Animal Ghosts Part 21

"'Oh, dear, ma'am, I am afraid that is an omen, and means the master won't live,' and she was confirmed in her opinion by the maid saying she had searched, and there was no trace of any bird.

"I was quite angry, as my husband was decidedly better, had slept through the night, and we thought the crisis had pa.s.sed. I went to his bedside and found him quietly sleeping, but he never woke, and in about an hour pa.s.sed quietly away.

"I thought no more of the bird, fancying I must have been mistaken from being overtired.

"Some months after my husband's death my youngest little one was born; he lived for twelve months, and then had an attack of bronchitis. He slept in a cot in my room, and I was undressing one night, when this same large white bird came from his cot, floated round me, and disappeared in the fireplace. At the time I did not for a moment think of it as anything but a strange coincidence, and in no way connected it with baby's illness.

"The next morning I was sitting by the drawing-room fire with baby on my lap. The doctor came in, looked at him, sounded his chest, and p.r.o.nounced him much better. As he was a friend of the family, he sat down on the other side of the fireplace and was chatting in an ordinary way, when he suddenly jumped up with an exclamation, 'Why, what does this mean?' and took the child from my arms quite dead!

"For two years we saw nothing more of the white bird, and we had moved to another place.

"One day I was in my room, and my two little girls, aged six and eight, were standing at the window watching a kitten in the garden, when suddenly the youngest cried out:

"'Oh, mamma! Look at that great white bird,' putting her hands as if to catch it, exactly in the way it flies round one.

"I saw nothing, and the elder child said, 'Don't be silly, Jessie; there is no bird.'

"'But there is,' said the child. 'Don't you see? There, look! There it is!'

"I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past three.

"Two days after we received the news that a niece of mine had died at twenty minutes past three. The children had never known anything of the former appearances, as we had never talked about it before them. We have seen nothing since of the bird, but have for some years had no death in the family."

So runs the article in the _Occult Review_, and I can corroborate it with similar experiences that have happened to my friends and to me.

Some years ago, for instance, a great friend of my wife's died, and on the day of the funeral a large bird tried to fly in at the window of the room where the corpse lay; while, shortly afterwards, an exactly similar bird visited the window of my wife's and my room in a house, several hundreds of miles away. If it was only a coincidence, it was a very extraordinary one.

Then again, this spring, just before the death of one of my wife's relatives, a large bird flew violently against the window-pane behind which my wife was sitting--an incident that had never happened to her in that house before.

Undoubtedly, spirits in the guise of birds--most probably they are the phantasms of birds that have actually once lived on the material plane--are the messengers of death.

_A Case of Bird haunting in East Russia_

Some years ago the neighbourhood of Orskaia, in East Russia, was roused by an affair of a very remarkable nature. The body of a handsome young peasant woman, called Marthe Popenkoff, was found in a lonely part of the road, between Orskaia and Orenburg, with the skin of her face and body shockingly torn and lacerated, but without there being any wounds deep enough to cause her death, which the doctor attributed to syncope.

The people of Orskaia, not satisfied with this verdict, declared Marthe had been murdered, and made such a loud clamour that the editor of the local paper at last voiced their sentiments in the _East Russia Chronicle_. It was then that M. Durant, a smart young French engineer, temporarily residing in those parts, became interested in the case, and decided to investigate it thoroughly. With this end in view he wrote to his friend M. Hersant--a keen student of the Occult--in Saratova, to join him, and three days after the despatch of his letter met the latter at the Orskaia railway station. M. Durant retailed the case as they drove to his house.

"It is a remarkable affair, in every way," he said. "The woman was leading a perfectly respectable married life; she was hard-working and industrious, and beyond the fact that she was over-indulgent to her children, does not seem to have had any serious faults. As far as I can ascertain she had no enemies."

"Nor secret lovers?" M. Hersant asked.

"No; she was quite straight."

"And you feel sure she was murdered?"

"I do. Public opinion so strongly favours that view."

"Did you see the marks on the woman?"

"I did, and could make nothing of them. After supper I will take you to see her, in the morgue."

"What--she is still unburied?"

"Yes--but there is nothing unusual about that. In these parts bodies are often kept for ten days--sometimes even longer."

M. Durant was as good as his word; after they had partaken of a somewhat hasty meal, they set out to the morgue, where they made a careful inspection of the poor woman's remains.

M. Hersant examined the marks on the woman's body very closely with his magnifying-gla.s.s.

"Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, bending down and almost touching the corpse with his nose, "Ah!"

"Have you made a discovery?" M. Durant enquired.

"I prefer not to say at present," M. Hersant replied. "I should like to see the spot where this body was found--now."

"We will go there at once," M. Durant rejoined.

The scene of the tragedy was the Orenburg road, at the foot of two little hills; and on either side were the sloping fields, yellow with the nodding corn.

"That is the exact place where she lay," M. Durant said, indicating with his finger a dark patch on a little wooden bridge spanning a stream, within a stone's throw of a tumbledown mill-house, all overgrown with ivy and lichens. M. Hersant looked round and sniffed the air with his nostrils.

"There is an air of loneliness about this spot," he remarked, "that in itself suggests crime. If this were an ordinary murder, one could well imagine the a.s.sa.s.sin was aided in his diabolical work by the configuration of the land which, shelving as it does, slips down into the narrow valley, so as to preclude any possibility of escape on the part of the victim. The place seems especially designed by Providence as a death-trap. Let us have a look at the interior of this building."

"The police have searched it thoroughly," M. Durant said.

"I've no doubt," M. Hersant replied drily. "No one knows better than I what the thoroughness of the police means."

They entered the premises cautiously, since the roof was in a rickety condition, and any slight concussion might dislodge an avalanche of stones and plaster. While M. Durant stood glancing round him rather impatiently, M. Hersant made a careful scrutiny of the walls.

"Humph," he said at last. "As you so rightly observed, Henri, this is a remarkable case. I have finished my investigation for to-night. Let us be going home. To-morrow I should like to visit Marthe's home."

This conversation took place shortly before midnight; some six hours later all Orskaia was ringing with the news that Marthe Popenkoff's three children had all been found dead in their beds, their faces and bodies lacerated in exactly the same manner as their mother's. There seemed to be no doubt now that Marthe had been murdered, and the populace cried shame on the police; for the a.s.sa.s.sin was still at large.

They agreed that the murderer could be no other than Peter Popenkoff, and the editor of the local paper repeating these statements, Peter Popenkoff was duly charged with the crimes, and arrested. He was p.r.o.nounced guilty by all excepting M. Hersant; and of course M. Hersant thought him guilty, too; only he liked to think differently from anyone else.

"I don't want to commit myself," was all they could get out of him. "I may have something to say later on."

M. Durant laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"It, undoubtedly, is Peter Popenkoff," he observed. "I had an idea that he was the culprit all along."

But a day or two later, Peter Popenkoff was found dead in prison with the skin on his face and hands all torn to shreds.

"There! Didn't we say so?" cried the inconsequent mob. "Peter Popenkoff was innocent. One of the police themselves is the murderer."

"Come, you must acknowledge that we are on the right track now--it is one of the police," M. Durant said to his friend.

But M. Hersant only shook his head.