Tom Ossington's Ghost Part 7

Ella's voice was tremulous. Her tremor had the effect of making Madge sarcastic.

"That's probably because our visitor opened it. You could hardly expect him to stop to close it, could you?"

She went boldly into the room--Ella hard on her heels. She held the candle above her head--to have it almost blown out by the draught. She placed it on the table.

"If we want to have a light upon the subject, we shall have to shut that window."

She did so. Then looked about her.

"Well, he doesn't seem to have left many tokens of his presence.

There's a chair knocked over, and he's pushed the cloth half off the table, but I don't see anything else."

"He seems to have taken nothing."

"Probably that was because there was nothing worth his taking. If he came here in search of plunder, he must have gone away a disgusted man."

"If he came here in search of plunder?--what else could he have come for?"

"Ah! that's the question."

"What's this?" Stooping, Ella picked up something off the floor.

"Here's something he's left behind, at any rate."

She was holding a sc.r.a.p of paper.

"What is it--a _piece de conviction_ of the first importance: the b.u.t.ton off the coat by means of which the infallible detective hunts down the callous criminal?"

"I don't know what it is. It's a sort of hieroglyphic--if it isn't--nonsense."

Madge went and looked over her shoulder. Ella was holding half a sheet of dirty white notepaper, on which was written, with very bad ink and a very bad pen, in a very bad hand:--

"TOM OSSINGTON'S GHOST."

"Right--Straight across--three--four--up.

"Right--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--cat--dog--left eye--push."

The two girls read to the end--then over again. Then they looked at each other--Madge with smiling eyes.

"That's very instructive, isn't it?"

"Very. There seems to be a good deal of cat and dog about it."

"There does, I wonder what it means."

"If it means anything."

Madge, taking the paper from Ella's hand, went with it closer to the candle. She eyed it very shrewdly, turning it over and over, and making as if she were endeavouring to read between the lines.

"Do you know, Ella, that there is something curious about this."

"I suppose there is, since it's gibberish; and gibberish is curious."

"No, I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of the heading--'Tom Ossington's Ghost.' Do you know that that enterprising stranger, who came in search of music lessons he didn't want, asked me if my name was Ossington, and if no one of that name lived here."

"Are you sure Ossington was the name he mentioned? It's an unusual one."

"Certain; it was because it was an unusual one that I particularly noticed it. Then that dreadful woman was full of her ghosts, even claiming, as you heard, to be the ghost's wife. Doesn't it strike you, under the circ.u.mstances, as odd that the paper the burglar has left behind him, should be headed 'Tom Ossington's Ghost'?"

"It does seem queer--though I don't know what you are driving at."

"No; I don't know what I am driving at either. But I do know that I am driving at something. I'm beginning to think that I shall see a glimmer of light somewhere soon--though at present I haven't the faintest notion where."

"Do you think it was either of your visitors who has paid us another call to-night?"

"No; but I tell you what I do think."

"What?"

"I shouldn't be surprised if we've been favoured with a call from the individual who wasn't one of my visitors; the man in the road, who took to his heels in such a hurry at the sight of the woman."

"What cause have you to suppose that?"

"None whatever, I admit it frankly; but I do suppose it all the same.

In the first place the man was burning to be one of my visitors, of that I'm persuaded--and he would have been if the woman hadn't come along. And in the second, he looked a burglar every inch of him. Ella, I'll tell you what!" She brought her hand on to the table with a crash which made Ella start, "There's a mystery about this house--you mark my words and see. It's haunted--in one sense, if it isn't in another."

Ella cast furtive glances over her shoulder, which were suggestive of anything but a mind at ease.

"You've a comfortable way of talking, upon my word."

Madge threw her arms out in front of her.

"There is a mystery about the house; it's one of these old, ramshackle sort of places in which there is that kind of thing--I'm sure of it.

Aren't you conscious of a sense of mystery about the place, and don't you feel it's haunted?"

"Madge, if you don't stop talking like that, I'll leave the house this instant."

"The notion is not altogether an agreeable one, I'll allow; but facts are----"

"What's that?"

"What's what?"

Ella, clutching at Madge's arm, stared over her shoulder with a face white as a sheet.

"Did--didn't I hear s-something in the kitchen?"