“I set out on Christmas Eve, and I admit that when I left the cheerfully lighted thoroughfare, and plunged into the dark silent emptiness of the house, my heart almost failed me. Apart from ghosts there were so many possibilities, and what more likely than that some tramp or criminal had forced an entrance, and was hiding somewhere on the premises. For a few seconds I stood and listened, and then, feeling a trifle more assured, I closed the door gently and advanced cautiously along the wide hall. At each step I took I became more and more sensitive to an atmosphere of intense sadness and desolation—an atmosphere of intense loneliness, loneliness that is without hope—that is perpetual and absolute. It could be felt in all parts of the house, but more particularly, perhaps, in the kitchen, which was built out at the back on the ground floor. I had never been in such a dreary and inhospitable kitchen. The night was bitterly cold and the bare stones sent chilly currents up my legs and back, into my very brain.
“To remain in such a hole till morning was assuredly courting pneumonia or rheumatic fever. I looked at the range, it was covered with rust and verdigris. If only it could be lighted! Then I uttered an exclamation of joy, for lying in one corner was a pile of wood—boxes, shelves, faggots, etc., intermingled with an assortment of other rubbish. In my early days I had lived on a ranch out west, and the experience I had had there now came in useful. In a few minutes there was a loud crackling, and the kitchen filled with a ruddy glow. A couple of dresser-drawers served me for a seat, and I was soon ensconced in a tolerably snug position, from which, however, I was prepared to spring at a moment’s notice.
“The hours sped by, and the silence deepened.
“At last, just about two o’clock, when I was beginning to think nothing would happen, I heard a door slam somewhere upstairs. This was followed by a series of creaks, and I heard someone cautiously descending the stairs. A great fear now seized me, and had I been able, I should doubtless have beaten a hasty retreat. Instead, I was possessed with a kind of paralysis, which rendered me quite helpless and prevented me from either moving a limb or uttering a sound. The creaks came nearer—down, down, down, until quite suddenly they stopped, and I heard a cough.
“It was repeated—cough, cough, cough. The cough of a delicate, neurotic woman. At first it simply startled me—it sounded so distinct, so reverberating, so real. Then it irritated me, and then it infuriated me—almost drove me mad. ‘God take the woman,’ I raved. ‘Will she never cease.’
“Cough, cough, cough. A nervous, hacking cough, a worrying, grating cough, an intensely silly, murder-instilling cough. I could see the owner of it—upstairs, hidden from me by impenetrable darkness, and yet quite distinct—a slight, pale, excessively plain little woman, with watery eyes and a quivering mouth. Heavens, how the mouth maddened me! On she went—cough, cough, cough! She was still coughing, when I suddenly became aware of a presence close beside me, and I saw in the glow from the dying embers the figure of a man seated at a table in the middle of the kitchen. He appeared to be trying to write, but to be unable to collect his thoughts. Every now and then he paused, dashed his pen down, and clenched his fists furiously. At first I could not understand his behaviour, and then it all of a sudden occurred to me—the coughing, of course. That perpetual noise, that everlasting hacking—it distracted, demented him. I watched him with feelings of infinite sympathy. At last, unable to stand it any longer, he sprang from his seat and dashed upstairs.
“I heard him race up two steps at a time. No madman would have raced faster or more nimbly. Then came a strange variety of sounds—a gratuitous course in phonetics—an altercation, more coughing, oaths, bumping, a scream, a thud, a little feeble cough, silence, and then rapidly descending footsteps—a man’s footsteps. I did not wait for them. The spell that had hitherto held me limb-tied now abruptly left me, and I fled out of the building—home.
“The next day—Christmas Day—I made my report to the owner of the house, and told her exactly what had happened.
“‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, ‘and he’s married Maisie! Swear that you will never tell a soul, no one, not even your most intimate friend, and I will give you an explanation of what you witnessed.’ (“All this happened years ago,” Mr. Vandergooch remarked, “so it’s all right my telling you now.”) I promised, and she at once began.
“‘Ten years ago the occupants of the house you’ve been in were a well-known dramatist and his wife, whom I will call Mr. and Mrs. Charles Turner. Mrs. Turner was exactly like the woman you imagined—frail, small and very plain; whilst her husband would tally with the man you saw in the kitchen—a tall, muscular, handsome man. He obviously married her for her money, poor soul, for there was nothing in her to attract him, and everyone could see how she irritated him, especially when she coughed—in fact, he often said to me, ‘You don’t know, Mrs. Wehlen, how Eva annoys me. Whenever I am in the midst of my work, trying to concentrate my thoughts, she starts her infernal coughing—I can hear her all over the house—hack, hack, hack.’ ‘She can’t help it, poor thing,’ I replied. ‘You ought to feel sorry for her.’ ‘Feel sorry for her,’ he said. ‘You’d feel sorry for her if you were tormented as I am. I believe she does it on purpose.’