“Let us just hear your account of what has happened from the beginning, Mrs. Ashcroft,” suggested Pons.
“Very well.” She sat for a moment trying to decide where to begin her narrative. “I suppose, Mr. Pons, it began about a month ago. Mrs. Jenkins, a housekeeper I had engaged, was cleaning late in the library when she heard someone singing. It seemed to come, she said, ‘from the books.’ Something about a ‘dead man.’ It faded away. Two nights later she woke after a dream and went downstairs to get a sedative from the medicine cabinet. She heard something in the library. She thought perhaps I was indisposed and went to the library. But the library, of course, was dark. However, there was a shaft of moonlight in the room it was bright outside, and therefore a kind of illumination was in the library, too — and in that shaft, Mr. Pons, Mrs. Jenkins believed she saw the bearded face of an old man that seemed to glare fiercely at her. It was only for a moment. Then Mrs. Jenkins found the switch and turned up the light. Of course, there was no one in the library but herself. It was enough for her; she was so sure that she had seen a ghost, that next morning, after all the windows and doors were found locked and bolted, she gave notice. I was not entirely sorry to see them go — her husband worked as caretaker of the grounds — because I suspected Jenkins of taking food from the cellars and the refrigerator for their married daughter. That is not an uncommon problem with servants in England, I am told.”
“I should have thought you a native, Mrs. Ashcroft,” said Pons. “You’ve been in the Colonies?”
“Kenya, yes. But I was born here. It was for reasons of sentiment that I took this house. I should have taken a better location. But I was little more than a street waif in Sydenham as a child, and somehow the houses here represented the epitome of splendor. When the agent notified me that this one was to be let, I couldn’t resist taking it. But the tables turned — the houses have come down in the world and I have come up, and there are so many things I miss — the hawkers and the carts, for which cars are no substitute, the rumble of the underground since the Nunhead-Crystal Palace Line has been discontinued, and all in all, I fear my sentiments have led me to make an ill-advised choice. The ghost, of course, is only the crowning touch.”
“You believe in him then, Mrs. Ashcroft?”
“I’ve seen him, Mr. Pons.” She spoke as matter-of-factly as if she were speaking of some casual natural phenomenon. “It was a week ago. I wasn’t entirely satisfied that Mrs. Jenkins had not seen something. It could have been an hallucination. If she had started awake from a dream and fancied she saw something in their room why, yes, I could easily have believed it a transitory hallucination, which might occur commonly enough after a dream. But Mrs. Jenkins had been awake enough to walk downstairs, take a sedative, and start back up when she heard something in the library. So the dream had had time enough in which to wear off. I am myself not easily frightened. My late husband and I lived in border country in Kenya, and some of the Kikuyu were unfriendly.
“Mr. Pons, I examined the library carefully. As you see, shelving covers most of the walls. I had very few personal books to add — the rest were here. I bought the house fully furnished, as the former owner had died and there were no near heirs. That is, there was a brother, I understand, but he was in Rhodesia, and had no intention of returning to England. He put the house up for sale, and my agents, Messrs. Harwell and Chamberlin, in Lordship Lane, secured it for me. The books are therefore the property of the former owner, a Mr. Howard Brensham, who appears to have been very widely read, for there are collections ranging from early British poetry to crime and detective fiction. But that is hardly pertinent. My own books occupy scarcely two shelves over there — all but a few have dust-jackets, as you see, Mr. Pons. Well, my examination of the library indicated that the position of these books as I had placed them had been altered. It seemed to me that they had been handled, perhaps even read. They are not of any great consequence — recent novels, some work by Proust and Mauriac in French editions, an account of life in Kenya, and the like. It was possible that one of the servants had become interested in them; I did not inquire. Nevertheless, I became very sensitive and alert about the library. One night last week — Thursday, I believe — while I lay reading late, in my room, I distinctly heard a book or some such object fall in this room.
“I got out of bed, took my torch, and crept down the stairs in the dark. Mr. Pons, I sensed someone’s or something’s moving about below. I could feel the disturbance of the air at the foot of the stairs where something had passed. I went directly to the library and from the threshold of that door over there I turned my torch into the room and put on its light. Mr. Pons, I saw a horrifying thing. I saw the face of an old man with a matted beard and with wild unkempt hair raying outward from his head; it glared fiercely, menacingly at me. I admit that I faltered and fell back; the flashlight almost fell from my hands. Nevertheless, I summoned enough courage to snap on the overhead light. Mr. Pons — there was no one in the room beside myself. I stood in the doorway. No one had passed me. Yet, I swear it, I had seen precisely the same apparition that Mrs. Jenkins had described! It was there for one second — in the next it was gone — as if the very books had swallowed it up.
“Mr. Pons, I am not an imaginative woman, and I am not given to hallucinations. I saw what I had seen; there was no question of that.
I went around at once to make certain that the windows and doors were locked; all were; nothing had been tampered with. I had seen something, and everything about it suggested a supernatural apparition. I applied to Mr. Harwell. He told me that Mr. Brensham had never made any reference to anything out of the ordinary about the house. He had personally known Mr. Brensham’s old uncle, Captain Jason Brensham, from whom he had inherited the house, and the Captain had never once complained of the house. He admitted that it did not seem to be a matter for the regular police, and mentioned Mr. Carnacki as well as yourself. I’m sure you know Mr. Carnacki, whose forte is psychic investigation. He came and as nearly as I can describe it, he felt the library, and assured me that there were no supernatural forces at work here. So I applied to you, Mr. Pons, and I do hope you will lay the ghost for me.”
Pons smiled almost benignly, which lent his handsome, feral face a briefly gargoylesque expression. “My modest powers, I fear, do not permit me to feel the presence of the supernatural, but I must admit to some interest in your little problem,” he said thoughtfully. “Let me ask you, on the occasion on which you saw the apparition — last Thursday — were you aware of anyone’s breathing?”
“No, Mr. Pons. I don’t believe ghosts are held to breathe.”
“Ah, Mrs. Ashcroft, in such matters I must defer to your judgment — you appear to have seen a ghost; I have not seen one.” His eyes danced. “Let us concentrate for a moment on its disappearance. Was it accompanied by any sound?”
Our client sat for a long moment in deep thought. “I believe it was, Mr. Pons,” she said at last. “Now that I think of it.”
“Can you describe it?”
“As best I can recall, it was something like the sound a book dropped on the carpet might make.
“But there was no book on the floor when you turned the light on?”
“I do not remember that there was.”
“Will you show me approximately where the spectre stood when you saw it?”
She got up with alacrity, crossed to her right, and stood next to the shelving there. She was in a position almost directly across from the entrance to the library from the adjacent room; a light flashed on from the threshold would almost certainly strike the shelving there.