from the younger members of the family, especially from a bright-eyed maiden of eighteen, who thought London “awfully jolly,” and vowed a literary career to be “quite too devey for anything.”
But David was level-headed enough to see that the verdict of squire and maid were equally unfavorable.
Then followed a few days in a big hotel. He paid a round of useless calls at the offices of magazines that, to his certain knowledge, printed all sorts of rubbishy articles about cow-boy life, but opposed a phalanx of commissionaires against a man who could not only round up an infuriated herd, but could also describe the feat deftly with a pen. Ultimately, he resolved to lay siege to the citadel which he was unable to storm, and pitch his camp over against the tents of the enemy. He took a furnished flat, “with plate and linen, gas-stove, electric light, bath H. and C.,” for six months.
In thus becoming a Londoner, he encountered the first quaint anomaly of London life. When he drove up to the door of the most fashionable hotel in the West End, and deposited a couple of portmanteaus in a bed-room after signing the register, he was permitted to run a bill for a week, at least, without let or hindrance; but when he offered to pay cash in advance for the flat, he met with a demand for “references.”
The agent was firm but explanatory. “It is not my client, but the over-landlord, who makes that stipulation,” he said. “In fact, the letting is wholly in my hands, as the late tenant is dead; but, for certain reasons, the residuary legatees wish to keep the place in its present condition until the lease expires a year hence.”
“Did the late tenant die there?” asked David.
“Well—yes—fully five months since; there have been other occupants subsequently, and the terms are so reasonable—”
“What did he, or she, die of?” persisted David. He was accustomed to reading men’s faces, and he had caught a certain fluttering of the agent’s eyelids.
“Nothing to cause any alarm, nothing infectious, I assure you. People—er—die in flats just the same as—er—in private houses.” This, being a joke, had its chuckle.
But the agent also knew men in his own way, and he felt it was unwise to wriggle. David had a steadfast glance. He gave others the impression that he heard and treasured each word they uttered. He was really wondering then why the speaker’s neck was so long and thin—nothing more serious, but, with a disagreeable disclosure lurking in the other’s mind, David’s scrutiny compelled candor.
“The thing is bound to come to your ears sooner or later, Mr. Harcourt; so I may as well tell you now,” said the Londoner. “The late tenant was a lady, a singer of much promise, it was said. For an unknown reason—probably some love affair was disturbing her rest—she—er—took an overdose of a sleeping-draft. She was a very charming woman, quite young, of highest character. It is inconceivable that she should have committed suicide. The affair was an accident, of course, but—er—”
“A sceptical coroner thought it a murder?”
“Oh, dear, no, nothing of the kind, not a hint of such a thing. Fact is—well, it sounds ridiculous to say with reference to a popular block of flats in the middle of London, but two foolish women—an excitable actress and her servant, your predecessors in the flat—have spread reports as to queer noises. Well, you know, don’t you? the sort of nonsense women will talk.”
“In plain English, they say the place is haunted.”
“Ha, ha! Something in that nature. You have hit it! Something in that nature. Absurd thing!”
“Who knows?” David had a cold disbelief in spooks, but it amused him to see the agent squirm; and he sat tight. Those eyelids fluttered again, and Mr. Dibbin banged a ledger with wrathful fist.
“Look here, Mr. Harcourt,” cried he finally. “This is a five-guineas-a-week flat. I’ll make you a fair offer; take it for six months and I give it you at half price.”
“I laying the ghost at two and a half guineas weekly?”
“Put it any way you like. If a man of sound common-sense like you lives there for a considerable period, the wretched affair will be forgotten; so it is worth the loss to me, and it is a first-class bargain for you.”
“Done!” said David.
The agent was so pleased that his annoyance vanished; he promised to secure a woman whom he knew to look after the new tenant’s housekeeping. She had probably never heard of the Eddystone Mansions tragedy. He would have her in the flat within four days. Meanwhile a charwoman might attend to things generally.
The references having proved satisfactory, David was now passing his first evening in his new abode. He had purchased some books and stationery; his charwoman had left him; and, when the door had closed behind her, he turned from the head of the dead girl in chalks over the mantelpiece to gaze out of the dining-room window, and back again to the sweet face in chalks, to return presently to the window.
It was a Thursday evening in the last week of January. The housekeeper was to arrive on Saturday. David fixed Monday as a good day to start work. In the interim he meant to loaf, dine at noteworthy restaurants, read, and go to theaters.
A man accustomed to guide his movements by the position of mountain-ranges or the stars, and count distances by his days on horseback, is likely to find himself all unhinged within a four-mile radius. David was in the novice stage of acquaintanceship with the magnetic life of the world’s capital. Not yet did the roar of London sing in familiar harmonies; the crunch of the omnibuses, the jingle of the hansoms, made no music in his ears. There was something uncanny in the silence of the millions eddying through the streets. Where all else was clamor, mankind was dumb, save for the shouts of the newsboys, the jabber of bus-conductors, the cries of itinerant venders.
So David, having dressed and gone out, wandered into another restaurant than that which he was aiming for; dawdled over the meal until the first act of the play which he meant to see must have been ended; and decided then upon a music-hall; finally, he strolled back toward Eddystone Mansions as early as eleven.
The elevator, placed in the center of the building, ran from the basement floor; those who used it had to descend a few steps from the entrance and advance along a passage. Harcourt felt unaccountably tired—there is a strain of life in London as on the tops of mountains—so he chose the lift in preference to the stairs.
The hall-porter, who sat within the lift, pondering the entries for the Spring Handicaps, recognized him, and jumped up with a salute.
“Good-evenin’, sir! Fine, frosty night, sir,” said he. They began to ascend. A thought occurred to David. “What was the name of the lady who occupied No. 7?” he asked.
“Miss Ermyn L’Estrange, sir,” was the instant answer.
Even in the wilds of Wyoming one grasps the significance of certain classes of names. For instance, not even the rawest tenderfoot would expect “One-eyed Pete” to turn out to be a parson.
“I mean the lady who died here,” said David.
The porter stopped the lift. “Your floor, sir,” he said. “I’ve only bin in these ’ere flats a matter o’ two months, sir.”
“Good egg!” cried David. “Have a cigar, porter. You are a man to be depended on. But surely there is no harm in telling me the poor girl’s name. It must have appeared in all the newspapers.”
The attendant tickled his head underneath his hat. The new tenant of No. 7 seemed a nice gentleman, anyhow. He looked up and down the stairs, of which two sections were visible from the landing where they stood.
“I ’ave ’eard,” said he, “that a young lydy used ter live ’ere of the nyme of Miss Gwendoline Barnes.”
“Ah, that sounds more like it. Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir.”
Harcourt, fumbling over the intricacies of the lock, heard the rattle of the lift as it reached