Tom Ossington's Ghost Part 10

"I have. Often!" This was Ella.

"Have you? You must know, Graham, that there are frequently occasions on which I have nothing whatever to talk about, so I fill up the blanks with what I may call padding. I say this, because I don't want you to misunderstand the situation. This morning he lunched at the same crib I did. Directly he came in I saw that he was below par; so I said--I always am a sympathetic soul--'I do hope, Graham, you won't forget to let me have an invitation to your funeral--and, in the meantime, perhaps you'll let me know of what it is you're dying?' Now, he's not one of those men who wear their hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at--you know the quotation, and if you don't, I do; and it was some time before I could extract a word from him, even edgeways. But at last he put down his knife and fork with a clatter--it was distinctly with a clatter--and he observed, 'Martyn, I've been misbehaving myself.' I was not surprised, and I told him so.

'I'm in a deuce of a state of mind because I've been insulting a lady.' 'That's nothing!' I replied. 'I'm always insulting a lady.'--I may explain that when I made that remark, Ella, you were the lady I had in my mind's eye. At this point I would pause to inquire why, Miss Brodie, you did not take me into your confidence yesterday afternoon?"

"I did."

"You did not."

"I did."

"You told me about the lunatic lady, because, I suppose, you could not help it--since you were caught in the act--but you said nothing about a lunatic gentleman." He wagged his finger portentously. "Don't think you deceive me, Madge Brodie--I smell a rat, and one of considerable size."

"Jack, do go on."

This was Ella.

"I will go on--in my own way. If you bustle me, I'll keep going on for ever. Don't I tell you this is my show? Do you want to queer it? Well, as I was about to observe--when I was interrupted--Graham started spinning a yarn about how he had forced his way into a house, in which there was a young woman all alone, by herself, and, so far as I could make out, gone on awful. 'May I ask,' I said, beginning to think that his yarn smelt somewhat fishy, 'what house this was?' 'The place,' he replied, as cool as a cuc.u.mber, 'is called Clover Cottage.' 'What's that!' I cried--I almost jumped out of my chair. 'I say that the place is called Clover Cottage.' I had to hold on to the hair of my head with both my hands. 'And whereabouts may Clover Cottage be?' 'On Wandsworth Common.' When he said that, as calmly as if he were asking me to pa.s.s the salt, I collapsed. I daresay he thought that I'd gone mad."

"I began to wonder." This was Graham.

"Did you? Let me tell you, sir, that as far as you were concerned, I had long since pa.s.sed the stage of wonder, and had reached the haven of a.s.surance. 'Are you aware?' I cried, 'that Clover Cottage, Wandsworth Common, is the residence of the lady whom I hope to make my wife?' 'Good Lord!' he said. 'No,' I screamed, 'good lady!' I fancy the waiter, from his demeanour, was under the impression that I was about to fight; in which case I should have proved myself mad, because, as you perceive for yourselves, the man's a monster. 'It seems to me,' I said, 'that if the lady you insulted was not the lady whom I hope to make my wife, it was that lady's friend, which is the same thing----'"

"Is it?" interposed Ella. "You hear him, Madge?"

"I hear."

"'Which is the same thing,'" continued Jack. "'And therefore, sir, I must ask you to explain.' He explained, I am bound to admit that he explained there and then. He gave me an explanation which I have no hesitation in a.s.serting"--Jack, holding his left hand out in front of him, brought his right list solemnly down upon his open palm--"was the most astonishing I ever heard. It shows the hand of Providence; it shows that the age of miracles is not yet past; it shows----"

Ella cut the orator short.

"Never mind what it shows; what's the explanation?"

Jack shook his head sadly.

"I was about to point out several other things which that explanation shows, with a view, as I might phrase it, of improving the occasion, but, having been interrupted for the third time, I refrain. The explanation itself you will hear from Graham's own lips--after tea. He is here for the purpose of giving you that explanation--after tea. I believe, Graham, I am correct in saying so?"

"Perfectly. Only, so far as I am concerned, I am ready to give my explanation now. I cannot but feel that I shall occupy an invidious position in, at any rate, Miss Brodie's eyes until I have explained."

"Then feel! I'll be hanged if you shall explain now. Dash it, man, I want my tea; I want a high tea, a good tea--at once!"

Ella sprang up from her chair.

"Come, Madge, let's give the man his tea."

It was a curious meal--if only because of the curious terms on which two members of the party stood toward each other. The two girls sat at each end of the table, the men on either side. Madge, unlike her usual self, was reserved and frosty; what little she did say was addressed to Ella or to Jack. Mr. Graham she ignored, treating his timorous attempts in a conversational direction with complete inattention. His position could hardly have been more uncomfortable. Ella, influenced by Madge's att.i.tude, seemed as if she could not make up her mind how to treat him on her own account; her bearing towards him, to say the least, was chilly. On the other hand. Jack's somewhat c.u.mbrous attempts at humour and sociability did not mend matters; and more than once before the meal was over Mr. Graham must have heartily wished that he had never sat down to it.

Still, even Madge might have admitted, and perhaps in her heart she did admit, that, under the circ.u.mstances, he bore himself surprisingly well; that he looked as if he was deserving of better treatment. Half unconsciously to herself--and probably quite unconsciously to him--she kept a corner of her eye upon him all the time. He scarcely looked the sort of man to do anything unworthy. The strong rough face suggested honesty, the bright clear eyes were frank and open; the broad brow spelt intellect, the lines of the mouth and jaw were bold and firm.

The man's whole person was suggestive of strength, both physical and mental. And when he came to tell the story which Jack Martyn had foreshadowed, it was difficult, as one listened, not to believe that he was one who had been raised by nature above the common sort. He told his tale with a dramatic earnestness, and yet a simple, modest sincerity, which held his hearers from the first, and which, before he had done, had gained them all over to his side.

CHAPTER VII

BRUCE GRAHAM'S FIRST CLIENT

"I don't know," he began, "if Martyn has told you that by profession I am a barrister."

"No," said Jack, as he shook his head, "I have told them nothing to your credit."

Graham smiled; the smile lighting up his features, and correcting what was apt to be their chief defect, a prevailing sombreness.

"I am a barrister--one of the briefless brigade. One morning, about fourteen months ago, I left London for a spin on my bicycle. It was the long vacation; every one was out of town except myself. I thought I would steal a day with the rest. I came through Wandsworth, meaning to go across Wimbledon Common, through Epsom, and on towards the Shirley Hills. As I came down St. John's Hill my tyre caught up a piece of broken gla.s.s off the road, and the result was a puncture, or rather a clean cut, nearly an inch in length. I took it to a repairing shop by the bridge. As I stood waiting for the job to be done, two policemen came along with a man handcuffed between them, a small crowd at their heels.

"I asked the fellow who was doing my cycle what was wrong. He told me that there had been a burglary at a house on the Common the night before, that the burglar had been caught in the act, had half-murdered the policeman who had caught him, and was now on his way to the magistrate's court.

"As it seemed likely that the mending of my tyre would take some time, actuated by a more or less professional curiosity, I followed the crowd to the court.

"The case was taken up without delay. The statement that the constable who had detected what was taking place had been half-murdered was an exaggeration, as the appearance of the officer himself in the witness-box disclosed. But he had been roughly handled. His head was bandaged, he carried his arm in a sling, and he bore himself generally as one who had been in the wars. My experience, small as it is, teaches that constables on such occasions are wont, perhaps not unnaturally, to make the most of their injuries; and, to say the least, the prisoner had not escaped scot free. His skull had been laid open, two of his teeth had been knocked down his throat, his whole body was black and blue with bruises. Indeed his battered appearance so excited my sympathy that then and there I offered him my gratuitous services in his defence. My offer was accepted. I did what I could.

"However, there was very little that could be done. The burglary, it seemed, had occurred at a place called Clover Cottage."

"Why," cried Ella, "this is Clover Cottage!"

"Yes," said Jack, shaking his head with what he meant to be mysterious significance, "as you correctly observe, this is Clover Cottage.

Didn't I tell you you'd see the hand of Providence? You just wait a bit, you'll be dumbfounded."

Mr. Graham continued.

"Clover Cottage it appeared was unoccupied. There were in it neither tenants nor goods. So far as the evidence showed, it contained nothing at all. Being found in an absolutely empty house is not, as a rule, an offence which meets with a severe punishment. I was at a loss, therefore, to understand why my client should have made such a desperate defence and thus have enormously increased the measure of his guilt in the way he had done. Had it not been for what was termed, and perhaps rightly, his a.s.sault on the police, the affair would have been settled out of hand. As it was, the magistrate felt that he had no option but to send the case to trial; which he did do there and then.

"Before his trial I had more than one interview with my client in his cell at Wandsworth Gaol. He told me, by way of explaining his conduct, an extraordinary story; so extraordinary that, from that hour to this, I have never been able to make up my mind as to its truth.

"Under ordinary circ.u.mstances I should have had no hesitation in affirming his statement, or rather his series of statements, was a more or less badly contrived set of lies. But there was something about the fellow which a.s.sured me that at any rate he himself believed what he said. He was by no means an ordinary criminal type, and there seemed no reason to doubt his a.s.sertion that this was the first felonious transaction he had ever had a hand in. He admitted he had led an irregular life, and that he had come down the ladder of respectability with a run, but he stoutly maintained that this was the first time he had ever done anything deserving the attention of the police.

"He was a man about forty years of age; he claimed to be only thirty-six. If that was the fact, then the life he had been living, and the injuries he had recently received, made him look considerably older. His name, he said, was Charles Ballingall. By trade he was a public-house broker; once, and that not so long ago, in a very fair way of business. He had had a lifelong friend--I am telling you the story, you understand, exactly as he told it me--named Ossington--Thomas Ossington. Ballingall always spoke of him as Tom Ossington."

Ellen looked at Madge.

"Madge!" she exclaimed, "how about Tom Ossington's Ghost?"

"I know."

Madge sat listening with compressed lips and flashing eyes; that was all she vouchsafed to reply. Mr. Graham glanced in her direction as he went on.

"According to Ballingall's story, Ossington must have been a man of some eccentricity. He was possessed of considerable means--according to Ballingall, of large fortune. But his whole existence had been embittered by the fact that he suffered from some physical malformation. For one thing, he had a lame foot----"