CHAPTER XII.

FOOTSTEPS IN THE ROOM

During the few months that elapsed between the murder of Percy Osmond and the arrival of General St. George in England, Park Newton had been shut up, Pearce, the old family butler, being left as custodian of the house. Of the former establishment he was allowed to retain his niece, Miss Piper, who had been still-room maid, and Finch, formerly a footman, but afterwards promoted to be Mr. Dering’s body-servant; together with a woman or two to do the rough work of the house.

When the General fixed his home at Park Newton these people were all retained in their places, but their numbers were augmented by eight or ten more. All his life the General had been used to be waited upon by a number of people, and he could not quite get out of the way of it even in England.

On a certain wintry evening early in the new year, Finch and Miss Piper were sitting in the drawing-room toasting their toes before a seasonable fire. Between them was a small table on which stood a decanter of Madeira and two glasses, together with a dish of apples, nuts, and oranges. The family had gone out to dinner, and would not be home till late; Mr. Pearce had driven into Duxley to pay the tradesmen’s accounts, and for the time being Mr. Finch and his fair companion commanded the situation.

Miss Piper wore a dress of rustling plum-coloured silk. At her elbow was a smelling-bottle and a lace-edged handkerchief. Mr. Finch, with one of General St. George’s snuffboxes by his side, was lounging in his easy-chair, with all the graceful nonchalance of an old club-man who has just partaken of an excellent dinner.

“This Madeira is not so bad,” he said condescendingly, as he swallowed his third glass at a gulp with the gusto of a connoisseur. “Miss Piper,” refilling his glass, “I look towards you. Here’s your very good health. May you live long and die happy.”

“Oh, Mr. Finch! deeply gratified, I’m sure.”

“I must have fallen into a doze just now, because I never heard you when you opened the door, and was quite startled when I saw you standing beside me. But then you always do go about the house more quietly than anybody else—except the ghost himself.”

Miss Piper glanced round with a shudder, and hitched her chair a little nearer the fire and Mr. Finch. “But surely, Mr. Finch,” she said, “you are not one of those who believe that Park Newton is haunted? Uncle Pearce says that he never heard of such rubbish in the whole course of his life.”

“Can a man doubt the evidence of his own senses, ma’am? I have lived in too many good families to have any imagination: I am matter-of-fact to the back-bone. Such being the case, what then? Why simply this, Miss Piper: that I know for a fact this house is haunted. Haven’t I heard noises myself?”

“Gracious goodness! What kind of noises, Mr. Finch?”

“Why—er—rumblings and grumblings, and—er—moanings and scratchings. And haven’t I woke up in the middle of the night, and sat up in bed, and listened and heard strange noises that couldn’t be made by anything mortal? And then in the dusk of evening, haven’t I seen the curtains move, and heard feet come pitter-pattering down the stairs; and far-away doors clash in the dark as if shut by ghostly hands? Dreadful, I assure you.”

“You make me feel quite nervous!” cried Miss Piper, edging an inch nearer.

“The old clock on the second landing has never kept right time since the night of the murder. And didn’t Mary Ryan swear that she saw Mr. Percy Osmond coming downstairs one evening, in his bloodstained shirt?—asking your pardon, Miss Piper, for mentioning such a garment before a lady. These are facts that can’t be got over. But there’s worse to follow.”

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Finch?”

“At first the house was haunted by one ghost, but now they do say there’s two of them.”

“Oh, lor! Two! And whose is the second one?”

“Why, whose ghost should it be but that of our late master, Mr. Lionel Dering? Five servants have left in six weeks, and I shall give warning next Saturday.”

“My nerves are turning to jelly,” returned Miss Piper. “Oh, Mr. Finch, we should be dull indeed at Park Newton if you were to go away!”

“Then why not go with me and make my life one long happiness? You know my feelings, you know that I——”

“No more of that Mr. Finch, if you please. I know your feelings, and you know my sentiments. Nothing can ever change them. But don’t let us talk any more nonsense. I want you to tell me about the ghosts.”

“I don’t know that I’ve much more to tell,” said Finch, in a mortified tone.

“But about Mr. Dering—Mr. Lionel, I mean? Which of the servants was it that saw his ghost?”

“I am unable to give you any details, Miss Piper, as I never condescend to listen to the gossip of my inferiors; but I believe it to be the general talk in the servants’ hall that the ghost of Mr. Lionel has been seen three or four times slowly pacing the big corridor by moonlight.”

“How were the idiots to know that it was Mr. Lionel Dering?” asked Piper with a toss of the head. “Not one of them ever saw him when he was alive.”

“Yes, Jane Minnows saw him in court during the trial, and she knew the ghost the moment she saw it.”

“But then Jane Minnows was a terrible storyteller, and just as likely as not to invent all about the ghost simply to get herself talked about. But tell me, Mr. Finch, have you not noticed the remarkable likeness that exists between Mr. Richard Dering and his poor brother?”

“As a gentleman of discernment, Miss Piper, I have noticed the likeness of which you speak. He has the very same nose, the very same hands, the very same way of sitting in his chair. And then the voice! I give you my word of honour that when Mr. Richard yesterday called out rather suddenly ‘Finch,’ you might have knocked me down with a cork. It sounded for all the world as if my poor master had come back from the grave, and had called to me just as he used to do.”

“You are not one of those, Mr. Finch, who believed in the guilt of Mr. Dering?”

“I never did believe in it and I never will to the last day of my life,” said Finch, sturdily. “No one, who knew Mr. Lionel as I knew him, could harbour such a thought for a single moment.”

“Uncle Pearce says exactly the same as you. ‘No power on earth could make me believe it.’ Them’s his very words. But I say, Mr. Finch, isn’t the old General a darling?”

“Yes, Miss Piper, I approve of the General—I approve of him very much indeed. But Mr. Kester St. George is a sort of person whom I would never condescend to engage as my employer. I don’t like that gentleman. It seems a strange thing to say, but he has never looked his proper self since the night of the murder. His man tells me that he has to drench himself with brandy every morning before he can dress himself. Who knows? Perhaps it’s the ghosts. They’re enough to turn any man’s brain.”

“I know that I shouldn’t like to go after dark anywhere near where the murder was done,” said Miss Piper. “It’s a good job they have nailed the door up. There’s no getting either in or out of the room now.”

“And yet they do say,” remarked Finch, “that on the eighth of every month—you know the murder was done on the eighth of May—a little before midnight, footsteps can be heard—the noise of some one walking about in the nailed-up room. You, as the niece of Mr. Pearce, have not been told this, but it has been known to me all along.”

“But you don’t believe it, Mr. Finch?”

“Well, I don’t know so much about that,” answered Finch, dubiously. “You see it was on account of them footsteps that Sims and Baker left last month. They had been told about the footsteps, and they made up their minds to go and hear them. They did hear them, and they gave warning next day. They told Mr. Pearce that the place wasn’t lively enough for them. But it was the footsteps that drove them away.”

“After what you have told me, I shall be frightened of moving out of my own room after dusk. Listen!” cried Miss Piper, jumping up in alarm. “That’s uncle’s ring at the side bell. He must have got back before his time.”

It was as Finch had stated. Kester St. George was staying as his uncle’s guest at Park Newton. The General’s letter found him at Paris, where he had been living of late almost en permanence. It was couched in such a style that he saw clearly if he were to refuse the invitation thus given, a breach would be created between his uncle and himself which might never be healed in time to come; and, distasteful as the idea of visiting Park Newton was to him, he was not the man to let any sentimental rubbish, as he himself would have been the first to call it, stand in the way of any possible advantage that might accrue to him hereafter. Rich though he was, he still hankered after his uncle’s money-bags almost as keenly as in the days when he was so poor; and in his uncle’s letter there were one or two sentences which seemed to imply that the probability of their one day becoming his own was by no means so remote as he had at one time deemed it to be.

“And who has so much right to the old boy’s savings as I have?” he asked himself. “Certainly not that scowling black-browed Richard Dering. I hope with all my heart that he’ll be gone back to India—or to Jericho—or to the bottom of the sea—before I get to Park Newton.”

But when he did reach Park Newton he found, greatly to his disgust, that Richard Dering was still there, and that there were no signs whatever of his speedy departure. That there was no love lost between the two men was evident both to themselves and others; but although their coolness towards each other could hardly fail to be noticed by General St. George, he never made the slightest allusion to it, but treated them both as if they were the best of possible friends. Kester he treated with greater cordiality than he had ever accorded to him before.

Richard and Kester saw hardly anything of each other except at the dinner-table, and then the conversation between them was limited to the baldest possible topics. Richard never sat over his wine, and generally asked and obtained his uncle’s permission to leave the table the moment dessert was placed upon it. He was an early riser, and had breakfasted and was out riding or walking long before his uncle or cousin made their appearance downstairs.

But these meetings over dinner, brief though they were, were to Kester like a dreadful oft-recurring nightmare which, although it may last for a minute or two only, murders sleep by the dread which it inspires before it comes, and the horror it leaves behind it after it has gone. Richard’s voice, his eyes, the swing of his walk, the very pose of his head, were all so many reminders to Kester of a dead and gone man, the faintest recollection of whom he would fain have erased not from his own memory alone, but from that of every one else who had known him. But to hear Richard speak was to hear, as it were, Lionel speaking from the tomb.

General St. George made the delicate state of his health a plea for not seeing much company at Park Newton, nor did he visit much himself. But there was no such restriction on Kester, and he was out nearly every day at one place or another, though he generally contrived to get back in time to dine with his uncle. He had not forgotten Dr. Bolus’s advice, and for the last month or two he had been leading a very quiet life indeed. As a result of this, he fancied that there was a decided improvement in the state of his health. In any case, he felt quite sure that the symptoms which had troubled him so much at one time troubled him less frequently now, and were milder at each recurrence. As a consequence, he had shrunk with a sort of morbid dread from seeking any further professional advice. He always felt the worst in a morning—so weak, nervous, and depressed when he woke up from the three or four hours of troubled sleep, which was all that nature could now be persuaded to give him. Let him tire himself as he might, he never could get much more sleep than when he went to bed comparatively fresh, the consequence simply being that he was more weak and ill than usual next morning. For a little while he tried narcotics; but the remedy proved worse than the disease it was intended to cure. More sleep he got, it is true; but sleep so burdened with frightful dreams that it seemed to him as if it would be better to lie awake for ever, than run the risk of floating helplessly in such a sea of horrors any more.

As Finch had said, he had to dose himself heavily with brandy before he could dress and crawl downstairs to breakfast. But as the day wore on he always got stronger and better, so that by the time it was necessary to dress for dinner, he was quite like his old self again, as well seemingly and as buoyant as the Kester St. George of a dozen years before. It was the dark hours that tried him most, when he was left alone in his great gloomy bedroom, with a candle, and a book, and his own thoughts.

He had brought his valet with him to Park Newton. Not Pierre Janvard this time. Pierre had left Mr. St. George’s service a little while previously, and had started business on his own account as an hotel keeper at Bath.

Mr. St. George’s new valet was an Englishman named Dobbs. He was a well-trained servant—noiseless, deferential, smooth-spoken, and treating all his master’s whims and capricious fluctuations of temper as the merest matter of course: a man who would allow himself to be sworn at, and called an idiot, an ass, the biggest blockhead in existence; and retaliate only with a faint smile of deprecation, and a gentle rubbing of his lean white hands.

Mr. St. George had a strange dislike to being left alone. When he could not have any other society—that is to say, early in the morning, and late at night, after everybody else was in bed—he would rather have the company of Dobbs than that of his own thoughts only. In a morning, between six and seven—long before daylight in winter—Dobbs was there in his master’s room, arranging his clothes, laying out his dressing-case, mixing him his cup of chocolate, supplying him with his brandy, doing anything—it did not matter what—so long as he was not out of his master’s sight for many minutes at a time.

Then at night, late, when the old house was as quiet as a tomb, Mr. St. George would sit in his dressing-room, drinking cold brandy-and-water, and smoking cigars till far into the small hours. It was Dobbs’s duty at such times to sit with his master in a chair removed a few yards away, and a little behind that of Mr. St. George. It was not that Kester wanted him there for conversational purposes, for he rarely condescended to speak to him except to ask him for something that he wanted. The man’s silent presence was all that he required, and for such a duty as that Dobbs was invaluable. He never dozed—he would have sat up all night without closing an eye—he never read, he never sneezed or coughed, or made his presence objectionable in any way; and he never spoke unless first spoken to. Silent, watchful, and alert, he was always there and always the same.

Mr. St. George never slept without a light in his room, and Dobbs, who had a little sofa-bed in the dressing-room, and who was a remarkably light sleeper, was instructed to arouse his master at once should he hear the latter begin to toss about or moan in his sleep.

The eighth of February had come. Kester was beginning to think that it was about time his visit to Park Newton should be brought to a close. He had two horses in training at Chantilly, on which he based some brilliant expectations, and his heart and thoughts were in the stable with his pets. Every day that he prolonged his stay at Park Newton merely served to deepen his hatred of the place. “I shall have a fit of horrors if I stay here much longer,” he said to himself. “I’ll invent some important business, and try to get away the day after to-morrow. I must persuade the old boy to come and spend a month with me at Chantilly when the spring sets fairly in.”

Dinner that day was quite an hour later than usual. General St. George had been to see an old friend who was ill, and he did not get back till late. Contrary to his usual practice, Richard Dering sat this evening with his uncle and cousin, after the cloth was removed: He sat drinking his wine in an absent mood, and scarcely joining in the conversation at all. By-and-by Pearce brought a note to the General on a salver. He put on his spectacles, opened the note, and read it. Then, with a little peevish exclamation, he tossed it into the fire.

“Another of them,” he said. “We shall be left before long without a servant to wait on us. I certainly did not anticipate this annoyance when I came to live at Park Newton.”

“What is the annoyance of which you speak?” asked Kester.

“Why, that fellow Finch has just given me notice that he intends to leave this day month. That will make the sixth of them, man or maid, that has left me since I came here; and I hear that the rest, old and new, are all likely to follow suit before long.”

“You astonish me,” said Kester. “You have always seemed to me the most indulgent of masters. If anything, too lenient—excuse me, sir, for saying so—and I can’t understand at all why these idiots should want to leave you.”

“Oh, it’s not me they want to leave: it’s the house that doesn’t suit them.”

“The house! And what have they to complain of as regards the house?”

“They swear, every man jack of them, that it’s haunted.”

Kester’s pale face became a shade paler. He fingered his empty wine glass nervously and did not answer for a little while.

“Park Newton haunted! What ridiculous nonsense is this?” he said at last with a forced laugh. “I lived in the house for years when I was a lad; but I certainly never knew before that it had so peculiar a reputation.”

“It is only of late—only since the murder last May—that people have got into the way of saying these things.”

Again Kester was silent. Richard Dering’s keen glance was fixed on his face. He felt it rather than saw it. His under lip quivered slightly. He moved uneasily in his chair.

“What a parcel of blockheads these people must be!” he exclaimed at last. “Do we live in the nineteenth century, or have we gone back to the middle ages? If I were in your place, sir, I would send the whole lot packing, and have an entirely new set from London. It is only these superstitious country-bred louts who believe in such rubbish as ghosts: your thoroughbred Cockney has no faith in anything half so unsubstantial.”

“It is certainly very singular,” said the General, “that these idle fancies of weak brains should be so contagious. The first man who propagates the idea of a house being haunted has much to answer for. He never finds any lack of ready-made believers; and it is remarkable that we who know better, when we have a subject like this so persistently forced on our notice, come at last, quite unconsciously to ourselves and with no desire whatever to do so, to give a sort of half credence to it. We listen with a more attentive ear to statements so obstinately made, and emanating from so many different sources.”

“My dear uncle,” cried Kester, “you are surely never going to allow yourself to be converted into a believer in this wretched nonsense!”

“My dear Kester, I am not aware that I have ever been accounted as a superstitious man, and I don’t think that I am going to become one so late in the day. I merely say that there is about these matters a certain degree of contagion which it is next to impossible altogether to resist.”

Richard, who up to this point had taken no part in the conversation, now spoke. “From what I can make out,” he said, “there seems to be a strange coherence, a remarkable similarity, in the stories told by the different persons who profess to have seen these appearances. And now they are not content with saying that Park Newton is haunted by one ghost: they will have it that two of them have been seen of late.”

“Two of them!” exclaimed the General and Kester in one breath.

“Ay, two of them,” answered Richard. “One of them I need not name. The other one is said to be the ghost of my poor lost brother.”

“What wretched fabrications are these!” exclaimed Kester. “Are you and I, sir,” turning to the General, “to have our lives worried and our peace of mind broken by the babbling of a set of idiots, such as there unfortunately seems to be in this house?”

“They do not disturb my peace of mind, Kester.”

“They do mine, sir. This house is my property—pardon me for mentioning the fact. Once let it acquire the unenviable reputation of being haunted, and for fifty years to come everybody will swear that it is so. Should you, sir, ever choose to leave the house, what chance shall I have of getting another tenant? None! With the reputation of being haunted, no one will live in it. Slowly but surely it will go to rack and ruin.”

“It is hardly to be wondered at,” said the General, “that these people have connected a tragedy so terrible, as that which will make Park Newton memorable for a century to come, with certain ghostly appearances. I myself find my thoughts dwelling upon the same thing very frequently indeed. What a strange, sad fate was that of poor young Osmond! Him I did not know. But in my dreams I am continually seeing the face of my poor lost boy whose fate was only one degree less sad. Do you never find yourself haunted in the same way, Kester?”

“Haunted, Uncle Lionel? That is a strange word to make use of. I have not forgotten my cousin, of course—nor am I likely ever to do so.”

For a little while they all sat in silence. Nothing was heard save the crackling of the fire, or the dropping of a cinder; or, now and then, the moaning of the wintry wind, as it crept about the old house, trying the doors and windows, and seeming as though it were burdened with the weight of some terrible secret which it was striving to tell but could not.

Suddenly Richard Dering spoke. “This is the eighth of February,” he said. “Nine months ago to-night, Percy Osmond was murdered, and under this very roof. To-night, at twelve o’clock, if what these people allege be true, footsteps will be heard—the noise of some one walking up and down the room where the murder was committed. Such being the case, what more easy than to prove or disprove the accuracy of at least this part of the story? Why not go, all three of us, a few minutes before twelve; and, accompanied by two or three of the servants who shall be chosen by the rest as a deputation, station ourselves close to the door of the nailed-up room, and there await the result? I do not for one moment anticipate that we shall either see or hear anything out of the ordinary way. Once let us prove this to the satisfaction of the servants, and I don’t think that we shall be troubled with much more nonsense about ghostly footsteps or appearances at Park Newton.”

“Not a bad idea, Dick, by any means,” said the General. “What say you, Kester?”

Kester had pushed back his chair from the table while Richard was speaking. There was a strange look on his face: in his eyes terror, on his lips a derisive smile. He emptied his glass before answering.

“Faith, sir,” he said, “it seems to me that you attach far too much importance to the cackling of these idiots. I would treat their assertions with the contempt they deserve, and send the whole crew about their business before they were two days older. Your presence there, as it seems to me, would be like a confession of your belief in the possible truth of certain statements which are really so childish that no sensible person can treat them otherwise than with the most supreme contempt.”

“I hardly agree with you there, Kester,” said General St. George. “Our presence would be like a guarantee of good faith, and would set the question at rest at once and for ever. At all events, the plan is one which I mean to try, and I should like both of you to be there with me. Richard, you can arrange for certain of the servants to be ready a few minutes before midnight.”

“Really, sir, I should feel obliged if you would excuse me from accompanying you,” said Kester. “I have a bad headache to-night, and intend to get between the sheets as soon as possible.”

“Pooh—pooh—pooh!” said the General, hastily. “I shall not excuse you. Hang your headaches! When I was a young fellow we left headaches to the women, and did not know what such things were ourselves. I have set my mind on having a game of backgammon with you this evening, and I shall not let you go.”

His uncle’s tone was so peremptory that Kester dared not say another word. He sat down again in silence.

At five minutes before twelve, they all met in the library—General St. George, Richard, Kester, and a deputation from the servants’ hall, headed by Finch with a pair of lighted candles. Finch led the way through the cold and dismal passages, up the black oaken staircase, through the dreary picture gallery, where the portrait of each dead and gone St. George looked down inquiringly, and seemed to ask the meaning of so strange a procession; and so at last they reached the door of the nailed-up room. Finch deposited his candles on the nearest window-sill, and by their dim, uncertain light, the company grouped themselves round the door, the servants a little way behind their superiors, and waited. No one spoke: no one wanted to speak. They were thinking of the dark tragedy that, but a few short months before, and in the dead of night, had been enacted behind that shut-up door. Presently the turret-clock began to strike. Slowly and lingeringly it tolled, as if unwilling to let the dying day drop into its grave. Over all there, a deeper hush fell. Twelve solemn strokes, and then silence and another day.

Silence for, perhaps, the space of half a minute; when, with an indescribable awe, they heard, one and all, a slight noise, as of a chair being pushed back; and next moment came the sound, clear, distinct, and unmistakable, of footsteps slowly pacing the bare, polished floor of the nailed-up room. The servants all shrank back a little, and turned their white and frightened faces on one another. Kester St. George, too, staggered back a step or two, and leaned for support against an angle of the wall.

Even at that supreme moment he could feel that the cold, stern eyes of Richard Dering were fixed on his face, and he hated him with a hatred like death.

Hardly breathing, they all listened, while the footsteps slowly, unhesitatingly, paced the room. Suddenly they heard another sound which several there present at once recognized. What they heard was the noise of a man coughing; and the cough they heard was the short, dry, grating cough that had been peculiar to Mr. Percy Osmond, and to him alone. Finch recognized it in a moment. So did Kester St. George; who, with a quick cry of pain, pressed his hand to his heart, and staggering back a pace or two, fell to the ground in a dead faint.