I was in the library, waiting to receive Mr. Harringford. A bright fire
blazed on the hearth, the table was strewn with papers Munro had brought
to me from the office, the gas was all ablaze, and the room looked
bright and cheerful--as bright and as cheerful as if no ghost had been
ever heard of in connection with it.
At a few minutes past nine my visitor arrived. Mrs. Stott ushered him
into the library, and he entered the room evidently intending to shake
hands with me, which civility I affected not to notice.
After the first words of greeting were exchanged, I asked if he would
have tea, or coffee, or wine; and finding he rejected all offers of
refreshment, I rang the bell and told Mrs. Stott I could dispense with
her attendance for the night.
"Do you mean to tell me you stay in this house entirely alone?" asked
my visitor.
"Until Mrs. Stott came I was quite alone," I answered.
"I would not have done it for any consideration," he remarked.
"Possibly not," I replied. "People are differently constituted."
It was not long before we got to business. His offer of twelve hundred
pounds I pooh-poohed as ridiculous.
"Well," he said--by this time I knew I had a keen man of business to
deal with--"put the place up to auction, and see whether you will
get as much."
"There are two, or rather, three ways of dealing with the property,
which have occurred to me, Mr. Harringford," I explained. "One is
letting or selling this house for a reformatory, or school. Ghosts in
that case won't trouble the inmates, we may be quite certain; another is
utilizing the buildings for a manufactory; and the third is laying the
ground out for building purposes, thus--"
As I spoke, I laid before him a plan for a tri-sided square of building,
the south side being formed by the river. I had taken great pains with
the drawing of this plan: the future houses, the future square, the
future river-walk with seats at intervals, were all to be found in the
roll which I unfolded and laid before him, and the effect my sketch
produced surprised me.
"In Heaven's name, Mr. Patterson," he asked, "where did you get this?
You never drew it out of your own head!"
I hastened to assure him I had certainly not got it out of any other
person's head; but he smiled incredulously.
"Probably," he suggested, "Mr. Elmsdale left some such sketch behind
him--something, at all events, which suggested the idea to you."
"If he did, I never saw nor heard of it," I answered.
"You may have forgotten the circumstance," he persisted; "but I feel
confident you must have seen something like this before. Perhaps amongst
the papers in Mr. Craven's office."
"May I inquire why you have formed such an opinion?" I said, a
little stiffly.
"Simply because this tri-sided square was a favourite project of the
late owner of River Hall," he replied. "After the death of his wife,
the place grew distasteful to him, and I have often heard him say he
would convert the ground into one of the handsomest squares in the
neighbourhood of London. All he wanted was a piece of additional
land lying to the west, which piece is, I believe, now to be had at
a price--"
I sat like one stricken dumb. By no mental process, for which I could
ever account, had that idea been evolved. It sprang into life at a
bound. It came to me in my sleep, and I wakened at once with the whole
plan clear and distinct before my mind's eye, as it now lay clear and
distinct before Mr. Harringford.
"It is very extraordinary," I managed at last to stammer out; "for I can
honestly say I never heard even a suggestion of Mr. Elmsdale's design;
indeed, I did not know he had ever thought of building upon the ground."
"Such was the fact, however," replied my visitor. "He was a speculative
man in many ways. Yes, very speculative, and full of plans and projects.
However, Mr. Patterson," he proceeded, "all this only proves the truth
of the old remark, that 'great wits and little wits sometimes jump
together.'"
There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice, as in his words, but I did not
give much heed to it. The design, then, was not mine. It had come to me
in sleep, it had been forced upon me, it had been explained to me in a
word, and as I asked myself, By whom? I was unable to repress a shudder.
"You are not well, I fear," said Mr. Harringford; "this place seems to
have affected your health. Surely you have acted imprudently in risking
so much to gain so little."
"I do not agree with you," I replied. "However, time will show whether I
have been right or wrong in coming here. I have learned many things of
which I was previously in ignorance, and I think I hold a clue in my
hands which, properly followed, may lead me to the hidden mystery of
River Hall."
"Indeed!" he exclaimed. "May I ask the nature of that clue?"
"It would be premature for me to say more than this, that I am inclined
to doubt whether Mr. Elmsdale committed suicide."
"Do you think his death was the result of accident, then?" he inquired,
his face blanching to a ghastly whiteness.
"No, I do not," I answered, bluntly. "But my thoughts can have little
interest for anyone, at present. What we want to talk about is the sale
and purchase of this place. The offer you made to Mr. Craven, I consider
ridiculous. Let on building lease, the land alone would bring in a
handsome income, and the house ought to sell for about as much as you
offer for the whole property."
"Perhaps it might, if you could find a purchaser," he answered; "and the
land might return an income, if you could let it as you suggest; but, in
the meantime, while the grass grows, the steed starves; and while you
are waiting for your buyer and your speculative builder, Miss Blake and
Miss Elmsdale will have to walk barefoot, waiting for shoes you may
never be able to provide for them."
There was truth in this, but only a half-truth, I felt, so I said:
"When examined at the inquest, Mr. Harringford, you stated, I think,
that you were under considerable obligations to Mr. Elmsdale?"
"Did I?" he remarked. "Possibly, he had given me a helping-hand
once or twice, and probably I mentioned the fact. It is a long time
ago, though."
"Not so very long," I answered; "not long enough, I should imagine, to
enable you to forget any benefits you may have received from Mr.
Elmsdale."
"Mr. Patterson," he interrupted, "are we talking business or sentiment?
If the former, please understand I have my own interests to attend to,
and that I mean to attend to them. If the latter, I am willing, if you
say Miss Elmsdale has pressing need for the money, to send her my cheque
for fifty or a hundred pounds. Charity is one thing, trade another, and
I do not care to mix them. I should never have attained to my present
position, had I allowed fine feelings to interfere with the driving of a
bargain. I don't want River Hall. I would not give that," and he snapped
his fingers, "to have the title-deeds in my hands to-morrow; but as Miss
Elmsdale wishes to sell, and as no one else will buy, I offer what I
consider a fair price for the place. If you think you can do better,
well and good. If--"
He stopped suddenly in his sentence, then rising, he cried, "It is a
trick--a vile, infamous, disgraceful trick!" while his utterance grew
thick, and his face began to work like that of a person in convulsions.
"What do you mean?" I asked, rising also, and turning to look in the
direction he indicated with outstretched arm and dilated eyes.
Then I saw--no need for him to answer. Standing in the entrance to the
strong room was Robert Elmsdale himself, darkness for a background, the
light of the gas falling full upon his face.
Slowly, sternly, he came forward, step by step. With footfalls that
fell noiselessly, he advanced across the carpet, moving steadily
forward towards Mr. Harringford, who, beating the air with his hands,
screamed, "Keep him off! don't let him touch me!" and fell full length
on the floor.
Next instant, Munro was in the room. "Hullo, what is the matter?" he
asked. "What have you done to him--what has he been doing to you?"
I could not answer. Looking in my face, I think Munro understood we had
both seen that which no man can behold unappalled.
"Come, Hal," he said, "bestir yourself. Whatever has happened, don't
sink under it like a woman. Help me to lift him. Merciful Heaven!" he
added, as he raised the prostrate figure. "He is dead!"
To this hour, I do not know how we managed to carry him into the
drawing-room. I cannot imagine how our trembling hands bore that inert
body out of the library and across the hall. It seems like a dream to me
calling up Mrs. Stott, and then tearing away from the house in quest of
further medical help, haunted, every step I took, by the memory of that
awful presence, the mere sight of which had stricken down one of us in
the midst of his buying, and bargaining, and boasting.
I had done it--I had raised that ghost--I had brought the man to his
death; and as I fled through the night, innocent as I had been of the
thought of such a catastrophe, I understood what Cain must have felt
when he went out to live his life with the brand of murderer upon him.
But the man was not dead; though he lay for hours like one from whom
life had departed, he did not die then. We had all the genius, and
knowledge, and skill of London at his service. If doctors could have
saved him, he had lived. If nursing could have availed him, he had
recovered, for I never left him.
When the end came I was almost worn out myself.
And the end came very soon.
"No more doctors," whispered the sick man; "they cannot cure me. Send
for a clergyman, and a lawyer, Mr. Craven as well as any other. It is
all over now; and better so; life is but a long fever. Perhaps he will
sleep now, and let me sleep too. Yes, I killed him. Why, I will tell
you. Give me some wine.
"What I said at the inquest about owing my worldly prosperity to him was
true. I trace my pecuniary success to Mr. Elmsdale; but I trace also
hours, months, and years of anguish to his agency. My God! the nights
that man has made me spend when he was living, the nights I have spent
in consequence of his death--"
He stopped; he had mentally gone back over a long journey. He was
retracing the road he had travelled, from youth to old age. For he was
old, if not in years, in sorrow. Lying on his death-bed, he understood
for what a game he had burnt his candle to the socket; comprehended how
the agony, and the suspense, and the suffering, and the long, long fever
of life, which with him never knew a remittent moment, had robbed him of
that which every man has a right to expect, some pleasure in the course
of his existence.
"When I first met Elmsdale," he went on, "I was a young man, and an
ambitious one. I was a clerk in the City. I had been married a couple of
years to a wife I loved dearly. She was possessed of only a small dot;
and after furnishing our house, and paying for all the expenses incident
on the coming of a first child, we thought ourselves fortunate in
knowing there was still a deposit standing in our name at the
Joint-Stock Bank, for something over two hundred pounds.
"Nevertheless, I was anxious. So far, we had lived within our income;
but with an annual advance of salary only amounting to ten pounds, or
thereabouts, I did not see how we were to manage when more children
came, particularly as the cost of living increased day by day. It was a
dear year that of which I am speaking.
"I do not precisely remember on what occasion it was I first saw Mr.
Elmsdale; but I knew afterwards he picked me out as a person likely to
be useful to him.
"He was on good terms with my employers, and asked them to allow me to
bid for some houses he wanted to purchase at a sale.
"To this hour I do not know why he did not bid for them himself. He gave
me a five-pound note for my services; and that was the beginning of our
connection. Off and on, I did many things for him of one sort or
another, and made rather a nice addition to my salary out of doing them,
till the devil, or he, or both, put it into my head to start as builder
and speculator on my own account.
"I had two hundred pounds and my furniture: that was the whole of my
capital; but Elmsdale found me money. I thought my fortune was made, the
day he advanced me my first five hundred pounds. If I had known--if I
had known--"
"Don't talk any more," I entreated. "What can it avail to speak of such
matters now?"
He turned towards me impatiently.
"Not talk," he repeated, "when I have for years been as one dumb,
and at length the string of my tongue is loosened! Not talk, when,
if I keep silence now, he will haunt me in eternity, as he has
haunted me in time!"
I did not answer, I only moistened his parched lips, and bathed his
burning forehead as tenderly as my unaccustomed hands understood how to
perform such offices.
"Lift me up a little, please," he said; and I put the pillows in
position as deftly as I could.
"You are not a bad fellow," he remarked, "but I am not going to leave
you anything."
"God forbid!" I exclaimed, involuntarily.
"Are not you in want of money?" he asked.
"Not of yours," I answered.
"Mine," he said; "it is not mine, it is his. He thought a great deal of
money, and he has come back for it. He can't rest, and he won't let me
rest till I have paid him principal and interest--compound interest.
Yes--well, I am able to do even that."
We sat silent for a few minutes, then he spoke again.
"When I first went into business with my borrowed capital, nothing I
touched really succeeded. I found myself going back--back. Far better
was my position as clerk; then at least I slept sound at nights, and
relished my meals. But I had tasted of so-called independence, and I
could not go back to be at the beck and call of an employer. Ah! no
employer ever made me work so hard as Mr. Elmsdale; no beck and call
were ever so imperative as his.
"I pass over a long time of anxiety, struggle, and hardship. The world
thought me a prosperous man; probably no human being, save Mr. Elmsdale,
understood my real position, and he made my position almost unendurable.
"How I came first to bet on races, would be a long story, longer than I
have time to tell; but my betting began upon a very small scale, and I
always won--always in the beginning. I won so certainly and so
continuously, that finally I began to hope for deliverance from Mr.
Elmsdale's clutches.
"I don't know how"--the narrative was not recited straight on as I am
writing it, but by starts, as strength served him--"Mr. Elmsdale
ascertained I was devoting myself to the turf: all I can say is, he did
ascertain the fact, and followed me down to Ascot to make sure there was
no mistake in his information.
"At the previous Derby my luck had begun to turn. I had lost then--lost
heavily for me, and he taxed me with having done so.
"In equity, and at law, he had then the power of foreclosing on every
house and rood of ground I owned. I was in his power--in the power of
Robert Elmsdale. Think of it--. But you never knew him. Young man, you
ought to kneel down and thank God you were never so placed as to be in
the power of such a devil--
"If ever you should get into the power of a man like Robert Elmsdale,
don't offend him. It is bad enough to owe him money; but it is worse for
him to owe you a grudge. I had offended him. He was always worrying me
about his wife--lamenting her ill-health, extolling her beauty,
glorifying himself on having married a woman of birth and breeding; just
as if his were the only wife in the world, as if other men had not at
home women twice as good, if not as handsome as Miss Blake's sister.
"Under Miss Blake's insolence I had writhed; and once, when my usual
prudence deserted me, I told Mr. Elmsdale I had been in Ireland and seen
the paternal Blake's ancestral cabin, and ascertained none of the family
had ever mixed amongst the upper thousand, or whatever the number may be
which goes to make up society in the Isle of Saints.
"It was foolish, and it was wrong; but I could not help saying what I
did, and from that hour he was my enemy. Hitherto, he had merely been my
creditor. My own imprudent speech transformed him into a man lying in
wait to ruin me.
"He bided his time. He was a man who could wait for years before he
struck, but who would never strike till he could make sure of inflicting
a mortal wound. He drew me into his power more and more, and then he
told me he did not intend to continue trusting anyone who betted--that
he must have his money. If he had not it by a certain date, which he
named, he would foreclose.
"That meant he would beggar me, and I with an ailing wife and a
large family!
"I appealed to him. I don't remember now what I said, but I do recollect
I might as well have talked to stone.
"What I endured during the time which followed, I could not describe,
were I to talk for ever. Till a man in extremity tries to raise money,
he never understands the difficulty of doing so. I had been short of
money every hour since I first engaged in business, and yet I never
comprehended the meaning of a dead-lock till then.
"One day, in the City, when I was almost mad with anxiety, I met
Mr. Elmsdale.
"'Shall you be ready for me, Harringford?' he asked.
"'I do not know--I hope so,' I answered.
"'Well, remember, if you are not prepared with the money, I shall be
prepared to act,' he said, with an evil smile.
"As I walked home that evening, an idea flashed into my mind. I had
tried all honest means of raising the money; I would try dishonest. My
credit was good. I had large transactions with first-rate houses. I was
in the habit of discounting largely, and I--well, I signed names to
paper that I ought not to have done. I had the bills put through. I had
four months and three days in which to turn round, and I might, by that
time, be able to raise sufficient to retire the acceptances.
"In the meantime, I could face Mr. Elmsdale, and so I wrote, appointing
an evening when I would call with the money, and take his release for
all claims upon me.
"When I arrived at River Hall he had all the necessary documents ready,
but refused to give them up in exchange for my cheque.
"He could not trust me, he said, and he had, moreover, no banking
account. If I liked to bring the amount in notes, well and good; if not,
he would instruct his solicitors.
"The next day I had important business to attend to, so a stormy
interview ended in my writing 'pay cash' on the cheque, and his
consenting to take it to my bankers himself.
"My business on the following day, which happened to be out of town,
detained me much longer than I anticipated, and it was late before I
could reach River Hall. Late though it was, however, I determined to go
after my papers. I held Mr. Elmsdale's receipt for the cheque,
certainly; but I knew I had not an hour to lose in putting matters in
train for another loan, if I was to retire the forged acceptances. By
experience, I knew how the months slipped away when money had to be
provided at the end of them, and I was feverishly anxious to hold my
leases and title-deeds once more.
"I arrived at the door leading to the library. Mr. Elmsdale opened it as
wide as the chain would permit, and asked who was there. I told him,
and, grumbling a little at the unconscionable hour at which I had
elected to pay my visit, he admitted me.
"He was out of temper. He had hoped and expected, I knew, to find
payment of the cheque refused, and he could not submit with equanimity
to seeing me slip out of his hands.
"Evidently, he did not expect me to come that night, for his table was
strewed with deeds and notes, which he had been reckoning up, no doubt,
as a miser counts his gold.
"A pair of pistols lay beside his desk--close to my hand, as I took the
seat he indicated.
"We talked long and bitterly. It does not matter now what he said or I
said. We fenced round and about a quarrel during the whole interview. I
was meek, because I wanted him to let me have part of the money at all
events on loan again; and he was blatant and insolent because he fancied
I cringed to him--and I did cringe.
"I prayed for help that night from Man as I have never since prayed for
help from God.
"You are still young, Mr. Patterson, and life, as yet, is new to you, or
else I would ask whether, in going into an entirely strange office, you
have not, if agitated in mind, picked up from the table a letter or
card, and kept twisting it about, utterly unconscious for the time being
of the social solecism you were committing.
"In precisely the same spirit--God is my witness, as I am a dying man,
with no object to serve in speaking falsehoods--while we talked, I took
up one of the pistols and commenced handling it.
"'Take care,' he said; 'that is loaded'; hearing which I laid it
down again.
"For a time we went on talking; he trying to ascertain how I had
obtained the money, I striving to mislead him.
"'Come, Mr. Elmsdale,' I remarked at last, 'you see I have been able to
raise the money; now be friendly, and consent to advance me a few
thousands, at a fair rate, on a property I am negotiating for. There is
no occasion, surely, for us to quarrel, after all the years we have done
business together. Say you will give me a helping-hand once more, and--'
"Then he interrupted me, and swore, with a great oath, he would never
have another transaction with me.
"'Though you have paid _me_,' he said, 'I know you are hopelessly
insolvent. I cannot tell where or how you have managed to raise that
money, but certain am I it has been by deceiving some one; and so sure
as I stand here I will know all about the transaction within a month.'
"While we talked, he had been, at intervals, passing to and from his
strong room, putting away the notes and papers previously lying about on
the table; and, as he made this last observation, he was standing just
within the door, placing something on the shelf.
"'It is of no use talking to me any more,' he went on. 'If you talked
from now to eternity you could not alter my decision. There are your
deeds; take them, and never let me see you in my house again.'
"He came out of the darkness into the light at that moment, looking
burly, and insolent, and braggart, as was his wont.
"Something in his face, in the tone of his voice, in the vulgar
assumption of his manner, maddened me. I do not know, I have never been
able to tell, what made me long at that moment to kill him--but I did
long. With an impulse I could not resist, I rose as he returned towards
the table, and snatching a pistol from the table--fired.
"Before he could realize my intention, the bullet was in his brain. He
was dead, and I a murderer.
"You can understand pretty well what followed. I ran into the passage
and opened the door; then, finding no one seemed to have heard the
report of the pistol, my senses came back to me. I was not sorry for
what I had done. All I cared for was to avert suspicion from myself, and
to secure some advantage from his death.
"Stealing back into the room, I took all the money I could find, as well
as deeds and other securities. These last I destroyed next day, and in
doing so I felt a savage satisfaction.
"He would have served them the same as me,' I thought. All the rest you
know pretty well.
"From the hour I left him lying dead in the library every worldly plan
prospered with me. If I invested in land, it trebled in value. Did I
speculate in houses, they were sought after as investments. I grew rich,
respected, a man of standing. I had sold my soul to the devil, and he
paid me even higher wages than those for which I engaged--but there was
a balance.
"One after another, wife and children died; and while my heart was
breaking by reason of my home left desolate, there came to me the first
rumour of this place being haunted.
"I would not believe it--I did not--I fought against the truth as men
fight with despair.
"I used to come here at night and wander as near to the house as I
safely could. The place dogged me, sleeping and waking. That library was
an ever-present memory. I have sat in my lonely rooms till I could
endure the horrors of imagination no longer, and been forced to come
from London that I might look at this terrible house, with the silent
river flowing sullenly past its desolate gardens.
"Life seemed ebbing away from me. I saw that day by day the blood left
my cheeks. I looked at my hands, and beheld they were becoming like
those of some one very aged. My lameness grew perceptible to others as
well as to me, and I could distinguish, as I walked in the sunshine, the
shadow my figure threw was that of one deformed. I grew weak, and worn,
and tired, yet I never thoroughly lost heart till I knew you had come
here to unravel the secret.
"'And it will be revealed to him,' I thought, 'if I do not kill him
too.'
"You have been within an ace of death often and often since you set
yourself this task, but at the last instant my heart always failed me.
"Well, you are to live, and I to die. It was to be so, I suppose; but
you will never be nearer your last moment, till you lie a corpse, than
you have been twice, at any rate."
Then I understood how accurately Munro had judged when he warned me to
be on my guard against this man--now harmless and dying, but so recently
desperate and all-powerful for evil; and as I recalled the nights I had
spent in that desolate house, I shivered.
Even now, though the years have come and the years have gone since I
kept my lonely watch in River Hall, I start sometimes from sleep with a
great horror of darkness upon me, and a feeling that stealthily some one
is creeping through the silence to take my life!