Tom Ossington's Ghost

CHAPTER XVIII

MADGE APPLIES MORE STRENGTH

Was it imagination? Or was it fact? Did some one or something really pass from the room, causing in going a little current of air? With startled faces each put to the other an unspoken query.

Which none answered.

The woman lay there, motionless, her exceeding stillness seeming accentuated by the sudden silence which filled the room. Bruce Graham, moving forward, took her up in his arms, as if she were but a feather's weight. His knife fell from her nerveless fingers, tumbling to the floor with startling clatter. Madge picked it up. Her voice rang out with clarion clearness-the voice of a woman whose nerves were tense as fiddle-strings.

"I'll see if I cannot press harder. This mystery must be solved to-night-before some of us go mad; if pressing will do it, it shall soon be done-if there's strength in me at all."

There was strength in her-and not a little.

She went on her knees where the woman had been; and, as she had done, fumbled with her fingers where the paper had been scraped from the wall, peering closely at it, as she did so.

"A dog's head, is it? – it doesn't look as if it were a dog's head to me, and that's not because I'm stupid. It's to be pressed, is it? – Well, if pressing will do it, here's for pressing!"

She exerted all her force against the point to which the woman had been directed.

"It gives! It gives! – something gives beneath my thumb: it's the knob of a spring or something-I'm sure of it."

Turning, she looked up at Graham with flaming cheeks and flashing eyes.

"The spring is sure to be rusty. It will need all your strength. Try it again."

She tried again.

"It does give-it does! But whatever it is supposed to open is not likely to act now that the wall has been repapered. Some one go and fetch the hammer and the chisel from downstairs-we'll try another way."

She glanced at Jack, as if intending the suggestion to apply to him. But Ella clung to his arm, which perhaps prevented him from moving with the speed which might have been expected.

"Will no one go?" cried Madge. "Why, then, I'll go myself."

But that Bruce Graham would not permit. Swiftly depositing his still unconscious burden on Ella's bed, he went in search of the required tools, returning almost as soon as he had gone.

"I think, Miss Brodie, that perhaps you had better allow me to try my hand. I am stronger than you."

She gave way to him unhesitatingly.

"Drive the chisel into the wall and see if it is hollow."

He did as she bade him. A couple of blows put the thing beyond a doubt. The chisel disappeared up to the hilt through what was evidently but an outer shell. Madge continued to issue her instructions.

"Break the wall in! It's no use fumbling with dogs' head in search of hidden springs-with us it's a case of the shortest road's the best. Whatever's inside that wall has been there long enough to excuse us if we're a little neglectful of ceremonious observances."

In a few minutes the wall was broken in, the ancient woodwork offering no resistance to Bruce Graham's vigorous onslaught. A cavity was made large enough to thrust one's head in. Madge stopped him.

"That'll do-for the present! Now let's see what there is inside!"

She went down on her knees the better to enable her to see, Graham moving aside to give her room. She thrust her fair young face as far into the opening as she could get it-only to discover that she was obscuring her own light. Out it came again.

"Give me a light-a match, or something. It's as dark as pitch in there."

Graham gave her a box of matches. Striking one, she introduced it into what was as the heart of the wall.

"There is something in there!"

She dropped the match. Fortunately it went out as it fell.

"It's the hidden fortune!"

She gave a gasp. Then in an instant she was on her feet and was hastening towards the recumbent figure on the bed.

The woman still lay motionless. Madge, bending down, caught her by the shoulder, forgetful of all in her desire to impart the amazing news.

"Your husband's fortune's in the wall-we've found it there."

Something on the woman's face, in her utter stillness, seemed to fill her with new alarm. She called to the others.

"Ella! – Mr. Graham! Jack!" Her voice sank to a whisper; there was a catching of her breath. "Is she dead?"

They came hastening towards her. Jack Martyn, stopping halfway, looking round, startled them with a fresh inquiry, to which he himself supplied the answer.

"By George! – I say! – where's Ballingall? – Why, he's gone!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE WOMAN AND THE MAN

Yes-the woman was dead. Ballingall had gone-and the fortune was found.

Put in that way, it was a curious sequence of events.

Indeed, put in any way, there could be no doubt about the oddity of the part which the woman had played.

Medical examination clearly showed that death had come to her from natural causes. She must, the doctor said, have been within a hand's-breadth of death for, at any rate, the last twelve months. He declared that every vital organ was hopelessly diseased. Asked if the immediate cause of death was shock, he replied that there was nothing whatever in the condition of the body which could be regarded as supporting such a theory. In his opinion, the woman had burned out, like a candle, which, when it is all consumed, dies. Nothing, in his judgment, could have retarded the inevitable end; just as there was nothing to suggest that it came one instant sooner than might, in the natural course, have been expected.

That was what the doctor said in public, at the coroner's inquest.

He listened to them when, in private, they told him the strange story of the night's adventure, pronouncing at the conclusion an opinion which contained in it the essence of all wisdom, for it might be taken any way. The gist of it was this. Very probably for some time before her death, the woman had been light-headed. When people are light-headed they suffer from hallucinations. It was quite possible that, in her case, those hallucinations had taken the form-literally-of her injured husband. It was on record that hallucinations had taken form, in similar cases. It was a perfectly feasible and reasonable theory which supposed that the woman, wandering, a homeless outcast, in the streets of London, delirious, premonitions of her approaching dissolution being borne in upon her in spite of her delirium, would turn her dying footsteps towards her one-time home, to which, as her behaviour in forcing herself on Madge plainly showed, her thoughts had recently returned. Nor, under the circumstances, was there anything surprising in her delusion that her husband had led her there.

It was when asked to explain how it was that she had hit upon the hiding-place of her husband's fortune-hit upon it, as it seemed, altogether against her will, that the doctor became oracular. But even here he was not without his hints as to the direction in which an explanation might be found.

He pointed out that our study of the science of mental psychology was still in its infancy. But, even so far as it had gone, it seemed to suggest the possibility of what has come to be called telepathic communication between two minds-even when the whilom owner of one of the minds has passed beyond the confines of the grave. This sounded a trifle abstruse. But as the doctor professed his inability to put it any clearer, they had to take his statement as it stood, and make out just as much of it as they were able.

As for Ballingall's pretensions to having shared the woman's hallucination-if hallucination it was-the doctor pooh-poohed them altogether. The man was as mad as the woman, and madder; and an impudent rogue to boot. Where was he? Let him come forward, and allow himself and his statements to be scientifically tested. Then it would be shown what reliance could be placed on anything which he might say.

But where Ballingall was, was exactly the problem which they found insoluble. He had vanished as completely as if he had never existed. The presumption was, that while they had been absorbed in watching Madge's efforts to carry on the work of discovery from the point at which the woman had left it, he had sneaked, unnoticed, from the room and from the house. The curious feature was that they were unable to agree as to the exact moment at which he could have gone. Bruce Graham declared that he was in the room when he went to fetch the hammer and chisel, and that he was still there when he returned. Madge protested that he was in the room when she ran across to the recumbent figure on Ella's bed. If so, since Jack discovered his absence within less than a minute afterwards, it was during that scant sixty seconds that he made good his escape.

Why he had gone at all was difficult to say. One might have thought that after what he had undergone during his search for the fortune he would hardly have disappeared at the moment of its finding. He had suffered so much in looking, that he had earned at least a share, when at last it was brought to light. Such, certainly, was the strong feeling of its actual discoverer. He stood in need enough of money; that was sure. Why then, at what from one point of view might be described as the very moment of his triumph, had he vanished?

He alone could tell.

They could only give wild guesses. Nothing has been seen or heard of him from that hour to this. They put advertisements for him in the papers, without result. Then, as they felt that living the sort of life which he probably was living-that is, if he was living at all-it was within the range of probability that a newspaper would never come his way, and that he would never glance at it if it did, they distributed handbills broadcast through the slums of London, beseeching him to apply to a certain address, and offering a reward to any one who could give an account of his proceedings after the night on which he had taken himself away.

To those handbills they did receive answers-in abundance. There were evidently plenty of people who were willing, nay, anxious, to lay their hands on that reward, just as there seemed several Charles Ballingalls with whom they were acquainted. But no one of them was the Charles Ballingall. More than once they thought they had chanced on him at last; the stories told were such very specious ones, and they followed up the trail till it proved beyond all manner of doubt to be a false one. When the Charles Ballingall to whom it referred was unearthed, he proved, in each and every case, to be not in the least like theirs.

And so the presumption is that the man is dead. He was, probably, as the doctor suggested, more than half out of his mind on that eventful night; his sins had brought him suffering enough to have driven the average mortal mad. It is not unlikely that the strange things which then transpired, completing the work of destruction, robbed him of his few remaining senses; and that, at that last moment, when Madge Brodie announced her discovery of what he had sought with so much pain and with such ardour, the irony of fate which seemed to have pursued him, pressing on him still, had driven him out into the night, a raving lunatic, seeking anywhere and anyhow for escape from the burden of life which haunted him.

God alone can tell where and how he found it.

CHAPTER XX

THE FORTUNE

And the fortune?

This remark may be made-that had they not found it when they did there would very shortly have been nothing left to find. Mr. Thomas Ossington had chosen for the treasure-chest a simple opening in the wall, to which access had originally been gained by touching a spring. This spring had been concealed under what had probably been a picture of a dog's head; the fifth alternating dog's head on the right-hand side of the bedroom door. When you pressed it a door flew open. But this primitive treasure-chest, if not entirely obvious to the world at large, was open to the rats and mice, and similar small deer, who had their happy hunting-grounds within the wall itself. The result was that, when the contents were examined, it was found that the bundles of bank-notes had been gnawed, in some cases to unrecognisable shreds; that meals-hearty ones of the cut-and-come-again description-had been made of parchment deeds, bonds, share certificates, and similar impediments; that coin-gold coin-had been contained in bags, which bags had been consumed, even to the strings which once had tied them. The coins lay under accumulations of dust, in heaps upon the floor. On several were actually well-marked indentations, showing that sharp, gleaming teeth had applied to them a stringent test before finally deciding that they really were not good to eat. A curious spectacle the whole presented when first brought to the light of day.

However, in but few cases had the damage proceeded to lengths which had rendered what was left absolutely worthless-discovery had come just in the nick of time. The Bank of England was good enough to hand over cash in exchange for the fragments of all notes of which there was satisfactory evidence that there had been once a whole. The various documents which represented property were none of them in a condition which rendered recognition altogether impossible, and when it was once established what they were, for all intents and purposes they were as available for their original use as if they had been in a condition of pristine freshness.

Altogether the find represented a sum of something like £40,000. Not a large fortune, as fortunes go, but still a comfortable capital to be the possessor of. If fate only had been kind to him, and the men and women who formed his world of finer texture, Tom Ossington might have been as happy as the days were long.

Oddly enough, the real trouble came after the fortune was found. The difficulty was as to whom it belonged-not because the claimants were so many, but because they were so few.

It was Madge's wish that it should be divided between those who were actually present at the moment of its discovery, maintaining that such a division would be in accordance with both law and equity. Ballingall's continued disappearance resolved the number of these into four-Ella, Jack Martyn, Bruce Graham, and herself. The first rift in the lute was caused by Mr. Graham, he refusing point-blank to have part or parcel in any such transaction. He maintained that the fortune had been found by Madge, and that therefore, in accordance with the terms of the will, the whole of it was hers. In any case he would have none of it. He had felt, on mature reflection, that Ballingall's accusations had not been without foundation, that his conduct had been unprofessional, that he had had no right to share his confidence with anybody-that, in short, he had behaved ill in the whole affair; and that, therefore, he had no option but to decline to avail himself of any advantages which were, so to speak, the proceeds of his misbehaviour.

When she heard this, Madge laughed outright. Seeing that her laughter made no impression, and that the gentleman continued of the same opinion still, she was moved to use language which was, to say the least, surprising. It was plain that, beneath the lash of the lady's tongue, he was unhappy. But his unhappiness did not go deep enough to induce him to change his mind. When it was obvious that his resolve was adamant, and that by no means could he be induced to move from it, she announced her own decision.

"Very well; if the fortune's mine, it's mine. And if it's mine I can do what I like with it. And what I like, is to divide it with Ella; and if Ella will not have half, then I'll not have a farthing either. And the whole shall go to the Queen, or to whoever unclaimed money does go. And you'll find that I can be as firm-or as obstinate-as anybody else."

"But, my dear," observed Ella, mildly, "I never said that I wouldn't have half. I'm sure I'll be delighted. I'll need no pressing-and thank you very kindly, ma'am."

"I do believe, Ella," returned Madge, with calmness which was both significant and deadly, "that you are the only reasonable person with whom I am acquainted."

So it was arranged-the two girls divided the whole; which of course meant, as Madge knew perfectly, that Jack Martyn would have his share. As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Martyn have been husband and wife for some time now, and are doing very well.

And it is said-as such things are said-that Madge Brodie will be Mrs. Bruce Graham yet before she dies. It is believed by those who know them best that he would give his eyes to marry her, and that she has made up her mind to marry him.

This being so, it would seem as if a marriage might ensue.

If such is the case, it appears extremely likely, if Madge ever is his wife, that, whether he will or won't, Bruce Graham will have to have his share.

She is as obstinate as he is-every whit.