Of my own accord I now reproduced my decanter of port-wine, and Calbot
and I finished it before either of us spoke another word.
What he was thinking of meanwhile I know not; for my part, I was
endeavouring to put in order a number of disjointed ideas, imbibed at
various epochs during this evening, whose logical arrangement, I was
convinced, would go far towards elucidating much of the mystery. As to
the positively supernatural part of Calbot's experience, of course I had
no way of accounting for that; but I fancied there were materials at
hand tolerably competent to raise a ghost, allowing such a thing as a
ghost to be possible.
"I am glad, Calbot," I began, "that you came to me. Your good sense--or
instinct, perhaps--directed you aright. Do not despair: I should not be
surprised were we to manage between us to discover that your happiness,
so far from being at an end, was just on the point of establishing
itself upon a trustworthy foundation." Calbot shook his head gloomily.
"Well, well," resumed I, "let us see. In the first place--as regards
that locket. It will perhaps surprise you to learn that I had heard of
it before you came this evening--had read quite a minute description of
it, in fact."
"Where?" demanded my friend, raising his eyes.
"That will appear later. I must first ask you whether, in the old family
documents you spoke of, the personal appearance of this Archibald
Armstrong was particularly delineated?"
"I hardly know; I have no recollection of any especial passage--and yet
I fancy it must have been given with some fulness; because when I saw
the hobgoblin, its costume and aspect seemed curiously familiar."
"And had I seen it, there is little doubt in my mind that I should have
recognised it also."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Calbot, sitting upright in his chair, "how happens
that?"
"Wait a moment, I am merely collecting evidence. Now, have you any
reason to suppose that a connection of any sort--friendly, business,
or other--subsisted between your unhappy ancestor and this Armstrong
previous to the former's marriage?"
"Do you mean whether he was under any obligations to Armstrong?"
"Yes."
"He may have been--but the idea is new to me. How----"
"I am not done yet. Now, did it never occur to you--or, I should say,
does it not seem probable--that the locket which you had found hidden
away in your mother's jewel-box was in some way connected with the
family tragedy you told me of?"
"I have thought of it, Drayton; there is no difficulty in imagining such
a thing; the trouble is, we haven't the slightest evidence of it."
"I was about to say," I rejoined, "that there is direct evidence of
precisely such a locket having been bought, in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, by precisely such a looking man as the hobgoblin
you saw to-day. It was to be a wedding-gift to the woman he was to marry
the next day."
"Drayton!"
"That woman deceived him, and eloped on the eve of her marriage with
a protégé of his. He professed forgiveness, and sent the locket as a
pledge of it."
"Odd!"
"He died in 1698, and his last recorded words were a curse invoked
upon those whom he had before professed to pardon--upon them and their
posterity."
"But, Drayton--what----"
"It is my opinion that his forgiveness was merely a cloak to his deadly
and unrelenting hatred. It is my opinion, Calbot, that the pledge he
gave was poisonous with evil and malicious influences. The locket
was made of tourmaline, which has mysterious properties. No doubt he
believed it a veritable witch's talisman; and from the sufferings which
afterwards befell his enemies (not to speak of your own experience), one
might almost fancy witchcraft to be not entirely a delusion after all."
"One might, indeed! But if, as you seem to imply, this locket enabled
Armstrong to persecute Calbot and his wife, why did not they send it
back or destroy it?"
"Simply because they were not aware of its evil nature, and fancied that
Armstrong's (if it were his) profession of forgiveness had been genuine.
Very likely Mrs. Calbot habitually wore it on her bosom, as Miss
Burleigh did again yesterday, more than a century later. The persecutor
must have been a devil incarnate, from the time he learnt his lady's
faithlessness until his death; and after that----"
"A plain devil. But to come to the point, you think that the locket was
the sole medium of his power over them?"
"Undoubtedly. Then, after their death, it remained in the family, but
never happened to be used again: it is not a jewel to catch the eye by
any means. It remained perdu until you fished it out for Miss Burleigh,
and thereby stirred up the old hobgoblin to play his devilish tricks
once more. But by a lucky combination of accidents you parted with her
in time; she returned you the locket, thus freeing _herself_ from the
spectre; and you, by throwing it in the Thames, have secured him against
ever being able to make his appearance again."
"It may be so, Drayton," cried Calbot in great excitement. "I remember,
too, that when I gave her the locket she promised fealty _to the giver_!
Now, in fact, not I but this cursed Armstrong was the real giver; and
so Edna was actually surrendering herself to his power. But, supposing
your explanation correct, why may not Edna and I come together again?"
"Well, my dear fellow," replied I, as I lit another Cabana, "unless you
have acquired a very decided aversion to each other during the last few
hours, I really don't see why you shouldn't."
"Drayton, I'm afraid to believe this true! Tell me how you came upon
your evidence, and what degree of reliance may be placed upon it."
I told him briefly about the MS., and added the conviction (at which I
had arrived during his narrative) that it must have been sent to me by
my former friend, Armstrong's executor; and probably comprised the very
papers which I had made an ineffectual attempt to secure at the auction
sale. "The only lame point about the matter," I added, "is, that the
MS. is wholly anonymous. All the names are blanks, and though I have no
doubt, now, that they are Armstrong, Burleigh, and Calbot, there is no
direct proof of it."