The Empty House Read online

  I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the cleaning rod and waited in the dining room, while Strickland brought a gardener’s ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the room.

  The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him the danger of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling cloths.

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Strickland. ‘They’re sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for them, and the heat of the room is just what they like.’ He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

  ‘H’m!’ said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof. ‘There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, someone is occupying ‘em!’

  ‘Snakes?’ I said from below.

  ‘No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main roof beam.’

  I handed up the rod.

  ‘What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,’ said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. ‘Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below there! It’s falling.’

  I saw the ceiling cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

  He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.

  ‘It strikes me,’ said he, putting down the lamp, ‘our friend Imray has come back. Oh! you would, would you?’

  There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

  Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life.

  ‘Is it Imray?’ I said.

  Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.

  ‘It is Imray,’ he said; ‘and his throat is cut from ear to ear.’

  Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: ‘That’s why he whispered about the house.’

  Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved open the dining room door.

  She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.

  Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.

  ‘It’s a bad business, old lady,’ said he. ‘Men don’t climb up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling cloth behind ‘em. Let’s think it out.’

  ‘Let’s think it out somewhere else,’ I said.

  ‘Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.’

  I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first, and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously because I was afraid.

  ‘Imray is back,’ said Strickland. ‘The question is—who killed Imray? Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took over most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn’t he?’

  I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor the other.

  ‘If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?’

  ‘Call ‘em in one by one,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,’ said Strickland. ‘We must segregate ‘em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?’

  ‘He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days,’ I answered. ‘What’s your notion?’

  ‘I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling cloth?’

  There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

  ‘Come in,’ said Strickland. ‘It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?’

  Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six foot Mahomedan, said that it was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.

  ‘It will be so, if God pleases,’ said Strickland, tugging off his boots. ‘It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days—ever since that time when thou first earnest into my service. What time was that?’

  ‘Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given; and I—even I—came into the honoured service of the protector of the poor.’

  ‘And Imray Sahib went to Europe?’

  ‘It is so said among those who were his servants.’

  ‘And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?’

  ‘Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.’

  ‘That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck shooting tomorrow. Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for black buck; it is in the case yonder.’

  The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached down to the gun case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the ‘360 Express.

  ‘And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?’

  ‘What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?’

  ‘Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.’

  ‘Sahib!’

  The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.

  ‘Go and look!’ said Strickland. ‘Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go!’

  The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling cloth; at the writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the tablecloth.

  ‘Hast thou seen?’ said Strickland after a pause.

  ‘I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence do?’

  ‘Hang thee within the month. What else?’

  ‘For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever—my child!’

  ‘What said Imray Sahib?’

  ‘He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.’

  Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular, ‘Thou art witness to
this saying? He has killed.’

  Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly. ‘I am trapped,’ he said, ‘but the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,’ he glared at Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, ‘only such could know what I did.’

  ‘It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!’

  A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.

  ‘Take him to the police station,’ said Strickland. ‘There is a case toward.’

  ‘Do I hang, then?’ said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and keeping his eyes on the ground.

  ‘If the sun shines or the water runs—yes!’ said Strickland.

  Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.

  ‘Go!’ said Strickland.

  ‘Nay; but I go very swiftly,’ said Bahadur Khan. ‘Look! I am even now a dead man.’

  He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

  ‘I come of land-holding stock,’ said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. ‘It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold, therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and—and—I die.’

  At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.

  ‘This,’ said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, ‘is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?’

  ‘I heard,’ I answered. ‘Imray made a mistake.’

  ‘Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years.’

  I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.

  ‘What has befallen Bahadur Khan?’ said I.

  ‘He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,’ was the answer.

  ‘And how much of this matter hast thou known?’

  ‘As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.’

  I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house—

  ‘Tietjens has come back to her place!’

  And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty, ceiling cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.

  Chunia, Ayah

  Alice Perrin

  ‘I hope you clearly understand that I do not believe in ghosts? ‘

  The little grey-haired spinster paused and regarded me with suspicion, and alarmed lest I should, after all, lose the story I had been so carefully stalking, I vehemently reassured her on the point, whereupon, to my relief, she continued—

  ‘It certainly was a most extraordinary thing, and even now I hardly know what to make of it, though it happened a long time ago. One cold weather when I was in India keeping house for my brother, I received a letter from a friend, begging me to pay her a long promised visit. She wrote that her husband was going into camp for a month to a part of his district where she could not accompany him, so that she and her little girl would be all alone, and I should be doing her a great kindness by coming. So the end of it was I accepted the invitation, though I greatly disliked leaving my brother to the tender mercies of the servants, and after a long, hot journey arrived at my destination at five o’clock one evening.

  ‘My friend, Mrs Pollock, was on the platform to meet me, and outside the station a bamboo cart was waiting, into which we climbed, and were soon bowling along the hard, white road at a brisk pace. Mary at once began to relate anecdotes of her little girl, whose name was Dot—how tall she was for her age (twenty months!), how much she ate, what she tried to say, what the ayah said about her, and so on.

  ‘Now I must confess that I am not very fond of children; I like them well enough in their proper place (if that is not too near me), but I do not know how to behave towards them, and am always nervous as to what they will do or say next. Therefore, fond as I was of Mary herself, the subject of her conversation did not particularly interest me. When we arrived at the house, she actually inquired which I would do first—see Dot or have some tea! I boldly elected for tea, as I was exceedingly tired and thirsty, and I also reflected that if I did not at once make a determined stand, I should be “Dot-ridden” for the remainder of my visit.

  ‘After tea I was taken to my room, and Mary brought her treasure to me for exhibition. She was the most lovely child I had ever beheld, with a grave, sweet face that quite won my unmotherly heart, and for once my prejudices completely melted away. Mary put her into my arms and stood by in an ecstacy of pride and delight as I proceeded to tap the pin-cushion, rattle my keys and perform various idiotic antics in my efforts to amuse Dot, who, I felt sure, would set up a howl in a few moments. But she watched my foolish attempts to be entertaining with an attentive gravity that was quite embarrassing, and charmed though I was with the little creature, I felt relieved when she held out her arms to go back to her mother.

  ‘Mary called for the ayah to come and take the child to her nursery, and a woman with a sullen, handsome face entered and took her charge away. I remarked that the ayah looked bad-tempered, upon which Mary assured me that she could trust the child anywhere with her, and that she was a perfect treasure.

  ‘The next morning I was awakened by a soft little pat on my face, and, opening my eyes, I found Dot holding herself upright by the corner, of my pillow.

  ‘“Why, little one, are you all alone?” I said, lifting her on to the bed, and then I discovered that her feet were wringing wet.

  ‘She held up one wet little foot and examined it carefully, and then pointed to the bathroom door, which was open, and from where I lay I could see an overturned jug and streams of water on the floor—evidently Dot’s handiwork. I put on my dressing gown and took the child to her mother, explaining what had happened, and Mary hastily pulled off the soaking little shoes and socks and called for the ayah, who presently entered, and stood silently watching her mistress.

  ‘“What do you mean by leaving the child in this way?” exclaimed Mary, angrily, and gathering up Dot’s shoes and socks, she threw them to the ayah, bidding her bring others that were dry. One of the little shoes struck the woman on the cheek, for Mary was annoyed and had flung them with unnecessary force, and never shall I forget the look on the ayah’s face as she left the room to carry out the order. It was the face of a devil, but Mary did not see it, for she was busy rubbing the cold little feet in her hands.

  ‘“Mary,” I said impulsively, “I am sure the ayah is a brute. Do get rid of her. I never saw anything so dreadful as the look she gave you just now.”

  ‘“My dear,” answered Mary, with good-humoured impatience, “you have taken an unreasonable dislike to Chunia. She knew she was in the wrong and felt ashamed of herself.”

  ‘So the matter dropped; but I could not get over my dislike to Chunia, and as my visit wore on, and I became more and more attached to dear little Dot, I could hardly endure to see the child in her presence.

  ‘My month with Mary passed quickly away, and I was really sorry when it was over, more especially as on my return home, my
brother was called away unexpectedly on business, and I was left alone. I missed Dot more than I could have believed possible, for I had become ridiculously devoted to the small, round bundle of humanity, with the great dark eyes and short yellow curls, and my feelings are not to be described when the letter came from Mr Pollock giving me the awful news of the child’s death.

  ‘I read the letter over and over again, hardly able to believe it. The whole thing was so hideously sudden! I had only left Mary and Dot such a short time ago, and when last I had seen the child she was in her mother’s arms on the platform of the railway station, kissing her little fat hands laboriously to me in farewell, and looking the picture of life and health.

  ‘Poor Mr Pollock wrote in a heartbroken strain. It appeared that the child had strayed away one afternoon and must have fallen into the river, which ran past the bottom of the garden, for the little sun hat was found floating in the stream, and close to the water’s edge lay a toy that she had been playing with all day. Every search had been made, but no further trace could be found. The poor mother was distracted with sorrow, and Mr Pollock had telegraphed for leave, as he meant to take her to England at once. He added that the ayah, Chunia, had been absent on three days leave when the dreadful accident happened, or, they both felt convinced, it would never have occurred at all. Mary, he wrote, sent me a message to beg me to take the woman into my service, as she could not endure the idea of one who had been so much with their darling going to strangers, for the poor woman had been a faithful servant, and was stricken and dumb with grief.

  ‘I telegraphed at once that I would take Chunia willingly. I forgot my old antipathy to her, and only remembered that I should have someone about me who had known and loved the child so well. When the woman arrived I was quite shocked at her altered appearance. Her face seemed to have shrunk to half its former size, and her eyes looked enormous, and shone with a strange brilliancy. She was very quiet at first but burst into a flood of tears when I tried to speak to her of poor little Dot, so I gave it up, as I saw she could hardly bear the subject mentioned.