mind, doubted that he was the real and only assassin, and I went on and asked him what he had done with the body of the cornet-player he had killed.
He said, “To which one may you be alluding?[28]”
“Oh, were there any more then?” I inquired.
He smiled, and gave a little cough. He said he did not like to appear to be boasting, but that, counting trombones, there were seven.
“Dear me!” I replied, “you must have had quite a busy time of it, one way and another.”
He said that perhaps he ought not to be the one to say so, but that really, speaking of ordinary middle-society, he thought there were few ghosts who could look back upon a life of more sustained usefulness.
He puffed away in silence for a few seconds, while I sat watching him. I had never seen a ghost smoking a pipe before, that I could remember, and it interested me.
I asked him what tobacco he used, and he replied, “The ghost of cut cavendish, as a rule.”
He explained that the ghost of all the tobacco that a man smoked in life belonged to him when he became dead. He said he himself had smoked a good deal of cut cavendish when he was alive, so that he was well supplied with the ghost of it now.
I observed that it was a useful thing to know that, and I made up my mind to smoke as much tobacco as ever I could before I died.
I thought I might as well start at once, so I said I would join him in a pipe[29], and he said, “Do, old man”; and I reached over and got out the necessary paraphernalia from my coat pocket and lit up.
We grew quite chummy after that, and he told me all his crimes. He said he had lived next door once to a young lady who was learning to play the guitar, while a gentleman who practised on the bass-viol lived opposite. And he, with fiendish cunning, had introduced these two unsuspecting young people to one another, and had persuaded them to elope with each other against their parents’ wishes, and take their musical instruments with them; and they had done so, and, before the honeymoon was over, SHE had broken his head with the bass-viol, and HE had tried to cram the guitar down her throat, and had injured her for life.
My friend said he used to lure muffin-men into the passage and then stuff them with their own wares till they burst and died. He said he had quieted eighteen that way.
Young men and women who recited long and dreary poems at evening parties, and callow youths who walked about the streets late at night, playing concertinas, he used to get together and poison in batches of ten, so as to save expense[30]; and park orators and temperance lecturers he used to shut up six in a small room with a glass of water and a collection-box apiece, and let them talk each other to death.
It did one good to listen to him.
I asked him when he expected the other ghosts – the ghosts of the wait and the cornet-player, and the German band that Uncle John had mentioned. He smiled, and said they would never come again, any of them.
I said, “Why; isn’t it true, then, that they meet you here every Christmas Eve for a row?”
He replied that it WAS true. Every Christmas Eve, for twenty-five years, had he and they fought in that room; but they would never trouble him nor anybody else again. One by one, had he laid them out, spoilt, and utterly useless for all haunting purposes. He had finished off the last German-band ghost that very evening, just before I came upstairs, and had thrown what was left of it out through the slit between the window-sashes. He said it would never be worth calling a ghost again.
“I suppose you will still come yourself, as usual?” I said. “They would be sorry to miss you, I know.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied; “there’s nothing much to come for now. Unless,” he added kindly, “YOU are going to be here. I’ll come if you will sleep here next Christmas Eve.”
“I have taken a liking to you,” he continued; “you don’t fly off, screeching, when you see a party, and your hair doesn’t stand on end[31]. You’ve no idea,” he said, “how sick I am of seeing people’s hair standing on end.”
He said it irritated him.
Just then a slight noise reached us from the yard below, and he started and turned deathly black.
“You are ill,” I cried, springing towards him; “tell me the best thing to do for you. Shall I drink some brandy, and give you the ghost of it?”
He remained silent, listening intently for a moment, and then he gave a sigh of relief, and the shade came back to his cheek.
“It’s all right,” he murmured; “I was afraid it was the cock.”
“Oh, it’s too early for that,” I said. “Why, it’s only the middle of the night.”
“Oh, that doesn’t make any difference to those cursed chickens,” he replied bitterly. “They would just as soon crow in the middle of the night as at any other time – sooner, if they thought it would spoil a chap’s evening out. I believe they do it on purpose.”
He said a friend of his, the ghost of a man who had killed a water-rate collector[32], used to haunt a house in Long Acre, where they kept fowls in the cellar, and every time a policeman went by and flashed his bull’s-eye down the grating, the old cock there would fancy it was the sun, and start crowing like mad; when, of course, the poor ghost had to dissolve, and it would, in consequence, get back home sometimes as early as one o’clock in the morning, swearing fearfully because it had only been out for an hour.
I agreed that it seemed very unfair.
“Oh, it’s an absurd arrangement altogether,” he continued, quite angrily. “I can’t imagine what our old man could have been thinking of when he made it. As I have said to him, over and over again, ‘Have a fixed time, and let everybody stick to it – say four o’clock in summer, and six in winter. Then one would know what one was about.’”
“How do you manage when there isn’t any cock handy?” I inquired.
He was on the point of replying, when again he started and listened. This time I distinctly heard Mr. Bowles’s cock, next door, crow twice.
“There you are,” he said, rising and reaching for his hat; “that’s the sort of thing we have to put up with[33]. What IS the time?”
I looked at my watch, and found it was half-past three.
“I thought as much,” he muttered. “I’ll wring that blessed bird’s neck if I get hold of it.” And he prepared to go.
“If you can wait half a minute,” I said, getting out of bed, “I’ll go a bit of the way with you.”
“It’s very good of you,” he rejoined, pausing, “but it seems unkind to drag you out.”
“Not at all,” I replied; “I shall like a walk.” And I partially dressed myself, and took my umbrella; and he put his arm through mine, and we went out together.
Just by the gate
To which one may you be alluding? – (
I would join him in a pipe – (
so as to save expense – (
your hair doesn’t stand on end – (
a water-rate collector – (
that’s the sort of thing we have to put up with – (
