to Miss Singleton’s house. Fortunately, I knew the housekeeper there--a
middle-aged, strong-minded woman, not easily frightened, which was a
good thing. To her I communicated such information as I considered
necessary. She consented to conceal me in the room where the safe stood.
There was a cupboard close by the safe from which I could command a full
view of the burglar’s operations and pounce upon him at the right
moment. If only my information was to be relied upon, there was every
chance of my capturing the famous burglar.
Soon after midnight, when the house was all quiet, I went to the pantry
and got into the cupboard, locking myself in. There were two openings
in the panel, through either of which I was able to command a full view
of the room. My position was somewhat cramped, but the time soon passed
away. My mind was principally occupied in wondering if I was really
about to have a chance of distinguishing myself. Somehow, there was an
air of unreality about the events of the evening which puzzled me.
Suddenly I heard a sound which put me on the alert at once. It was
nothing more than the creaking of a board or opening of a door would
make in a quiet house; but it sounded intensified to my expectant ears.
I drew myself up against the door of the cupboard and placed my eye to
the opening in the panel. I had oiled the key of the door, and kept my
fingers upon it in readiness to spring upon the burglar at the proper
moment. After what seemed some time I saw the gleam of light through the
keyhole of the door opening into the pantry. Then it opened, and a man
carrying a small lantern came gently into the room. At first I could see
nothing of his face; but when my eyes grew accustomed to the hazy light
I saw that I had been rightly informed, and that the burglar was indeed
no other than the famous Light Toed Jim.
As I stood there watching him I could not help admiring the cool fashion
in which he went to work. He went over to the window and examined it. He
tried the door of the cupboard in which I stood concealed. Then he
locked the door of the pantry and turned his attention to the safe. He
set his lamp on a chair before the lock and took from his pocket as neat
and pretty a collection of tools as ever I saw. With these he went
quietly and swiftly to work.
Light Toed Jim was a somewhat slimly built fellow, with little muscular
development about him, while I am a big man with plenty of bone and
sinew. If matters had come to a fight between us I could have done what
I pleased with him; but I knew that Jim would not chance a fight.
Somewhere about him I felt sure there was a revolver, which he would use
on the least provocation. My plan, therefore, was to wait until his back
was bent over the lock of the safe, then to open the cupboard door
noiselessly and fall bodily upon him, pinning him to the ground beneath
me.
Before long the moment came. He was working steadily away at the lock,
his whole attention concentrated on the job. The slight noise of his
drill was sufficient to drown the faint click of the key in the cupboard
door. I turned it quickly and tumbled right upon him, driving the tool
out of his hands and tumbling him into a heap at the foot of the safe.
He uttered an exclamation of rage and astonishment as he went down, and
immediately began to wriggle under me like an eel. As I kept him down
with one hand I tried to pull out the handcuffs with the other. This
somewhat embarrassed me, and the burglar profited by it to pull out a
sharp knife. He had worked himself round on his back, and before I
realized what he was after he was hacking furiously at me with his keen,
dagger-like blade. Then I realized that we were going to have a fight
for it, and prepared myself. He tried to run the knife into my side. I
warded it off, but the blade caught the fleshy part of my left arm and I
felt a warm stream of blood spurt out.
That maddened me, and I seized one of the steel drills lying near at
hand, and hit my man such a blow over the temple that he collapsed at
once, and lay as if dead. I put the handcuffs on him instantly, and, to
make matters still more certain, I secured his ankles. Then I rose and
looked at my arm. The knife had made a nasty gash, and the blood was
flowing freely, but it was not serious; and when the housekeeper, who
had just then appeared on the scene, had bandaged it, I went out and
secured the help of the first policeman I met in conveying Light Toed
Jim to the office.
I felt a proud man when I made my report to the inspector.
“Light Toed Jim?” said he. “What, James Bland? Nonsense, Parker.” But I
took him to the cells where Jim was being attended to by the doctor.
“You’re right, Parker,” he said. “That’s the man. Well, this will be a
fine thing for you.”
After a time, feeling a little exhausted, I went home to try and get
some sleep. The surgeon had attended to my arm, and told me it was but a
superficial wound. It felt sore enough in spite of that.
I had no sooner reached my lodgings than I saw sitting in my easy-chair
the strange man who had called upon me earlier in the evening. He rose
to his feet when I entered. I stared at him in utter astonishment.
“Well, guv’nor,” said he, “I see you’ve done it. You’ve got him square
and fair, I reckon?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Ah!” he said, with a sigh of complete satisfaction. “Then I’m
satisfied. Yes, I don’t know as how there’s aught more I could say. I
reckon as how Light Toed Jim an’ me is quits.”
I was determined to find out who this man was this time. “Sit down,” I
said. “There’s a question or two I must ask you. Just let me get my coat
off and I’ll talk to you.” I took my coat off and went over to the bed
to lay it down. “Now then,” I began, and looked around at him. I said no
more, being literally struck dumb. The man was gone!
I began to feel uncomfortable. I ran hastily downstairs, only to find
the outer door locked and bolted, as I had left it a few minutes
before. I went back, utterly nonplussed. For an hour I pondered the
matter over, but could neither make head nor tail of it.
When I went down to the office next morning I was informed that the
burglar wanted to see me. I went to his cell, where he was lying in bed
with his head bandaged. I had hit him pretty hard, as it turned out, and
it was probable he would have to lie on the sick list for some days.
“Well, guv’nor,” said he, “you’d the best of me last night. You hit me
rather hard that time.”
“I was sorry to have to do it, my man,” I answered. “You would have
stabbed me if you could.”
“Yes,” he said, “I should. But I say, guv’nor, come a bit closer; I want
to ask you a question. How did you know I was on that little job last
night? For, s’elp me, there wasn’t a soul knew a breath about it but
myself. I hadn’t no pals, never talked to anybody about it, never
thought aloud about it, as I knows on. How came you to spot it,
guv’nor?”
There was no one else in the cell with us, and I thought I might find
out something about my mysterious visitor of the night before. “It was a
pal of yours who gave me the information,” I said.
“Can’t be, guv’nor. No use telling me that. I ain’t got no
pals--leastways not in this job.”
“Did you ever know a man like this?” I described my visitor. As I
proceeded, Light Toed Jim’s face assumed an expression of real terror.
Whatever color there was in it faded away. I never saw a man look more
thoroughly frightened. “Yes, yes,” he said, eagerly. “In course I know
who it is. Why, it’s Barksea Bill, as I pal’d with at one time--and what
did he say, guv’nor--that he owed me a grudge? That we was quits at
last? Right you are, ’cos he did owe me a grudge. I treated Bill very
shabby--very shabby, indeed, and he swore solemn he’d have his revenge.
On’y, guv’nor, what you see wasn’t Barksea Bill at all, but his ghost,
’cos Barksea Bill’s been dead and buried this three year.”
I was naturally very much exercised in my mind over this weird
development of the affair, and I used to think about it long after Light
Toed Jim had once more retired to the seclusion of Portland. While he
was in charge at Westford I tried more than once to worm some more
information out of him about the defunct Barksea Bill, but with no
success. He would say no more than that “Bill was dead and buried this
three year;” and with that I had to be content. Gradually I came to have
a firm belief that I had indeed been visited by Barksea Bill’s ghost,
and I often told the story to brother officers, and sometimes got well
laughed at. That, however, mattered little to me; I felt sure that any
man who had gone through the same experience would have had the same
beliefs.
Of course I got my promotion and was soon afterward married. Things went
well with me, and I was lifted from one step to another. In my secret
mind I was always sure I owed my first rise to the burglar’s ghost, and
I should have continued to think so but for an incident which occurred
just five years after my capture of Light Toed Jim.
I had occasion to travel to Sheffield from Westford, and had to change
trains at Leeds. The carriage I stepped into was occupied by a solitary
individual, who turned his face to me as I sat down. Though dressed in
more respectable fashion, I immediately recognized the man who had
visited me so mysteriously at my lodgings. My first feeling was one of
fear, and I daresay my face showed it, for the man laughed.
“Hallo, guv’nor,” said he; “I see you knew me as soon as you come in.
You owes a deal to me, guv’nor; now, don’t you, eh?”
“Look here, my man,” I said, “I’ve been taking you for a ghost these
five years past. Now just tell me how you got in and out of my room that
night, will you?”
He laughed long and loud at that. “A ghost?” said he. “Well, if that
ain’t a good un! Why, easy enough, guv’nor. I was a-lodging for a day or
two in the same house. It’s easy enough, when you know how, to open a
door very quiet and to slip out, too.”
“But I followed you sharp, and looked for you.”
“Ay, guv’nor; but you looked down, and I had gone up! You should ha’
come up to the attics, and there you’d ha’ found me. So you took me for
a ghost? Well, I’m blowed.”
I told him what Light Toed Jim had said in the cell.
“Ay,” said he, “I dessay, guv’nor. You see, ’twas this way--it weren’t
Jim’s fault as I wasn’t dead. He tried to murder me, guv’nor, he did,
and left me a-lying for dead. So I ses to myself when I comes round that
I’d pay him out sooner or later. But after that I quit the profession,
Jim’s nasty conduck havin’ made me sick of it. So I went in for honest
work at my old trade, which was draining and pipe repairing. I was on a
job o’ that sort in Westford, near Miss Singleton’s house, when I see
Light Toed Jim. I had a hidea what he was up to, havin’ heard o’ the
plate, and I watches him one or two nights, and gets a notion ’ow he was
going to work the job. Then, o’ course, you being a officer and close at
hand I splits on him--and that’s all.”
“But you had got the time and details correct?”
“Why, o’ course, guv’nor. I was an old hand--served many years at
Portland, I have, and I knew just how Jim would work it, after seeing
his perlim’nary observations. But a ghost! Ha, ha, ha! Why, guv’nor, you
must ha’ been a very green young officer in them days!”
Perhaps I was. At any rate I learned a lesson from the ci-devant Barksea
Bill--namely, that in searching a house it is always advisable to look
up as well as down.
A PHANTOM TOE.
I am not a superstitious man, far from it, but despite all my efforts to
the contrary I could not help thinking, directly I had taken a survey of
my chamber, that I should never quit it without going through a strange
adventure. There was something in its immense size, heaviness and gloom
that seemed to annihilate at one blow all my resolute skepticism as
regards supernatural visitations. It appeared to me totally impossible
to go into that room and disbelieve in ghosts.
The fact is, I had incautiously partaken at supper of that favorite
Dutch dish, sauerkraut, and I suppose it had disagreed with me and put
strange fancies into my head. Be this as it may I only know that after
parting with my friend for the night I gradually worked myself up into
such a state of fidgetiness that at last I wasn’t sure whether I hadn’t
become a ghost myself.
“Supposing,” ruminated I, “supposing the landlord himself should be a
practical robber and should have taken the lock and bolt from off this
door for the purpose of entering here in the dead of the night,
abstracting all my property, and perhaps murdering me! I thought the dog
had a very cutthroat air about him.” Now, I had never had any such idea
until that moment, for my host was a fat (all Dutchmen are fat),
stupid-looking fellow, who I don’t believe had sense enough to
understand what a robbery or murder meant, but somehow or other,
whenever we have anything really to annoy us (and it certainly was not
pleasant to go to bed in a strange place without being able to fasten
one’s door), we are sure to aggravate it by myriads of chimeras of our
own brain.
So, on the present occasion, in the midst of a thousand disagreeable
reveries, some of the most wild absurdity, I jumped very gloomily into
bed, having first put out my candle (for total darkness was far
preferable to its flickering, ghostly light, which transformed rather
than revealed objects), and soon fell asleep, perfectly tired out with
my day’s riding.
How long I lay asleep I don’t know, but I suddenly awoke from a
disagreeable dream of cutthroats, ghosts and long, winding passages in a
haunted inn. An indescribable feeling, such as I never before
experienced, hung upon me. It seemed as if every nerve in my body had a
hundred spirits tickling it, and this was accompanied by so great a heat
that, inwardly cursing mine host’s sauerkraut and wondering how the
Dutchmen could endure such poison, I was forced to sit up in bed to
cool myself. The whole of the room was profoundly dark, excepting at one
place, where the moonlight, falling through a crevice in the shutters,
threw a straight line of about an inch or so thick upon the
floor--clear, sharp and intensely brilliant against the darkness. I
leave you to conceive my horror when, upon looking at this said line of
light, I saw there a naked human toe--nothing more.
For the first instant I thought the vision must be some effect of
moonlight, then that I was only half awake and could not see distinctly.
So I rubbed my eyes two or three times and looked again. Still there was
the accursed thing--plain, distinct, immovable--marblelike in its
fixedness and rigidity, but in everything else horribly human.
I am not an easily frightened man. No one who has traveled so much and
seen so much and been exposed to so many dangers as I, can be, but there
was something so mysterious and unusual in the appearance of this single
toe that for a short time I could not think what to be at, so I did
nothing but stare at it in a state of utter bewilderment.
At length, however, as the toe did not vanish under my steady gaze, I
thought I might as well change my tactics, and remembering that all
midnight invaders, be they thieves, ghosts or devils, dislike nothing
so much as a good noise I shouted out in a loud voice:
“Who’s there?”
The toe immediately disappeared in the darkness.
Almost simultaneously with my words I leaped out of bed and rushed
toward the place where I had beheld the strange appearance. The next
instant I ran against something and felt an iron grip round my body.
After this I have no distinct recollection of what occurred, excepting
that a fearful struggle ensued between me and my unseen opponent; that
every now and then we were violently hurled to the floor, from which we
always rose again in an instant, locked in a deadly embrace; that we
tugged and strained and pulled and pushed, I in the convulsive and
frantic energy of a fight for life, he (for by this time I had
discovered that the intruder was a human being) actuated by some passion
of which I was ignorant; that we whirled round and round, cheek to cheek
and arm to arm, in fierce contest, until the room appeared to whiz round
with us, and that at least a dozen people (my fellow traveler among
them), roused, I suppose, by our repeated falls, came pouring into the
room with lights and showed me struggling with a man having nothing on
but a shirt, whose long, tangled hair and wild, unsettled eyes told me
he was insane. And then, for the first time, I became aware that I had
received in the conflict several gashes from a knife, which my opponent
still held in his hand.
To conclude my story in a few words (for I daresay all of you by this
time are getting very tired), it turned out that my midnight visitor was
a madman who was being conveyed to a lunatic asylum at The Hague, and
that he and his keeper had been obliged to stop at Delft on their way.
The poor fellow had contrived during the night to escape from his
keeper, who had carelessly forgotten to lock the door of his chamber,
and with that irresistible desire to shed blood peculiar to many insane
people had possessed himself of a pocketknife belonging to the man who
had charge of him, entered my room, which was most likely the only one
in the house unfastened, and was probably meditating the fatal stroke
when I saw his toe in the moonlight, the rest of his body being hidden
in the shade.
After this terrible freak of his he was watched with much greater
strictness, but I ought to observe, as some excuse for the keeper’s
negligence, that this was the first act of violence he had ever
attempted.
MRS. DAVENPORT’S GHOST.
BY FREDERICK F. SCHRADER.
Dear readers, do you agree with Hamlet? Do you believe that there is
more between heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy? Does
it seem possible to you that Eliphas Levy conjured up the shade of
Apollonius of Tyana, the prophet of the Magii, in a London hotel, and
that the great sage, William Crookes, drank his tea at breakfast several
days a week, for months in succession, in the society of the
materialized spirit of a young lady, attired in white linen, with a
feather turban on her head?
Do not laugh! Panic would seize you in the presence even of a turbaned
spirit, and the grotesque spectacle would but intensify your terror. As
for me, I did not laugh last night on reading an account in a New York
newspaper of a criminal trial that will probably terminate in the death
penalty of the accused.
It is a sad case. I shudder as I transcribe the records of the trial
from the testimony of the hotel waiter, who heard the conversation of
the two confederates through a keyhole, and of forty thoroughly
credible witnesses, who testified to the same facts. What would be my
feelings if I had seen the beautiful victim with the gaping wound in her
breast, into which she dipped her finger to mark the brow of her
murderer?
I.
About three o’clock on the afternoon of February 3, Professor Davenport
and Miss Ida Soutchotte, a very pale and delicate young girl, who had
submitted to the tests of Professor Davenport for a number of years,
were finishing their dinner in their room in the second story of a New
York hotel. Professor Benjamin Davenport was a celebrity, but it was
said that he owed his fame to somewhat questionable means. The leading
spiritualists did not repose the confidence in him that manifestly
marked their regard for William Crookes or Daniel Douglas Home.
“Greedy and unscrupulous mediums,” the author of Spiritualism in America
thinks, “are to blame for the most bitter attacks to which our cause has
been exposed. When the materializations do not take place as quickly as
circumstances require, they resort to trickery and fraud to extricate
themselves from a dilemma.”
Professor Benjamin Davenport belonged to these “versatile” mediums.
Aside from this, queer stories were afloat about him. He was secretly
accused of highway robbery in South America, cheating at cards in the
gambling houses of San Francisco, and the overhasty use of firearms
toward persons who had never offended him. It was said almost openly,
that the professor’s wife had died from abuse and grief at his
infidelity. But in spite of these annoying rumors, Mr. Davenport, by
virtue of his skill as a fraud and fakir, continued to exercise a great
deal of influence upon certain plain and simple-minded folks, whom it
was impossible to convince that they had not touched the materialized
spirits of their brothers, mothers, or sisters through the agency of his
wonderful power. His professional success received material accession
from his swarthy, Mephisto-like countenance, his deep, fiery eyes, his
large curved nose, the cynical expression of his mouth, and the lofty,
almost prophetic tone of his words.
When the waiter had made his last visit--he did not go far--the
following conversation took place in the room:
“There is to be a seance this evening at the residence of Mrs. Harding,”
began the medium. “Quite a number of influential people will be there,
and two or three millionaires. Conceal under your skirt the blonde
woman’s wig and the white material in which the spirits usually make
their appearance.”
“Very well,” replied Ida Soutchotte, in a resigned tone.
The waiter heard her pace the room. After a pause, she asked:
“Whose spirit are you going to control this evening, Benjamin?”
The waiter heard a loud, brutal laugh and the chair groaning beneath the
weight of the demonstrative professor.
“Guess.”
“How should I know?” she asked.
“I am going to conjure up the spirit of my dead wife.”
And another burst of laughter issued from the room, full of sinister
levity. A cry of terror burst from Ida’s lips. A muffled sound indicated
to the eavesdropper at the door that she was dragging herself to the
feet of the professor.
“Benjamin, Benjamin! don’t do it,” she sobbed.
“Why not? They say I broke Mrs. Davenport’s heart. The story is damaging
my reputation, but it will be forgotten if her spirit should address me
in terms of endearment from the other shore in the presence of numerous
witnesses. For you will speak to me tenderly, will you not, Ida?”
“No, no. You shall not do it; you shall not think of it. Listen to me,
for God’s sake. During the four years that I have been with you I have
obeyed you faithfully and suffered patiently. I have lied and deceived,
like you; I learned to imitate the sleep and symptoms of clairvoyants.
Tell me, did I ever refuse to serve you, or utter a word of complaint,
even when my shoulders bent with the weight of my burden, when you
pierced the flesh of my arms with knitting needles? Worse than all this,
I imitated distant voices behind curtains, and made mothers and wives
believe that their sons and husbands had come from a better world to
communicate with them. How often have I performed the most dangerous
feats in parlors with the lamps turned low? Clothed in a shroud or white
muslin I essayed to represent supernatural forms, whom tear-dimmed eyes
recognized as those of departed dear ones. You do not know what I
suffered at this unhallowed work. You scoff at the mysteries of
eternity. I suffer the torments of an impending retribution. My God! if
some time the dead whom I counterfeit should rise up before me with
uplifted arms and dreadful imprecations! This constant terror has
injured my heart--it will kill me. I am consumed by fever. Look how
emaciated, how worn-out and downcast I am. But I am under your control.
Do as you like with me; I am in your power, and I want it to be so. Have
I ever complained? But do not force me to do this thing, Benjamin. Have
pity on me for what I have done for you in the past, for what I am
suffering. Do not attempt this mummery; do not compel me to play the
role of your dead wife, who was so tender and beautiful. Oh, what put
that thought into your mind? Spare me, Benjamin, I implore you!”
The professor did not laugh again. Amid the confusion of upturned
articles of furniture the eavesdropper distinguished the sound of a
skull striking the floor. He concluded that Professor Davenport had
knocked Miss Ida down with a blow of his fist, or had kicked her as she
approached him. But the waiter did not enter the room, as no one rang
for him.
II.