Part 4

“All right,” I replied, “please fire away.”

“Well,” continued Chester, “they told me the Prior had often been seen since peeping over the tower, and at times he was seen to fall, as he did years ago, from the summit. By the bye, his assassin was starved to death and buried in some old midden. One moonlight night as my brother and I were standing on the Kirkhill, to our horror and amazement we saw a figure appear suddenly on the top of the tower, leap on to the parapet, and deliberately jump over. Zounds, sir, my blood ran cold.”

“We did not hesitate long, but jumped the low wall of the Cathedral. It was easily done in those days, and we were young and active, and hurried to the grim old tower. Just as we neared it, a monk passed us in the Augustinian habit, his cowl was thrown back, and for just one second we had a view of his pallid, handsome face and keen penetrating eyes. Then he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. We were alone in the moonlight, nothing stirring.”

“That is very odd,” I said.

“Zooks! sir, I have odder things still to tell you. We went home to the old house, had supper, and retired to bed thoughtfully. I woke about 2 a.m. The blinds were up and it was as clear as day with the moonlight. Imagine my blank astonishment when I clearly perceived, leaning up against the mantelpiece, the pallid monk I had seen a few hours before near the Square Tower. He leaned on his elbow and was gazing intently at me, while in his hand he held some object that had a blue glitter in the moonbeams.

“He smiled. ‘Fear not, brother,’ he said, ‘I am Prior Robert of Montrose who quitted this earth many years syne, and of whom you have been talking and thinking so much of late days. I saw you to-night in our cruelly ruined Abbey Kirk. Alas! alas! but I come from ayont the distant hills and have far to go to-night.’

“‘What do you want, Holy Father?’ I said, ‘and what of your murder?’

“‘That is forgiven and forgotten long syne,’ he said, ‘and I love to revisit, _at times_, my old haunts, and so does he. You have in your regiment, methinks, one named Montrose, a scion of our family.’

“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know Bob Montrose well.’

“‘See you this dagger I hold,’ said Prior Robert, ‘it was with this I lost my life on this earth many years syne on the tower of blessed St Rule. They buried it with me in my stone kist; I will leave it here with you to give to my kinsman, for it will prove of use to him e’er he pass hence—mark my words.’

“He raised his hand as in act of blessing, and melted away. I fell back in a sleep or in a faint. When I woke the morning sun was streaming into my bedroom. At first I thought I had eaten too much supper and had a nightmare, but there on the table by my bed lay an old dagger of curious workmanship—the dagger that slew the Prior years and years ago. I faithfully fulfilled my vow, and my friend, Major Bob Montrose, has now got his monkish ancestor’s dagger.”

“That’s all Captain Chester told me, dear children. Goodbye, don’t forget me, and do not forget old St Andrews Ghosts, the Tower of St Rule, and the Spectre of Prior Robert of Montrose.”

Then a modern hansom whirled me away to King’s Cross.

Related by Captain Chester.

In my travels I have met many very extraordinary and remarkable people with hobbies and fads of various kinds, but I never met a man of such curious personality as this old friend of mine, Captain Chester. All his methods and ideas were purely original. Everyone has some hobby; his hobby was ghost and spook-hunting.

We were sitting one lovely September evening in the gardens of one of the hotels at Bonn, which stretched down to the river Rhine, listening to the band and watching the great rafts coming down the river from the Black Forest.

“By Jove, sir,” said the old man, “I have shot big game in the Rockies, and hunted tigers and all that sort of thing; but, zooks! sir, I prefer hunting ghosts any day. That Robert de Montrose was the first I saw. There are shoals of these shades about, a perfect army of them everywhere, especially in St Andrews. Gad, sir, you should hear the banshees shrieking at night in the Irish bogs. I don’t believe in your infernal sea serpents, but I’ve seen water kelpies in the Scottish and American lakes.”

I told him I had never heard a banshee or seen a water kelpie.

“Very likely, sir, very probable. Everyone can’t see and hear these things. _I can._”

I told him I had never seen a disembodied spirit, and didn’t want to.

“Gad, zooks! sir, I consider disinspirited bodies far worse. They are quite common. I allude to human bodies that have lost their spirits or souls, and yet go about among us. Zounds! sir, my cousin is one of them.

“Ah,” he continued, “detached personality is a curious thing. I can detach my personality, can you?”

“Most certainly not,” I said, “what the deuce do you mean?”

“Mean,” he said, “I mean my spirit can float out of my body at will. My spirit becomes a sort of mental balloon. I can then defy destiny.”

“How in thunder do you manage to do it anyway?”

“By practice, sir, of course. When my spirit floats out of my body, I can see my own old body sitting in my armchair and an ugly old wreck of a body it is. It is bad for one, I admit; it is very weakening. Another thing may happen; another wandering spirit may suddenly take possession of one’s body, and then one’s own spirit can’t get back again, and it becomes a wandering spirit, and is always trying to force itself into other people’s bodies. Then one’s spirit gets into a mental bunker, you see.”

“I don’t see a bit. It is most unpleasant. Tell me about ghosts you have seen, and about that dagger you gave Major Montrose.”

“Oh! so then you are not interested in eliminated personality?”

“Not a bit,” I said, “I don’t know what it is. Tell me about that dagger for a change.”

“Oh! ah! Well, the dagger Robert of Montrose gave me proved of great use to my old friend, Bob Montrose, on _many_ occasions. It had a wonderful power of its own. Once he got into a broil with a lot of Spanish fellows one night, and as he was unarmed at the time he was in a remarkably tight corner. Suddenly something slipped into his hand, and, by Jove, sir, it was the dagger, and that dagger saved his life. Another time he found himself in an American train with a raving lunatic, and if it had not been for the protecting dagger he’d have been torn limb from limb. After that he took it everywhere with him.”

“Where is it now?”

“Well, there’s an odd thing if you like. Bob died in the Isle of France, where Paul and Virginia used to be. He was killed by a fall, and is buried there. He left the dagger to me in his will, but no human eyes have ever seen that dagger since his death. It may have been stolen, or it may have gone back to where it came from into Robert of Montrose’s stone kist in the old Chapter-House at St Andrews Cathedral. Probably its usefulness was at an end, and it was needed no more. Bob told me one queer thing about that dagger. _Once a year_ near Christmastide (the dagger hung on the wall of his bedroom) it used to exude a thick reddish fluid like blood, which used to cover the blade in large drops, and it remained so for several hours—and, again, sometimes at night it used to shine with a bright light of its own.”

“That is indeed wonderful,” I said, lighting another cheroot, “but tell me more about the St Andrews bogles. Astral bodies, dual personality, and things of that kind depress me a bit.”

“Well, that is odd,” said old Chester, “I love them. When I was in St Andrews I rented a fine old house, with huge thick walls, big fireplaces, funny corkscrew stairs, such rum holes and corners, and big vaulted kitchens. It’s all pulled down now, I believe, and a bran new house built; but I hear the vaulted rooms below are left exactly as they were. People didn’t take to the old house; they heard noises and rappings, and saw things in the night, and so on. _We all saw things._ My brother met the ghost of a horrible looking old witch, quite in the orthodox dress, on the Witch Hill above the Witch Lake. It upset him terribly at the time—made him quite ill—nerves went all to pot—would not sleep in a room by himself after that. He made me devilish angry, sir, I can tell you.”

“Perhaps it was Mother Alison Craik, a well-known witch, who was burnt there.”

“Likely enough, sir, it may have been the old cat you mention, an old hag. Then my nephew and I saw that phantom coach in the Abbey Walk one windy moonlight night. It passed us very quickly, but made a deuced row, like a lifeboat carriage.”

“What was it like?”

“Like a huge black box with windows in it, and a queer light inside. It reminded me of a great coffin. Ugly looking affair; very uncanny thing to meet at that time of night and in such a lonely spot. It was soon gone, but we heard its rumbling noise for a long time.”

“What were the horses like, eh?”

“Shadowy looking black things, like great black beetles with long thin legs.”

“And what was the driver like?” I asked.

“He was a tall thin, black object also, like a big, black, lank lobster, with a cocked hat on the top. That’s all I could see. On the top of the coach was an object that looked like a gigantic tarantula spider, with a head like a moving gargoyle. I can’t get at the real history of that mysterious old coach yet. I don’t believe it has anything whatever to do with the murdered prelates, Beaton or Sharpe. However, the coach does go about. Another wraith I saw at the Castle of St Andrews was that of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, third husband of Mary Queen of Scots. He lies buried in the crypt of Faarveile Church, close to the cattegut. Before his death he was a prisoner at Malmo; then he was sent to Denmark, and died in the dungeon of the State prison at Drachsholm.”

“I am awfully interested,” I said, “about those times, and in Bothwell and Mary in particular.”

“Odd’s fish, sir,” said Chester, “so am I. I went to Faarveile to see Bothwell’s well-preserved body. The verger took me down a trap-door near the altar, and there it lies in a lidless box, a very fine face, with a cynical and mocking mouth. He murdered Darnley, and he was treated and buried as a murderer in those bygone days. At Malmo folks say he was tormented by the ghosts of his mad wife, Jane Huntly, and by Darnley. He ended his days in misery, and serve him devilish well right, say I. I love and revere lovely Mary Stuart. Damn it, sir, he deserted her when she was in a fix at Carberry Hill, the curmudgeon.”

“But what of the appearances of the Earl you saw?”

“Met him twice at the Castle—no mistaking him—a big, knightly, handsome fellow. Spirits can easily at times assume their earthly form and dress. I recognised him at once—the sneering lips and all, just like his pictures, too. When he glided past me his teeth were chattering like a dice-box, and the wind was whistling through his neck bones. I addressed him boldly by name, but he melted away. One sees these apparitions with one’s mental eyes. I saw him again leaning against the door that leads to that oubliette in the Sea Tower of the Castle. Egad, sir, he _exactly_ resembled the body I saw in the old crypt at Faarveile. He often appears there, and at Hermitage Castle also. No mistake, sir, that was Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell. I must tell you _some other time_—(it’s getting very late now)—of the ghosts I saw in my house at St Andrews, and of the Prior or Monk of Pittenweem. I must turn into bed now. I go to the service at the Cathedral here early to-morrow.”

Then the tall figure of Captain Chester strode away and left me alone to my meditations.

Well! I suppose if _I had been_ Captain Chester, left alone there in those gardens, I’d have seen a ghost or two with my mental eyes; but, instead, I saw a fat waiter approaching, who told me my supper awaited me.

The Screaming Skull of Greyfriars.

I never met a better fellow in the world than my old friend, Allan Beauchamp. He had been educated at Eton, and Magdalen at Oxford, after which he joined a crack regiment, and later on took it into his head to turn doctor. He was a great traveller and a magnificent athlete. There was no game in which he did not excel. Curiously enough, he hated music; he had no ear for it, and he did not know the difference between the airs of “Tommy, make room for your uncle” and “The Lost Chord.” He was tremendously proud of his pedigree; he had descended from the de Beauchamps, and one of his ancestors, he gravely informed people, had helped Noah to get the wasps and elephants into the Ark. Another of them seems to have been not very far away in the Garden of Eden. In fact, they seem to have been quite prehistoric. He was quite cracked on the subject of brain transference, telepathy, spiritualism, ghosts, warnings, and the like, and on these points he was most uncanny and fearsome. The literature he had about them was blood curdling. He believed in dual personality, and in visions, horoscopes, and dreams. He showed me a pamphlet he had written, entitled “The Toad-faced Demon of Lone Devil’s Dyke.” He was always flitting about Britain exploring haunted houses and castles, and sleeping in haunted rooms when it was possible. Some years ago Beauchamp and myself, accompanied by his faithful valet, rejoicing in the name of Pellingham Truffles, went to the Highlands for a bit of quiet and rest, and it was there I heard his curious story of the skull.

We were sitting over a cosy fire after dinner. It was snowing hard outside, and very cold. Our pipes were alight and our grog on the table, when Allan Beauchamp suddenly remarked—“It’s a deuced curious thing for a man to be always followed about the place by a confounded grinning skull.”

“Eh, what,” I said, “who the deuce is being followed about by a skull? It’s rubbish, and quite impossible.”

“Not a bit,” said my friend, “I’ve had a skull after me more or less for several years.”

“It sounds like a remark a lunatic would make,” I rejoined rather crossly. “Do not talk bunkum. You’ll go dotty if you believe such infernal rot.”

“It is not bunkum or rot a bit,” said Allan, “It’s gospel truth. Ask Truffles, ask Jack Weston, or Jimmy Darkgood, or any of my south country pals.”

“I don’t know Jack Weston or Jimmy Darkgood,” I said, “but tell me the whole story, and some day, _if it’s good_, I’ll put it in the _St Andrews Citizen_.”

“It’s mostly about St Andrews,” said Beauchamp, “so here goes, but shove on some coals first.”

I did so, and then requested him to fire away.

“It was long, long ago, I think about the year 1513, that one of my ancestors, a man called Neville de Beauchamp, resided in Scotland. It seems he was an uncommonly wild dog, went in for racing and cards, and could take his wine and ale with any of them even in those hard-drinking days. He was known as Flash Neville. Later on he married a pretty girl, the daughter of a silk mercer in Perth, who, it seems, died (they said of a broken heart) two years after. Neville de Beauchamp was seized with awful remorse, and became shortly after a monk in Greyfriars Monastery at St Andrews. After Neville’s wife’s death, her relations seem to have been on the hunt after him, burning for revenge, and the girl’s brother, a rough, wild dog in those stormy days, at last managed to track his quarry down in the monastery at St Andrews.”

“Very interesting,” I said, “that monastery stood very nearly on the site of the present infant school, and we found the well in 1880. Well, what did this brother do, eh?”

“It seems that one afternoon after vespers he forced his way into the Monastery Chapel, sought out Neville de Beauchamp, and slashed off his head with a sword in the aisle of the Kirk. Now a queer thing happened—his body fell on the floor, but the severed head, with a wild scream, flew up to the chapel ceiling and vanished through its roof.”

“Mighty queer that,” I said.

“The body was reverently buried,” went on Allan, “but the head never was recovered, and, whirling through the air over the monastery, screaming and groaning most pitifully, it used to cause great terror to the monks and others o’ nights. It was a well-known story, and few cared to venture in that locality after nightfall. The head soon became a skull, and since that time has always haunted some member of the house of Beauchamp. Now comes a strange thing. I went a few years ago and lived in rooms at St Andrews for a change, and while there I heard of my uncle’s death somewhere abroad. I had never seen him, but I had frequently heard that he was very much perplexed and worried by the tender attentions paid him by the skull of Neville de Beauchamp, which was always turning up at odd times and in unexpected places.”

“This is a grand tale,” I said.

“Now I come on the job,” said Allan, ruefully. “That uncle was the very last of our family, and I wondered if that skull would come my way. I felt very ill and nervous after I got the news of my uncle’s death. A strange sense of depression and oppression overcame me, and I got very restless. One stormy evening I felt impelled by some strange influence to go out. I wandered about the place for several hours and got drenched. I felt as if I was walking in my sleep, or as if I had taken some drug or other. Then I had a sort of vision—I had just rounded the corner of North Bell Street.”

“Now called Greyfriars Garden,” I remarked.

“Yes! Well, when I got around that corner I saw a large, strange building before me. I opened a wicket gate and entered what I found to be the chapel; service was over, the lights were being extinguished, and the air was laden with incense. As I knelt in a corner of the chapel I saw the whole scene, the tragedy of which I had heard, enacted all over again. I saw that monk in the aisle, I saw a man rush in and cut off his head. I saw the body fall and the head fly up with a shriek to the roof. When I came to myself I found I was sitting on the low wall of the school. I was very cold and wet, and I got up to go home. As I rose I saw lying on the pavement at my feet what appeared to be a small football. I gave it a vicious kick, when to my horror it turned over and I saw it was a skull. It was gnashing its teeth and moaning. Then with a shriek it flew up in the air and vanished. A horrible thing. Then I knew the worst. The skull of the monk Neville de Beauchamp had attached itself to me for life, I being the last of the race. Since then it is almost always with me.”

“Where is it now?” I said, shuddering.

“Not very far away, you bet,” he said.

“It’s a most unpleasant tale,” I said. “Good night, I’m off to bed after that.”

I was in my first sleep about an hour afterwards, when a knock came at my door, and the valet came in.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” he said, “but the skull has _just come back_. It’s in the next room. Would you like to see it?”

“Certainly not,” I roared. “Get away and let me go to sleep.”

Then and there I firmly resolved to leave next morning. I hated skulls, and I fancied that probably it might take a fancy to me, and I had no desire to be followed about the country by a skull as if it was a fox terrier.

Next morning I went in to breakfast. “Where is that beastly skull?” I said to Allan.

“Oh, it’s off again somewhere. Heaven knows where; but I have had another vision, a waking vision.”

“What was it?”

“Well,” said Allan, “I saw the skull and a white hand which seemed to beckon to me beside it. Then they slowly receded and in their place was what looked like a big sheet of paper. On it in large letters were the words—_Your friend, Jack Weston, is dead_. This morning I got this wire telling me of his sudden death. Read it.”

That afternoon I left the Highlands and Allan Beauchamp.

Since then I have constant letters from him from his home in England. He has tried every means possible to get rid of that monk’s skull; but they are of no avail, it always returns. So he has made the best he can of it, and keeps it in a locked casket in an empty room at the end of a wing of the old house. He says it keeps fairly quiet, but on stormy nights wails and gruesome shrieks are heard from the casket in that closed apartment.

I heard from him last week. He said:—

“DEAR W. T. L.,—I don’t think I mentioned that twice a year the skull of Neville de Beauchamp vanishes from its casket for a period of about two days. It is never away longer.

“I wonder if it still haunts its old monastery at St Andrews where its owner was slain. Do write and tell me if anyone now in that vicinity hears or sees the screaming skull of my ancestor, Neville de Beauchamp.”

The Spectre of the Castle.

Several years had elapsed since I met the butler of Lausdree Castle in the Highland Inn. I had just come up from the south of England for some golf and fresh air, and was looking over my letters one morning at breakfast when I opened the following missive:—

Lausdree Castle, ......

SIR,—Yours to command. Sir, I have not forgot our pleasant talk on that snowy night up in the far north, when you were pleased to be interested in my experiences of Lausdree. Could you very kindly meet me any day and time you choose to fix at Leuchars? And oblige,

Your obedient servant,

JEREMIAH ANKLEBONE.

_P.S._—I have something to divulge to you connected with St Andrews that may absorb your mind.

Accordingly, I fixed up arrangements and met Mr Anklebone at Leuchars, where we went to the nearest hostelry and ordered the best lunch they had there. Jeremiah looked thinner, older, and whiter than when I last saw him, doubtless owing to his frequent communing with spirits.

“How is Lausdree getting on?” I meekly inquired, “and what of the ghosts?”

“It is getting on fine, sir. I have had a number of new experiences since I had the pleasure of seeing you last. You must understand, sir, that my family for generations have been favoured with occult powers. My father was a great seer, and my great-grandfather, Mr Concrikketty Anklebone, of the Isle of Skye, was a wonderful visionary.”

Now, Anklebone was an interesting old fellow, but he had a tiresome habit of wandering away from his theme, and, as it were, getting off the main road into a labyrinth of bye-ways, and one had, metaphorically, to push him out of these side lanes and place him on his feet again in the main road.

“Before I come to St Andrews Castle,” he said, “I must tell you about a queer episode of an astral body at Lausdree, a disentangled personality, as it were.”

“Push along,” I said, “and tell me.”

“Well, one afternoon after luncheon the master and I were in the dining hall, when we saw a gentleman crossing the lawn towards the castle. He was a tall man in a riding dress, with curly hair and a large flowing moustache. He came up to the window and looked in earnestly at us, and then walked along the gravel-walk round to the castle door. ‘Hullo!’ said the master, ‘that is my old friend, Jack Herbert, to whom I have let Lausdree for this summer. What on earth can bring him here? I’ll go to the door myself and let him in. He never said he was coming.’

“In a minute or two the master came back looking bewildered. ‘Anklebone,’ he said, ‘that’s a _very_ queer thing; there is nobody there!’ ‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘the gentleman has gone round to the stables’; so we both hurried off to look, but not a sign of anyone could be seen, and we stared blankly at each other. We could not make it out. Two days after, the master got a letter from Mr Jack Herbert telling him he had had a bad fall off his horse, had injured his spine, and was confined to bed.