Louis Tracy - The Late Tenant

“Quite so. But I say, Dibbin, can you give me the address of the lady?”

“With pleasure,” said the agent, in whom brandy and soda acted as a solvent. “I am a man, Mr. Harcourt, with three hundred and odd addresses in my head, I do assure you. But, then, Miss L’Estrange is a bird of passage – ”

“All right, just write down the address that you know; and there is one other address that I want, Mr. Dibbin – that of the girl who acted as help to Miss Gwendoline Mordaunt.”

Dibbin had known this address also, and with the promise to see if he could find it among his papers – for it was he who had recommended the girl – went away. He was hardly gone when Harcourt, who did not let the grass grow under his feet, put on hat and coat, and started out to call upon Miss Ermyn L’Estrange.

The address of Miss L’Estrange, given to David by Dibbin, was in King’s Road, Chelsea, and thither David set out, thinking in his cab of that word “papers,” of the oddness of Violet’s question at the grave: “What have you done with my sister’s papers?”

Whatever papers might be meant, it was hardly to be supposed that Miss L’Estrange knew aught of them, yet he hoped for information from her, since a tenant next in order is always likely to have gathered many bits of knowledge about the former tenant.

As for his right to pry and interfere, that, he assured himself, was a settled thing. Going over in his mind Violet’s words and manner in the cemetery, he came to the conclusion that she was half inclined to suspect that he was her sister’s destroyer, who had now taken the flat for some vaguely evil reason, perhaps to seek, or to guard from her, those very papers for which she so craved. Had she never heard, he wondered, that her sister’s evil mate was a man with a black mustache and pale, dark skin? Perhaps, if she ever had, she would suspect – some one else than he! That would be strange enough, her suspicion of the innocent, if at the same time the guilty was at her side, unsuspected! But David tried to banish from his mind the notion that Van Hupfeldt might possibly be Johann Strauss.

At Chelsea he was admitted to a flat as cozily dim as his own, but much more frivolously crowded with knickknacks; nor had he long to wait until Miss L’Estrange, all hair and paint, dashed in. It was near one in the afternoon, but she had an early-morning look of rawness and déshabillement , as if she had just risen from bed. Her toilet was incomplete. Her face had the crude look of a water-color daub by a school-girl; her whirl of red hair swept like a turban about her head.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I am sorry – ” began David.

“Cut the excuses,” said Miss Ermyn L’Estrange. She had a reputation for bruskness which passed for wit in her set.

“I am the occupant of the flat in Eddystone Mansions which you recently left.”

“I hope you like it.”

“I like it fairly well, as a flat.”

“What? Not seen anything?”

“No. Anything of what nature?”

“Anything ghostified?” she snapped, sitting with her chin on her palm, her face poked forward close to David’s, while the sleeve fell away from her thin forearm. She had decided that he was an interesting young man.

“I have seen no ghost,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever shall see one.”

“There are ghosts,” she said; “so it’s no good saying there are not, for my old Granny Price has been chased by one, and there’s been a ghost in that very flat. My servant Jenny saw it with her own eyes.”

“It is always some one else’s eyes which see the invisible,” said David.

“Jenny’s eyes are not some one else’s, they are her own. She saw it, I tell you, but perhaps you are one of those people who cower under the sheets all night for fright, and in the daytime swear that there are no ghosts.”

“What? You know so much of me already?”

“Oh, I know my man the moment I lay eyes on him, as a rule. You’re from Australia – I can tell your twang – and you have come to England to look for a wife. Can’t very well get along without us, after all, can you?”

“There is some truth in that. What a pity you didn’t see the ghost yourself!”

“I heard it; I smelled it.”

“Really? What did it smell of? Brimstone?”

“Violets!”

David started, not wholly because he thought Miss L’Estrange would be flattered by this tribute to her forcible style.

“And I’m not one of your fanciful ones either,” she went on, smirking at the effect she had made.

“How often did this thing happen to you?”

“Twice in three months.”

“Daytime? Night-time?”

“Dead of night. The first time about two in the morning, the second time about three.”

“To me this is naturally fascinating,” said David. “Do tell me – ”

“The first time, I was asleep in that front bed-room, when I suddenly found myself awake – couldn’t tell why, for I hadn’t long been in bed, and was tired. I found myself listening, heard some creaks about, nothing more than you can generally hear in a house in the dead of night, and I was thinking of going to sleep again, when all at once I seemed to scent violets somewhere. I wasn’t certain at first, but the notion grew, and if it had been brimstone, as you said, I couldn’t have been so overcome as I was – something so solemn and deathly in that fume of violets visiting anybody in the dark in that fashion. As I knew that Gwen Barnes, who poisoned herself in that very room, was fond of violets – for I had seen her both on and off the stage several times – you can guess whether I felt rummy or not. Pop went my little head under the bed-clothes, for I’ll stand up to any living girl you care to mention, and send her home all the worse for it; but the dead have an unfair advantage, anyhow. The next minute I heard a bang – it sounded to me like the lid of one of my trunks dropping down – and this was followed by a scream. The scream did for me – I was upset for weeks. It was Jenny who had screamed; but, like a fool, I thought it was the ghost – I don’t know what I thought; in fact, I just heard the scream, and lay me down and d’eed. When I came to myself, there was Jenny shivering at my side, with the light turned on, saying that a tall woman had been in the flat – ”

“Was Gwendoline Barnes in the flesh a tall girl?” asked David.

“Pretty tall; one would have called her tall.”

“And Jenny was certain? She had really seen a woman?”

“Quite certain.”

“In the light?”

“No, in the dark.”

“Ah, that’s not so good. And as to your trunk, had you left it locked?”

“No, I don’t think. It’s certain anyway that something or somebody was at it that night; for next day I found the things rummaged.”

“Sure now? I don’t imagine that you are very tidy.”

“The cheek! I tell you the things were rummaged.”

“And nothing stolen?”

“Ghosts are not thieves. They only come back to pretend to themselves that they are still living in the old scenes, and that their bit of a fling is not all over forever. I can well imagine how the poor things feel, can’t you? Of course, nothing was stolen, though I did miss something out of the trunk a day or two afterward – ”

“What was that?”

“My agreement with the theater. Couldn’t find it high or low in the place; though I was pretty sure that I had put it into that very trunk. Three weeks after it had disappeared, lo and behold! my agreement comes to me one morning through the post! No letter with it, not a word of explanation, just the blessed agreement of itself staring me in the face, like a miracle. Now, I’m rather off miracles – aren’t you? So I said to myself – ”