“Ay,” said he, “I dessay, guv’nor. You see, ’twas this way—it weren’t Jim’s fault as I wasn’t dead. He tried to murder me, guv’nor, he did, and left me a-lying for dead. So I ses to myself when I comes round that I’d pay him out sooner or later. But after that I quit the profession, Jim’s nasty conduck havin’ made me sick of it. So I went in for honest work at my old trade, which was draining and pipe repairing. I was on a job o’ that sort in Westford, near Miss Singleton’s house, when I see Light Toed Jim. I had a hidea what he was up to, havin’ heard o’ the plate, and I watches him one or two nights, and gets a notion ’ow he was going to work the job. Then, o’ course, you being a officer and close at hand I splits on him—and that’s all.”
“But you had got the time and details correct?”
“Why, o’ course, guv’nor. I was an old hand—served many years at Portland, I have, and I knew just how Jim would work it, after seeing his perlim’nary observations. But a ghost! Ha, ha, ha! Why, guv’nor, you must ha’ been a very green young officer in them days!”
Perhaps I was. At any rate I learned a lesson from the ci-devant Barksea Bill—namely, that in searching a house it is always advisable to look up as well as down.
A PHANTOM TOE.
I am not a superstitious man, far from it, but despite all my efforts to the contrary I could not help thinking, directly I had taken a survey of my chamber, that I should never quit it without going through a strange adventure. There was something in its immense size, heaviness and gloom that seemed to annihilate at one blow all my resolute skepticism as regards supernatural visitations. It appeared to me totally impossible to go into that room and disbelieve in ghosts.
The fact is, I had incautiously partaken at supper of that favorite Dutch dish, sauerkraut, and I suppose it had disagreed with me and put strange fancies into my head. Be this as it may I only know that after parting with my friend for the night I gradually worked myself up into such a state of fidgetiness that at last I wasn’t sure whether I hadn’t become a ghost myself.
“Supposing,” ruminated I, “supposing the landlord himself should be a practical robber and should have taken the lock and bolt from off this door for the purpose of entering here in the dead of the night, abstracting all my property, and perhaps murdering me! I thought the dog had a very cutthroat air about him.” Now, I had never had any such idea until that moment, for my host was a fat (all Dutchmen are fat), stupid-looking fellow, who I don’t believe had sense enough to understand what a robbery or murder meant, but somehow or other, whenever we have anything really to annoy us (and it certainly was not pleasant to go to bed in a strange place without being able to fasten one’s door), we are sure to aggravate it by myriads of chimeras of our own brain.
So, on the present occasion, in the midst of a thousand disagreeable reveries, some of the most wild absurdity, I jumped very gloomily into bed, having first put out my candle (for total darkness was far preferable to its flickering, ghostly light, which transformed rather than revealed objects), and soon fell asleep, perfectly tired out with my day’s riding.
How long I lay asleep I don’t know, but I suddenly awoke from a disagreeable dream of cutthroats, ghosts and long, winding passages in a haunted inn. An indescribable feeling, such as I never before experienced, hung upon me. It seemed as if every nerve in my body had a hundred spirits tickling it, and this was accompanied by so great a heat that, inwardly cursing mine host’s sauerkraut and wondering how the Dutchmen could endure such poison, I was forced to sit up in bed to cool myself. The whole of the room was profoundly dark, excepting at one place, where the moonlight, falling through a crevice in the shutters, threw a straight line of about an inch or so thick upon the floor—clear, sharp and intensely brilliant against the darkness. I leave you to conceive my horror when, upon looking at this said line of light, I saw there a naked human toe—nothing more.