SHORT STORY

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 3174, 19 June 1900, Page 7

SHORT STORY

About a Necklace and Something Else, lam a coward; it iB no good saying I am not, for I am and I know it quite well. Some people say I am brave, some even strong-minded, but that is principally because .1 , don't, mind ■ about mice and blackbeetles, and never scream when I am frightened; none the less, really lam a coward, as I think this tale of the haunted room will show. It was Christmas time, and I was staying with my friend, Dolly Tanborough. Dolly is a sweet little creature, as lovable and fair and, lively as I amtthe reverse, which, of course, tends to make us the v greater friends. Still, though we had been school chums, I had never stayed with her till that Christmas, and so did hot know her people. I Was rather afraid of them, they -were? very rich, and quite kings in their own country, with a big old house and lots of : company. Dolly's brother Derrick I was afraid of too; he was much older than Dolly, very clever, and grave and silent-^-rather a terrible personage. And, to make matters' worse, Dolly, who is the dearest little dunce in the world, persists in believing me clever, and in. trying, to impress other people with her belief. However, Mr Derrick was very polite; and pretended he liked talking to me, and never appeared to be aware of my mistakes. His mother and father, too, were so kind, and misted oh. my prolonging my visit indefinitely. Altogether, I enjoyed myself, in spite of the haunted room. I slept in it.' It was not supposed to be much haunted, and for a long time I heard and saw nothing-. No one before me seemed to have been particularly troubled, the only objection to the place being its distance from the occupied part of the house. I first saw my ghost when. I began to inquire into his story. I did not do this very early in my visit. It is true I asked Dolly about it soon after my arrival, but she Iznew nothing, and then there were bo many other things io think of, that; I forgot to seek further particulars, | till one evening at dinner nay neighbour began a ghost conversation. Of course, j this reminded me of my haunted chamber; and I applied to the general public for information. Unfortunately, I could not get much. All I could gather was that for nearly eighty years the room was supposed to have been occasionally visited more by mysterious noises and wandering lights than anything else ; even these had ceased entirely for a long time. The date when the hauntimg began was at the death of Dolly's great great grandmother, when also a very valuable diamond necklace disappeared ; some shadowy tradition connected these facts in. a tangled way. I was very interested, of course, and asked heaps of questions, among others whether tix&y Had Bsarched i»y rooia for tHe aeoklaee. ' Oh, yes ; they have turned the whole house out of window onetime and another/ Mr Vanborough said. ' For my part, I don't altogether believe in that necklace. I have a fancy that it was privately sold, and its ignominious end concealed by tTri.q story/ I do not think Mr Derrick agreed with his father, and Dolly would have nothing to do with so unromantic a conclusion. She and the younger guests agreed to institute a search the next day. Of course nothing came of it. If you had seen them looking- you would not have wondered. Anything more utterly unsystematic I cannot imagine. The search itself was in no way important. It was the night after that my experiences of haunted rooms began. I had been asleep some time when some slight noise woke me; I am a light sleeper and the least idling rouses me. I was looking drowsily round, as one does on first waking me up at once. The fire was out and, except for a little moonlight, the room was very dark. Plainly, in the patch of light, I saw, between two planks of the floor, which was polished and only furnished on the matoasis principle, the fingers of a hand. I was simply petrified with horror at the sight and lay bathed in cold perspiration staring at it, too frightened to scream or move. As I, fascinated, watched it, I saw it creep along the edge of the board for the space of a foot or more ; then, as its progress was towards the bed, I gathered together all the little courage I had and gasped, ' Go away, do go away/ And as if it had heard me, the hand went creeping back again and vanished 1 It was long bef'^e I slept again, but at last I did, and with the return of daylight I had a return of courage. In fact, by morning, so brave had I become that I examined the crack between the two boards where the ghost hand had appeared. To my great surprise I discovered that by forcing it a little way and pushing with a strong comb, I was able to slide one plank back a couple of inches. Through the aperture thus made I could see nothing owing to the darkness, but by tying a pocket-knife to a piece of string and using it as a plummet, I found the distance below was considerable. The old library, the room under mine, w«s very low, I knew therefore it was easy to imagine there might be some sort of hiding hole between the floor of the one room and the ceiling of the other. I questioned Dolly about it when I saw her alone after breakfast, but she knew nothing ; I wished to keep my adventure to myself, so I was not very explicit, I am afraid. In spite of my intentions of secrecy, there was one person who found me out, and that was Mr Derrick. Quite how he did it Ido not know ; he guessed part and compelled me to tell him the rest. Of courße, he wanted me to give up my room in consequence, and, of . comse, I would not. We both behaved rather queerly about it, I fancy, for when I flatly declined to sleep anywhere else (which I did partly from obstinacy and partly from fear of being laughed at), he asked me to do so 'for his sake!' And I in return begged, him to allow me to keep my room one more night. After some hesitation he consented to do 10 on condition that I would leave my door unfastened. I went to dress for dinner early that night, and; took upstairs with me some long tacks. With these, using the heel of slipper as a hammer, I fastened the biggest mat in the room over the slidingboard. Then I had a thorough hunt in all the likely and unlikely places I could think of for the necklace, which, needless to say, I did not find. During dinner, however, I found something' else — a, hand very like my ghoßs hand! There is a wonderful lot of difference in hands; my ghost hand, which was naturally very clearly ■■ impressed 'on my mind, had short fingers full of little creases and very knobby joints." I noticed, when he waa pouring out some Bherry forme* that Buncelj the butler had a wonderfully similar hand. Th4s,intereate4 me very . much, , and I set to work ; to ftad , out . all I could about ■ the the man. I learned 'that he wasamoßt worthy person,: and. ;had -served ,the<¥anborough family,; r from, boyhood, as his father had before him. Indeed, the latter had been in their service at the time of the disappearance of the necklace. I did not tell anyone about the hand coincident; I thought it best, because, you see, there really was very little to gc upon i all the same I could aothalp think*

;ing about it in a rea'-f foolish fashioi that night. What with that and specu lating about Mr. Derrick's behaviour which had been most perplexing, I founc when, having looked under the bed, I gol inside it, that it was quite impossible U sleep. I kept looking from the mat covered board to the unlocked door, anc then back to the board again, and thinking and thinking of— oh, lots of things, till i1 became quite dreadful. At last, unable to stand the strain . any longer, I got up and went to the fireplace, and stood staring a< the now low and smouldering fire. The room was quite warm, and my dressing, gown was beyond that horrid slidingboard in a dark corner, and I am ashamed to confest I had not the courage to fetch it. The fire, as I said, was getting low, and, and, as I had no fancy for being left in the dark by its expiring altogether, I turned to get some wood to replenish it. As I stooped I leaned one hand against the woodwork of a panel by "the mantelpiece for support. Suddenly it gave way beneath the pressure, and I nearly lost my balance and quite lost my nerve in consequence. Hastily withdrawing my hand, I poked up the fire, and, still shaking a little, proceeded to examine my new discovery, of course brimming over with the idea of finding the necklace. The aperture so unexpectedly revealed looked like a small cupbo&rd, a&d was not more than twelve or fourteen inches anyway ; it was, moreover, quite devoid of interest, and absolutely empty. I had come to this conclusion — it did not take long to do so, seeing that it could be discovered at a glance — when another idea occurred to me. Supposing this secret cupboard was only the ante-chamber, that it contained, hidden in it, the entrance to another ? Such a thing seemed possible — indeed, nothing seemed impossible in my surprising room, especially at that bour of night. Accordingly, I felt and poked all round the email place, not forgetting to keep an eye on that nailed mat. All at once, something clicked, gaye — and then there was a thud — a snap — and the spiring had closed again as suddenly as it had opened- But it had left something outside, something 1 that had fallen down when it had opened — what waa it ? I turned to the firelight, with a mad excitement shaking me all over. No ! Yes, it was — it was really the lost necklace ! There it was, folded in paper, lost for years, but glimmering, glowing in the firelight like drops of crystallised light ! And I, spellbound, held it, admiring it as 'only a woman can admire diamonds, oblivious alike of door and board. And then suddenly a. hand was placed over my mouth, a weight was flung on me from behind, and the next instant the necklace lay a pool of light on the floor, and I was locked in deadly combat. I an strong, very strong — girls are nowa- I days — and I am stronger than most, and ' though I was takes unawares, I was no mean adversary for my unknown foe, hampered as he was by long white draperies sxiitabl© to itis role of gtioefc. X am afraid, unwomanly as ft may seem, I dearly love a tussle, not quite such an earnest one as that was j though I somehow knew then that it was a matter of life and death we were fighting out as we rolled over and over on the polished floor. A matter of life and death to be fought and fought alone, for my own room was so far removed from the rest of the household that I might even then have been murdered without their knowledge. Was I so far removed from everyone ? How was it, then, that the door flew open, and a man rushed in, and, divining 1 by instinct between the two struggling figures, dealt the ghoßt such a blow, reducing him to silence ? How was it, and who was it f Why, Derrick ! Yes, Derrick, who had watched all night in the next roomj the old disused pictureroom, and who stood with pale face and trembling hands, all fearful for me ; Derrick, who picked up the necklace and hung it round my neck, and vowed no one should wear it but me ; Derrick, who gathered me in his arms, and then apologised, and then asked me if he might, and — oh ! I can't tell any more ! Just a word about Mr Buncell, though. It appears his father had stolen the necklace and hidden it until he could find a convenient opportunity for selling it. The opportunity never came, and owing to his sudden death, the exact whereabouts of hiding-place was never known. His son, who had spent much time looking for it unsuccessfully, believed it to be hidden somewhere in my room. When he saw the unexpected publicity given to the story, and the energetic search made for the necklace, he felt he must take desperate measures, and carry on the hunt himself; and, as he was unable to go to the room in the day without causing remark, he determined to do so at night. If by so doing he frightened me into giving up the room, he would no doubt have been very pleased, as he would have had the coast clear. The space between the library and my room and the sliding-board, which was one of the two ways into it, had been made during a time of religious persecution, it was believed, but its exact history was never known. The secret cupboard and its hidden spring were probably constructed byßuncelTs father, who was well versed in the ways of locks and springs. There is really nothing more to tell, except that no one has ever worn the necklace but me. Mrs Vanborough says she is too old for such things, and Mr Vanborough says it becomes his son's wife, especcially as she found it, and Derrick says — well, lots of things. — U. L. SilBBB.BAD.