The tale of “The Phantom Foot-steps” is still whispered with awe and
loathing among the people of that decayed but genteel district of London
known to those who live in it as Belgravia and to others as Pimlico.
Julia and Geraldine Biggot-Baggot were twin sisters who lived with their
father, a widower, in a town in Lancashire called Wigan, or it may have
been called Bolton. The tale finds Julia and Geraldine in their
nineteenth year, and it also finds them in a very bad temper, for they
were yearning for a more spacious life than can be found in Wigan, or it
might be Bolton. This yearning their neighbours found all the more
inexplicable since the parents of the girls were of Lancashire stock,
their mother having been a Biggot from Wigan and their father a Baggot
from Bolton.
The reader can imagine with what excess of gaiety Julia and Geraldine
heard one day from their father that he had inherited a considerable
property from a distant relation; and the reader can go on imagining the
exaltation of the girls when they heard that the property included a
mansion in Belgravia, since that for which they had always yearned most
was to enjoy, from a central situation, the glittering life of the
metropolis.
Their father preceded them from Wigan, or was it Bolton? He was a man of
a tidy disposition, and wished to see that everything in the Belgravia
house was ready against his daughters’ arrival. When Julia and Geraldine
did arrive, however, they were admitted by a genial old person of
repellent aspect and disagreeable odour, who informed them that she was
doing a bit of charing about the house but would be gone by the evening.
Their father, she added, had gone into the country to engage servants,
but would be back the next day; and he had instructed her to tell Julia
and Geraldine not to be nervous of sleeping alone in a strange house,
that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that he would, anyhow, be
with them first thing in the morning.
Now Julia and Geraldine, though twins, were of vastly different
temperaments; for whereas Julia was a girl of gay and indomitable spirit
who knew not fear, Geraldine suffered from agonies of timidity and knew
nothing else. When, for instance, night fell and found them alone in
the house, Julia could scarcely contain her delight at the adventure;
while it was with difficulty that Geraldine could support the tremors
that shook her girlish frame.
Imagine, then, how differently they were affected when, as they lay in
bed in their room towards the top of the house, they distinctly heard
from far below a noise, as of someone moving. Julia sat up in bed,
intent, unafraid, curious. Geraldine swooned.
“It’s only a cat,” Julia whispered. “I’m going down to see.”
“Don’t!” sighed Geraldine. “For pity’s _sake_ don’t leave me, Julia!”
“Oh, don’t be so childish!” snapped Julia. “Whenever there’s the chance
of the least bit of fun you get shivers down your spine. But as you are
so frightened I will lock the door from the outside and take the key
with me, so that no one can get in when I am not looking. Oh, I hope
it’s a burglar! I’ll give him the fright of his life, see if I don’t.”
And the indomitable girl went, feeling her way to the door in darkness,
for to have switched on the light would have been to warn the intruder,
if there was one, that the house was inhabited: whereas it was the
plucky girl’s conceit to turn the tables on the burglar, if there was
one, by suddenly appearing to him as an avenging phantom: for having
done not a little district-visiting in Wigan or, possibly, Bolton, no
one knew better than Julia of the depths of base superstition among the
vulgar.
A little calmed by her sister’s nonchalance, Geraldine lay still as a
mouse in the darkness, with her pretty head beneath the bedclothes. From
without came not a sound, and the very stillness of the house had
impelled Geraldine to a new access of terror had she not concentrated on
the works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, which tell of the grit of the English
people.
Then, as though to test the grit of the English people in the most
abominable way, came a dull noise from below. Geraldine restrained a
scream, lay breathless in the darkness. The dull noise, however, was not
repeated, and presently Geraldine grew a little calmer, thinking that
maybe her sister had dropped a slipper or something of the sort. But the
reader can imagine into what terror the poor girl had been plunged had
she been a student of the detective novels of the day, for then she must
instantly have recognised the dull noise as a dull thud, and can a dull
thud mean but one thing?
It was as she was praying a prayer to Our Lady that her ears grew aware
of footsteps ascending the stairs. Her first feeling was one of infinite
relief. Of course Julia had been right, and there had been nothing
downstairs but a cat or, perhaps, a dog. And now Julia was returning,
and in a second they would have a good laugh together. Indeed, it was
all Geraldine could do to restrain herself from jumping out of bed to
meet her sister, when she was assailed by a terrible doubt; and on the
instant her mind grew so charged with fear that she could no longer hold
back her sobs. Suppose it was not Julia ascending! Suppose----“Oh,
God!” sobbed Geraldine.
Transfixed with terror, yet hopeful of the best, the poor girl could not
even command herself to reinsert her head beneath the sheets. And always
the ascending steps came nearer. As they approached the door, she
thought she would die of uncertainty. But as the key was fitted into the
lock she drew a deep breath of relief--to be at once shaken by the most
acute agony of doubt, so that she had given anything in the world to be
back again in Wigan or, even better, Bolton.
“Julia!” she sobbed. “Julia!”
For the door had opened, the footsteps were in the room, and Geraldine
thought she recognised her sister’s maidenly tread. But why did Julia
not speak, why this intolerable silence? Geraldine, peer as hard as she
might, could make out nothing in the darkness. The footsteps seemed to
fumble in their direction, but came always nearer to the bed, in which
poor Geraldine lay more dead than alive. Oh, why did Julia not speak,
just to reassure her?
“Julia!” sobbed Geraldine. “Julia!”
The footsteps seemed to fumble about the floor with an indecision
maddening to Geraldine’s distraught nerves. But at last they came beside
the bed--and there they stood! In the awful silence Geraldine could hear
her heart beating like a hammer on a bell.
“Oh!” the poor girl screamed. “What is it, Julia? Why don’t you speak?”
But never a sound nor a word gave back the livid silence, never a sigh
nor a breath, though Julia must be standing within a yard of the bed.
“Oh, she is only trying to frighten me, the beast!” poor Geraldine
thought; and, unable for another second to bear the cruel silence, she
timidly stretched out a hand to touch her sister--when, to her infinite
relief, her fingers touched the white rabbit fur with which Julia’s
dressing-gown was delicately trimmed.
“You beast, Julia!” she sobbed and laughed. Never a word, however, came
from the still shape. Geraldine, impatient of the continuation of a joke
which seemed to her in the worst of taste, raised her hand from the fur,
that she might touch her sister’s face; but her fingers had risen no
further than Julia’s throat when they touched something wet and warm,
and with a scream of indescribable terror Geraldine fainted away.
When Mr. Biggot-Baggot admitted himself into the house early the next
morning, his eyes were assailed by a dreadful sight. At the foot of the
stairs was a pool of blood, from which, in a loathsome trail, drops of
blood wound up the stairway.
Mr. Biggot-Baggot, fearful lest something out-of-the-way had happened to
his beloved daughters, rushed frantically up the stairs. The trail of
blood led to his daughters’ room; and there, in the doorway, the poor
gentleman stood appalled, so foul was the sight that met his eyes. His
beloved Geraldine lay on the bed, her hair snow-white, her lips raving
with the shrill fancies of a maniac. While on the floor beside the bed
lay stretched, in a pool of blood, his beloved Julia, her head
half-severed from her trunk.
The tragic story unfolded only when the police arrived. It then became
clear that Julia, her head half-severed from her body, and therefore a
corpse, had yet, with indomitable purpose, come upstairs to warn her
timid sister against the homicidal lunatic who, just escaped from an
Asylum nearby, had penetrated into the house. However, the police
consoled the distracted father not a little by pointing out that the
escape of the homicidal lunatic from the Asylum had done some good,
insomuch as there would now be room in an Asylum near her home for
Geraldine.