The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories | Page 7

a corner
fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were
ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a
pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The papering of one
side of the room had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster
adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master
B., in his spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling the paper
down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest why he made such a
fool of himself.
Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I
made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but
sparely. Some of the furniture--say, a third--was as old as the house; the
rest was of various periods within the last half- century. I was referred
to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for
the house. I went that day, and I took it for six months.
It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden
sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very handsome,
sensible, and engaging). We took with us, a deaf stable- man, my
bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an
Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, who
was one of the Saint Lawrence's Union Female Orphans, that she was a
fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.
The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold

day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most
depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of
intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that
her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock's
Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything
happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned
cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never
been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for
sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing
an oak.
We went, before dark, through all the natural--as opposed to
supernatural--miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports
ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and
descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was
no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is),
there was nothing in the house; what there was, was broken, the last
people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the
landlord be? Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful and
exemplary. But within four hours after dark we had got into a
supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen "Eyes," and was in
hysterics.
My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to ourselves,
and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left Ikey, when he
helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any one of them,
for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had "seen Eyes"
(no other explanation could ever be drawn from her), before nine, and
by ten o'clock had had as much vinegar applied to her as would pickle a
handsome salmon.
I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under these
untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o'clock Master B.'s bell
began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the
house resounded with his lamentations!
I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the
mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory

of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or
wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause,
sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know; but,
certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the
happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck--in other words, breaking his
bell short off--and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience
and belief, for ever.
But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers
of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very
inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed
with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the
servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted
Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away
and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded
boy had lived and died, to clothe