Part 12

“You remember the night poor Charlie died, Hilda,” said Carrados in his suavest tones, “you cooked some mushrooms for his supper, didn’t you?”

“No, sir,” came the glib reply.

“‘No,’ Hilda!” exclaimed Mrs Dupreen in wonderment. “You mean ‘yes,’ surely, child. Of course you cooked them. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, ma’am,” dutifully replied Hilda.

“That is all right,” said the blind man reassuringly. “Nervous witnesses very often answer at random at first. You have nothing to be afraid of, my good girl, if you will tell the truth. I suppose you know a mushroom when you see it?”

“Yes, sir,” was the rather hesitating reply.

“There was nothing like this among them?” He held up one of the poisonous sort.

“No, sir; indeed there wasn’t, sir. I should have known then.”

“You would have known _then_? You were not called at the inquest, Hilda?”

“No, sir.”

“If you had been, what would you have told them about these mushrooms that you cooked?”

“I--I don’t know, sir.”

“Come, come, Hilda. What could you have told them--something that we do not know? The truth, girl, if you want to save yourself?” Then with a sudden, terrible directness the question cleft her trembling, guilt-stricken little brain: “Where did you get the other mushrooms from that you put with those that your mistress brought?”

The eyes that had been mostly riveted to the floor leapt to Carrados for a single frightened glance, from Carrados to her mistress, to Philip Loudham, and to the floor again. In a moment her face changed and she was in a burst of sobbing.

“Oho, oho, oho!” she wailed. “I didn’t know; I didn’t know. I meant no harm; indeed I didn’t, ma’am.”

“Hilda! Hilda!” exclaimed Mrs Dupreen in bewilderment. “What is it you’re saying? What have you done?”

“It was his own fault. Oho, oho, oho!” Every word was punctuated by a gasp. “He always was a little pig and making himself ill with food. You know he was, ma’am, although you were so fond of him. I’m sure I’m not to blame.”

“But _what_ was it? What _have_ you done?” besought her mistress.

“It was after you went out on that afternoon. He put on his things and slipped down into the kitchen without the master knowing. He said what you were getting for his dinner, ma’am, and that you never got enough of them. Then he told me not to tell about his being down, because he’d seen some white things from his bedroom window growing by the hedge at the bottom of the garden and he was going to get them. He brought in four or five and said they were mushrooms and asked me to cook them with the others and not say anything because you’d say too many were not good for him. And I didn’t know any difference. Indeed I’m telling you the truth, ma’am.”

“Oh, Hilda, Hilda!” was torn reproachfully from Mrs Dupreen. “You know what we’ve gone through. Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“I was afraid. I was afraid of what they’d do. And no one ever guessed until I thought I was safe. Indeed I meant no harm to anyone, but I was afraid that they’d punish me instead.”

Carrados had risen and was picking up his things.

“Yes,” he said, half musing to himself, “I knew it must exist: the one explanation that accounts for everything and cannot be assailed. We have reached the bed-rock of truth at last.”

V

The Ghost at Massingham Mansions

“Do you believe in ghosts, Max?” inquired Mr Carlyle.

“Only as ghosts,” replied Carrados with decision.

“Quite so,” assented the private detective with the air of acquiescence with which he was wont to cloak his moments of obfuscation. Then he added cautiously: “And how don’t you believe in them, pray?”

“As public nuisances--or private ones for that matter,” replied his friend. “So long as they are content to behave as ghosts I am with them. When they begin to meddle with a state of existence that is outside their province--to interfere in business matters and depreciate property--to rattle chains, bang doors, ring bells, predict winners and to edit magazines--and to attract attention instead of shunning it, I cease to believe. My sympathies are entirely with the sensible old fellow who was awakened in the middle of the night to find a shadowy form standing by the side of his bed and silently regarding him. For a few minutes the disturbed man waited patiently, expecting some awful communication, but the same profound silence was maintained. ‘Well,’ he remarked at length, ‘if you have nothing to do, I have,’ and turning over went to sleep again.”

“I have been asked to take up a ghost,” Carlyle began to explain.

“Then I don’t believe in it,” declared Carrados.

“Why not?”

“Because it is a pushful, notoriety-loving ghost, or it would not have gone so far. Probably it wants to get into _The Daily Mail_. The other people, whoever they are, don’t believe in it either, Louis, or they wouldn’t have called you in. They would have gone to Sir Oliver Lodge for an explanation, or to the nearest priest for a stoup of holy water.”

“I admit that I shall direct my researches towards the forces of this world before I begin to investigate any other,” conceded Louis Carlyle. “And I don’t doubt,” he added, with his usual bland complacence, “that I shall hale up some mischievous or aggrieved individual before the ghost is many days older. Now that you have brought me so far, do you care to go on round to the place with me, Max, to hear what they have to say about it?”

Carrados agreed with his usual good nature. He rarely met his friend without hearing the details of some new case, for Carlyle’s practice had increased vastly since the night when chance had led him into the blind man’s study. They discussed the cases according to their interest, and there the matter generally ended so far as Max Carrados was concerned, until he casually heard the result subsequently from Carlyle’s lips or learned the sequel from the newspaper. But these pages are primarily a record of the methods of the one man whose name they bear and therefore for the occasional case that Carrados completed for his friend there must be assumed the unchronicled scores which the inquiry agent dealt capably with himself. This reminder is perhaps necessary to dissipate the impression that Louis Carlyle was a pretentious humbug. He was, as a matter of fact, in spite of his amiable foibles and the self-assurance that was, after all, merely an asset of his trade, a shrewd and capable business man of his world, and behind his office manner nothing concerned him more than to pocket fees for which he felt that he had failed to render value.

Massingham Mansions proved to be a single block of residential flats overlooking a recreation ground. It was, as they afterwards found, an adjunct to a larger estate of similar property situated down another road. A porter, residing in the basement, looked after the interests of Massingham Mansions; the business office was placed among the other flats. On that morning it presented the appearance of a well-kept, prosperous enough place, a little dull, a little unfinished, a little depressing perhaps; in fact faintly reminiscent of the superfluous mansions that stand among broad, weedy roads on the outskirts of overgrown seaside resorts; but it was persistently raining at the time when Mr Carlyle had his first view of it.

“It is early to judge,” he remarked, after stopping the car in order to verify the name on the brass plate, “but, upon my word, Max, I really think that our ghost might have discovered more appropriate quarters.”

At the office, to which the porter had directed them, they found a managing clerk and two coltish youths in charge. Mr Carlyle’s name produced an appreciable flutter.

“The governor isn’t here just now, but I have this matter in hand,” said the clerk with an easy air of responsibility--an effect unfortunately marred by a sudden irrepressible giggle from the least overawed of the colts. “Will you kindly step into our private room?” He turned at the door of the inner office and dropped a freezing eye on the offender. “Get those letters copied before you go out to lunch, Binns,” he remarked in a sufficiently loud voice. Then he closed the door quickly, before Binns could find a suitable retort.

So far it had been plain sailing, but now, brought face to face with the necessity of explaining, the clerk began to develop some hesitancy in beginning.

“It’s a funny sort of business,” he remarked, skirting the difficulty.

“Perhaps,” admitted Mr Carlyle; “but that will not embarrass us. Many of the cases that pass through my hands are what you would call ‘funny sorts of business.’”

“I suppose so,” responded the young man, “but not through ours. Well, this is at No. 11 Massingham. A few nights ago--I suppose it must be more than a week now--Willett, the estate porter, was taking up some luggage to No. 75 Northanger for the people there when he noticed a light in one of the rooms at 11 Massingham. The backs face, though about twenty or thirty yards away. It struck him as curious, because 11 Massingham is empty and locked up. Naturally he thought at first that the porter at Massingham or one of us from the office had gone up for something. Still it was so unusual--being late at night--that it was his business to look into it. On his way round--you know where Massingham Mansions are?--he had to pass here. It was dark, for we’d all been gone hours, but Willett has duplicate keys and he let himself in. Then he began to think that something must be wrong, for here, hanging up against their number on the board, were the only two keys of 11 Massingham that there are supposed to be. He put the keys in his pocket and went on to Massingham. Green, the resident porter there, told him that he hadn’t been into No. 11 for a week. What was more, no one had passed the outer door, in or out, for a good half-hour. He knew that, because the door ‘springs’ with a noise when it is opened, no matter how carefully. So the two of them went up. The door of No. 11 was locked and inside everything was as it should be. There was no light then, and after looking well round with the lanterns that they carried they were satisfied that no one was concealed there.”

“You say lanterns,” interrupted Mr Carlyle. “I suppose they lit the gas, or whatever it is there, as well?”

“It is gas, but they could not light it because it was cut off at the meter. We always cut it off when a flat becomes vacant.”

“What sort of a light was it, then, that Willett saw?”

“It was gas, Mr Carlyle. It is possible to see the bracket in that room from 75 Northanger. He saw it burning.”

“Then the meter had been put on again?”

“It is in a locked cupboard in the basement. Only the office and the porters have keys. They tried the gas in the room and it was dead out; they looked at the meter in the basement afterwards and it was dead off.”

“Very good,” observed Mr Carlyle, noting the facts in his pocket-book. “What next?”

“The next,” continued the clerk, “was something that had really happened before. When they got down again--Green and Willett--Green was rather chipping Willett about seeing the light, you know, when he stopped suddenly. He’d remembered something. The day before the servant at 12 Massingham had asked him who it was that was using the bathroom at No. 11--she of course knowing that it was empty. He told her that no one used the bathroom. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we hear the water running and splashing almost every night and it’s funny with no one there.’ He had thought nothing of it at the time, concluding--as he told her--that it must be the water in the bathroom of one of the underneath flats that they heard. Of course he told Willett then and they went up again and examined the bathroom more closely. Water had certainly been run there, for the sides of the bath were still wet. They tried the taps and not a drop came. When a flat is empty we cut off the water like the gas.”

“At the same place--the cupboard in the basement?” inquired Carlyle.

“No; at the cistern in the roof. The trap is at the top of the stairs and you need a longish ladder to get there. The next morning Willett reported what he’d seen and the governor told me to look into it. We didn’t think much of it so far. That night I happened to be seeing some friends to the station here--I live not so far off--and I thought I might as well take a turn round here on my way home. I knew that if a light was burning I should be able to see the window lit up from the yard at the back, although the gas itself would be out of sight. And, sure enough, there was the light blazing out of one of the windows of No. 11. I won’t say that I didn’t feel a bit home-sick then, but I’d made up my mind to go up.”

“Good man,” murmured Mr Carlyle approvingly.

“Wait a bit,” recommended the clerk, with a shamefaced laugh. “So far I had only had to make my mind up. It was then close on midnight and not a soul about. I came here for the keys, and I also had the luck to remember an old revolver that had been lying about in a drawer of the office for years. It wasn’t loaded, but it didn’t seem quite so lonely with it. I put it in my pocket and went on to Massingham, taking another turn into the yard to see that the light was still on. Then I went up the stairs as quietly as I could and let myself into No. 11.”

“You didn’t take Willett or Green with you?”

The clerk gave Mr Carlyle a knowing look, as of one smart man who will be appreciated by another.

“Willett’s a very trustworthy chap,” he replied, “and we have every confidence in him. Green also, although he has not been with us so long. But I thought it just as well to do it on my own, you understand, Mr Carlyle. You didn’t look in at Massingham on your way? Well, if you had you would have seen that there is a pane of glass above every door, frosted glass to the hall doors and plain over each of those inside. It’s to light the halls and passages, you know. Each flat has a small square hall and a longish passage leading off it. As soon as I opened the door I could tell that one of the rooms down the passage was lit up, though I could not see the door of it from there. Then I crept very quietly through the hall into the passage. A regular stream of light was shining from above the end door on the left. The room, I knew, was the smallest in the flat--it’s generally used for a servant’s bedroom or sometimes for a box-room. It was a bit thick, you’ll admit--right at the end of a long passage and midnight, and after what the others had said.”

“Yes, yes,” assented the inquiry agent. “But you went on?”

“I went on, tiptoeing without a sound. I got to the door, took out my pistol, put my hand almost on the handle and then----”

“Well, well,” prompted Mr Carlyle, as the narrator paused provokingly, with the dramatic instinct of an expert raconteur, “what then?”

“Then the light went out. While my hand was within an inch of the handle the light went out, as clean as if I had been watched all along and the thing timed. It went out all at once, without any warning and without the slightest sound from the beastly room beyond. And then it was as black as hell in the passage and something seemed to be going to happen.”

“What did you do?”

“I did a slope,” acknowledged the clerk frankly. “I broke all the records down that passage, I bet you. You’ll laugh, I dare say, and think you would have stood, but you don’t know what it was like. I’d been screwing myself up, wondering what I should see in that lighted room when I opened the door, and then the light went out like a knife, and for all I knew the next second the door would open on me in the dark and Christ only knows what come out.”

“Probably I should have run also,” conceded Mr Carlyle tactfully. “And you, Max?”

“You see, I always feel at home in the dark,” apologised the blind man. “At all events, you got safely away, Mr----?”

“My name’s Elliott,” responded the clerk. “Yes, you may bet I did. Whether the door opened and anybody or anything came out or not I can’t say. I didn’t look. I certainly did get an idea that I heard the bath water running and swishing as I snatched at the hall door, but I didn’t stop to consider that either, and if it was, the noise was lost in the slam of the door and my clatter as I took about twelve flights of stairs six steps at a time. Then when I was safely out I did venture to go round to look up again, and there was that damned light full on again.”

“Really?” commented Mr Carlyle. “That was very audacious of him.”

“Him? Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. That’s what the governor insists, but he hasn’t been up there himself in the dark.”

“Is that as far as you have got?”

“It’s as far as we can get. The bally thing goes on just as it likes. The very next day we tied up the taps of the gas-meter and the water cistern and sealed the string. Bless you, it didn’t make a ha’peth of difference. Scarcely a night passes without the light showing, and there’s no doubt that the water runs. We’ve put copying ink on the door handles and the taps and got into it ourselves until there isn’t a man about the place that you couldn’t implicate.”

“Has anyone watched up there?”

“Willett and Green together did one night. They shut themselves up in the room opposite from ten till twelve and nothing happened. I was watching the window with a pair of opera-glasses from an empty flat here--85 Northanger. Then they chucked it, and before they could have been down the steps the light was there--I could see the gas as plain as I can see this ink-stand. I ran down and met them coming to tell me that nothing had happened. The three of us sprinted up again and the light was out and the flat as deserted as a churchyard. What do you make of that?”

“It certainly requires looking into,” replied Mr Carlyle diplomatically.

“Looking into! Well, you’re welcome to look all day and all night too, Mr Carlyle. It isn’t as though it was an old baronial mansion, you see, with sliding panels and secret passages. The place has the date over the front door, 1882--1882 and haunted, by gosh! It was built for what it is, and there isn’t an inch unaccounted for between the slates and the foundation.”

“These two things--the light and the water running--are the only indications there have been?” asked Mr Carlyle.

“So far as we ourselves have seen or heard. I ought perhaps to tell you of something else, however. When this business first started I made a few casual inquiries here and there among the tenants. Among others I saw Mr Belting, who occupies No. 9 Massingham--the flat directly beneath No. 11. It didn’t seem any good making up a cock-and-bull story, so I put it to him plainly--had he been annoyed by anything unusual going on at the empty flat above?

“‘If you mean your confounded ghost up there, I have not been particularly annoyed,’ he said at once, ‘but Mrs Belting has, and I should advise you to keep out of her way, at least until she gets another servant.’ Then he told me that their girl, who slept in the bedroom underneath the little one at No. 11, had been going on about noises in the room above--footsteps and tramping and a bump on the floor--for some time before we heard anything of it. Then one day she suddenly said that she’d had enough of it and bolted. That was just before Willett first saw the light.”

“It is being talked about, then--among the tenants?”

“You bet!” assented Mr Elliott pungently. “That’s what gets the governor. He wouldn’t give a continental if no one knew, but you can’t tell where it will end. The people at Northanger don’t half like it either. All the children are scared out of their little wits and none of the slaveys will run errands after dark. It’ll give the estate a bad name for the next three years if it isn’t stopped.”

“It shall be stopped,” declared Mr Carlyle impressively. “Of course we have our methods for dealing with this sort of thing, but in order to make a clean sweep it is desirable to put our hands on the offender _in flagranti delicto_. Tell your--er--principal not to have any further concern in the matter. One of my people will call here for any further details that he may require during the day. Just leave everything as it is in the meanwhile. Good-morning, Mr Elliott, good-morning.... A fairly obvious game, I imagine, Max,” he commented as they got into the car, “although the details are original and the motive not disclosed as yet. I wonder how many of them are in it?”

“Let me know when you find out,” said Carrados, and Mr Carlyle promised.

Nearly a week passed and the expected revelation failed to make its appearance. Then, instead, quite a different note arrived:

“MY DEAR MAX,--I wonder if you formed any conclusion of that Massingham Mansions affair from Mr Elliott’s refined narrative of the circumstances?

“I begin to suspect that Trigget, whom I put on, is somewhat of an ass, though a very remarkable circumstance has come to light which might--if it wasn’t a matter of business--offer an explanation of the whole business by stamping it as inexplicable.

“You know how I value your suggestions. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood--not otherwise, Max, I protest--I should be glad if you would drop in for a chat. Yours sincerely,

“LOUIS CARLYLE.”

Carrados smiled at the ingenuous transparency of the note. He had thought several times of the case since the interview with Elliott, chiefly because he was struck by certain details of the manifestation that divided it from the ordinary methods of the bogy-raiser, an aspect that had apparently made no particular impression on his friend. He was sufficiently interested not to let the day pass without “happening” to be in the neighbourhood of Bampton Street.

“Max,” exclaimed Mr Carlyle, raising an accusing forefinger, “you have come on purpose.”

“If I have,” replied the visitor, “you can reward me with a cup of that excellent beverage that you were able to conjure up from somewhere down in the basement on a former occasion. As a matter of fact, I have.”

Mr Carlyle transmitted the order and then demanded his friend’s serious attention.

“That ghost at Massingham Mansions----”

“I still don’t believe in that particular ghost, Louis,” commented Carrados in mild speculation.

“I never did, of course,” replied Carlyle, “but, upon my word, Max, I shall have to very soon as a precautionary measure. Trigget has been able to do nothing and now he has as good as gone on strike.”

“Downed--now what on earth can an inquiry man down to go on strike, Louis? Notebooks? So Trigget has got a chill, like our candid friend Elliott, Eh?”

“He started all right--said that he didn’t mind spending a night or a week in a haunted flat, and, to do him justice, I don’t believe he did at first. Then he came across a very curious piece of forgotten local history, a very remarkable--er--coincidence in the circumstances, Max.”

“I was wondering,” said Carrados, “when we should come up against that story, Louis.”

“Then you know of it?” exclaimed the inquiry agent in surprise.

“Not at all. Only I guessed it must exist. Here you have the manifestation associated with two things which in themselves are neither usual nor awe-inspiring--the gas and the water. It requires some association to connect them up, to give them point and force. That is the story.”