All that night was a changed world for Rackham: messengers sent hither
and thither; the telephone at work; a nurse from the Cottage Hospital;
another nurse urgently sent for from Lewes; the local practitioner
jumping into his trousers hurriedly after an insufficient sleep, and
also jumping out of his skin for joy when he heard the great name of
his patient; lanterns going back and forth through the spring night,
as one and another was sent upon a further errand; motors purring,
buzzing, hooting, and every human being stirred up to an unnatural
vigil.
Meanwhile, upstairs Amathea sat steadfast by her husband’s bed, glad
to hear his breathing, for it told her that he lived. She looked like
a vulgar queen of the Renaissance, of the swollen commercial families,
with big lips curved downwards, determined on what she should do. Anger
was flaming in her heart.
She sent order after order, and Hilda Maple’s servants humbly obeyed.
She had them telephone for an ambulance to be at Rackham Catchings by
nine the next morning—not a second later, or it would be the worse
for them; and it had to be the best ambulance Maxton, who is open all
night, could supply. It was she who had sent for the nurses and the
doctors, often doubling her hostess’ orders.
She did more. She was determined that her George should return to
recover—if recovery Gawd would grant him—in his own house in Mayfair.
She knew the servants would have gone to bed, and she sent the message
through an all-night office to knock the place up and compel them to
have everything ready against the morning.
She thought of everything. Yet she did all this from where she sat,
without moving from the bedside, despatching one after another to do
her will.
It was half-past one o’clock in the small hours before she had
received the final replies. She was still alone in the room, with the
half-conscious, muttering man. She had given terrible commands that
no one was to be admitted till she allowed it; and the nurses and
the doctors were waiting, with the torturedly-anxious Hilda in the
drawing-room below.
George Huggins stirred. Amathea leaned over the bed and tried to catch
what confused words were coming from those lips which she had known for
a lifetime, and so much loved. The old fellow propped himself up on his
elbow, a momentary gleam of sanity entered his eyes as they looked into
hers.
“Mattie,” he whispered hoarsely, “is that you?”
He smiled foolishly. Then his face changed dreadfully, and he went on
in rising tones:
“It ’ad no ’ed, it ’ad no ’ed, Mattie! Oh! OH! OH!” and with a horrible
groan he sank back, and went on muttering—but half sitting up at
intervals and pointing, and catching her, and saying, “There ’tis!
There ’tis! Keep it awye, Mattie! Keep it awye!”
She knew what had happened. He had seen IT. Her anger rose, enormous;
but she contained it. She allowed the doctors and the nurses to come
in. Hilda Maple, already stricken with fatigue, and showing her age
under the strain, timidly followed them; but Amathea, Lady Mere de
Beaurivage, on seeing her hostess, called out strongly, “Not that un!
Keep ’er out, keep ’er out!” And poor Hilda had capitulated and retired.
The servants had gone to bed; Hilda herself lay down, all dressed as
she was, half loosened and no more, to catch if she could an hour or
two of sleep—but sleep came not to her.
John in his room, after helping to run innumerable messages and
counter-messages, tried to sleep also, and did sleep a little,
fitfully; but his conscience troubled him.
Lord Hellup thought it his duty to stay awake in the Little Red Room,
and he did so too, with Motley and successive cigars.
Of all in that household only Isabeau slept placidly, when she had
seen it all fixed up: so great conquerors on the night of victory.
So William of Falaise in his tent after Hastings; so Mr. Gulp, at
the Ritz after the Pugley deal, before he resigned in affluence his
Secretaryship of State.
While the agony thus proceeded upstairs, Lord Hambourne showed
initiative beyond his academic kind. But he was one whose wits had been
sharpened by poverty. It was not the first time in his life that he had
displayed those qualities which, with better luck, make millions. Had
he not scooped the Chair of Psychology? Here was another little scoop,
and he was going to pick it up. He had got the main event at once,
overhearing two phrases in the frightened muttering of the servant.
Leaving them to their agony upstairs, he himself went quietly into the
deserted drawing-room, took up the telephone and got on to _The Howl_.
It was not too late for a stop-press in that enterprising paper, at any
rate for the London edition.
Carter was at the other end of the wire. No. It was not to be on the
usual terms. He told Carter with great rapidity in a low, precise tone,
conquering his stammer, what had happened, but he gave neither the
place nor the name.
No. It was not to be in the contract. It would be a separate
£100—posted that day. Would he accept the verbal promise on the
telephone? He would. Carter could not undertake the responsibility?
Then he must do without the scoop. Oh, he could, could he? All right.
He would trust him. The place was Rackham Catchings, and the old fellow
was Bruvvish himself.... Yes, it _was_ a scoop, wasn’t it? Would Carter
leave word for someone to be there when he rang up again, so that they
could go on with it in the evening paper? It would be difficult for
him to get to the telephone after they were down. He must have someone
there to take it between six and seven o’clock in the morning. Yes,
that was all.
He hung up the receiver, just in time, as the shuffling of someone
descending came down the stairs, while above altercation and confused
advice filled the air. He managed to get into the hall and to mix with
them before they had noticed his absence.
* * * * *
In the grey light of morning Lord Hambourne had taken up the telephone
again. He felt secure. They had all been lying down, dressed as they
were, exhausted, and he himself in his evening clothes, looking
crumpled and dishevelled in the new light, was the only one doing
business.
He gave rapid advice to Lord Toronto’s other serfs. The old boy was
very bad indeed, he thought he would be moved that morning. He
advised someone from _The Howl_ to be sent to photograph the house and
if possible the scene when the ambulance left. It would make a good
picture. But he warned them that Mrs. Maple had got a policeman in
plain clothes on the place, and there were orders to allow no one to
come near. She didn’t want it in the papers—he laughed, gently, and
there was another much louder laugh at the other end of the wire. No,
he could not send a sketch of the ghost. They must do that. They could
get that little drunken artist of theirs to make a line sketch—just a
long black cloak and a sword and a big Elizabethan ruff, and no head,
and an old curtained bed close by.
[Illustration: _Distraction of Lord Hambourne on being offered the
usual terms_]
Even as he was talking he dropped the receiver at the sound of a
piteous wail. It was Betsy Broom, casting her dustpan and brush to the
winds and calling on her maker to deliver her from evil. Lord Hambourne
himself was surprised to find how much his nerves were on edge. Betsy
Broom might have been the ghost, he felt so startled. But he had the
sense to quiet her.
“Hold your tongue,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, sir,” said the unfortunate young woman, “I thought you was the
ghost! That’s the third time I thought I seen it!”
Lord Hambourne made another of those rapid decisions which I sincerely
hope will sooner or later lead him to an independent income. He did not
like parting with money, and he had very little to part with. But he
decided it was worth his while; and after all, he had won at bridge. He
took a crumpled ten-shilling note out of his waistcoat pocket, and put
it into Betsy’s hand.
“Betsy,” he said, “if I were you I wouldn’t talk too much about my
telephoning. Their nerves are all on edge, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” said the simple girl, bobbing and grateful, “I quite
understand.” But she was still trembling. He patted her paternally upon
the shoulder.
“There,” he said. “It’s all right. Even if there was anything, you
wouldn’t see it after sunrise, you know.”
“So I’ve always heard, sir,” answered Betsy, with due acknowledgment of
his learning. “That and runnin’ water lays ’em.”
“Yes, you’re right, Betsy,” he said loftily; and then gently left the
scene of his misdeeds, hoping that the office would not commit the
unpardonable folly of ringing him up. But he ought to have warned them.
* * * * *
We still have relics of an age when the Press could be managed by
people of influence, because its owners, though millionaires, were
commonly still climbing. Hilda Maple was of that age. She was quite
secure in her own mind after she had telephoned to five or six London
offices that she could keep the thing out of the papers. There would
be no reporters, at any rate, and it was a relief, and she had seen to
a detective coming to watch the place against photographers. She had
ordered that loudly before she had lain down, and Lord Hambourne had
heard her.
[Illustration: _Effect of the other world on Miss Broom, housemaid_]
Therefore it was that, while yet the morning was very young, and while
there was still a dew upon the gardens of Rackham—so quiet that the
second under-gardener could hear the low moans proceeding from the
patient’s bedroom—a figure appeared by a very singular approach, to
wit, pushing its way through the laurels to the west-south-west of the
main approach. It would seem that the figure had avoided the publicity
of the lodge, and preferred its own method of entry, which was by
crawling under a barbed-wire fence, crashing through the brushwood and
finding its way, a little torn and bleeding, to the edge of the lawn in
front of the house. But with great gallantry the figure had borne with
him throughout this adventure a huge contraption, a tripod covered with
a black cloth, and reminiscent of the photography of thirty years ago.
And the name of the figure was Columbus.
It was not his real name. It was the name facetiously given him in
his good-nature and condescension by his master, Lord Toronto, who,
having asked upon one occasion which serf of his had managed to secure
unexpected photographs, in double quick time, of other people’s very
private and intimate affairs, was respectfully given the efficient
dependant’s name. His lordship had thereupon christened the good serf
Columbus, because he got there, and Columbus he continued to be called.
It was the method of Columbus, I say, whenever he had to surprise
the vigilance of those whose lack of public spirit prompted them to
elude the Press, to carry with him this huge superstructure upon a
tripod, covered with a black cloth. He knew well enough the attention
it would excite, the gathering of menials ordering him off the place,
even the approach of the police. But its weight and size also meant
that he could not be driven off at a moment’s notice, and during the
altercation nothing was easier than to bring out his little Zeiss
camera on the sly and snap the whole concern, unbeknownst.
For this also had Columbus everything prepared upon that early morning.
He put himself squarely facing the antique front of Rackham Catchings;
he elaborately fixed the tripod; he covered his head with the cloth;
he went through all the gestures of a performance dear to our fathers.
Nor was he, as one might imagine, incapacitated by this attitude from
watching his foes; for the camera box beneath the cloth was a fake and
in place of its glass a large round hole stared empty, through which
all could be naturally observed. He swept the landscape. He patiently
waited the arrival of the servants, perhaps with police. He had his
expostulations ready in his mind; and, nicely tucked away, concealed
in the hollow between his left arm and his left side, the little Zeiss
that was to do the trick. He wanted “figures in the foreground.” He got
more than he bargained for.
No servant appeared. But what did at last saunter into the bright
circle framed in black was something very different. By the boots, a
policeman; by the clothes, and especially the sharply pressed trousers,
an advertisement for that which the vulgar call ready-to-wear and the
gentle ready-made; by the hat, a scandal to God and man; by the face,
a fool. My reader has divined him with her customary skill. It was Mr.
Pretherton, the Detective.
With a fine nonchalance Mr. Pretherton strolled across the green, as
one taking the morning air. He came up to Columbus, still distracted,
still, as it were, careless of mundane things. He lifted a corner of
the black cloth and whispered in the ear of the stooping expert:
“It may interest you to know that I am a member of the Force in plain
clothes.”
Columbus answered—to himself:
“Forty-three and one-tenth, diameter eight,” and proceeded to turn a
little screw which was not there.
“And the sooner you make off, young man,” went on the redoubtable
Pretherton, lifting the corner of the cloth again, but turning his face
towards the house, as though he were taking part in the photography,
“the better for you, I can tell you.”
To which Columbus very simply replied, but again to himself and not to
his interlocutor:
“Double for morning light; cloudy sky, no deep shadows.”
Upon the scene of this blinded duel there appeared at some little way
off, round a corner of the house, an unexpected ally, and an unexpected
enemy, of the one and the other protagonist.
They were Bo with the hound Lovey-Lad.
Bo (Oh, the efficiency of the efficient!) had caught the whole
situation in a moment. She had inherited, here again, that quality in
the eminent peer her progenitor whereby the market may be seized at a
glance. The Press was snapping the house. A bull point for the Bo-Jacko
crowd. That fellow whom she had suspected was interfering; a bear point
for same. To have the tragedy in the papers would complete the ruin of
Aunt Hilda’s market. To keep it out was the object of the interfering
fellow in the policeman’s boots.
The greatest generals are capable in the heat of action of an ambiguous
order. It must be admitted in defence of Lovey-Lad that he could hardly
have distinguished between the friend and the enemy of his mistress.
When, therefore, he heard from Bo’s arched lips the glad words “Siccum,
boy!” he leapt forward like a shell from a gun, not for the evil
Pretherton, but alas! for the well-working Columbus. And after all, how
should not your bow-legged, hideous, brass-banded bulldog befriend a
common human who might be anybody’s friend and rather go for a monster
with three wooden legs, two trouser ends and no head?
Through the round empty aperture, where the object glass was not,
Columbus saw his Fate hurtling at him. Without pausing to arbitrate on
moral right, he fled incontinent. And Mr. Pretherton, very innocently
and naturally thinking that someone from the household which he was
serving had supported his effort, laughed heartily at the clumsy
efforts of the devoted prey, who ran regardless, blinded by the black
cloth, straight for the rhododendrons, the first cover he could find.
But dogs, since they are quite unintelligent, are admirably subject to
discipline. Bo (who had learned the art in childhood and had happily
retained it) put two fingers between her teeth and with a piercing
whistle recalled the well-meaning but mistaken hound. What it must
have cost Lovey-Lad to pull up again upon the common earth, to lose his
quarry, to turn back, slinking—only a dog can know. But the whistle had
been imperative, and he had obeyed. He came back panting, not without
an irresolute halt now and then and a glance back at the strange morsel
he had missed, as Columbus, finding the chase had failed, recovered
himself, folded his cloth upon his arm, and, grasping his tripod, came
forward somewhat timidly to explain.
But Bo gave him no opportunity. She did not want explanations. She
wanted a frank friendship and excellent publicity for the great Rackham
Catchings tragedy—for the ghost—in the Press of the metropolis; and
notably in that of Lord Toronto, as being to her certain knowledge the
most vulgar of all the six vulgarians who control our great organs of
opinion.
She could trust Lord Toronto to have it all over London that evening.
Meanwhile she must be rid of Hilda’s policeman.
The thing had not taken sixty seconds from the moment when Lovey-Lad
had shot forward to the moment when he came back unsatisfied, and
almost daring to growl, and sat on his haunches panting at his
mistress’ feet. Mr. Pretherton was still smiling the smile of triumph,
Columbus was still in hesitating stance, wondering how he would be
received, when Bo gave her second order, without hesitation, rapidly,
and this time more directly, pointing with an unashamed finger at
her victim, and launched the Friend of Man at the Detective.
[Illustration: _Solid satisfaction of Mr. Pretherton at the pressed
pace of Columbus_]
Then was it seen with what majesty the British policeman bolts! Note to
what skill, what promptitude, what immediate appreciation of reality,
the public civilian forces of our beloved country are trained!
The flight of Columbus from Lovey-Lad had been a turtle’s waddle, hasty
though it was, compared with the whizz of the detective. Lovey-Lad
never reached him. He was through the brushwood, under the wire and
over the stone coping in a flash; and, her purpose accomplished, his
mistress called him back to heel.
What happens in the souls of dogs when they are used for retrievers,
for pointers, for any object at all except their own (and they are
so used all the time)? Is it triumph in their skill, and an obscure
but loyal understanding that they have served their masters, mere
disappointment, bewilderment, or what? I know not. But I fancy a
mixture of all these things, from the description I have had of what
lay upon Lovey-Lad’s features as he came back the second time panting,
still hungry, to his mistress’ feet. He had torn nothing, he had bitten
nothing; but he had gloriously chased him whom he had been sent to
destroy—let that suffice.
Columbus came back extending a large hand towards Bo with the
self-possession of his kind. Bo took it with the simplicity of hers.
When he thanked her, as one who had saved his life, and when they had
both remarked upon the absurd picture presented by the detective in
his flight, a very few words made clearer still what Bo had already
discovered. With charming good nature the young woman sought out for
the journalist the exact point of vantage whence best Rackham Catchings
might be snapped. She was torn between her desire for a striking
picture which no one could miss and a contradictory desire for early
publication. She saw him register the scene; she accompanied him
without shame to the lodge gate, and then in a moment of inspiration
she made a suggestion consonant with her means, ill-fitted to her
condition.
“D’you know what edition of your two-cent’ll carry the picture of
Rackham Catchings? Have ye’ seen the story that’s to flare it?”
He had seen the story. It had gone up straight to London—from Lord
Hambourne. As to the edition, it would be the lunch-time edition at
the latest; he could swear to that—now that she had so kindly seen him
through.
Bo decided at once, risking a rebuff, and, as you may expect, not in
danger of receiving one. She did not pull out a single pound note, as
a less efficient person would have done; she put the whole leather
case—scented—quietly into his hand, whence it slipped into his pocket
under his eyes.
“I know what’s in there, Bud,” she said. “And there’ll be as much
again for you when I see it in that edition. It sure must go in. D’you
get me? But who’m I to send it to? What’s your name?”
[Illustration: _Genuine pleasure of Columbus on observing the haste of
Mr. Pretherton_]
In an accent not unlike her own the mysterious stranger answered:
“My name? Nothing! Just you put ‘Columbus’ on the envelope, and the
Baron’ll see it won’t miss me.”
They nodded cheerfully to each other. And _that_ was all settled.
Indeed, upon the morrow, after the story had ended and Bo could make
sure that her bargain had been observed, she (a woman who knew exactly
how much she had in that leather wallet at any one time) put into an
envelope the exact equivalent, and, keeping her word, delivered it with
her own hands, sealed up, at Lord Toronto’s hideous building off Fleet
Street, addressed only “Columbus,” demanding no receipt and leaving no
name.
Nor can I deny that Columbus well earned this treble stream of gold,
the first from his vulgar master, the second and the third from Bo.
The picture of Rackham Catchings came out enormous on the front page of
_The Howl_: they had the exclusive story; they had the exclusive snaps;
and an admirable caption designed by the Editor himself, a Mr. Emston,
who had been Emstein somewhere in America years ago. That caption ran:
ELIZABETHAN SPECTRE APPEARS IN
ANCIENT MANOR HOUSE.
SEEN BY ALL.
CONCLUSIVE PROOF BY OXFORD PROFESSOR OF
PSYCHOLOGY.
PROMINENT PEER PROSTRATED.
On the picture a large black cross deeply marked over poor Mrs. Maple’s
bathroom window, and having a gigantic arrow pointing at it, was
labelled:
ANCIENT MONASTIC CHAPEL WHERE GHOST
APPEARED.
And underneath all this, in somewhat smaller letters:
_Opinions of our Readers._
which last were a number of letters dated from all parts of London,
signed by various names, and written somewhat hurriedly by the
sub-editor’s son, who was trying his hand as apprentice serf to Lord
Toronto.
It would be all over London by one o’clock and the market for Rackham
ruined.