He had accepted Mrs. Preedy’s invitation to a glass of gin and water, and had asked for sugar. It was while she was getting the sugar that he had allowed the mask to slip from his false face.
“If it gets known,” she said, “I’m a ruined woman!”
“Ah,” said Richard Manx, “I comprehend what you mean by ruined. A house with a shadow—a spirit ghost in it, would be—a—horrible! Listen you. This house is likewise.” Mrs. Preedy shuddered. “Well,” he continued, “I will say—a—nothing.” He placed his hand on his heart and leered at her. “On my honour. But be you positive—what I have heard is not—a—fancy. It is veritable.”
He said a great deal more to the same effect, and I never saw a woman more completely prostrated.
Richard Manx speaks imperfect English, and I cannot make up my mind whether he is a Frenchman, or a German, or an Italian, or an Impostor. I am not only suspicious of the man, I am suspicious of his broken English.
What I wanted now to ascertain was whether any person had heard the tapping or the scratching in No. 119, and the person I fixed upon to settle this point was Mrs. Bailey, our old lady lodger on the first floor. If anything was going on in the next house it could scarcely have escaped her ears.
Yesterday morning while I was tidying up her room, I broached the subject.
“I wonder,” I said, “whether the next house will ever be let.”
“I wouldn’t take it,” said Mrs. Bailey, “if they offered it to me for nothing a-year—eh?”