Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (25 page)

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” said the Secretary. “Dunning won’t mention it himself, for these matters are confidential, and none of us will for the same reason.

“Karswell won’t know his name, for Dunning hasn’t published anything on the same subject yet. The only danger is that Karswell might find out, if he was to ask the British Museum people who was in the habit of consulting
alchemical manuscripts. I can’t very well tell them not to mention Dunning, can I? It would set them talking at once.

“Let’s hope it won’t occur to him.”

However, Mr. Karswell was an astute man.

This much is in the way of prologue.

On an evening rather later in the same week, Mr. Edward Dunning was returning from the British Museum, where he had been engaged in research, to the comfortable house in a suburb where he lived alone, tended by two excellent women who had been long with him.

There is nothing to be added by way of description of him to what we have heard already. Let us follow him as he takes his sober course homewards.

A train took him to within a mile or two of his house, and an electric tram a stage farther. The line ended at a point some three hundred yards from his front door.

He had had enough of reading when he got into the car, and indeed the light was not such as to allow him to do more than study the advertisements on the panes of glass that faced him as he sat. As was not unnatural, the advertisements in this particular line of cars were objects of his frequent contemplation, and, with the possible exception of the brilliant and convincing dialogue between Mr. Lamplough and an eminent K.C. on the subject of Pyretic Saline, none of them afforded much scope to his imagination.

I am wrong: there was one at the corner of the car farthest from him which did not seem familiar. It was in blue letters on a yellow ground, and all that he could read of it was a name—
John Harrington
—and something like a date.

It could be of no interest to him to know more, but for all that, as the car emptied, he was just curious enough to move along the seat until he could read it well. He felt to a slight extent repaid for his trouble. The advertisement was
not
of the usual type. It ran thus:

In memory of John Harrington, F.S.A., of The Laurels

Ashbrooke. Died Sept. 18th, 1889. Three months were allowed.

The car stopped. Mr. Dunning, still contemplating the blue letters on the yellow ground, had to be stimulated to rise by a word from the conductor.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I was looking at that advertisement—it’s a very odd one, isn’t it?”

The conductor read it slowly. “Well, my word,” he said, “I never see that one before. Well, that is a cure, ain’t it? Someone bin up to their jokes ’ere, I should think.”

He got out a duster and applied it, not without saliva, to the pane and then to the outside. “No,” he said, returning, “that ain’t no transfer. Seems to me as if it was reg’lar
in
the glass, what I mean in the substance, as you may say. Don’t you think so, sir?”

Mr. Dunning examined it and rubbed it with his glove, and agreed. “Who looks after these advertisements, and gives leave for them to be put up? I wish you would inquire. I will just take a note of the words.”

At this moment there came a call from the driver: “Look alive, George, time’s up.”

“All right, all right; there’s somethink else what’s up at this end. You come look at this ’ere glass.”

“What’s gorn with the glass?” said the driver, approaching. “Well, and oo’s ’Arrington? What’s it all about?”

“I was just asking who was responsible for putting the advertisements up in your cars, and saying it would be as well to make some inquiry about this one.”

“Well, sir, that’s all done at the Company’s office, that work is. It’s our Mr. Timms, I believe, looks into that. When we put up tonight I’ll leave word, and per’aps I’ll be able to tell you tomorrer if you ’appen to be coming this way.”

This was all that passed that evening. Mr. Dunning did just go to the trouble of looking up Ashbrooke, and found that it was in Warwickshire.

Next day he went to town again. The car (it was the same car) was too full in the morning to allow of his getting a word with the conductor. He could only be sure that the curious advertisement had been made away with.

The close of the day brought a further element of mystery into the transaction. He had missed the tram, or else preferred walking home, but at a
rather late hour, while he was at work in his study, one of the maids came to say that two men from the tramways was very anxious to speak to him.

This was a reminder of the advertisement, which he had, he says, nearly forgotten. He had the men in—they were the conductor and driver of the car—and when the matter of refreshment had been attended to, asked what Mr. Timms had had to say about the advertisement.

“Well, sir, that’s what we took the liberty to step round about,” said the conductor. “Mr. Timms ’e give William ’ere the rough side of his tongue about that. ’Cordin’ to ’im there warn’t no advertisement of that description sent in, nor ordered, nor paid for, nor put up, nor nothink, let alone not bein’ there, and we was playing the fool takin’ up his time.

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘if that’s the case, all I ask of you, Mr. Timms,’ I says, ‘is to take and look at it for yourself,’ I says. ‘Of course if it ain’t there,’ I says, ‘you may take and call me what you like.’ ‘Right,’ he says, ‘I will,’ and we went straight off.

“Now, I leave it to you, sir, if that ad, as we term ’em, with ’Aarrington on it warn’t as plain as ever you see anythink—blue letters on yeller glass, and as I says at the time, and you borne me out, reg’lar
in
the glass, because, if you remember, you recollect of me swabbing it with my duster.”

“To be sure I do, quite clearly—well?”

“You may say well, I don’t think. Mr. Timms he gets in that car with a light—no, he telled William to ’old the light outside. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘where’s your precious ad what we’ve ’eard so much about?’

“‘’Ere it is,’ I says, ‘Mr. Timms’ and I laid my ’and on it.” The conductor paused.

“Well,” said Dunning, “it was gone, I suppose. Broken?”

“Broke!—Not it. There warn’t, if you’ll believe me, no more trace of them letters—blue letters they was—on that piece o’ glass, than—well, it’s no good
me
talkin’.
I
never see such a thing. I leave it to William here if—but there, as I says, where’s the benefit in me going on about it?”

“And what did Mr. Timms say?”

“Why ’e did what I give ’im leave to—called us pretty much anythink he liked, and I don’t know as I blame him so much neither.

“But what we thought, William and me did, was as we seen you take down a bit of a note about that—well, that letterin’—”

“I certainly did that, and I have it now. Did you wish me to speak to Mr. Timms myself, and show it to him? Was that what you came in about?”

“There, didn’t I say as much?” said William. “Deal with a gent if you can get on the track of one, that’s my word. Now perhaps, George, you’ll allow as I ain’t took you very far wrong tonight.”

“Very well, William, very well. No need for you to go on as if you’d ’ad to frog’s-march me ’ere. I come quiet, didn’t I? All the same for that, we ’adn’t ought to take up your time this way, sir. But if it so ’appened you could find time to step round to the Company’s orfice in the morning and tell Mr. Timms what you seen for yourself, we should lay under a very ’igh obligation to you for the trouble.

“You see it ain’t bein’ called—well, one thing and another, as we mind, but if they got it into their ’ead at the orfice as we seen things as warn’t there, why, one thing leads to another, and where we should be a twelvemunce ’ence—well, you can understand what I mean.”

Amid further elucidations of the proposition, George, conducted by William, left the room.

The incredulity of Mr. Timms (who had a nodding acquaintance with Mr. Dunning) was greatly modified on the following day by what the latter could tell and show him, and any bad mark that might have been attached to the names of William and George was not suffered to remain on the Company’s books. But explanation there was none.

Mr. Dunning’s interest in the matter was kept alive by an incident of the following afternoon. He was walking from his club to the train, and he noticed some way ahead a man with a handful of leaflets such as are distributed to passers-by by agents of enterprising firms.

This agent had not chosen a very crowded street for his operations—in fact, Mr. Dunning did not see him get rid of a single leaflet before he himself reached the spot.

One was thrust into his hand as he passed. The hand that gave it touched his, and he experienced a sort of little shock as it did so. It seemed unnaturally rough and hot. He looked in passing at the giver but the impression he got was so unclear that, however much he tried to reckon it up subsequently, nothing would come.

He was walking quickly, and as he went on glanced at the paper. It was
a blue one. The name of HARRINGTON in large capitals caught his eye. He stopped, startled, and felt for his glasses.

The next instant the leaflet was twitched out of his hand by a man who hurried past and was irrecoverably gone.

He ran back a few paces, but where was the passer-by? And where the distributor?

It was in a somewhat pensive frame of mind that Mr. Dunning passed on the following day into the Select Manuscript Room of the British Museum, and filled up tickets for Harley 3586, and some other volumes.

After a few minutes they were brought to him, and he was settling the one he wanted first upon the desk, when he thought he heard his own name whispered behind him.

He turned around hastily, and in doing so, brushed his little portfolio of loose papers on to the floor. He saw no one he recognized except one of the staff in charge of the room, who nodded to him, and he proceeded to pick up his papers.

He thought he had them all, and was turning to begin work, when a stout gentleman at the table behind him, who was just rising to leave, and had collected his own belongings, touched him on the shoulder, saying, “May I give you this? I think it should be yours,” and handed him a missing quire.

“It is mine, thank you,” said Mr. Dunning.

In another moment the man had left the room.

Upon finishing his work for the afternoon, Mr. Dunning had some conversation with the assistant in charge, and took occasion to ask who the stout gentleman was.

“Oh, he’s a man named Karswell,” said the assistant. “He was asking me a week ago who were the great authorities on alchemy, and of course I told him you were the only one in the country. I’ll see if I can catch him—he’d like to meet you, I’m sure.”

“For heaven’s sake don’t dream of it!” said Mr. Dunning. “I’m particularly anxious to avoid him.”

“Oh! Very well,” said the assistant. “He doesn’t come here often. I dare say you won’t meet him.”

More than once on the way home that day Mr. Dunning confessed to himself that he did not look forward with his usual cheerfulness to a solitary
evening. It seemed to him that something ill-defined and impalpable had stepped in between him and his fellow-men—had taken him in charge, as it were.

He wanted to sit close-up to his neighbors in the train and in the tram, but as luck would have it both train and car were markedly empty. The conductor George was thoughtful, and appeared to be absorbed in calculations as to the number of passengers.

On arriving at his house he found Dr. Watson, his medical man, on his doorstep. “I’ve had to upset your household arrangements, I’m sorry to say, Dunning. Both your servants
hors de combat.
In fact, I’ve had to send them to the Nursing Home.”

“Good heavens! What’s the matter?”

“It’s something like ptomaine poisoning, I should think. You’ve not suffered yourself, I can see, or you wouldn’t be walking about. I think they’ll pull through all right.”

“Dear, dear. Have you any idea what brought it on?”

“Well, they tell me they bought some shell-fish from a hawker at their dinner-time. It’s odd. I’ve made inquiries, but I can’t find that any hawker has been to other houses in the street.

“I couldn’t send word to you. They won’t be back for a bit yet. You come dine with me tonight, anyhow, and we can make arrangements for going on. Eight o’clock. Don’t be too anxious.”

The solitary evening was thus obviated, at the expense of some distress and inconvenience it is true. Mr. Dunning spent the time pleasantly enough with the doctor (a rather recent settler), and returned to his lonely home at about 11:30.

The night he passed is not one on which he looks back with any satisfaction. He was in bed and the light was out. He was wondering if the charwoman would come early enough to get him hot water next morning, when he heard the unmistakable sound of his study door opening.

No step followed it on the passage floor, but the sound must mean mischief, for he knew that he had shut the door that evening after putting his papers away in his desk. It was rather shame than courage that induced him to slip out into the passage and lean over the banisters in his nightgown, listening.

No light was visible; no further sound came; only a gust of warm, or even hot air played for an instant around his shins. He went back and decided to lock himself into his room.

There was more unpleasantness, however.

Either an economical suburban company had decided that their light would not be required in the small hours, and had stopped working, or else something was wrong with the meter. The effect was in any case that the electric light was off. The obvious course was to find a match, and also to consult his watch. He might as well know how many hours of discomfort awaited him.

So he put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow. Only, it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being.

I do not think it is any use to guess what he said or did. But he was in a spare room with the door locked and his ear to it before he was clearly conscious again. And there he spent the rest of a most miserable night, looking every moment for some fumbling at the door. But nothing came.