1940-12-19 — Page 78

20

THE CHINA MAIL SPECIAL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT; DECEMBER: 19, 1940

The Haunted House

In B--

when he fell and be lying some where under the snow. Though it was very old and dirty, he had an affection for it Ite would come again, when it was light and look for it.

All the way home he pondered over his strange experience. He could not get that scene in tho bedroom, the awful looking wo man with the sharp, murderous knife, out of his head. She haunt

ed hitn.

Midday saw him back in B- Square, standing in front of Num- ber 13, There was a notice board

with TO LET on it attached

to

the area railings, and bure floors and walls met his astonished gaze when he peered in at the win- The weather had changed. dows. It was much warmer, consequent- ly the show had nearly gone, and he had no difficulty in finding his cap. It was in the area.

A tradesman's cart was in front of Number 12 when he came up

the area steps.

Square

sult that tie pavements and road- ways were very slippery. Bill got to B-Square just about: the time ho Had arrived thero the preceding year, and at the same window of Number 13 was the he would never have fallen down, same blonde Indy dangling the knocked his hend;, and imagined diamond necklace in her glisten- himself inside it, if it was only ing, carmine tipped fingers. Be imagination; Those diamonds, rubbed his eyes to make sure he and his mouth watered again at was not dreaming, but when he the thought of them-How they looked again she was still there. had: glittered and sparkled,

Everything, then happened just The as it Hud: Happened before. sarne burning desire to get diamonds came over him, and he left the Square resolved to visit it again when the coast was quite clear,

Then came a vision of that gloating woman with the knife; and cruel, wicked smile. He could see her as plainly in his mind now as he had seen her in the night, could see even the shining black Buttons on her dress and the grip in her leering, mouth where one of her yellow teeth was missing. was reputed to be haunted: had he; in some utterly inexplicable manner, got into it and encountered the ghostk? Or was it some queor delirium,

of kind

concussion nightmare, caused by his fall?

The house

a

the

He returned shortly before mid- night, Just as he had done that Christmas Eve twelve months ago, Me tiptoed down. the area steps, trod on a slippery spot, fell and Bumped his head against some- thing, had: Conselous that all he did was merely a repetition, in de- tail, of all he had previously done, He entered the house by the little larder window, and passing through the kitchen, where

a dull fire glowed nearly spent red in the large rangé, he ascend- ed the basement staircase into the fear in breathless hall, halted when he heard the policeman, and then went on up the other stair case on to the first floor landing.

The next twe've months saw him at his old vocation whenever he got the opportunity, but never with quite his former zeal. What he had gone through that Christ-

im "Who lives in Number 13" the mas Eve had made a deop

He had hitherto man driving it said. In answer to pression on him.

It's reoffed at the idea of hosts and a hy query. "Why, no one. bern umoreupied for more than a Hereafter, but he no longer scoffed

and hence into He had a feeling that that your No one ever stays in it for now.

the blonde. Round here they call it experience of his was nothing ac- long.

but says ridental

ordained by The Unlucky House', and it's tr Not that I believe some Power behind the Scenes, in such things as ghosts myself. ordained for a special purpose. It

think it's all imagination, but made him think. there's no doubt there is some- thing queer about the house. dee't think I should care to live in it

I

B-11 thanked him and moved away. Yes, there was something

some about Number 13. thing devilishly queer, otherwise

querr

1

WHS

the

the bedroom of

was

the

of.

From Page 12

pen gripped him to such an ex-

More than ever wondering and tent that he would have got out of the house as fast as he could, perplexed he went away, not dar- because of the had he been able; but a Power heng to remain

ex-con they could not resist compelled Him to Police, being an stay and go through everything might suspect he was up to some- again. Then, just as before, he thing if they saw him hanging

around. was examining the contents the dressing table drawers when He had, however, to go to the he heard the top of dainty high trial of the accused lady before heels on the polished floor of the the Magistrates. He knew it was landing, and he had hardly hid- a risky and foolhardy thing to do, den behind the curtains, when the but he could not resist the Power blonde lady entered the room, outside himself; that strange, un- looking so he thought, lovelier canny influence that had been This time, however, haunting and compelling him ever than ever.

Directly he set eyes on as she stood by the bedside gaz- since that first experience in the ing down at the sleeper, Bili be- Square. came aware of a ghostly unreality the woman in the dock, he re- and about the man. cognised her as the beautiful about her They seemed no longer to belong blonde with the necklace.

The case against her was briefly to a world he knew, but to hail

from the same strange unearthly this. world as the frighteningly bizarro shadows on the floor and walls.

Her married life was known to be unhappy. She had lovers and He breathed easier when she

had been heard to quarrel with left the bedside and finally slip her husband over them and Her declaration ped into her night attire. As she

money inatters. by the electric stood warming

that a burglar had got into the fire, the dainty pearl buttons on house, murdered her husband and her pyjamas and her red lac-

stolen her diamond necklace while quered finger and to nails shone she was sleeping, was unsupport- and flashed like jewels.

ed by any evidence. The necklace Then, after she was at last certainly could not be found, but bed, came the long. harrowing the Police had not been able to wait till she slept, the emerging discover any indication of anyone from the curtains to snatch the breaking into the house, and were necklace, the horribly cautious

of the opinion that the crime had trying of the door handle and that ugly sinister face in the aper the household.

been perpetrated by a member of And who could it ure. the lurid

glow from the

have been but the accused? She heater The silence in the house seem-

throwing into startling

alone had the opportunity and the ed even deeper and more unna- prominence its every evil feature motive, and it was absurd to be- tural than the last time he

In she crept with feline stealth, lieve she had been sleeping foo shadows on there, and the

her glittering eyes full of cruelty soundly to hear her husband kill-

became more Bill wall and ceiling more alarming- And once

l, In the semi-gloom helpless spectator of the fiendish ly fantastic.

murder. Then came the culmin- If Bill got a shock on seeing the the face of the sleeping man look-

weird. ating horror, when a strange noise accused, he got a much bigger one ed startlingly white and

witness In the end he went.

Bill was horribly afraid; afraid of close to Bill attracting the atten- on seeing the principal This time Rain in the the sleeper, the shadows, the si- tion of the murderess, she made a for the Prosecution. She was the there was no snow.

at se- lence, every thing. The dread of cat-like spring the curtains housekeeper at Number 13. B- morning was succeeded by a

what he knew was about to hap- and pulling them aside, saw him. Square, and there was no mistak~ vere frost at night, with the re-

The glee with which she beheld ing that long narrow face, hawk- his terror and suspence was even like nose and those dark, sinister more hellish than before, her grin eyes. She was the woman with when brandishing the dagger- the knife, the real murderess. shaped knife in mid-air more dia- Bill had a hard struggle: bolical, and the pain of the stab, the while she testified against her if possible, even more agonising, mistress he knew she was lying, and as, on the previous Christmas but what could he do? If he nar- Eve, he recovered from uncon- rated his experiences, who would sciousness to find himself lying in belleve him? No one. They would the area, on the very spot where say he was crazy. The only thing he had fallen and bumped his he could do would be to declare

Once again it WIIK Christmas Eve, and as the day wore on his desire to revisit B--Square grew stronger and stronger.

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head.

a

All

He was actually in the house on When he opened his eyes

he the night of the murder, and that was quite alone, and the stars would mean a stiff sentence for were shining down on him from burglary. They might even accuse the murder. Bill had a bright, cloudless sky. Rising him of

with with some difficulty, for he had never been over-burdened lain there a considerable time, he conscience. At times he persuad- clambered up the area steps, saw ed himself he had none, but what what, curiously enough, he had he had of conscience now joined not noticed before on his arrival, partnership with a Bense of chi- namely, a board with "To Let Un- valry and something else; a strange furnished" on it, and wandered uncanny something quite outside thoughtfully home.

himself and beyond his ken. He

Another year passed, and once could not get away from it, it Influenced him all the time and at again it was Christmas Eve, a

that

same

mild, muggy Christmas Eve, with last proved so all-powerful an occasional drizzle and a gentle he found himself scribbling a note South West wind.

to the Solicitor for the Defence. All day the impulse to go again

"I know something about this to the Square obsessed Bill. He 're case," he wrote, "for Gawd's fought hard against it but in the sake, guvernor, let me speak."

And speak he did. He swore end he had to go; and on reach- ing Number 13, he saw, standing he had entered the house on the in front of the mirror in the room night of the murder, and esconced on the first floor, the same blonde behind the window curtains had lady, doing precisely the

seen the woman with the dark, the deceased's thing. And, as on those two pre- sinister eyes cut vious occasions, the sight of that throat. He explained it all in dè- sparkling diamond necklace tail, and all the while the mur- with tempted him sorely.

deress sat staring at him This time, however, he manag- ever increasing terror and amaze- ed, after a desperate struggle with ment: More than once she open- himself, to tear himself away from ed her mouth to speak and deny the spot and go straight home. what he said, but words would not Back in his little parlour he come, and before Bill had finish chuckled to think he had not been cd she fainted. Later, she con- fool enough this time to go down fessed.

into the area of that empty house. The motive for the murder was. Had he done so he might again the diamond necklace, She-ba- huve fallen and undergone another longed to a gang of Continental harrowing experience. Whether thieves. Her mistress being on ghosts or things of a delirium, and well known bad terms with the he still could not decide which, he murdered man, it seemed an easy had outwitted them.

thing to frame her for the murder. In the morning he went to the She had not, of course, calculat- Free Library across the way and ed on any interference by a Pow- almost the first thing he saw in er of Powers outside the World. large headlines, in a Lunch Edi- It was just too bad for her that tion paper, was

♫

"SHOCKING MURDER IN

B-SQUARE”.

the Superphysical, for some pecu- liar reason-maybe an interest in the Blonde Lady, or in Bill, or in A man of seventy had been both-had thought fit to inter- found horribly murdered in bed vene. and his young and beautiful wife Since Bill's evidence was of had been arrested on suspicion. such vital importance, the Magis- The number of the house where trates, who believed his confes- the crime had been committed sion, had not the heart to punish was 13. Bill could hardly believe him, and so he walked out of the he read aright. Thirteen; why Court a free and conscience-ap- that was the house! Yet it could peased man,

not be, because the house of his

Some days afterwards he re- experiences was empty and un- ceived a letter. It was from the furnished,

Full of excitement and curiosity blonde lady and contained he tore or to B Square, in cheque for a sum that fairly took find several policemen and a small his breath away.

of

crowd of people standing In front Realising, he owed his good for- 13. It was the house--the tune to his strange experiences on house of his weird experiences those two successive. Christmas but now there was no "To Let 'Eves, Bill never again scoffed at: board on the ruilings. It was ghosts, but fully agreed with the -furnished and tenanted, Suppos- sentiments of the Immortal play- ung he had gone there the preced- wright that "there are more things. ing night, what might have hap- in Henven: and on Earth than are pened?

areained of in your philosoph

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