THE GHOST OF THREE OAKS APPEARS AGAIN.
For an instant Elijah Callister stood riveted to the floor.
Then, springing forward with a fierce imprecation upon his lips, he
approached the door of the deserted chamber in the direction of which
the ghostly figure of the dead Mrs. Marley had disappeared.
It was firmly locked.
He had himself thus locked it upon their first entrance, not from fear
of intrusion--that was not to be expected in a mansion so utterly given
over to rats and the dust of neglect as this--but from the natural
tendency of a suspicious evil-doer to perform his acts behind barred
doors.
And even as he had left it so remained that great oaken door now.
There had not been sufficient time for the woman, were she living, to
have even turned the key, providing it had been in the lock.
But the key was not in the lock--it snugly reposed at that very moment
in the pocket of the man himself.
Now, Elijah Callister did not believe in ghosts.
Search the length and breadth of New York City over, and in all
probability no less superstitious man than the stock broker himself
could have been found.
He shook the latch fiercely.
It had not been disturbed--there could be no doubt of that.
No other means of entrance to the chamber existed save by one of the
windows, forty feet from the ground, at least.
A strange sense of fear seemed to creep over him--a tightness about the
heart.
There lay his villainous companion stretched senseless upon the floor.
Neither window could have been approached without passing directly by
the place where the man lay, where he himself had stood.
And yet the appearance had been a reality.
The figure of Mrs. Marley had advanced from behind the broken bedstead,
whose high headboard offered an effective shield to the movements of
any object behind it, had moved forward across the room, and retreated
in the direction from whence it came.
Seizing the lantern, Mr. Callister swept its light underneath the bed.
The dust that everywhere filled the room was there plentiful enough,
but that was all.
There were no signs of its having been recently disturbed--it lay in
one unbroken sheet upon the floor.
At that instant a terrific gust of wind swept the rain fiercely against
the panes.
And amid its moaning of the oaks without, and the rattling of the rain
upon the glass, a low, mocking laugh was heard, seemingly from the
floor itself, which sent a chill to the very marrow of his bones.
"This thing must be investigated," muttered the man, striding toward
the fire-place. "Either that woman lives, or--but, pshaw! Don't I know
she is dead? I saw her killed with my own eyes. I know that at this
very moment her body lies waiting identification in the Morgue. There
is some infernal trickery in all this; what it means I must know and
will."
Setting down the lantern by the side of the hearth-stone, he seized the
shoulder of the unconscious man and shook it with all the violence he
could exert.
"Rube, Rube!" he cried, "what ails you, man? For Heaven's sake, stop
this nonsense and try to be something like yourself!"
Slowly the eyes opened and Reuben Tisdale, raising himself to a sitting
posture, looked wildly around.
"Lije, did you see her, or was it only meant for me?"
"See her! Of course I saw her. There's some infernal jugglery going on
in this house, and I propose to find out what it is."
The man shook his head.
"No, no. It was Maria's spirit," he muttered. "I killed her and she
haunts me, and no wonder, in this evil room."
"Well, and what's the matter with this room?"
"Can you ask?" said the man, shudderingly, rising with difficulty to
his feet. "After the crime committed here on this very bed, can you ask
why this room should be evil to me?"
"I don't see what that has to do with it. If that is your mode of
reasoning it ought to be the ghost of old man Mansfield, not of your
wife, that should appear to you here."
Again the man shuddered, glancing at the same time nervously about him.
"I don't know what came over me," he muttered. "I believe I must have
fainted for the first time since I was a boy. Lije, for heaven's sake
let's get out of this. I shall be of no more use to you in this house
to-night."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," replied the stock-broker, decidedly.
"I shan't leave the house until I've searched it from garret to cellar
and found out what this thing means. If it were not that I know that
she is closely confined I might almost think----"
But what Mr. Callister might have almost thought was destined never to
find expression in words, for, at that moment, his companion pressing
his hand to his forehead, reeled heavily forward and would have fallen
again had not the broker caught him in his arms.
"Rube, for Heaven's sake," he exclaimed, "what on earth ails you, man?
One would take you for a nervous woman instead of the man you are from
the way you act. Here, drink this. It will put some heart in you, and
then we'll search this old barn together. If there is a ghost in it,
I'll warrant you I'll have it out."
He passed a whisky flask to the trembling Tisdale, who pressed it to
his lips.
"There, do you feel better?"
"Yes, somewhat, but I'm as weak as a rat still."
"Well, then, come along. I'm bound to see this out."
Striding toward the bedstead, he seized hold of the headboard and tried
to move it out into the center of the room.
Weak and decayed before, this action proved too much for the
dilapidated piece of furniture.
With a loud crash it fell a mass of broken rubbish to the floor,
causing Tisdale to spring back with a startled cry.
"Confound the old trap!" exclaimed Callister. "But one thing is
settled--what we saw is neither under it nor behind it, that is clear.
Where the mischief it could have found means to hide beats me. The door
is locked, and the rest of the room is all clear before us. There is no
place in which a cat could lie concealed."
He flung open the door of the closet as he spoke.
It was empty.
Nothing but a heap of dust met his gaze.
"Come," he said, shortly, picking up the lantern and producing the key
from his pocket; "there are rooms below and above. Let us examine them
all, and see if we can find trace of her ghostship there."
He unlocked the door and led the way out into the deserted hall.
To the right and left opened other doors, connecting with the various
chambers upon the floor.
Opening each in turn, Callister and his companion examined the rooms in
silence.
One was a large guest chamber, containing various articles of antique
furniture; another was a small bedroom, entirely vacant, and another
still a bath-room, filled with rubbish of various kinds.
In neither one nor the other was there the slightest trace of the form
of the woman which had appeared before them, nor evidence that the dust
which covered everything had been disturbed for years.
Nor was their examination of the floor above better rewarded.
Here piles of old lumber were found, broken furniture, boxes, and bales.
Evidently years had passed since this portion of the house had been
occupied. From the appearance presented there could be little doubt
that it had been used for storage purposes by its miserly owner, who
met death by violence on the floor below.
The parlor floor, the kitchen, and even the cellar itself, did not
escape examination.
Equally to no purpose.
Some of the rooms were furnished, others were not.
Everywhere the furnishings were green with mold and sinking rapidly to
decay.
No trace, not even so much as a footprint on the dust-covered floors of
the ghostly visitant was anywhere found.
"It's no use, Lije," said Tisdale, hoarsely, as they paused at length
in the great hall at the foot of the staircase which they had ascended
upon their first entrance to the house. "You may search all night, but
you'll find nothing. It was poor Maria's spirit that we saw."
"Nonsense, Reuben Tisdale! Do you mean to tell me that at your time of
life you are going to give way to a belief in ghosts?"
"I didn't believe in them any more than you until to-night, but, after
what we saw, what is a man to think?"
"I tell you it's a trick. This house has the reputation of being
haunted, brought about by my own nocturnal searches within its walls.
Some one saw us enter, and followed us to give us a scare."
Tisdale shook his head incredulously.
"Absurd," he said, with emphasis. "You saw the thing as well as I. What
did it look like? Answer me that."
"Well, I must admit that it looked like Maria."
"I should say so. Wasn't it her face, her form, her dress? Do you
suppose a man can forget the form of his wife? I tell you no. Not if he
lived to be a thousand years old. Besides, I saw the mark of my fist
upon her forehead, poor girl. Great God, to think that I should have
struck her dead at my feet! She who once loved me more than all else on
earth."
"Rube, you are acting like a perfect child!" exclaimed Callister,
impatiently. "Here we are standing directly upon the verge of a
precipice, as it were, and you give way like this. Detectives are on
our track, man; the capture of Joe Dutton, unless he can be silenced
most effectually, is likely to prove a fatal blow to us, and what we
want is money--money alone will pull us through; without it all my
influence in the business world will go for naught."
"Well, you have money, folks say. Use it--it is as much to your
interest as the rest of us."
"Have I? So you say. Let me tell you, Rube Tisdale, that my stock
operations of the last year have left me a well-nigh ruined man. I
depended upon this bank affair to put me on my feet again. It has
failed. If you had only preserved that parchment more carefully, every
dollar of old Mansfield's wealth would now be within our grasp."
"Oh! stow that!" cried Tisdale, angrily. "What's the use of throwing
all the blame on me? The bank affair proved a failure, didn't it! The
parchment was lost, through my carelessness, I'll admit. Let's face
matters as they are, and make the best of them we can. Come, let's be
off out of this. We can do no more here to-night."
Callister blew out the lantern and opened the door.
"I go," he said, sulkily, "but, mark you, Rube, I shall return again.
In a month's time, under the will of Jeremiah Mansfield, which
fortunately is recorded in the Surrogate's office, even if you did lose
the original, this house and all it contains belongs to me, if I can
only catch that cub of a boy and turn him over to the law. Once in my
possession, I'll raze it to the foundation stones but I'll discover the
secret hidden by its moldering walls."
He slammed the door behind them, and descending the piazza steps,
started down the avenue leading to the Fort Washington road beyond,
regardless of the pelting rain, his companion following without a word.
Hard as it had poured all day long, and now far into the night, not at
any time had the storm assumed such violence as now.
The water fell about them in torrents, the wind swept through the tops
of the tall oak-trees with a wild, unearthly moan.
Now what possessed the man Tisdale to pause before he had advanced ten
paces from the old mansion, and turn to survey its gloomy front once
more, is something we cannot tell.
But turn he did, and simultaneously with the movement there broke from
his lips a wild, unearthly yell.
"Lije! For God's sake! There she is again!"
And Elijah Callister also turned.
From out of the darkness before him there shot a blaze of light.
The door of the old mansion stood wide open.
The piazza, the great hall, and even the staircase beyond, were to be
seen illuminated with the brightness of day.
And there, in the midst of that blaze of light, upon the threshold
of the door itself, stood the form of the dead Mrs. Marley, pale and
rigid, with one thin, white finger pointing directly toward himself and
his frightened companion who with chattering teeth stood trembling by
his side.
For one instant only the apparition maintained its place.
The next, and all was darkness again.
With a loud cry of terror Reuben Tisdale sprang down the avenue, and
was lost from view among the trees, while his companion, now scarcely
less alarmed, hurriedly followed in the direction of the gate.