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Page 78
"You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent.
I confessed that I had.
"And what do YOU think of it?"
I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business
of mine.
"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a
woman or not?"
"It is certainly a woman."
"Which room did you hear it from?"
"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."
"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the
doors as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and
praying just as plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----"
"Why, what else COULD it be?"
He looked at me hard.
"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it
is a woman, how does she get there?"
"I don't know."
"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a
practical business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is
rather a ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I
saw that he felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost
stories of Thorpe Place a new one was being added before our very
eyes. It may by this time have taken its permanent place, for
though an explanation came to me, it never reached the others.
And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a
sleepless night from neuralgia, and about midday I had taken a
heavy dose of chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time I was
finishing the indexing of Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was
my custom to work there from five till seven. On this particular
day I struggled against the double effect of my bad night and the
narcotic. I have already mentioned that there was a recess in the
library, and in this it was my habit to work. I settled down
steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me and, falling
back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep.
How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I
awoke. Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay
motionless in a semi-conscious state. The great room with its high
walls covered with books loomed darkly all round me. A dim
radiance from the moonlight came through the farther window, and
against this lighter background I saw that Sir John Bollamore was
sitting at his study table. His well-set head and clearly cut
profile were sharply outlined against the glimmering square behind
him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the sharp turning of a
key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a dream I was
vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which stood in
front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something
squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I
never realized--it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain
that I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to
be alone in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my
horrified perceptions, and I had half risen to announce my
presence, I heard a strange, crisp, metallic clicking, and then the
voice.
Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it.
But a voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that
it will ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious faraway
tinkle, but every word was clear, though faint--very faint, for
they were the last words of a dying woman.
"I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I
am here at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more.
I die happy to think that morning and night you will hear my voice.
Oh, John, be strong, be strong, until we meet again."
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