The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories | Page 9

suggested, that I looked very doubtful.
"We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and
we know they are frightened and do infect one another," said my sister.
"With the exception of Bottles," I observed, in a meditative tone.
(The deaf stable-man. I kept him in my service, and still keep him, as a
phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)
"To be sure, John," assented my sister; "except Bottles. And what does
that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he is
absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever given, or taken?
None."
This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired, every
night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no other
company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of water
would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put

myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that minute, I had
deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had
Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many uproars. An
imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his supper, with
Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, and had only put
another potato in his cheek, or profited by the general misery to help
himself to beefsteak pie.
"And so," continued my sister, "I exempt Bottles. And considering,
John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept well
in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast about among
our friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and
willing--form a Society here for three months--wait upon ourselves and
one another--live cheerfully and socially--and see what happens."
I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot, and
went into her plan with the greatest ardor.
We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our
measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in
whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired,
when our party all came down together merrily, and mustered in the
haunted house.
I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my
sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that
Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out
of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I
seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must
not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually
asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On his saying, "Yes, sir, I
knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged the favor of his stepping
up to the house and looking at mine.
"SHE'S a true one, sir," said Ikey, after inspecting a double- barrelled
rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago. "No mistake about
HER, sir."

"Ikey," said I, "don't mention it; I have seen something in this house."
"No, sir?" he whispered, greedily opening his eyes. "'Ooded lady, sir?"
"Don't be frightened," said I. "It was a figure rather like you."
"Lord, sir?"
"Ikey!" said I, shaking hands with him warmly, I may say
affectionately; "if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the greatest
service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure. And I promise you, by
Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!"
The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little
precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret to
him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell;
because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur
cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out ringing;
and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he
came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no
injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted;
and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an
opportunity. The Odd Girl's case was exactly similar. She went about
the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully,
and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the
sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is not
necessary for me, here,