Chapter XVIII: The Ghost of Three Oaks Appears Again

For an instant Elijah Callister stood riveted to the floor.

Then, springing forward with a fierce imprecation upon his lips, he approached the door of the deserted chamber in the direction of which the ghostly figure of the dead Mrs. Marley had disappeared.

It was firmly locked.

He had himself thus locked it upon their first entrance, not from fear of intrusion--that was not to be expected in a mansion so utterly given over to rats and the dust of neglect as this--but from the natural tendency of a suspicious evil-doer to perform his acts behind barred doors.

And even as he had left it so remained that great oaken door now.

There had not been sufficient time for the woman, were she living, to have even turned the key, providing it had been in the lock.

But the key was not in the lock--it snugly reposed at that very moment in the pocket of the man himself.

Now, Elijah Callister did not believe in ghosts.

Search the length and breadth of New York City over, and in all probability no less superstitious man than the stock broker himself could have been found.

He shook the latch fiercely.

It had not been disturbed--there could be no doubt of that.

No other means of entrance to the chamber existed save by one of the windows, forty feet from the ground, at least.

A strange sense of fear seemed to creep over him--a tightness about the heart.

There lay his villainous companion stretched senseless upon the floor.

Neither window could have been approached without passing directly by the place where the man lay, where he himself had stood.

And yet the appearance had been a reality.

The figure of Mrs. Marley had advanced from behind the broken bedstead, whose high headboard offered an effective shield to the movements of any object behind it, had moved forward across the room, and retreated in the direction from whence it came.

Seizing the lantern, Mr. Callister swept its light underneath the bed.

The dust that everywhere filled the room was there plentiful enough, but that was all.

There were no signs of its having been recently disturbed--it lay in one unbroken sheet upon the floor.

At that instant a terrific gust of wind swept the rain fiercely against the panes.

And amid its moaning of the oaks without, and the rattling of the rain upon the glass, a low, mocking laugh was heard, seemingly from the floor itself, which sent a chill to the very marrow of his bones.

"This thing must be investigated," muttered the man, striding toward the fire-place. "Either that woman lives, or--but, pshaw! Don't I know she is dead? I saw her killed with my own eyes. I know that at this very moment her body lies waiting identification in the Morgue. There is some infernal trickery in all this; what it means I must know and will."

Setting down the lantern by the side of the hearth-stone, he seized the shoulder of the unconscious man and shook it with all the violence he could exert.

"Rube, Rube!" he cried, "what ails you, man? For Heaven's sake, stop this nonsense and try to be something like yourself!"

Slowly the eyes opened and Reuben Tisdale, raising himself to a sitting posture, looked wildly around.

"Lije, did you see her, or was it only meant for me?"

"See her! Of course I saw her. There's some infernal jugglery going on in this house, and I propose to find out what it is."

The man shook his head.

"No, no. It was Maria's spirit," he muttered. "I killed her and she haunts me, and no wonder, in this evil room."

"Well, and what's the matter with this room?"

"Can you ask?" said the man, shudderingly, rising with difficulty to his feet. "After the crime committed here on this very bed, can you ask why this room should be evil to me?"

"I don't see what that has to do with it. If that is your mode of reasoning it ought to be the ghost of old man Mansfield, not of your wife, that should appear to you here."

Again the man shuddered, glancing at the same time nervously about him.

"I don't know what came over me," he muttered. "I believe I must have fainted for the first time since I was a boy. Lije, for heaven's sake let's get out of this. I shall be of no more use to you in this house to-night."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," replied the stock-broker, decidedly. "I shan't leave the house until I've searched it from garret to cellar and found out what this thing means. If it were not that I know that she is closely confined I might almost think----"

But what Mr. Callister might have almost thought was destined never to find expression in words, for, at that moment, his companion pressing his hand to his forehead, reeled heavily forward and would have fallen again had not the broker caught him in his arms.

"Rube, for Heaven's sake," he exclaimed, "what on earth ails you, man? One would take you for a nervous woman instead of the man you are from the way you act. Here, drink this. It will put some heart in you, and then we'll search this old barn together. If there is a ghost in it, I'll warrant you I'll have it out."

He passed a whisky flask to the trembling Tisdale, who pressed it to his lips.

"There, do you feel better?"

"Yes, somewhat, but I'm as weak as a rat still."

"Well, then, come along. I'm bound to see this out."

Striding toward the bedstead, he seized hold of the headboard and tried to move it out into the center of the room.

Weak and decayed before, this action proved too much for the dilapidated piece of furniture.

With a loud crash it fell a mass of broken rubbish to the floor, causing Tisdale to spring back with a startled cry.

"Confound the old trap!" exclaimed Callister. "But one thing is settled--what we saw is neither under it nor behind it, that is clear. Where the mischief it could have found means to hide beats me. The door is locked, and the rest of the room is all clear before us. There is no place in which a cat could lie concealed."

He flung open the door of the closet as he spoke.

It was empty.

Nothing but a heap of dust met his gaze.

"Come," he said, shortly, picking up the lantern and producing the key from his pocket; "there are rooms below and above. Let us examine them all, and see if we can find trace of her ghostship there."

He unlocked the door and led the way out into the deserted hall.

To the right and left opened other doors, connecting with the various chambers upon the floor.

Opening each in turn, Callister and his companion examined the rooms in silence.

One was a large guest chamber, containing various articles of antique furniture; another was a small bedroom, entirely vacant, and another still a bath-room, filled with rubbish of various kinds.

In neither one nor the other was there the slightest trace of the form of the woman which had appeared before them, nor evidence that the dust which covered everything had been disturbed for years.

Nor was their examination of the floor above better rewarded.

Here piles of old lumber were found, broken furniture, boxes, and bales.

Evidently years had passed since this portion of the house had been occupied. From the appearance presented there could be little doubt that it had been used for storage purposes by its miserly owner, who met death by violence on the floor below.

The parlor floor, the kitchen, and even the cellar itself, did not escape examination.

Equally to no purpose.

Some of the rooms were furnished, others were not.

Everywhere the furnishings were green with mold and sinking rapidly to decay.

No trace, not even so much as a footprint on the dust-covered floors of the ghostly visitant was anywhere found.

"It's no use, Lije," said Tisdale, hoarsely, as they paused at length in the great hall at the foot of the staircase which they had ascended upon their first entrance to the house. "You may search all night, but you'll find nothing. It was poor Maria's spirit that we saw."

"Nonsense, Reuben Tisdale! Do you mean to tell me that at your time of life you are going to give way to a belief in ghosts?"

"I didn't believe in them any more than you until to-night, but, after what we saw, what is a man to think?"

"I tell you it's a trick. This house has the reputation of being haunted, brought about by my own nocturnal searches within its walls. Some one saw us enter, and followed us to give us a scare."

Tisdale shook his head incredulously.

"Absurd," he said, with emphasis. "You saw the thing as well as I. What did it look like? Answer me that."

"Well, I must admit that it looked like Maria."

"I should say so. Wasn't it her face, her form, her dress? Do you suppose a man can forget the form of his wife? I tell you no. Not if he lived to be a thousand years old. Besides, I saw the mark of my fist upon her forehead, poor girl. Great God, to think that I should have struck her dead at my feet! She who once loved me more than all else on earth."

"Rube, you are acting like a perfect child!" exclaimed Callister, impatiently. "Here we are standing directly upon the verge of a precipice, as it were, and you give way like this. Detectives are on our track, man; the capture of Joe Dutton, unless he can be silenced most effectually, is likely to prove a fatal blow to us, and what we want is money--money alone will pull us through; without it all my influence in the business world will go for naught."

"Well, you have money, folks say. Use it--it is as much to your interest as the rest of us."

"Have I? So you say. Let me tell you, Rube Tisdale, that my stock operations of the last year have left me a well-nigh ruined man. I depended upon this bank affair to put me on my feet again. It has failed. If you had only preserved that parchment more carefully, every dollar of old Mansfield's wealth would now be within our grasp."

"Oh! stow that!" cried Tisdale, angrily. "What's the use of throwing all the blame on me? The bank affair proved a failure, didn't it! The parchment was lost, through my carelessness, I'll admit. Let's face matters as they are, and make the best of them we can. Come, let's be off out of this. We can do no more here to-night."

Callister blew out the lantern and opened the door.

"I go," he said, sulkily, "but, mark you, Rube, I shall return again. In a month's time, under the will of Jeremiah Mansfield, which fortunately is recorded in the Surrogate's office, even if you did lose the original, this house and all it contains belongs to me, if I can only catch that cub of a boy and turn him over to the law. Once in my possession, I'll raze it to the foundation stones but I'll discover the secret hidden by its moldering walls."

He slammed the door behind them, and descending the piazza steps, started down the avenue leading to the Fort Washington road beyond, regardless of the pelting rain, his companion following without a word.

Hard as it had poured all day long, and now far into the night, not at any time had the storm assumed such violence as now.

The water fell about them in torrents, the wind swept through the tops of the tall oak-trees with a wild, unearthly moan.

Now what possessed the man Tisdale to pause before he had advanced ten paces from the old mansion, and turn to survey its gloomy front once more, is something we cannot tell.

But turn he did, and simultaneously with the movement there broke from his lips a wild, unearthly yell.

"Lije! For God's sake! There she is again!"

And Elijah Callister also turned.

From out of the darkness before him there shot a blaze of light.

The door of the old mansion stood wide open.

The piazza, the great hall, and even the staircase beyond, were to be seen illuminated with the brightness of day.

And there, in the midst of that blaze of light, upon the threshold of the door itself, stood the form of the dead Mrs. Marley, pale and rigid, with one thin, white finger pointing directly toward himself and his frightened companion who with chattering teeth stood trembling by his side.

For one instant only the apparition maintained its place.

The next, and all was darkness again.

With a loud cry of terror Reuben Tisdale sprang down the avenue, and was lost from view among the trees, while his companion, now scarcely less alarmed, hurriedly followed in the direction of the gate.