“I’m from the Chronicle,” I said. “The Old Man sent me. The handle is Daffy Dill. The job is taking pictures of a ghost while an organ plays in C minor.”
“Yes,” Nurbeck nodded. “But—”
“This is Miss Mason,” I said. “She’s to write a story on what she sees in case I’m busy with the camera. And this is Captain Hanley of die homicide bureau; he figures the ghost may have a lot to do with the disappearance of Gloria Canova eight years ago, and he’d like a chance to prove it.”
“By all means!” Nurbeck exclaimed, his voice quivering. “Do come in, gentlemen and Miss Mason. Sorry to have been impolite, but — my nerves aren’t at their best tonight. You’ll just have to drop your coats here in the hall. No servants around. They departed after last night, poor souls, and I can’t blame them.”
There was a Chinese teak chest in the hall by the door and we laid our hats and coats on it before we had a look around.
“Before we go into the living room,” Nurbeck said, “I’d like you to glance up at the staircase. We’ll come out here later on. The dog came down from the top landing there to the intermediate landing, stood still momentarily, then turned and ran to disappear into the wall behind its back.”
I looked hard. It was a gloomy house at best. The most modern furniture wouldn’t have changed it. The walls were all of paneled oak, stained very dark like mahogany. The staircase — very narrow — went up to a small landing on the left side of the hall. Here, at the landing, it made a ninety-degree right turn and went up to the second floor of the house. All around the left side of the staircase as it descended, the paneled oak motif held.
“Hmmm!” said Poppa Hanley with profundity.
“Let’s go inside,” Dinah suggested, because her knees were knocking together with the speed of a rolling drum and she had to sit down.
Nurbeck led us into the living room. It looked cheerful, which was a nice change. He had a fire going in the big stone fireplace and the furniture looked comfortable, and there was a flagon of port wine which Nurbeck immediately served to us. We all sat around the fire and we drank the wine slowly and didn’t say much, and I kept the Speed Graphic close to me, set at hyperfocal distance and loaded with a flash bulb and ready to go.
Then I began to feel it...
I felt it twice before. Once when I visited the little green room at Sing Sing where the electric chair sits in the room and rows of benches stretch out before it for witnesses. The time I saw it the room was empty, except for my guide and myself. But I felt death there, as distinctly as if a man had been dying while I watched. You couldn’t get away from its actuality. It was there in that little green room.
Another time I felt it was in an operating room when I was watching a very simple appendectomy. There was no reason on earth why the operation should not have been successful and the patient should have lived, regardless. But I felt death that time, close, sure, its presence making the small of my back prickle like a desert cactus and get cold and bloodless. The patient died on the table.
...It was here, too, in this house, suddenly. The cactus flourished once more down my spine and breathing came hard and my veins felt cold despite the roaring fire, and death visited the premises.
The vigil for a ghost went on for three hours while we chatted idly, or, for long periods, said nothing at all. At eleven-thirty, the room was entirely silent and we were all staring morosely at the dying flames in the fireplace; Nurbeck’s head had fallen to his chest and his eyes shone glassily in the fire’s reflection, as he stared intently at the embers; Dinah watched the flames too, her chin on her hands, her face very white. Poppa Hanley leaned back in his chair as he chewed stolidly on an unlighted stogie, for Poppa liked to chew, but never smoked.
“What is it?” Dinah asked suddenly, sitting up straight and rubbing her elbows briskly.
“What’s that?” I snapped, nerves on edge.
“I... I heard something,” Dinah quavered.
“Yes,” said Nurbeck, his face very pallid, even in the red touch of the fire flare. “You did hear something!”
“I didn’t hear anything,” affirmed Poppa Hanley. “Not a doggone thing.”
I said: “Nor I.”
“It’s time,” Nurbeck said, disregarding us completely. “A little earlier tonight than last night, but it’s started.” He rose and began putting out the lights of the living room. Soon we were completely in the dark, seeing each other only by the glow of the moribund hearth embers.
“What’s to happen?” I asked.
“Mr. Dill,” Nurbeck began, his voice high and thin and unsure, “above all else, you must get a picture tonight. I’ve had doubts about my own mind after what took place last night. Tonight, I want a picture. I must have a picture and the testimony of reliable witnesses. You won’t fail me?”
“I’ll get the picture,” I said, “if there’s one to get. But for pete’s sake, will you give me an in on what’s to come off?”
He held up his finger in a solemnly prophetic manner.
“Listen!”
I heard it and froze. Dinah heard it and gasped. Poppa heard it, slowly removed the cigar from his mouth and drawled: “Well, blow me down, it’s on the level!”
At first, it was only the hoarse whisper of rushing wind, filling the house in one tremulous gust, emanating from nowhere yet reaching everywhere. A vibrant reedy concussion which could only be felt inside your mind; then: a rush of sound which broke the trembling silence like a splitting crack of thunder. The sound of a pipe organ welling up to a ghastly cresendo throughout the house, within the walls of the house, everywhere!
C minor — then a horrible crashing discord! B flat — and another rending discord! C minor — and a series of tripping de, de, dum, dum, do, do, DUM! like spectral rivulets of mistaken melody falling from the mad fingers of a madder madman as his hands tripped along a keyboard without rhyme or reason.
Without warning, all sounds ceased. It was as though a magician’s hand had passed over the Old Dark House and had left it without life, without pulse, without breath. We were all standing on our feet at that point, wild-eyed, gasping, pale. My ticker was hitting against my ribs until I thought it would crack one of them.
“It... it seemed to come from the hall outside,” Dinah faltered.
“It comes from everywhere,” Walter Nurbeck declared soberly. “I’ve tried to trace it down but I can’t. It’s in the walls themselves and it’s... it’s terrifying—”
“Judas!” Poppa Hanley grunted, holding up his hand.
Again sound. This time, a single wavering soprano note, penetrating, sharp, holding onto its pitch for ten eternal seconds before it broke into a series of mashed notes all struck at the same time and ending in a crash of discordant noise which shook us.
“Let’s see the hall,” Hanley snapped.
“Yes,” said Nurbeck. “But go quietly. It’s time. And Mr. Dill — your camera—”
We moved into the hall. The reflection of the embers did not reach out there. The hall was solidly black now. We could not see the staircase at all. We moved in the intangible pitch by feeling our way against each other.
“Wait and watch,” Walter Nurbeck whispered hollowly.
“And listen,” Dinah added hoarsely. “There goes little Joe on the organ again.”
She was right. The organ crashed out for the third time, and this rendition was almost entirely played on the bass keys of the ectoplasmic instrument, cannonades of rumbling sounds whose vibrations — mute but strong — played themselves upon our bodies as we stood, bathed in the blackness.
It was Poppa Hanley who spoke next.
We had waited for the canine ghost for something over ten minutes. The vigil had been something to go through, sitting in a lonely, gloomy hallway, waiting for a spectre others had seen, knowing it would come, disbelieving in its reality, yet believing in its presence, and all the time, at frequent, unexpected intervals, the horrific crash of the unseen organ while hands crashed across an unseen keyboard.