When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

"Give me hold a quarter of a minute," says the officer. She cannot refuse to give the pipe up. "Someone's had a whiff off this pipe since closing-time last night," he continues, touching the still warm bowl; for all this had passed very quickly. And he actually puts the pipe to his lips, and in two or three draws works up its lingering spark. "A good mouthful of smoke," says he, blowing it out in a cloud.

"You can look where you like," mutters the woman sullenly. "There's no man for you. Only you won't want to disturb my father. He's only just fell asleep."

"He'll be sleeping pretty sound after fifteen year." Thus the officer, and the unhappy woman felt she had indeed made a complete mess of the case. "Which is his room now, ma'am? We'll go there first."

Up the stairs and past a window looking on the garden. The day is hot beneath the July sun, and the two men in uniform who are coming up the so-called garden, or rather gravelled yard, behind The Pigeons, are mopping the sweat from their brows. They might have been customers from the river, but Miss Hawkins knows the look of them too well for that. The house is surrounded—watched back and front. Escape is hopeless, successful concealment the only chance.

"Been on his back like that for fifteen years, has he?" So says the officer looking at the prostrate figure of the old man on the couch. He is not asleep now—far from it. His mouth begins to move, uttering jargon. His one living eye has light in it. There is something he wants to say and struggles for in vain. "Can't make much out of that," is the verdict of his male hearer. His daughter can say that he is asking his visitor's name and what he wants. He can understand when spoken to, she says. But the intruder is pointing at the door leading to the roof. "Where does that go to?" he asks.

"Out on the tiles. I'll see for the key and let you through, if you'll stop a minute." It is the only good bit of acting she has done. Perhaps despair gives histrionic power. She sees a chance of deferring the breaking-down of that door, and who knows what may hang on a few minutes of successful delay? Before she goes she suggests again that the paralysed man will understand what is said to him if spoke to plain. Clearly, he who speaks plain to him will do a good-natured act.

Whether the officer's motives are Samaritan or otherwise, he takes the hint. As the woman gets out of hearing, he says:—"You are the master of this house, I take it?" And his hearer's crippled mouth half succeeds in its struggle for an emphatic assent. He continues:—"In course you are. I'm Sub-Inspector Cardwell, N Division. There's a man concealed in your house I'm after. He's wanted.... Who is he?"—a right guess of an unintelligible question—"You mean what name does he go by? Well—his name's Daverill, but he's called Thornton or Wix as may be. P'r'aps you know him, sir?" Whether or no, the name has had effect electrically on its hearer, who struggles frantically—painfully—hopelessly for speech. The officer says commiseratingly:—"Poor devil!—he's quite off his jaw"; and then, going to the open window, calls out to his mates of the river-service, below in the garden:—"Keep an eye on the roof, boys."

Then he goes out on the stair-landing. That woman is too long away—it is out of all reason. As he passes the paralytic man, he notes that he seems to be struggling violently for something—either to speak or to rise. He cannot tell which, and he does best to hasten the return of the woman who can.

Out on the landing, Miss Hawkins, who has not been looking for keys, but supplying her first Sunday customers in their own jugs, protests that she has fairly turned the house over in her key-hunt—all in vain! Her interest seems vivid that these police shall not be kept off her roof. She suggests that a builder's yard in the Kew Road will furnish a ladder long enough to reach the roof. "Shut on Sunday!" says Sub-Inspector Cardwell conclusively. Then let someone who knows how be summoned to pick the lock. By all means, if such a person is at hand. But no trade will come out Sunday, except the turn-cock, obviously useless. That is the verdict. "You'll never be for breaking down the door, Mr. Inspector, with my father there ill in the room!"—is the woman's appeal. "Not till we've looked everywhere else," is the reply. "I'll say that much. I'll see through the cupboards in the room, though. That won't hurt him."

Little did either of them anticipate what met their eyes as the door opened. There on the couch, no longer on his back, but sitting up and gasping for clearer speech, which he seemed to have achieved in part, was the paralysis-stricken man. The left hand, powerless no longer, was still uncertain of its purpose, and wavered in its ill-directed motion; the right, needed to raise him from his pillow, grasped the level moulding of the couch-back. Its fingers still showed a better colour than those of its fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as though to make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His knees jerked against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, and his right foot was striving to lift or help the other down to the floor. Probably life was slower to return to it than to the hand, as the blood returns soonest to the finger-tips after frost. Only the face was quite changed from its seeming of but ten minutes back. The voice choked and stammered still, but speech came in the end, breaking out with a shout-burst:—"Stop—stop—stop!"