The interior of the establishment was in keeping with the exterior—gloomy and forbidding, and the damp, earthy smell that seemed to rise from the basement made me gravely apprehensive of rheumatism; still the tariff was in strict accordance with my means, and feeling too tired to wander further, I decided to remain.
The room in which I had a very sparse supper was like the majority of dining-rooms in middle-class hotels: overcrowded with unwieldy furniture, frowsy, ill-ventilated; imagine that the table had been laid once and for all (it had undoubtedly presented the same spectacle for months), and that the cloth, never very white, was removed, only, when it grew too begrimed even for the blunted susceptibilities of the proprietress. I afterwards found that the beef did not belie its looks, that the bread was in excellent accord, and that the water might well have been the receptacle of innumerable generations of bacilli.
There were other visitors besides myself, either Germans or commercial travellers, probably both; but as their conversation carried on over plates of half raw meat, was neither particularly edifying nor interesting, I preferred an antique number of Vanity Fair until, at length, tiring of that, I picked up a candlestick and made my way to bed.
The moment I crossed the threshold of my room, that peculiar and indefinable sensation that invariably suggests the immediate proximity of the superphysical came over me, I felt sure the house was haunted. But by what? Ah! that was the problem left for ME to solve.
The furniture of the room was of the orthodox lodging-house type—inartistic, scant and seedy; a gaunt four-poster propped against the middle of the wall running at right angles to the door was adorned with exceedingly dirty valances of a nondescript pink and white pattern; facing this was a fireplace the register of which was of course down; to the left of this was a hanging wardrobe that I at once examined and found to contain nothing more formidable than a score or two of black-beetles that scuttled unceremoniously away into holes at the sight of my candle; whilst on the opposite side of the room, facing the window, was a rickety dressing-table surmounted by a still more rickety looking-glass. In one corner of the room stood a washing-stand from which the white paint had peeled in a hundred places, and in the other corner a dismantled bureau that resembled some vessel after a great storm. These, I believe, apart from a couple of cane-bottomed chairs, constituted the entire furniture, nor can I say this scantiness, taking into consideration the poorness of the quality, was any matter of regret.
The carpet, undoubtedly the best feature of the room, and either an Axminster or a Brussels—not being an expert on such a point I cannot tell which—hid all the boarding save where the margins were stained with a preparation of potash.
I give all these details to show that several years of practical investigation of haunted houses had developed my inquiring faculties to a very high degree, little, if anything, escaping my notice.
The raison d’être of ghosts often lies where it is least expected; in some article of furniture, not infrequently a cupboard near at hand, in the panelling, the skirting, or, not infrequently again, on or under the boards.
When I am in a haunted room, my first instinct, therefore, is to take a very careful stock of my surroundings; the bare appearance or touch of a piece of furniture often supplying me with the necessary clue.
On this occasion, however, nothing arousing my suspicions and feeling abnormally sleepy, I bolted my door and lay on the bed; I say “on,” not “in,” as a cursory glance at the pillow made me draw deductions as to the sheets. Within a few minutes I went to sleep, falling into a heavy, dreamless slumber from which I was suddenly and most alarmingly awakened by the feeling I was no longer alone in the room.