Best Horror Stories - [14]

Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer time than any man’s memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over the same matter.

‘If you please, sir,’ said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one morning, ‘do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?’

‘All right, Styles?’

‘Yes sir. Right in his head, sir.’

‘Why should he not be, then?’

He’s took to talkin’ to himself something awful. I wonder it don’t disturb you. I don’t know what to make of him, sir.’

‘I don’t know what business it is of yours, Styles.’

‘Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I can’t help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he’s out and when the door’s locked on the outside.’

‘Eh! you’re talking nonsense, Styles.’

‘Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more’n[8] once with my own ears.’

‘Rubbish, Styles.’

‘Very good, sir. You’ll ring the bell if you want me.’

Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old man-servant, but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his memory.

Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.

‘There’s some fellow gone in or out of your room,’ he remarked.

Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the expression of a man who is half incredulous and half afraid.

‘I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it,’ he stammered. ‘No one could have opened it.’

‘Why, I hear someone coming up the steps now,’ said Smith.

Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him, and hurried down the stairs. About half-way down Smith heard him stop, and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more, and re-entered the room.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, throwing himself down in a chair. ‘It was that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don’t know how I came to forget to lock it.’

‘I didn’t know you kept a dog,’ said Smith, looking very thoughtfully at the disturbed face of his companion.

‘Yes, I haven’t had him long. I must get rid of him. He’s a great nuisance.’

‘He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have thought that shutting the door would have been enough, without locking it.’

‘I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He’s of some value, you know, and it would be awkward to lose him.’

‘I am a bit of a dog-fancier myself,’ said Smith, still gazing hard at his companion from the corner of his eyes. ‘Perhaps you’ll let me have a look at it.’

‘Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be to-night; I have an appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a quarter of an hour late already. You’ll excuse me, I am sure.’

He picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his appointment, Smith heard him re-enter his own chamber and lock his door upon the inside.

This interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical student’s mind. Bellingham had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that it looked as if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But if it were not, then what could it be? There was old Styles’s statement about the room at times when the owner was absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the view. If so, it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered by the authorities, so that his anxiety and falsehoods might be accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate could keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favored neighbor.

But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly caught up the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst into the room.

Have you heard about Long Norton?’ he asked.

‘What’s that?’

‘He’s been attacked.’

‘Attacked?’

‘Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a hundred yards of the gate of Old’s.’

‘But who—’

If you said ‘what,’ you would be more grammatical. Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from the scratches on his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him.’