Yes, it's been empty ever since," she replied, and, sinking her voice
to a whisper, "folks say it's haunted. I can't altogether bring myself
to believe in ghosts--but I've heard noises," and she laughed uneasily.
"Had he any children?" Pelamon asked.
"No," the girl answered, "and he has left the money he hoarded--he was
the meanest of old sticks--to the hospital for consumptives."
"A worthy cause," Pelamon commented.
The girl nodded. "His wife was a consumptive," she went on. "I
remember her well--a pretty, fair-haired creature with a lovely skin,
and"--here she shuddered--"a shocking cough." Then, thrusting her
head close to Pelamon, and fixing him with a frightened glance, she
whispered, "It was the cough that killed her!"
Pelamon stared at her in astonishment. "Why, of course," he said. "It's
the cough that kills all consumptives. I've buried scores of them."
The girl shook her head. "You don't understand," she said, "but I
daren't tell you any more; and, after all, it's only what we thought.
Anyhow, he's dead now, and a good job too. Did you want to see him?"
"Oh, it was nothing very particular," Pelamon replied. "Who has the
keys of the house?"
The girl's jaws dropped and her eyes grew as big as turtle's eggs.
"The keys!" she exclaimed. "Mercy on us, you don't intend going there?"
"That's my business," Pelamon replied haughtily; and then, not wishing
to offend her, he added: "I heard the place was to be let, and as I
want a house in this particular locality, I thought I would call and
look at it, that's all! I am not a burglar!"
The girl giggled. "A burglar!" she said. "Oh no, you're not sharp
enough for that. Besides, the house is empty."
"What!" Pelamon exclaimed. "Has all the furniture been taken away?"
"All but the blinds," the girl nodded. "There was a sale here the day
after Mrs. Nimkin was buried, and at it crowds of people; some of the
furniture fetched an enormous price. I did hear that the house was sold
too, but I'll ask the missus to make sure."
She ran upstairs, and returned in a few minutes.
"Yes," she said, "the house is sold, and the new people are coming in
soon."
"Then that settles the matter," Pelamon said, and, thanking her in his
usual terse and precise way, he withdrew.
He took a brief turn on the sea front, thinking all the time of Regency
Square and the mysterious individual who had interviewed Mrs. Hunt, and
who must be, he thought, related to the Nimkin who had been buried that
afternoon. At nine o'clock he was once again in the square. Entering
the garden of No. --, he crept round to the back of the house and,
finding the catch of one of the windows undone, he raised the sash and
climbed in.
He had an electric torch with him, and consequently he was able to
find his way about. Pelamon is very susceptible to the influence of
the superphysical, and is probably far more of a psychic than the
majority of those who earn their living as professional mediums. He
told me afterwards that he knew No. -- was haunted the moment he set
his foot inside it. He could detect the presence of the superphysical
both in the atmosphere and also in the shadows. Frequently in the death
chambers which he had attended he had seen a certain type of shadow on
the floor by the bed; and it was this same queer kind of shadow, he
said, that now crept out from the wall to meet him. But it was not the
only phenomenon. From just where the shadow lay, there came a cough, a
nervous, worrying cough, a regular hack, hack, hack, and when Pelamon
moved, the cough and the shadow moved too. He went all over the house,
into every room; and the cough and the shadow followed him. Hack, hack,
hack, he could not get rid of it. At first it merely irritated him; but
after a while he grew angry, infuriated, maddened.
"Damn you!" he yelled. "Stop it! Stop that vile, infernal hacking. Damn
you! Curse you! STOP it!"
But the coughing went on, and in a hideous fit of rage, Pelamon flew
at the shadow, jumped on it, stamped on it, and drawing out his clasp
knife, knelt down and deliberately stabbed it. Still it went on,
untiringly, ceaselessly, significantly, hack, hack, hack. Pelamon was
still on the floor cutting, stabbing, blaspheming, when a taxi suddenly
drew up outside the house, and the next moment the front-door bell gave
a loud birr. Pelamon waited till it had rung twice; then he answered
it. A chauffeur stood on the doorstep.
"You've come to the wrong house," Pelamon said to him. "No taxi is
wanted here."
"This is No. --, ain't it?" the man ejaculated.
"Yes," Pelamon replied. "It is No. --, but that doesn't simplify
matters. Who sent for you?"
"A gentleman as lives on t'other side of the town," the chauffeur
replied. "He called out to me as I was passing his house. 'Do you want
a job?' he says. 'Will you drive to No. -- Regency Square and fetch a
lady and gentleman? You'll find them there waiting for you. The gent's
name is Harrison' (Pellijohn Harrison, I think he said, but I couldn't
quite catch it). 'Never mind the lady's. Bring 'em both here.'"
"That's very extraordinary," Pelamon exclaimed, "for that's my name,
without a doubt. But I don't know who the gentleman could have been,
and there's no lady here."
"Maybe there ain't no lady in the house now," the chauffeur said dryly,
"because she's just got in the taxi. But she was there a second or two
ago. You do like your bit of fun, don't yer?"
Pelamon, in a great state of bewilderment, was about to say something,
when from the direction of the taxi came the cough, hack, hack, hack.
He knew it too well.
"There you are," the chauffeur said, with a leer. "You must admit she's
in there right enough, and waiting till you're ready to join her."
Possessed with the feeling that he must see the thing through, Pelamon
hesitated no longer. He got into the taxi. The coughing went on, but he
could see no lady.
They drove right through the town, and at last stopped outside a
small villa facing a church or chapel. Concluding this must be their
destination, Pelamon got out and, bidding the chauffeur wait, rang the
front-door bell. There was no response. He looked at the windows; there
was not a vestige of light anywhere and the blinds were all tightly
drawn. He rang again, and rapped as well, and was about to do so a
third time, when a window in the next house was raised and a voice
called out: "There's no one there. There's been a funeral to-day and
the house is empty."
"Whose funeral was it?" Pelamon asked eagerly.
"Mr. Nimkin's," was the reply; "he died last Tuesday."
"Why, what are you a-talking about?" the chauffeur called out,
descending from his perch and joining Pelamon on the doorstep. "Nimkin!
Why, that was the name of the bloke as was here less than an hour ago
and told me to fetch this gentleman. No one in the house indeed, why,
he's in it, and the lady that came along with this gentleman here,
she's in it too. Listen to her coughing," and, as he spoke, from the
other side of the closed door came the familiar sounds, hack, hack,
hack.