Uncanny Tales

"Next morning, on pretence of examining the date of the tapestry, we had it down – you were all out – and we found —something. Just where the hands felt about, there had been a cut – three cuts, three sides of a square, as it were, making a sort of door in the stuff, the fourth side having evidently acted as a hinge, for there was a mark where it had been folded back. And just where – treating the thing as a door – you might expect to find a handle to open it by, we found a distinct dint in the tapestry, as if a button or knob had once been there. We looked at each other. The same idea had struck us. The tapestry had been used to conceal a small door in the wall – the door of a secret cupboard probably. The ghostly fingers had been vainly seeking for the spring which in the days of their flesh and bone they had been accustomed to press.

"'The first thing to do,' said Miles, 'is to look up Hunter and make him tell where he got the tapestry from. Then we shall see.'

"'Shall we take the portières with us?' I said.

"But Miles shuddered, though he half laughed too.

"'No, thank you,' he said. 'I'm not going to travel with the evil thing.'

"'We can't hang it up again, though,' I said, 'after this last experience.'

"In the end we rolled up the two portières, not to attract attention by only moving one, and – well, I thought it just possible the ghost might make a mistake, and I did not want any more scares while I was away – we rolled them up together, first carefully measuring the cut, and its position in the curtain, and then we hid them away in one of the lofts that no one ever enters, where they are at this moment, and where the ghost may have been disporting himself, for all I know, though I fancy he has given it up by this time, for reasons you shall hear.

"Then Miles and I, as you know, set off for Raxtrew. I smoothed my father down about it, by reminding him how good-natured they had been to us, and telling him Miles really needed me. We went straight to Hunter. He hummed and hawed a good deal – he had not distinctly promised not to give the name of the place the tapestry had come from, but he knew the gentleman he had bought it from did not want it known.

"'Why?' said Miles. 'Is it some family that has come down in the world, and is forced to part with things to get some ready money?'

"'Oh, dear no!' said Hunter. 'It is not that, at all. It was only that – I suppose I must give you the name – Captain Devereux – did not want any gossip to get about, as to – '

"'Devereux!' repeated Miles, 'you don't mean the people at Hallinger?'

"'The same,' said Hunter. 'If you know them, sir, you will be careful, I hope, to assure the captain that I did my best to carry out his wishes?'

"'Certainly,' said Miles, 'I'll exonerate you.'

"And then Hunter told us that Devereux, who only came into the Hallinger property a few years ago, had been much annoyed by stories getting about of the place being haunted, and this had led to his dismantling one wing, and – Hunter thought, but was not quite clear as to this – pulling down some rooms altogether. But he, Devereux, was very touchy on the subject – he did not want to be laughed at.

"'And the tapestry came from him – you are certain as to that?' Miles repeated.

"'Positive, sir. I took it down with my own hands. It was fitted on to two panels in what they call the round room at Hallinger – there were, oh, I daresay, a dozen of them, with tapestry nailed on, but I only bought these two pieces – the others were sold to a London dealer.'

"'The round room,' I said. Leila, the expression struck me.

"Miles, it appeared, knew Devereux fairly well. Hallinger is only ten miles off. We drove over there, but found he was in London. So our next move was to follow him there. We called twice at his club, and then Miles made an appointment, saying that he wanted to see him on private business.

"He received us civilly, of course. He is quite a young fellow – in the Guards. But when Miles began to explain to him what we had come about, he stiffened.

"'I suppose you belong to the Psychical Society?' he said. 'I can only repeat that I have nothing to tell, and I detest the whole subject.'

"'Wait a moment,' said Miles, and as he went on I saw that Devereux changed. His face grew intent with interest and a queer sort of eagerness, and at last he started to his feet.

"'Upon my soul,' he said, 'I believe you've run him to earth for me – the ghost, I mean, and if so, you shall have my endless gratitude. I'll go down to Hallinger with you at once – this afternoon, if you like, and see it out.'

"He was so excited that he spoke almost incoherently, but after a bit he calmed down, and told us all he had to tell – and that was a good deal – which would indeed have been nuts for the Psychical Society. What Hunter had said was but a small part of the whole. It appeared that on succeeding to Hallinger, on the death of an uncle, young Devereux had made considerable changes in the house. He had, among others, opened out a small wing – a sort of round tower – which had been completely dismantled and bricked up for, I think he said, over a hundred years. There was some story about it. An ancestor of his – an awful gambler – had used the principal room in this wing for his orgies. Very queer things went on there, the finish up being the finding of old Devereux dead there one night, when his servants were summoned by the man he had been playing with – with whom he had had an awful quarrel. This man, a low fellow, probably a professional cardsharper, vowed that he had been robbed of a jewel which his host had staked, and it was said that a ring of great value had disappeared. But it was all hushed up – Devereux had really died in a fit – though soon after, for reasons only hinted at, the round tower was shut up, till the present man rashly opened it again.

"Almost at once, he said, the annoyances, to use a mild term, began. First one, then another of the household were terrified out of their wits, just as we were, Leila. Devereux himself had seen it two or three times, the 'it,' of course, being his miserable old ancestor. A small man, with a big wig, and long, thin, claw-like fingers. It all corresponded. Mrs. Devereux is young and nervous. She could not stand it. So in the end the round tower was shut up again, all the furniture and hangings sold, and locally speaking, the ghost laid. That was all Devereux knew.

"We started, the three of us, that very afternoon, as excited as a party of schoolboys. Miles and I kept questioning Devereux, but he had really no more to tell. He had never thought of examining the walls of the haunted room – it was wainscotted, he said – and might be lined all through with secret cupboards, for all he knew. But he could not get over the extraordinariness of the ghost's sticking to the tapestry– and indeed it does rather lower one's idea of ghostly intelligence.

"We went at it at once – the tower was not bricked up again, luckily – we got in without difficulty the next morning – Devereux making some excuse to the servants, a new set who had not heard of the ghost, for our eccentric proceedings. It was a tiresome business. There were so many panels in the room, as Hunter had said, and it was impossible to tell in which the tapestry had been fixed. But we had our measures, and we carefully marked a line as near as we could guess at the height from the floor that the cut in the portières must have been. Then we tapped and pummelled and pressed imaginary springs till we were nearly sick of it – there was nothing to guide us. The wainscotting was dark and much shrunk and marked with age, and full of joins in the wood any one of which might have meant a door.

"It was Devereux himself who found it at last. We heard an exclamation from where he was standing by himself at the other side of the room. He was quite white and shaky.

"'Look here,' he said, and we looked.

"Yes – there was a small deep recess, or cupboard in the thickness of the wall, excellently contrived. Devereux had touched the spring at last, and the door, just matching the cut in the tapestry, flew open.

"Inside lay what at first we took for a packet of letters, and I hoped to myself they contained nothing that would bring trouble on poor Devereux. They were not letters, however, but two or three incomplete packs of cards – grey and dust-thick with age – and as Miles spread them out, certain markings on them told their own tale. Devereux did not like it, naturally – their supposed owner had been a member of his house.

"'The ghost has kept a conscience,' he said, with an attempt at a laugh. 'Is there nothing more?'

"Yes – a small leather bag – black and grimy, though originally, I fancy, of chamois skin. It drew with strings. Devereux pulled it open, and felt inside.

"'By George!' he exclaimed. And he held out the most magnificent diamond ring I have ever seen – sparkling away as if it had only just come from the polisher's. 'This must be the ring,' he said.

"And we all stared – too astonished to speak.

"Devereux closed the cupboard again, after carefully examining it to make sure nothing had been left behind. He marked the exact spot where he had pressed the spring so as to find it at any time. Then we all left the round room, locking the door securely after us.

"Miles and I spent that night at Hallinger. We sat up late talking it all over. There are some queer inconsistencies about the thing which will probably never be explained. First and foremost – why has the ghost stuck to the tapestry instead of to the actual spot he seemed to have wished to reveal? Secondly, what was the connection between his visits and the full moon – or is it that only by the moonlight the shade becomes perceptible to human sense? Who can say?

"As to the story itself – what was old Devereux's motive in concealing his own ring? Were the marked cards his, or his opponent's, of which he had managed to possess himself, and had secreted as testimony against the other fellow?

"I incline, and so does Miles, to this last theory, and when we suggested it to Devereux, I could see it was a relief to him. After all, one likes to think one's ancestors were gentlemen!

"'But what, then, has he been worrying about all this century or more?' he said. 'If it were that he wanted the ring returned to its real owner – supposing the fellow had won it – I could understand it, though such a thing would be impossible. There is no record of the man at all – his name was never mentioned in the story.'

"'He may want the ring restored to its proper owner all the same,' said Miles. 'You are its owner, as the head of the family, and it has been your ancestor's fault that it has been hidden all these years. Besides, we cannot take upon ourselves to explain motives in such a case. Perhaps – who knows? – the poor shade could not help himself. His peregrinations may have been of the nature of punishment.'

"'I hope they are over now,' said Devereux, 'for his sake and everybody else's. I should be glad to think he wanted the ring restored to us, but besides that, I should like to do something – something good you know – if it would make him easier, poor old chap. I must consult Lilias.' Lilias is Mrs. Devereux.

"This is all I have to tell you at present, Leila. When I come home we'll have the portières up again and see what happens. I want you now to read all this to my father, and if he has no objection – he and my mother, of course – I should like to invite Captain and Mrs. Devereux to stay a few days with us – as well as Miles, as soon as I come back."

Philip's wish was acceded to. It was with no little anxiety and interest that we awaited his return.

The tapestry portières were restored to their place – and on the first moonlight night, my father, Philip, Captain Devereux and Mr. Miles held their vigil.

What happened?

Nothing– the peaceful rays lighted up the quaint landscape of the tapestry, undisturbed by the poor groping fingers – no gruesome unearthly chill as of worse than death made itself felt to the midnight watchers – the weary, may we not hope repentant, spirit was at rest at last!

And never since has any one been troubled by the shadow in the moonlight.

"I cannot help hoping," said Mrs. Devereux, when talking it over, "that what Michael has done may have helped to calm the poor ghost."

And she told us what it was. Captain Devereux is rich, though not immensely so. He had the ring valued – it represented a very large sum, but Philip says I had better not name the figures – and then he, so to say, bought it from himself. And with this money he – no, again, Phil says I must not enter into particulars beyond saying that with it he did something very good, and very useful, which had long been a pet scheme of his wife's.

Sophy is grown up now and she knows the whole story. So does our mother. And Dormy too has heard it all. The horror of it has quite gone. We feel rather proud of having been the actual witnesses of a ghostly drama.