Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT: The Man in the Dressing-Gown

Andy stayed at the house until Mr. Nelson returned, and strolled across the green to the guest house, where he had reserved his old room.

He was the only visitor in the house, and Johnston hailed his arrival with unfeigned pleasure.

“Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be here for another hour.”

Andy shot a swift professional glance at the man; his face was drawn, his teeth were chattering.

“What is the matter with you, Johnston?” he said. “You seem to be under the weather.”

“My nerves have all gone to pieces since this murder,” said Johnston. “I get that jumpy I can hardly keep still, and I never go to sleep until three o’clock in the morning.”

“Why not?” asked Andy.

The man laughed hysterically.

“If I tell you, you’ll probably think I am mad, and there are times when I feel that way, doctor. And I’m not naturally a nervous man—never was. I don’t mind telling you in confidence that in my younger days I poached on every estate in this country. But——”

“But what?” asked Andy after an interval of silence.

“I’m a religious man, too, in a manner of speaking,” Johnston went on. “I never miss the evening service, and I don’t believe in anything supernatural—spiritualism and all that sort of rubbish. I’ve always said that the spirits men see are the spirits they put inside of ’em.”

“And you’ve been seeing ghosts, eh?” said Andy, interested. “Which means, Johnston, that you are thoroughly run down. I’ll see Mr. Nelson to-morrow and ask him to recommend to the committee that you have a holiday.”

Johnston shook his head.

“Perhaps you are right, sir, but—I’m a fool I suppose, but I’ve seen things in Beverley Green that would make your blood turn to water, and you’re a doctor. It is a valley of ghosts. I’ve always said it was, and it is.”

“Have you been seeing any of the ghostly inhabitants?”

The man licked his lips.

“I’ve seen Mr. Merrivan,” he said.

Andy, who had turned with a laugh to go upstairs, swung round again.

“You’ve seen Mr. Merrivan? Where?”

“I have seen him, as I’ve seen him dozens of times, standing at his front gate in his dressing-gown. He used to come out in the old days in the early morning, just wearing his long yellow dressing-gown —before people were about, you understand—at five or six o’clock, and I’ve seen him out there on warm summer nights, standing with his hands in his pockets, taking the air.”

“Oh, you have, have you?” said Andy softly. “And you’ve seen him since his death?”

The man nodded.

“I saw him two nights ago,” he said. “I haven’t told a soul about it, but I’ve been sleeping badly, and I usually take a walk round the green before I go to bed. I have been as many as twenty times round the green in the course of a night,” he explained. “At first I used to go as near Mr. Merrivan’s house as my nerves would let me, and after two or three nights I found I couldn’t go within fifty yards of it. Two nights ago I was strolling up and down, wondering who would buy the house. Mr. Wilmot has had all the furniture cleared out, the only things left being the curtains in the windows. I was loafing along, thinking how desolate the place looked, when all of a sudden I saw a light, and——” His voice shook tremulously. “It was in the room where the body was found.”

“What sort of a light?”

“It looked to me like a candle, sir. It wasn’t a bright light, as though somebody had turned on the electricity. As a matter of fact, Mr. Wilmot has had the electric current cut off.”

“And then what happened?” asked Andy.

“Then, sir,” Johnston shivered, “well, I only saw a crack of light between the blinds and the wall, and I was thinking that I was imagining things, when the blind was slowly pulled up——”

Andy waited until the man had overcome his emotions.

“I couldn’t see him distinctly, but he was in a dressing-gown, and he was looking out into the garden. I was paralysed; just stood stock still and couldn’t move. Then the blind was pulled down and the light went out. I saw it a few minutes afterwards in the hall. There is a fanlight over the door. I don’t know how long I stood there, possibly ten minutes, probably ten seconds—I didn’t sort of realise that time was passing. And then, when I was just recovering myself, the door opened. There was only a faint light in the passage—and he came out.”

“Merrivan?”

The man nodded.

“Or, at any rate, somebody in a dressing-gown, eh?” said Andy.

“Yes, sir.”

“And have you seen it since?”

“I saw it again last night. I made myself walk toward the house. There he was standing at the front gate, with his hands in his pockets.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No, sir, I didn’t wait to see his face. I bolted.”

“Have you told Mr. Wilmot?”

“No, sir, I didn’t like to tell him, Mr. Merrivan being his uncle.”

Andy thought over the matter for a long time.

“You are probably suffering from hallucinations due to a bad attack of nerves,” he said. “I’ll give you an examination to-morrow, Johnston.”

It was eleven o’clock when Andy turned his light out and slipped into bed. For some reason he could not sleep. He had had a hard day’s work, and it was absurd to suggest that his nerves had been in any way disordered by Johnston’s narrative. The man was certainly neurotic. He had seen the reflection of a light from some other house and had imagined the rest. And yet there would be no lights in other houses at that hour of the morning. Turning over the matter in his mind, Andy fell into an uneasy sleep.

It was a scream that aroused him, a hoarse shriek of fear. He leapt out of bed and turned on the light, and a second later there came to him the scuttle of hurrying footsteps along the passage.

He opened the door to confront Johnston. The caretaker’s face was the colour of chalk, and in his terror he mouthed and gibbered incoherently, pointing toward the window. Andy ran to the window and threw it up. He could see nothing.

“Turn out the light, Johnston,” he said sharply. A second later the room was dark. Still peering into the darkness, he saw nothing.

“I saw him, I saw him!” gasped Johnston. “He was there on the green, under my window, just walking up and down in his dressing-gown! I opened the window and looked out to make sure. And he spoke to me. Oh, my God!”

“What did he say?” asked Andy, shaking the blubbering man by the shoulder. “Speak up, man; what did he say?”

“He asked for the key,” wailed Johnston. “He called me by my name. ‘Give me the key,’ he said.”

Andy slipped on an overcoat, ran down the stairs, and out into the open. He saw nobody, and, throwing himself flat on the grass to secure a skyline, he searched in every direction, but in vain.

Returning to Johnston, he found the man on the verge of collapse, and applied such rough-and-ready restoratives as he could secure. He succeeded in bringing him back to some semblance of manhood, but he held stoutly to his story.

“Why did he ask you for the key?”

“Because I have it,” said Johnston. “Here it is, sir.”

He took a key from a cupboard in his room.

“Mr. Wilmot gave me this. I was supposed to show people over the house—people who want to buy it.”

“Give it to me,” said Andrew, and put it in his pocket.

There could be no more sleep for Andy that night. He dressed and went abroad on a tour of inspection. He met nothing human or supernatural in his walk across the green. An eerie sensation came to him as he passed through the gates and by the aid of his flash-lamp turned the key. His footsteps echoed hollowly in the bare hall.

He hesitated only for a second before he turned the handle and threw open the door leading into Mr. Merrivan’s “den.” Every article of furniture had been removed, even the carpet had been taken up from the floor, and only a few hanging strands of wire showed where Mr. Merrivan’s etchings had hung.

He paused for a second to examine the dark stain on the floor-board where the owner of the house had met his death, and then he flashed his lamp on the window. In that second of time he saw something, and a cold shiver ran down his spine. It was the glimpse of a figure in the garden outside, the figure dimly illuminated by the flash of his electric torch. Another second, and it had disappeared.

He jumped to the window and tried to force it up, but the side screws had been put into place, and it was some time before he came out into the garden and followed the cinder-path to the orchard. There was no sign of man or ghost.

“Phew!” said Andy, wiping his moist forehead.

Going back to the room, he fastened the window behind him and closed and locked the street door before he returned to the guest house, and then——

“Well I’m——”

Andy stood stock still in the middle of the green and looked up to Stella’s window. Once more in a moment of crisis her light was burning.