The conclusion that naturally leapt to one’s mind, thought Mr. Puce, was that the room must have something the matter with it: else would a hawk like Quillier have bet money on its qualities of terror? Mr. Puce had, indeed, suggested, when first the bet was put forward, that five hundred pounds was perhaps an unnecessary sum to stake on so idiotic a fancy; but Quillier had said in a very tired way that he never bet less than five hundred on anything, but that if Mr. Puce preferred to bet with poppycock and chickenfood, he, Quillier, would be pleased to introduce him to some very jolly children of his acquaintance.
Such thoughts persuaded Mr. Puce to rise and examine more carefully the walls and appointments of the room. But as the furniture was limited to the barest necessities, and as the oak-panelled walls appeared in the faint light to be much the same as any other walls, the gentleman from America swore vaguely and again reclined on the bed. It was a very comfortable bed.
He had made up his mind, however, that he would not sleep. He would watch out, thought Mr. Puce, for any sign of this old ghost, and he would listen with the ears of a coyote, thought Mr. Puce, for any hint of those rapping noises, rude winds, musty odours, clanking of chains and the like, with which, so Mr. Puce had always understood, the family ghosts of Britishers invariably heralded their foul appearance.
Mr. Puce, you can see, did not believe in ghosts. He could not but think, however, that some low trick might be played on him, since on the honour of Sir Cyril Quillier, peer though he was—for Mr. Puce, like a good American, could never get the cold dope on all this fancy title stuff—he had not the smallest reliance. But as to the supernatural, Mr. Puce’s attitude was always a wholesome scepticism—and a rather aggressive scepticism at that, as Quillier had remarked with amusement when he had spoken of the ghost in, as he had put it, the house of Kerr-Anderson’s aunt. Quillier had said:
“There are two sorts of men on whom ghosts have an effect: those who are silly enough to believe in them, and those who are silly enough not to believe in them.”
Mr. Puce had been annoyed at that. He detested clever back-chat. “I’ll tell the world,” Mr. Puce had said, “that a plain American has to go to a drug-store after a conversation with you.”
Mr. Puce, lying on the great bed, whose hangings depressed him, examined his automatic and found it good. He had every intention of standing no nonsense, and an automatic nine-shooter is, as Mr. Puce remembered having read somewhere, an Argument. Indeed, Mr. Puce was full of those dour witticisms about the effect of a “gun” on everyday life which go to make the less pretentious “movies” so entertaining; although, to be sure, he did not know more than a very little about guns. Travellers have remarked, however, that the exciting traditions behind a hundred-per-cent American nationality have given birth in even the most gentle citizens of that great republic to a feeling of familiarity with “guns,” as such homely phrases as “slick with the steel mit,” “doggone son of a gun,” and the like, go to prove.
Mr. Puce placed the sleek little automatic on a small table by the bed, on which stood the candle and, as he realised for the first time, a book. One glance at the paper jacket of the book was enough to convince the gentleman from America that its presence there must be due to one of Quillier’s tired ideas. It showed a woman of striking, if conventional, beauty fighting for her life with a shape which might or might not be the wraith of a bloodhound but was certainly something quite outside a lovely woman’s daily experience. Mr. Puce laughed. The book was called: Tales of Terror for Tiny Tots, by Ivor Pelham Marlay.
The gentleman from America was a healthy man, and needed his sleep; and it was therefore with relief that he turned to Mr. Marlay’s absurd-looking book as a means of keeping himself awake. The tale at which the book came open was called The Phantom Foot-steps; and Mr. Puce prepared himself to be entertained, for he was not of those who read for instruction. He read:
The Phantom Foot-steps