me?”
“Partly on that account, and partly on another.”
“On my word, I appreciate your generosity. You might have labeled the
thing as poison.”
“Exactly. But then you must remember how often you have told me that
you _never_ smoke your specimens.”
“That was no reason why you shouldn’t have given me a hint that the
thing was more dangerous than dynamite.”
“That did occur to me afterwards. Therefore I called to supply the
slight omission.”
“_Slight_ omission, you call it! I wonder what you would have called it
if you had found me dead.”
“If I had known that you _intended_ smoking it I should not have been
at all surprised if I had.”
“Really, Tress, I appreciate your kindness more and more! And where
is this example of your splendid benevolence? Have you pocketed it,
regretting your lapse into the unaccustomed paths of generosity? Or is
it smashed to atoms?”
“Neither the one nor the other. You will find the pipe upon the table.
I neither desire its restoration nor is it in any way injured. It
is merely an expression of personal opinion when I say that I don’t
believe that it _could_ be injured. Of course, having discovered its
deleterious properties, you will not want to smoke it again. You will
therefore be able to enjoy the consciousness of being the possessor of
what I honestly believe to be the most remarkable pipe in existence.
Good day, Pugh.”
He was gone before I could say a word. I immediately concluded, from
the precipitancy of his flight, that the pipe _was_ injured. But when I
subjected it to close examination I could discover no signs of damage.
While I was still eyeing it with jealous scrutiny the door reopened,
and Tress came in again.
“By the way, Pugh, there is one thing I might mention, especially as I
know it won’t make any difference to you.”
“That depends on what it is. If you have changed your mind, and want
the pipe back again, I tell you frankly that it won’t. In my opinion, a
thing once given is given for good.”
“Quite so; I don’t want it back again. You may make your mind easy on
that point. I merely wanted to tell you _why_ I gave it you.”
“You have told me that already.”
“Only partly, my dear Pugh--only partly. You don’t suppose I should
have given you such a pipe as that merely because it happened to be
drugged? Scarcely! I gave it you because I discovered from indisputable
evidence, and to my cost, that it was haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“Yes, haunted. Good day.”
He was gone again. I ran out of the room, and shouted after him down
the stairs. He was already at the bottom of the flight.
“Tress! Come back! What do you mean by talking such nonsense?”
“Of course it’s only nonsense. We know that that sort of thing always
is nonsense. But if you should have reason to suppose that there is
something in it besides nonsense, you may think it worth your while
to make inquiries of me. But I won’t have that pipe back again in my
possession on any terms--mind that!”
The bang of the front door told me that he had gone out into the
street. I let him go. I laughed to myself as I reëntered the room.
Haunted! That was not a bad idea of his. I saw the whole position at a
glance. The truth of the matter was that he did regret his generosity,
and he was ready to go any lengths if he could only succeed in cajoling
me into restoring his gift. He was aware that I have views upon certain
matters which are not wholly in accordance with those which are
popularly supposed to be the views of the day, and particularly that
on the question of what are commonly called supernatural visitations I
have a standpoint of my own. Therefore, it was not a bad move on his
part to try to make me believe that about the pipe on which he knew I
had set my heart there was something which could not be accounted for
by ordinary laws. Yet, as his own sense would have told him it would
do, if he had only allowed himself to reflect for a moment, the move
failed. Because I am not yet so far gone as to suppose that a pipe, a
thing of meerschaum and of amber, in the sense in which I understand
the word, _could_ be haunted--a pipe, a mere pipe.
“Hollo! I thought the creature’s legs were twined right round the bowl!”
I was holding the pipe in my hand, regarding it with the affectionate
eyes with which a connoisseur does regard a curio, when I was induced
to make this exclamation. I was certainly under the impression that,
when I first took the pipe out of the box, two, if not three of the
feelers had been twined about the bowl--twined _tightly_, so that
you could not see daylight between them and it. Now they were almost
entirely detached, only the tips touching the meerschaum, and those
particular feelers were gathered up as though the creature were in the
act of taking a spring. Of course I was under a misapprehension: the
feelers _couldn’t_ have been twined; a moment before I should have
been ready to bet a thousand to one that they were. Still, one does
make mistakes, and very egregious mistakes, at times. At the same
time, I confess that when I saw that dreadful-looking animal poised
on the extreme edge of the bowl, for all the world as though it were
just going to spring at me, I was a little startled. I remembered
that when I was smoking the pipe I did think I saw the uplifted
tentacle moving, as though it were reaching out to me. And I had a
clear recollection that just as I had been sinking into that strange
state of unconsciousness, I had been under the impression that the
creature was writhing and twisting, as though it had suddenly become
instinct with life. Under the circumstances, these reflections were not
pleasant. I wished Tress had not talked that nonsense about the thing
being haunted. It was surely sufficient to know that it was drugged and
poisonous, without anything else.
I replaced it in the sandalwood box. I locked the box in a cabinet.
Quite apart from the question as to whether that pipe was or was not
haunted, I know it haunted me. It was with me in a figurative--which
was worse than actual--sense all the day. Still worse, it was with me
all the night. It was with me in my dreams. Such dreams! Possibly I
had not yet wholly recovered from the effects of that insidious drug,
but, whether or no, it was very wrong of Tress to set my thoughts
into such a channel. He knows that I am of a highly imaginative
temperament, and that it is easier to get morbid thoughts into my
mind than to get them out again. Before that night was through I
wished very heartily that I had never seen the pipe! I woke from one
nightmare to fall into another. One dreadful dream was with me all
the time--of a hideous, green reptile which advanced toward me out
of some awful darkness, slowly, inch by inch, until it clutched me
round the neck, and, gluing its lips to mine, sucked the life’s blood
out of my veins as it embraced me with a slimy kiss. Such dreams are
not restful. I woke anything but refreshed when the morning came. And
when I got up and dressed I felt that, on the whole, it would perhaps
have been better if I never had gone to bed. My nerves were unstrung,
and I had that generally tremulous feeling which is, I believe, an
inseparable companion of the more advanced stages of dipsomania. I ate
no breakfast. I am no breakfast eater as a rule, but that morning I ate
absolutely nothing.
“If this sort of thing is to continue, I will let Tress have his pipe
again. He may have the laugh of me, but anything is better than this.”
It was with almost funereal forebodings that I went to the cabinet in
which I had placed the sandalwood box. But when I opened it my feelings
of gloom partially vanished. Of what phantasies had I been guilty! It
must have been an entire delusion on my part to have supposed that
those tentacula had ever been twined about the bowl. The creature was
in exactly the same position in which I had left it the day before--as,
of course, I knew it would be--poised, as if about to spring. I was
telling myself how foolish I had been to allow myself to dwell for a
moment on Tress’s words, when Martin Brasher was shown in.
Brasher is an old friend of mine. We have a common ground--ghosts.
Only we approach them from different points of view. He takes the
scientific--psychological--inquiry side. He is always anxious to hear
of a ghost, so that he may have an opportunity of “showing it up.”
“I’ve something in your line here,” I observed, as he came in.
“In my line? How so? _I’m_ not pipe mad.”
“No; but you’re ghost mad. And this is a haunted pipe.”
“A haunted pipe! I think you’re rather more mad about ghosts, my dear
Pugh, than I am.”
Then I told him all about it. He was deeply interested, especially
when I told him that the pipe was drugged. But when I repeated Tress’s
words about its being haunted, and mentioned my own delusion about the
creature moving, he took a more serious view of the case than I had
expected he would do.
“I propose that we act on Tress’s suggestion, and go and make inquiries
of him.”
“But you don’t really think that there is anything in it?”
“On these subjects I never allow myself to think at all. There are
Tress’s words, and there is your story. It is agreed on all hands
that the pipe has peculiar properties. It seems to me that there is a
sufficient case here to merit inquiry.”
He persuaded me. I went with him. The pipe, in the sandalwood box, went
too. Tress received us with a grin--a grin which was accentuated when I
placed the sandalwood box on the table.
“You understand,” he said, “that a gift is a gift. On no terms will I
consent to receive that pipe back in my possession.”
I was rather nettled by his tone.
“You need be under no alarm. I have no intention of suggesting anything
of the kind.”
“Our business here,” began Brasher--I must own that his manner is a
little ponderous--“is of a scientific, I may say also, and at the same
time, of a judicial nature. Our object is the Pursuit of Truth and the
Advancement of Inquiry.”
“Have you been trying another smoke?” inquired Tress, nodding his head
toward me.
Before I had time to answer, Brasher went droning on:
“Our friend here tells me that you say this pipe is haunted.”
“I say it is haunted because it _is_ haunted.”
I looked at Tress. I half suspected that he was poking fun at us. But
he appeared to be serious enough.
“In these matters,” remarked Brasher, as though he were giving
utterance to a new and important truth, “there is a scientific and
nonscientific method of inquiry. The scientific method is to begin at
the beginning. May I ask how this pipe came into your possession?”
Tress paused before he answered.
“You may ask.” He paused again. “Oh, you certainly may ask. But it
doesn’t follow that I shall tell you.”
“Surely your object, like ours, can be but the Spreading About of the
Truth?”
“I don’t see it at all. It is possible to imagine a case in which the
spreading about of the truth might make me look a little awkward.”
“Indeed!” Brasher pursed up his lips. “Your words would almost lead one
to suppose that there was something about your method of acquiring the
pipe which you have good and weighty reasons for concealing.”
“I don’t know why I should conceal the thing from you. I don’t suppose
either of you is any better than I am. I don’t mind telling you how I
got the pipe. I stole it.”
“Stole it!”
Brasher seemed both amazed and shocked. But I, who had previous
experience of Tress’s methods of adding to his collection, was not at
all surprised. Some of the pipes which he calls his, if only the whole
truth about them were publicly known, would send him to jail.
“That’s nothing!” he continued. “All collectors steal! The eighth
commandment was not intended to apply to them. Why, Pugh there has
‘conveyed’ three-fourths of the pipes which he flatters himself are
his.”
I was so dumbfounded by the charge that it took my breath away. I sat
in astounded silence. Tress went raving on:
“I was so shy of this particular pipe when I had obtained it, that I
put it away for quite three months. When I took it out to have a look
at it something about the thing so tickled me that I resolved to smoke
it. Owing to peculiar circumstances attending the manner in which the
thing came into my possession, and on which I need not dwell--you don’t
like to dwell on those sort of things, do you, Pugh?--I knew really
nothing about the pipe. As was the case with Pugh, one peculiarity I
learned from actual experience. It was also from actual experience that
I learned that the thing was--well, I said haunted, but you may use any
other word you like.”
“Tell us, as briefly as possible, what it was you really did discover.”
“Take the pipe out of the box!” Brasher took the pipe out of the box
and held it in his hand. “You see that creature on it. Well, when I
first had it, it was underneath the pipe.”
“How do you mean that it was underneath the pipe?”
“It was bunched together underneath the stem, just at the end of the
mouthpiece, in the same way in which a fly might be suspended from the
ceiling. When I began to smoke the pipe I saw the creature move.”
“But I thought that unconsciousness immediately followed.”
“It did follow, but not before I saw that the thing was moving. It
was because I thought that I had been, in a way, a victim of delirium
that I tried the second smoke. Suspecting that the thing was drugged I
swallowed what I believed would prove a powerful antidote. It enabled
me to resist the influence of the narcotic much longer than before, and
while I still retained my senses I saw the creature crawl along under
the stem and over the bowl. It was that sight, I believe, as much as
anything else, which sent me silly. When I came to, I then and there
decided to present the pipe to Pugh. There is one more thing I would
remark. When the pipe left me the creature’s legs were twined about the
bowl. Now they are withdrawn. Possibly you, Pugh, are able to cap my
story with a little one which is all your own.”
“I certainly did imagine that I saw the creature move. But I supposed
that while I was under the influence of the drug imagination had played
me a trick.”
“Not a bit of it! Depend upon it, the beast is bewitched. Even to my
eye it looks as though it were, and to a trained eye like yours, Pugh!
You’ve been looking for the devil a long time, and you’ve got him at
last.”
“I--I wish you wouldn’t make those remarks, Tress. They jar on me.”
“I confess,” interpolated Brasher--I noticed that he had put the pipe
down on the table as though he were tired of holding it--“that, to _my_
thinking, such remarks are not appropriate. At the same time what you
have told us is, I am bound to allow, a little curious. But of course
what I require is ocular demonstration. I haven’t seen the movement
myself.”
“No, but you very soon will do so, if you care to have a pull at the
pipe on your own account. Do, Brasher, to oblige me! There’s a dear!”
“It appears, then, that the movement is only observable when the pipe
is smoked. We have at least arrived at step No. 1.”
“Here’s a match, Brasher! Light up, and we shall have arrived at step
No. 2.”
Tress lit a match and held it out to Brasher. Brasher retreated from
its neighborhood.
“Thank you, Mr. Tress, I am no smoker, as you are aware. And I have no
desire to acquire the art of smoking by means of a poisoned pipe.”
Tress laughed. He blew out the match and threw it into the grate.
“Then I tell you what I’ll do--I’ll have up Bob.”
“Bob--why Bob?”
“Bob”--whose real name was Robert Haines, though I should think he must
have forgotten the fact, so seldom was he addressed by it--was Tress’s
servant. He had been an old soldier, and had accompanied his master
when he left the service. He was as depraved a character as Tress
himself. I am not sure even that he was not worse than his master. I
shall never forget how he once behaved toward myself. He actually had
the assurance to accuse me of attempting to steal the Wardour Street
relic which Tress fondly deludes himself was once the property of Sir
Walter Raleigh. The truth is that I had slipped it with my handkerchief
into my pocket in a fit of absence of mind. A man who could accuse _me_
of such a thing would be guilty of anything. I was therefore quite at
one with Brasher when he asked what Bob could possibly be wanted for.
Tress explained.
“I’ll get him to smoke the pipe,” he said.
Brasher and I exchanged glances, but we refrained from speech.
“It won’t do him any harm,” said Tress.
“What--not a poisoned pipe?” asked Brasher.
“It’s not poisoned--it’s only drugged.”
“_Only_ drugged!”
“Nothing hurts Bob. He is like an ostrich. He has digestive organs
which are peculiarly his own. It will only serve him as it served
me--and Pugh--it will knock him over. It is all done in the Pursuit of
Truth and for the Advancement of Inquiry.”
I could see that Brasher did not altogether like the tone in which
Tress repeated his words. As for me, it was not to be supposed that
I should put myself out in a matter which in no way concerned me. If
Tress chose to poison the man, it was his affair, not mine. He went to
the door and shouted:
“Bob! Come here, you scoundrel!”
That is the way in which he speaks to him. No really decent servant
would stand it. I shouldn’t care to address Nalder, my servant, in
such a way. He would give me notice on the spot. Bob came in. He is a
great hulking fellow who is always on the grin. Tress had a decanter of
brandy in his hand. He filled a tumbler with the neat spirit.
“Bob, what would you say to a glassful of brandy--the real thing--my
boy?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And what would you say to a pull at a pipe when the brandy is drunk!”
“A pipe?” The fellow is sharp enough when he likes. I saw him look
at the pipe upon the table, and then at us, and then a gleam of
intelligence came into his eyes. “I’d do it for a dollar, sir.”
“A dollar, you thief?”
“I meant ten shillings, sir.”
“Ten shillings, you brazen vagabond?”
“I should have said a pound.”
“A pound! Was ever the like of that! Do I understand you to ask a pound
for taking a pull at your master’s pipe?”
“I’m thinking that I’ll have to make it two.”
“The deuce you are! Here, Pugh, lend me a pound.”
“I’m afraid I’ve left my purse behind.”
“Then lend me ten shillings--Ananias!”
“I doubt if I have more than five.”
“Then give me the five. And, Brasher, lend me the other fifteen.”
Brasher lent him the fifteen. I doubt if we shall either of us ever see
our money again. He handed the pound to Bob.
“Here’s the brandy--drink it up!” Bob drank it without a word, draining
the glass of every drop. “And here’s the pipe.”
“Is it poisoned, sir?”
“Poisoned, you villain! What do you mean?”
“It isn’t the first time I’ve seen your tricks, sir--is it now? And
you’re not the one to give a pound for nothing at all. If it kills me
you’ll send my body to my mother--she’d like to know that I was dead.”
“Send your body to your grandmother! You idiot, sit down and smoke!”
Bob sat down. Tress had filled the pipe, and handed it, with a lighted
match, to Bob. The fellow declined the match. He handled the pipe very
gingerly, turning it over and over, eying it with all his eyes.
“Thank you, sir--I’ll light up myself if it’s the same to you. I carry
matches of my own. It’s a beautiful pipe, entirely. I never see the
like of it for ugliness. And what’s the slimy-looking varmint that
looks as though it would like to have my life? Is it living, or is it
dead?”
“Come, we don’t want to sit here all day, my man!”
“Well, sir, the look of this here pipe has quite upset my stomach. I’d
like another drop of liquor, if it’s the same to you.”
“Another drop! Why, you’ve had a tumblerful already! Here’s another
tumblerful to put on top of that. You won’t want the pipe to kill
you--you’ll be killed before you get to it.”
“And isn’t it better to die a natural death?”
Bob emptied the second tumbler of brandy as though it were water. I
believe he would empty a hogshead without turning a hair! Then he gave
another look at the pipe. Then, taking a match from his waistcoat
pocket, he drew a long breath, as though he were resigning himself to
fate. Striking the match on the seat of his trousers, while, shaded by
his hand, the flame was gathering strength, he looked at each of us in
turn. When he looked at Tress I distinctly saw him wink his eye. What
my feelings would have been if a servant of mine had winked his eye at
me I am unable to imagine! The match was applied to the tobacco, a puff
of smoke came through his lips--the pipe was alight!
During this process of lighting the pipe we had sat--I do not wish to
use exaggerated language, but we had sat and watched that alcoholic
scamp’s proceedings as though we were witnessing an action which would
leave its mark upon the age. When we saw the pipe was lighted we gave a
simultaneous start. Brasher put his hands under his coat tails and gave
a kind of hop. I raised myself a good six inches from my chair, and
Tress rubbed his palms together with a chuckle. Bob alone was calm.
“Now,” cried Tress, “you’ll see the devil moving.”
Bob took the pipe from between his lips.
“See what?” he said.
“Bob, you rascal, put that pipe back into your mouth, and smoke it for
your life!”
Bob was eyeing the pipe askance.
“I dare say, but what I want to know is whether this here varmint’s
dead or whether he ain’t. I don’t want to have him flying at my
nose--and he looks vicious enough for anything.”
“Give me back that pound, you thief, and get out of my house, and
bundle.”
“I ain’t going to give you back no pound.”
“Then smoke that pipe!”
“I am smoking it, ain’t I?”
With the utmost deliberation Bob returned the pipe to his mouth. He
emitted another whiff or two of smoke.
“Now--now!” cried Tress, all excitement, and wagging his hand in the
air.
We gathered round. As we did so Bob again withdrew the pipe.
“What is the meaning of all this here? I ain’t going to have you
playing none of your larks on me. I know there’s something up, but I
ain’t going to throw my life away for twenty shillings--not quite I
ain’t.”
Tress, whose temper is not at any time one of the best, was seized with
quite a spasm of rage.
“As I live, my lad, if you try to cheat me by taking that pipe from
between your lips until I tell you, you leave this room that instant,
never again to be a servant of mine.”
I presume the fellow knew from long experience when his master meant
what he said, and when he didn’t. Without an attempt at remonstrance he
replaced the pipe. He continued stolidly to puff away. Tress caught me
by the arm.
“What did I tell you? There--there! That tentacle is moving.”
The uplifted tentacle _was_ moving. It was doing what I had seen it do,
as I supposed, in my distorted imagination--it was reaching forward.
Undoubtedly Bob saw what it was doing; but, whether in obedience to his
master’s commands, or whether because the drug was already beginning
to take effect, he made no movement to withdraw the pipe. He watched
the slowly advancing tentacle, coming closer and closer toward his
nose, with an expression of such intense horror on his countenance that
it became quite shocking. Farther and farther the creature reached
forward, until on a sudden, with a sort of jerk, the movement assumed a
downward direction, and the tentacle was slowly lowered until the tip
rested on the stem of the pipe. For a moment the creature remained
motionless. I was quieting my nerves with the reflection that this
thing was but some trick of the carver’s art, and that what we had seen
we had seen in a sort of nightmare, when the whole hideous reptile was
seized with what seemed to be a fit of convulsive shuddering. It seemed
to be in agony. It trembled so violently that I expected to see it
loosen its hold of the stem and fall to the ground. I was sufficiently
master of myself to steal a glance at Bob. We had had an inkling of
what might happen. He was wholly unprepared. As he saw that dreadful,
human-looking creature, coming to life, as it seemed, within an inch or
two of his nose, his eyes dilated to twice their usual size. I hoped,
for his sake, that unconsciousness would supervene, through the action
of the drug, before through sheer fright his senses left him. Perhaps
mechanically he puffed steadily on.