Part 4

‘Ah! a little sea-air won’t be amiss,’ remarked Fenwick, looking about him thoughtfully.—‘Now, let me see.’ He peered into the faces with his quick keen eyes, leaning his chin the while upon the knob of his stick. Presently he cocked an eye at Tiltcroft, and said: ‘See any one you recognise?’

Walter threw a swift glance around him. Most of the faces were thin and pale, and there were several eyes staring at him and his companion; but many eyes were closed in sleep; among these he saw a half-hidden face which he seemed to know, yet for the moment could not recall; but the recollection quickly flashed upon him.

The detective, watching his expression, saw the change; and following the direction in which Walter was staring in blank surprise, perceived that the object in which he appeared to take such a sudden interest was a large, muscular person, wrapped in a thick pea-jacket, with his head upon his arm, and his arm resting upon a sea-chest, which was corded with a thick rope. The man was fast asleep, and on his head was a mangy-looking skin-cap, pulled down to his eyebrows.

‘Well,’ said the detective, glancing from this man into Walter’s face; ‘who is he?’

‘Joe Grimrood!’ cried Walter.

It would seem as though the man had heard the mention of his name; for, as Walter pronounced it, he frowned, and opening his eyes slowly, looked up askance, like an angry dog.

‘Get up!’ said the detective, giving the man a playful thrust in the ribs; ‘you’re wanted.’

Joe Grimrood showed his teeth, and started, as though about to spring upon Fenwick. But on reflection, he appeared to think better of it, and simply growled.

Fenwick turned to the sailor, and said, pointing to the chest against which Joe Grimrood still leaned, ‘Uncord that box. And if,’ he added—‘if that man moves or utters a word, bind him down hands and feet with the rope. Do you understand?’

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ cried the sailor, with a grin on his honest-looking face. With all the dexterity of a practised ‘tar,’ the sailor removed the cord from the chest; then he glanced at the detective for further instructions.

‘Open it!’ cried Fenwick.

At these words, Joe Grimrood, who sat with his back against the iron pillar and his arms crossed defiantly, showed signs of rebellion in his small glittering eyes. But a glance from Fenwick quelled him.

When the chest was opened, a quantity of old clothes was discovered. ‘Make a careful search,’ said the detective. ‘If you find nothing more valuable than old clothes in that box, I shall be greatly surprised.’

Something far more valuable, sure enough, soon came to light. One after another the sailor brought out fat little bags, which, being shaken, gave forth a pleasant ring not unlike the chink of gold.

Fenwick presently, after opening one of these bags, held it up before Joe Grimrood’s eyes, tauntingly. ‘You’re a nice emigrant, ain’t you? Why, a man of your wealth ought to be a first-class passenger, not a steerage. How did you manage to accumulate such a heap of gold?’

Joe Grimrood gave another growl, and replied: ‘Let me alone. I’m an honest workman. Mr Tiltcroft there will tell you if I’m not; asking his pardon.’

‘That’s no answer. How do you come by all this gold?’

‘By the sweat of my brow,’ answered the man, with the perspiration rolling down his face. ‘So help me. By the sweat of my brow.’

‘That will do,’ continued the detective. ‘Take my advice, and don’t say another word.—Come, Tiltcroft. The sooner we get back to the city the better. There is work to be done there to-night.’ With these words, Fenwick beckoned to two constables. These men, at a sign from the detective, seized Joe Grimrood and handcuffed him before he had time to suspect their intention. Meanwhile, the sailor had packed up the box, gold and all, and had corded it down as quickly as he had uncorded it.

The constables went first, with Joe Grimrood between them. The man showed no resistance. Behind him followed the sailor with the valuable chest. The detective and Tiltcroft brought up the rear. The boat which had brought Walter and his companions alongside the emigrant ship was still waiting under the bow when they came on deck. In a few minutes, without noise or confusion, they were once more in their places, with the chest and Joe Grimrood—still between the two constables—by way of additional freight. Once more the boat moved across the dark river and carried them to the shore.

Having deposited Joe Grimrood and his luggage at the police station, the detective turned to Walter and said: ‘Now, my lad, let us be off. This business in the city is pressing. Every moment is precious; it’s a matter of life and death.’

THE RATIONALE OF HAUNTED HOUSES.

That a very old house should gain the reputation of being haunted is not surprising, especially if it has been neglected and allowed to fall out of repair. The woodwork shrinks, the plaster crumbles away; and through minute slits and chasms in window-frames and door-cases there come weird and uncanny noises. The wind sighs and whispers through unseen fissures, suggesting to the superstitious the wailings of disembodied spirits. A whole household was thrown into consternation, and had its repose disturbed, one stormy winter, by a series of lamentable howls and shrieks that rang through the rooms. The sounds were harrowing, and as they rose fitfully and at intervals, breaking the silence of the night, the stoutest nerves among the listeners were shaken. For a long time the visitation continued to harass the family, recurring by day as well as night, and especially in rough weather. When there was a storm, piercing yells and shrieks would come, sudden and startling, changing anon into low melancholy wails. It was unaccountable. At length the mystery was solved. Complaints had been made of draughts through the house, and as a remedy, strips of gutta-percha had at some former time been nailed along the window-frames, while its owners were at the seaside. This, for some reason explainable upon acoustic principles, had caused the disturbance. Even after the gutta-percha had been torn away, a sudden blast of wind striking near some spot to which a fragment still adhered, would bring a shriek or moan, to remind the family of the annoyance they had so long endured.

Meantime, the house got a bad reputation, and servants were shy of engaging with its owners. A maid more strong-minded than the others, and who had hitherto laughed at their fears, came fleeing to her mistress on one occasion, saying she must leave instantly, and that nothing would induce her to pass another night under the roof. There was a long corridor at the top of the house, and the girl’s story was, that in passing along it, she heard footsteps behind her. Stopping and looking back, she saw no one; but as soon as she went on, the invisible pursuer did so too, following close behind. Two or three times she stood still suddenly, hoping the footsteps would pass on and give her the go-by; instead of which, they pulled up when she did. And when at last, wild with terror, she took to her heels and ran, they came clattering along after her to the end of the passage!

The mistress suspected that some one was trying to frighten the girl, and she urged her to come up-stairs and endeavour to find out the trick. This the terrified damsel refused to do, so the lady went off alone. On reaching the corridor and proceeding along it, she was startled to find that, as the maid had described, some one seemed to be following her. Tap, tap, clack, clack—as of one walking slipshod with shoes down at heel—came the steps, keeping pace with her own; stopping when she stopped, and moving on when she did. In vain the lady peered around and beside her; nothing was to be seen. It could be no trick, for there was nobody in that part of the house to play a practical joke.

Ere long the cause was discovered in the shape of a loose board in the flooring of the corridor. The plank springing when pressed by the foot in walking along, gave an echoing sound that had precisely the effect of a step following; and this, in the supposed haunted house, was sufficient to raise alarm.

It happened to us once to be a temporary dweller in a mansion that had a ghostly reputation. We were on our way to Paris, travelling with an invalid; and the latter becoming suddenly too ill to proceed on the journey, we were forced to stop in the first town we came to. The hotel being found too noisy, a house in a quiet street was engaged by the week. It was a grand old mansion, that had once belonged to a magnate of the land; fallen now from its high estate, and but indifferently kept up. Wide stone staircases with balusters of carved oak led to rooms lofty and spacious, whose walls and ceilings were decorated with gilded enrichments and paintings in the style of Louis XIV. At the side of the house was a covered-way leading to the stables and offices. This was entered through a tall _porte cochère_; and at either side of the great gates, fixed to the iron railings, were a couple of those huge metal extinguishers—still sometimes to be seen in quaint old houses—used in former times to put out the torches or links carried at night by running footmen beside the carriages of the great. The stables and offices of the place were now falling into decay, and the _porte cochère_ generally stood open until nightfall, when the gates were locked.

We had been in the house for some little time before we heard the stories of supernatural sights and sounds connected with it—of figures flitting through halls and passages—the ghosts of former occupants; of strange whisperings and uncanny noises. There certainly were curious sounds about the house, especially in the upper part, where lumber-closets were locked and sealed up, through whose shrunken and ill-fitting doors the wind howled with unearthly wails. In the dining-hall was a row of old family pictures, faded and grim; and the popular belief was that, at the ‘witching hour,’ these worthies descended from their frames and held high festival in the scene of former banquetings. No servant would go at night into this room alone or in the dark.

We had with us a young footman called Carroll, the son of an Irish tenant; devoted to his masters, under whom he had been brought up. He was a fine young fellow, bold as a lion, and ready to face flesh and blood in any shape; but a very craven as regarded spirits, fairies, and supernatural beings, in whom he believed implicitly. One night, after seeing the invalid settled to rest and committed to the care of the appointed watcher, I came down to the drawing-room to write letters. It was an immense saloon, with—doubling and prolonging its dimensions—wide folding-doors of looking-glass at the end. I had been writing for some time; far, indeed, into the ‘small-hours.’ The fire was nearly out; and the candles, which at their best had only served to make darkness visible in that great place, had burnt low. The room was getting chilly, dark shadows gathering in the corners. Who has not known the creepy, shivering feeling that will come over us at such times, when in the dead silence of the sleeping house we alone are wakeful? The furniture around begins to crack; the falling of a cinder with a clink upon the hearth makes us start. And if at such a time the door should slowly and solemnly open wide, as doors sometimes will, ‘spontaneous,’ we look up with quickening pulse, half expecting to see some ghastly spectral shape glide in, admitted by invisible hands. Should sickness be in the house, and the angel of death—who knows?—be brooding with dark wing over our dwelling, the nerves, strained by anxiety, are more than usually susceptible of impressions. I was gathering my papers together and preparing to steal up-stairs past the sick-room, glad to escape from the pervading chilliness and gloom, when the door opened. Not, this time, of itself; for there—the picture of abject terror—stood Carroll the footman. He was as pale as ashes, shaking all over; his hair dishevelled, and clothes apparently thrown on in haste. To my alarmed exclamation, ‘What _is_ the matter?’ he was unable, for a minute, to make any reply, so violently his lips were trembling, parched with fear. At last I made out, among half-articulate sounds, the words ‘Ghost, groans.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what nonsense! You have been having a bad dream. You ought to know better, you who’——

My homily was cut short by a groan so fearful, so unlike anything I had ever heard or imagined, that I was dumb with horror.

‘Ah-h-h!—there it is again!’ whispered Carroll, dropping on his knees and crossing himself; while vehemently thumping his breast, he, as a good Catholic, began to mumble with white lips the prayers for the dead. Up the stairs through the open door the sounds had come; and after a few minutes, they were repeated, this time more faintly than before.

‘Let us go down and try to find out what it is,’ I said at last. And in spite of poor Carroll’s misery and entreaties, making a strong effort, I took the lamp from his trembling hands and began to descend the wide staircase. Nothing was stirring. In the great dining-room, where I went in, while the unhappy footman kept safely at the door, casting frightened glances at the portraits on the walls, all was as usual. As we went lower down, the groans grew louder and more appalling. Hoarse, unnatural, long-drawn—such as could not be imagined to proceed from human throat, they seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth, and to be re-echoed by the walls of the great dark lofty kitchens. Beyond these kitchens were long stone passages, leading to cellars and pantries and servants’ halls, all unused and shut up since the mansion’s palmy days; and into these we penetrated, led by the fearful sounds.

All here was dust and desolation. The smell of age and mould was everywhere; the air was chill; and the rusty hinges of the doors shrieked as they were pushed open, scaring away the spiders, whose webs hung in festoons across the passages, and brushed against our faces as we went along. Doubtless, for years no foot had invaded this dank and dreary region, given over to mildew and decay; or disturbed the rats, which ran scampering off at our approach. The groans seemed very near us now, and came more frequently. It was terrible, in that gruesome place, to hearken to the unearthly sounds. I could hear my agonised companion calling upon every saint in the calendar to take pity upon the soul in pain. At length there came a groan more fearful than any that had been before. It rooted us to the spot. And then was utter silence!

After a long breathless pause, broken only by the gasps of poor Carroll in his paroxysm of fear, we turned, and retraced our steps towards the kitchens. The groans had ceased altogether.

‘It is over now, whatever it was,’ I said. ‘All is quiet; you had better go to bed.’

He staggered off to his room; while, chilled to the marrow, I crept up-stairs, not a little shaken, I must confess, by the night’s doings.

Next day was bright and fine. My bedroom looked to the street; and soon after rising, I threw open the window, to admit the fresh morning air. There was a little stir outside. The _porte cochère_ gates were wide open, and a large cart was drawn up before them. Men with ropes in their hands were bustling about, talking and gesticulating; passers-by stopped to look; and boys were peering down the archway at something going on within. Soon the object of their curiosity was brought to light. A dead horse was dragged up the passage, and after much tugging and pulling, was hauled up on the cart and driven away.

It appeared that at nightfall of the previous day the wretched animal was being driven to the knacker’s; and straying down into our archway, while the man who had him in charge was talking to a friend, he fell over some machinery that stood inside, breaking a limb, and otherwise frightfully injuring himself. Instead of putting the poor animal out of pain at once, his inhuman owner left him to die a lingering death in agonies; and his miserable groans, magnified by the reverberation of the hollow archway and echoing kitchens, had been the cause of our nocturnal alarm.

Carroll shook his head and looked incredulous at this solution of the mystery, refusing, with the love of his class for the supernatural, to accept it. Though years have since then passed over his head, tinging his locks with gray, and developing the brisk, agile footman into the portly, white-chokered, pompous butler, he will still cleave to his first belief, and stoutly affirm that flesh and blood had nought to do with the disturbance that night in the haunted house.

UMPIRES AT CRICKET.

Cricket has undergone many changes during its history, but, as far as we can tell, one thing has remained unaltered—the umpires are sole judges of fair and unfair play. The laws of 1774, which are the oldest in existence, say: ‘They (the umpires) are the sole judges of fair and unfair play, and all disputes shall be determined by them.’ Various directions have been given to them from time to time, but nothing has been done to lessen their responsibility or destroy their authority. An umpire must not bet on the match at which he is employed, and only for a breach of that law can he be changed without the consent of both parties. It is probable that the reason why an ordinary side in a cricket-match consists of eleven players is that originally a ‘round dozen’ took part in it, and that one on each side was told off to be umpire. An old writer on cricket says that in his district the players were umpires in turn; so, though there might be twelve of them present, only eleven were actually playing at once. This may have been a remnant of a universal custom; and it would explain why the peculiar number eleven is taken to designate a side in a cricket-match.

It is not always possible for an umpire to give satisfaction to both parties in a dispute, and very hard things have sometimes been said by those against whom a decision has been given. Mobbing an umpire is not so common in cricket as in football, but it is not unknown. Nervous men have sometimes been influenced by the outcries of spectators, and have given decisions contrary to their judgment. But occasionally the opposite effect has been produced by interference. A bowler who has been unpopular has been clamoured against when bowling fairly; and the umpire has not interfered even when he has bowled unfairly, lest it should look as if he was being coerced by the mob.

For some years there has been a growing demand for what may be called umpire reform. It has been said that in county matches umpires favoured their own sides. A few years ago, a Manchester paper commenced an account of a match between Lancashire and Yorkshire with these words: ‘The weather was hot, the players were hotter, but the umpiring was hottest of all.’ This kind of danger was sought to be obviated last year by the appointment of neutral umpires. The Marylebone Cricket Club appointed the umpires in all county matches; but this did not remove the dissatisfaction which had previously existed, as it was said that the umpires were afraid to enforce the strict laws of the game.

Some people who think there will not be fair-play as long as professional umpires are employed, would have amateurs in this position, and they predict that with the alteration there would be an end to all unfairness and dispute. But Lord Harris, who is the chief advocate for greater strictness on the part of umpires, says he believes they would never be successful in first-class matches; he has seen a good many amateur umpires in Australia, and, without impugning their integrity, he would be sorry to find umpires in England acting with so little experience and knowledge of the game.

Dr W. G. Grace has told two anecdotes of umpires whom he met in Australia. He says: ‘In an up-country match, our wicket-keeper stumped a man; but much to our astonishment the umpire gave him not out, and excused himself in the following terms: “Ah, ah! I was just watching you, Mr Bush; you had the tip of your nose just over the wicket.” In a match at Warrnambool, a man snicked a ball, and was caught by the wicket-keeper. The umpire at the bowler’s wicket being asked for a decision, replied: “This is a case where I can consult my colleague.” But of course the other umpire could not see a catch at the wicket such as this, and said so; whereupon our friend, being pressed for a decision, remarked: “Well, I suppose he is not out.”’

The Australians have frequently said that English professional umpires are afraid of giving gentlemen out, but this cannot be said of those who are chosen to stand in the chief matches. A well-known cricketer tells about a country match in which he was playing. A friend of his was tempting the fieldsmen to throw at his wicket, until at length one did throw, and hit it. ‘Not out,’ cried the umpire; and coming up to the batsman, said: ‘You really must be more careful, sir; you were clean out that time.’ This reminds us of the umpire who, in answer to an appeal, said: ‘Not out; but if he does it again, he will be.’ Caldecourt was a famous umpire—‘Honest Will Caldecourt,’ as he was called. The author of _Cricketana_ had a high opinion of him, and said he could give a reason for everything. That is a great virtue in an umpire. Some men in that position will give decisions readily enough, but they either cannot or will not explain on what grounds their decisions are formed.

John Lillywhite was a very honest umpire. It was his opinion that bowling was being tolerated which was contrary to the laws of cricket as they were then framed. In a match at Kennington Oval in 1862, he acted according to his opinion, for he was umpire. Lillywhite would not give way, and another umpire was employed in his place on the third day of the match. Lillywhite was right, and it was unfortunate that he was superseded. That was not the way to make umpires conscientious.

When the old All England Eleven were in their prime, and were playing matches in country places against eighteens and twenty-twos, the players did not always pay that deference to umpires which was customary on the best grounds, and advantage was sometimes taken of an umpire’s nervousness and inexperience. It seemed to be an axiom with some players, ‘To appeal is always safe.’ If several famous cricketers cried ‘How’s that?’ it is not to be wondered at that an umpire would occasionally say ‘Out’ on the spur of the moment, without knowing why. But a very fair retort was once made to a player who was fond of making appeals, on the chance of getting a lucky decision. ‘How’s that, umpire?’ he cried. The reply was: ‘Sir, you know it is not out; so why ask me, if you mean fair-play?’

The umpire has not an easy post to fill, even if he have all the assistance which can be rendered by the players. Points are constantly arising which are not provided for in the laws, and he must be guided by the practice of his predecessors in the best matches. There is such a thing as common law in cricket, as well as what may be called statute law. It is undecided whether the umpire should be considered part of the earth or part of the air. If a ball hit him, and be caught before it touch the ground, is the batsman out? Some umpires say Yes, and others say No. Severe accidents have sometimes happened to umpires who have been struck with the ball, and there is on record that at least one has met his death in this way.