Hutchinson Hatch, reporter, stood beside the City Editor's desk,
smoking and waiting patiently for that energetic gentleman to dispose
of several matters in hand. City Editors always have several matters
in hand, for the profession of keeping count of the pulse-beat of the
world is a busy one. Finally this City Editor emerged from a mass of
other things and picked up a sheet of paper on which he had scribbled
some strange hieroglyphics, these representing his interpretation of
the art of writing.
"Afraid of ghosts?" he asked.
"Don't know," Hatch replied, smiling a little. "I never happened to
meet one."
"Well, this looks like a good story," the City Editor explained. "It's
a haunted house. Nobody can live in it; all sorts of strange
happenings, demoniacal laughter, groans and things. House is owned by
Ernest Weston, a broker. Better jump down and take a look at it. If it
is promising, you might spend a night in it for a Sunday story. Not
afraid, are you?"
"I never heard of a ghost hurting anyone," Hatch replied, still
smiling a little. "If this one hurts me it will make the story
better."
Thus attention was attracted to the latest creepy mystery of a small
town by the sea which in the past had not been wholly lacking in
creepy mysteries.
Within two hours Hatch was there. He readily found the old Weston
house, as it was known, a two-story, solidly built frame structure,
which had stood for sixty or seventy years high upon a cliff
overlooking the sea, in the center of a land plot of ten or twelve
acres. From a distance it was imposing, but close inspection showed
that, outwardly, at least, it was a ramshackle affair.
Without having questioned anyone in the village, Hatch climbed the
steep cliff road to the old house, expecting to find some one who
might grant him permission to inspect it. But no one appeared; a
settled melancholy and gloom seemed to overspread it; all the shutters
were closed forbiddingly.
There was no answer to his vigorous knock on the front door, and he
shook the shutters on a window without result. Then he passed around
the house to the back. Here he found a door and dutifully hammered on
it. Still no answer. He tried it, and passed in. He stood in the
kitchen, damp, chilly and darkened by the closed shutters.
One glance about this room and he went on through a back hall to the
dining-room, now deserted, but at one time a comfortable and
handsomely furnished place. Its hardwood floor was covered with dust;
the chill of disuse was all-pervading. There was no furniture, only
the litter which accumulates of its own accord.
From this point, just inside the dining-room door, Hatch began a sort
of study of the inside architecture of the place. To his left was a
door, the butler's pantry. There was a passage through, down three
steps into the kitchen he had just left.
Straight before him, set in the wall, between two windows, was a large
mirror, seven, possibly eight, feet tall and proportionately wide. A
mirror of the same size was set in the wall at the end of the room to
his left. From the dining-room he passed through a wide archway into
the next room. This archway made the two rooms almost as one. This
second, he presumed, had been a sort of living-room, but here, too,
was nothing save accumulated litter, an old-fashioned fireplace and
two long mirrors. As he entered, the fireplace was to his immediate
left, one of the large mirrors was straight ahead of him and the other
was to his right.
Next to the mirror in the end was a passageway of a little more than
usual size which had once been closed with a sliding door. Hatch went
through this into the reception-hall of the old house. Here, to his
right, was the main hall, connected with the reception-hall by an
archway, and through this archway he could see a wide, old-fashioned
stairway leading up. To his left was a door, of ordinary size, closed.
He tried it and it opened. He peered into a big room beyond. This room
had been the library. It smelled of books and damp wood. There was
nothing here--not even mirrors.
Beyond the main hall lay only two rooms, one a drawing-room of the
generous proportions our old folks loved, with its gilt all tarnished
and its fancy decorations covered with dust. Behind this, toward the
back of the house, was a small parlor. There was nothing here to
attract his attention, and he went upstairs. As he went he could see
through the archway into the reception-hall as far as the library
door, which he had left closed.
Upstairs were four or five roomy suites. Here, too, in small rooms
designed for dressing, he saw the owner's passion for mirrors again.
As he passed through room after room he fixed the general arrangement
of it all in his mind, and later on paper, to study it, so that, if
necessary, he could leave any part of the house in the dark. He didn't
know but what this might be necessary, hence his care--the same care
he had evidenced downstairs.
After another casual examination of the lower floor, Hatch went out
the back way to the barn. This stood a couple of hundred feet back of
the house and was of more recent construction. Above, reached by
outside stairs, were apartments intended for the servants. Hatch
looked over these rooms, but they, too, had the appearance of not
having been occupied for several years. The lower part of the barn, he
found, was arranged to house half a dozen horses and three or four
traps.
"Nothing here to frighten anybody," was his mental comment as he left
the old place and started back toward the village. It was three
o'clock in the afternoon. His purpose was to learn then all he could
of the "ghost," and return that night for developments.
He sought out the usual village bureau of information, the town
constable, a grizzled old chap of sixty years, who realized his
importance as the whole police department, and who had the gossip and
information, more or less distorted, of several generations at his
tongue's end.
The old man talked for two hours--he was glad to talk--seemed to have
been longing for just such a glorious opportunity as the reporter
offered. Hatch sifted out what he wanted, those things which might be
valuable in his story.
It seemed, according to the constable, that the Weston house had not
been occupied for five years, since the death of the father of Ernest
Weston, present owner. Two weeks before the reporter's appearance
there Ernest Weston had come down with a contractor and looked over
the old place.
"We understand here," said the constable, judicially, "that Mr. Weston
is going to be married soon, and we kind of thought he was having the
house made ready for his Summer home again."
"Whom do you understand he is to marry?" asked Hatch, for this was
news.
"Miss Katherine Everard, daughter of Curtis Everard, a banker up in
Boston," was the reply. "I know he used to go around with her before
the old man died, and they say since she came out in Newport he has
spent a lot of time with her."
"Oh, I see," said Hatch. "They were to marry and come here?"
"That's right," said the constable. "But I don't know when, since this
ghost story has come up."
"Oh, yes, the ghost," remarked Hatch. "Well, hasn't the work of
repairing begun?"
"No, not inside," was the reply. "There's been some work done on the
grounds--in the daytime--but not much of that, and I kind of think it
will be a long time before it's all done."
"What is the spook story, anyway?"
"Well," and the old constable rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It seems
sort of funny. A few days after Mr. Weston was down here a gang of
laborers, mostly Italians, came down to work and decided to sleep in
the house--sort of camp out--until they could repair a leak in the
barn and move in there. They got here late in the afternoon and didn't
do much that day but move into the house, all upstairs, and sort of
settle down for the night. About one o'clock they heard some sort of
noise downstairs, and finally all sorts of a racket and groans and
yells, and they just naturally came down to see what it was.
"Then they saw the ghost. It was in the reception-hall, some of 'em
said, others said it was in the library, but anyhow it was there, and
the whole gang left just as fast as they knew how. They slept on the
ground that night. Next day they took out their things and went back
to Boston. Since then nobody here has heard from 'em."
"What sort of a ghost was it?"
"Oh, it was a man ghost, about nine feet high, and he was blazing from
head to foot as if he was burning up," said the constable. "He had a
long knife in his hand and waved it at 'em. They didn't stop to argue.
They ran, and as they ran they heard the ghost a-laughing at them."
"I should think he would have been amused," was Hatch's somewhat
sarcastic comment. "Has anybody who lives in the village seen the
ghost?"
"No; we're willing to take their word for it, I suppose," was the
grinning reply, "because there never was a ghost there before. I go up
and look over the place every afternoon, but everything seems to be
all right, and I haven't gone there at night. It's quite a way off my
beat," he hastened to explain.
"A man ghost with a long knife," mused Hatch. "Blazing, seems to be
burning up, eh? That sounds exciting. Now, a ghost who knows his
business never appears except where there has been a murder. Was there
ever a murder in that house?"
"When I was a little chap I heard there was a murder or something
there, but I suppose if I don't remember it nobody else here does,"
was the old man's reply. "It happened one Winter when the Westons
weren't there. There was something, too, about jewelry and diamonds,
but I don't remember just what it was."
"Indeed?" asked the reporter.
"Yes, something about somebody trying to steal a lot of jewelry--a
hundred thousand dollars' worth. I know nobody ever paid much
attention to it. I just heard about it when I was a boy, and that was
at least fifty years ago."
"I see," said the reporter.
* * * * * *
That night at nine o'clock, under cover of perfect blackness, Hatch
climbed the cliff toward the Weston house. At one o'clock he came
racing down the hill, with frequent glances over his shoulder. His
face was pallid with a fear which he had never known before and his
lips were ashen. Once in his room in the village hotel Hutchinson
Hatch, the nerveless young man, lighted a lamp with trembling hands
and sat with wide, staring eyes until the dawn broke through the east.
He had seen the flaming phantom.