“Don’t speak in such a solemn tone,” interrupted Mrs. Mortimer, casting a shuddering glance around: “you almost make me think that you yourself believe in the possibility of the spectral visitation.”
“Well—I don’t know how it is.” returned the Doctor, feeling a certain superstitious influence growing upon him, and which he vainly endeavoured to shake off,—“but I certainly never before had such sensations as I experience now. Upon my soul;” he cried, striking the table violently with his clenched fist, “I am a prey to vague and undefined alarms to night:—but I will subdue them!”
“And are you sure that this is the house where the young lady was murdered?” asked Mrs. Mortimer, after a brief pause.
“There is no doubt about that!” responded Jack Rily. “Vitriol Bob there can tell you that the floor of the chamber where the deed took place is blackened with accumulated dust, yet in the middle there is a deeper stain; and on the ceiling of the room beneath, it is easy to descry the same sinister traces, even amidst dirt and cobwebs.”
“Then, as you said just now,” remarked Mrs. Mortimer, drawing her shawl over her shoulders—for she experienced the chill of superstitious terror gaining upon her,—“as you said just now, this is the second murder that has been committed within these walls!”
Scarcely had Mrs. Mortimer ceased speaking when the bell of the neighbouring church proclaimed the hour of one.
“Now is the time for the ghost,” said Vitriol Bob, with a low but ferocious chuckle; for he experienced a malignant pleasure in observing that superstitious fears were gaining on the formidable Rily and the hideous old woman. “You don’t like the near neighbourhood of the stiff ’un, I’m a-thinking! Well—I’ll lay you a wager, Jack, that I’ll go and shake the old feller by the hand quite in a friendly way—if you will but take off these cussed cords. There’s no ill feelin’ betwixt us now.”
“I would much rather leave you where you are, and send Polly Calvert to release you,” replied the Doctor.
“Yes—yes,” hastily exclaimed Mrs. Mortimer, “let him be where he is. But surely we may go now, Mr. Rily? It is getting on for two——”
“It has only just this minit struck one!” cried Vitriol Bob, with a malignant leer from his dark, reptile-like eyes, which seemed to shine with a glare of their own, independent of and brighter than the dim light of the miserable candle. “Besides,” he added, now purposely rendering his voice as solemn and ominous in its tone as possible, “’tis just the time for the ghost of the young gal—or rayther, the young o’oman to walk; and I should be wexed indeed if you didn’t stay to have a look at her. I’ve seen her more than once——”