"Oh, I thought you were the spir--I mean--I--oh, but it was standing
exactly where you are!" she exclaimed.
"I suppose so," I agreed, "but you can see that I am not the young
man's spirit. However, I am familiar with this whole case, madam, and
if I can be of any service in the matter I should be glad if you would
inform me. I am aware that our friend is persecuted by a spirit, which
visits him frequently, and I am positive that through you it has
informed him that the end is not far away, and that our elderly
friend's death will assume some terrible form. Is there anything that I
can do to avert the tragedy?"
The woman stared at me in a horrified silence. "How did you know these
things?" she gasped.
"That is immaterial. When will the tragedy occur? Can I prevent it?"
"Yes, yes!" she exclaimed. "It will happen this very night! But no
earthly power can prevent it!"
She came close to me and looked at me with an expression of the most
acute terror.
"Merciful God! what will become of me? He is to be murdered, you
understand--murdered in cold blood by a spirit--and he knows it and
_I know it_! If he is spared long enough he will tell them at the
garrison, and they will all think that I had something to do with it!
Oh, this is terrible, terrible, and yet I dare not say a word in
advance--nobody there would believe in what the spirits say, and they
will think that I had a hand in the murder!" The woman's agony was
pitiful.
"Be assured that he will say nothing about it," I said; "and if you
keep your tongue from wagging you need fear nothing."
With this and a few other hurried words of comfort, I soothed her and
hastened away.
For I had interesting work on hand: it is not often that one may be in
at such a murder as that! I ran to a livery stable, secured a swift
horse, mounted him, and spurred furiously for the reservation. The
hack, with its generous start, had gone far on its way, but my horse
was nimble, and his legs felt the pricking of my eagerness. A few miles
of this furious pursuit brought me within sight of the hack just as it
was crossing a dark ravine near the reservation. As I came nearer I
imagined that the hack swayed somewhat, and that a fleeing shadow
escaped from it into the tree-banked further wall of the ravine. I
certainly was not in error with regard to the swaying, for it had
roused the dull notice of the driver. I saw him turn, with an air of
alarm in his action, and then pull up with a heavy swing upon the
reins. At this moment I dashed up and halted.
"Anything the matter?" I asked.
"I don't know," he answered, getting down. "I felt the carriage sway,
and I see that the door's wide open. Guess my load thought he'd sobered
up enough to get out and walk, without troubling me or his
pocket-book."
Meanwhile I too had alighted; then struck a match, and by its light we
discovered, through the open door, the "load" huddled confusedly on the
floor of the hack, face upward, his chin compressed upon his breast by
his leaning against the further door, and looking altogether vulgar,
misshapen, and miserably unlike a soldier. He neither moved nor spoke
when we called. We hastily clambered within and lifted him upon the
seat, but his head rolled about with an awful looseness and freedom,
and another match disclosed a ghastly dead face and wide eyes that
stared horribly at nothing.
"You would better drive the body to headquarters," I said.
Instead of following, I cantered back to town, housed my horse, and
went straightway to bed; and this will prove to be the first
information that I was the "mysterious man on a horse," whom the
coroner could never find.
About a year afterwards I received the following letter (which is
observed to be in fair English) from Stockholm, Sweden:
"Dear Sir,--For some years I have been reading your remarkable
psychological studies with great interest, and I take the liberty
to suggest a theme for your able pen. I have just found in a
library here a newspaper, dated about a year ago, in which is an
account of the mysterious death of a military officer in a hack."
Then followed the particulars, as I have already detailed them, and the
very theme of post-mortem revenge which I have adopted in this setting
out of facts. Some persons may regard the coincidence between my
correspondent's suggestion and my private and exclusive knowledge as
being a very remarkable thing; but there are likely even more wonderful
things in the world, and at none of them do I longer marvel. More
extraordinary still is his suggestion that in the dynamite explosion a
dog or a quarter of beef might as well have been employed as a
suicide-minded man; that, in short, the man may not have killed himself
at all, but might have employed a presumption of such an occurrence to
render more effective a physical persecution ending in murder by the
living man who had posed as a spirit. The letter even suggested an
arrangement with a spirit medium, and I regard that also as a queer
thing.
The declared purpose of this letter was to suggest material for another
of my "psychological studies;" but I submit that the whole affair is of
too grave a character for treatment in the levity of fiction. And if
the facts and coincidences should prove less puzzling to others than to
me, a praiseworthy service might be done to humanity by the
presentation of whatever solution a better understanding than mine
might evolve.
The only remaining disclosure which I am prepared now to make is that
my correspondent signed himself "Ramtarg,"--an odd-sounding name, but
for all I know it may be respectable in Sweden. And yet there is
something about the name that haunts me unceasingly, much as does some
strange dream which we know we have dreamt and yet which it is
impossible to remember.