“In Africa,” Mr. Rowlandson said.
“That’s capital! If we can find the cemetery, there ought to be no difficulty in getting at the body. The officials are, as a rule, open to bribery. Anyhow, we might try it as an experiment.”
I left Edinburgh next day, but I heard some months later from Mr. Rowlandson.
“You may recollect Colonel Rushworth’s suggestion,” he wrote. “Well, the hauntings have ceased. We are shortly returning to ‘Bocarthe’!”
From this I gathered that an attempt to exhume and cremate Ernest Dekon’s body had been made, and had proved successful.
CHAPTER IV
I TRAVEL ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, AND DO SOME GHOST HUNTING IN SAN FRANCISCO
Upon leaving Scotland I seriously considered my future, and at length decided to go to Oregon and fruit farm. Though the expedition, through no fault of my own, proved a failure, and I had to return to England within a comparatively short time, I managed, whilst in America, to see and learn a good deal. Apart from visiting Crater Lake, which in those days was one of the wildest spots imaginable, far out of the beat of any but the most adventurous tourist, and seeing the Rogue River Indians in their native element, I spent several weeks in the big cities, and when in San Francisco obtained the services of a guide, and did a nightly tour of China Town, and several of the lesser known subterranean haunts of that city.
It was in San Francisco that I had my first experience with an American ghost. I had been out tramping all day along the southern side of the bay, and it was close on midnight before I got back to the city, feeling thoroughly done up and very footsore. The last chime of twelve o’clock sounded, as I swung wearily round 117th Street into a narrow thoroughfare leading to the obscure quarter of the town in which my finances forced me to live. As I came within sight of the end house of a block of low old-fashioned buildings, I received something of a shock. I had passed by it that morning and had noticed that it was to let. I was quite sure of this, because there was something about the house that had especially attracted my attention. I was struck with its utter loneliness, its air of past grandeur—so oddly at variance with the modern and mediocre buildings around it—and, peeping in at the windows, I had taken stock of its big oak-panelled apartments devoid of furniture and bestrewn with dust and cobwebs.
Now, to my astonishment, I perceived a bright glow—a kind of phosphorescent light—emanating from one of the rooms on the ground floor. I approached nearer, and, as I leaned against the verandah and peered in, it suddenly seemed to me that the room was no longer empty, but richly carpetted and full of ponderous, old-fashioned furniture. I also seemed to see in the centre of the room a long table covered with a snowy cloth, on which were arranged, in rich profusion, many handsome silver dishes containing a selection of the choicest food. I was dumbfounded. Twelve hours ago there was not a soul to be seen about the house nor a particle of furniture in it, and now!—well, it looked to me as if it never, never had been empty.