The Greatest Short Stories of E. F. Benson. E. F. Benson
for an hour or more. It rustled the leaves of the telephone book, and it ruffled my hair when it came close to me. And it was bitter cold, sir.”
The doctor looked him straight in the face.
“Did it remind you of what had been done yesterday morning?” he asked suddenly.
Again the man hesitated.
“Yes, sir,” he said at length. “Convict Charles Linkworth.”
Dr. Teesdale nodded reassuringly.
“That’s it,” he said. “Now, are you on duty tonight?”
“Yes, sir, I wish I wasn’t.”
“I know how you feel, I have felt exactly the same myself. Now whatever this is, it seems to want to communicate with me. By the way, did you have any disturbance in the prison last night?”
“Yes, sir, there was half a dozen men who had the nightmare. Yelling and screaming they were, and quiet men too, usually. It happens sometimes the night after an execution. I’ve known it before, though nothing like what it was last night.”
“I see. Now, if this—this thing you can’t see wants to get at the telephone again tonight, give it every chance. It will probably come about the same time. I can’t tell you why, but that usually happens. So unless you must, don’t be in this room where the telephone is, just for an hour to give it plenty of time between half-past nine and half-past ten. I will be ready for it at the other end. Supposing I am rung up, I will, when it has finished, ring you up to make sure that I was not being called in—in the usual way.”
“And there is nothing to be afraid of, sir!” asked the man.
Dr. Teesdale remembered his own moment of terror this morning, but he spoke quite sincerely.
“I am sure there is nothing to be afraid of,” he said, reassuringly.
Dr. Teesdale had a dinner engagement that night, which he broke, and was sitting alone in his study by half past-nine. In the present state of human ignorance as to the law which governs the movements of spirits severed from the body, he could not tell the warder why it was that their visits are so often periodic, timed to punctuality according to our scheme of hours, but in scenes of tabulated instances of the appearance of revenants, especially if the soul was in sore need of help, as might be the case here, he found that they came at the same hour of day or night. As a rule, too, their power of making themselves seen or heard or felt grew greater for some little while after death, subsequently growing weaker as they became less earth-bound, or often after that ceasing altogether, and he was prepared tonight for a less indistinct impression. The spirit apparently for the early hours of its disembodiment is weak, like a moth newly broken out from its chrysalis—and then suddenly the telephone bell rang, not so faintly as the night before, but still not with its ordinary imperative tone.
Dr. Teesdale instantly got up, put the receiver to his ear. And what he heard was heartbroken sobbing, strong spasms that seemed to tear the weeper.
He waited for a little before speaking, himself cold with some nameless fear, and yet profoundly moved to help, if he was able.
“Yes, yes,” he said at length, hearing his own voice tremble. “I am Dr. Teesdale. What can I do for you? And who are you?” he added, though he felt that it was a needless question.
Slowly the sobbing died down, the whispers took its place, still broken by crying.
“I want to tell, sir—I want to tell—I must tell.”
“Yes, tell me, what is it?” said the doctor.
“No, not you—another gentleman, who used to come to see me. Will you speak to him what I say to you?—I can’t make him hear me or see me.”
“Who are you?” asked Dr. Teesdale suddenly.
“Charles Linkworth. I thought you knew. I am very miserable. I can’t leave the prison—and it is cold. Will you send for the other gentleman?”
“Do you mean the chaplain?” asked Dr. Teesdale.
“Yes, the chaplain. He read the service when I went across the yard yesterday. I shan’t be so miserable when I have told.”
The doctor hesitated a moment. This was a strange story that he would have to tell Mr. Dawkins, the prison chaplain, that at the other end of the telephone was the spirit of the man executed yesterday. And yet he soberly believed that it was so, that this unhappy spirit was in misery and wanted to “tell.” There was no need to ask what he wanted to tell.
“Yes, I will ask him to come here,” he said at length.
“Thank you, sir, a thousand times. You will make him come, won’t you?”
The voice was growing fainter.
“It must be tomorrow night,” it said. “I can’t speak longer now. I have to go to see—oh, my God, my God.”
The sobs broke out afresh, sounding fainter and fainter. But it was in a frenzy of terrified interest that Dr. Teesdale spoke.
“To see what?” he cried. “Tell me what you are doing, what is happening to you?”
“I can’t tell you; I mayn’t tell you,” said the voice very faint. “That is part—” and it died away altogether.
Dr. Teesdale waited a little, but there was no further sound of any kind, except the chuckling and croaking of the instrument. He put the receiver on to its hook again, and then became aware for the first time that his forehead was streaming with some cold dew of horror. His ears sang; his heart beat very quick and faint, and he sat down to recover himself. Once or twice he asked himself if it was possible that some terrible joke was being played on him, but he knew that could not be so; he felt perfectly sure that he had been speaking with a soul in torment of contrition for the terrible and irremediable act it had committed. It was no delusion of his senses, either; here in this comfortable room of his in Bedford Square, with London cheerfully roaring ’round him, he had spoken with the spirit of Charles Linkworth.
But he had no time (nor indeed inclination, for somehow his soul sat shuddering within him) to indulge in meditation. First of all he rang up the prison.
“Warder Draycott?” he asked.
There was a perceptible tremor in the man’s voice as he answered.
“Yes, sir. Is it Dr. Teesdale?”
“Yes. Has anything happened here with you?”
Twice it seemed that the man tried to speak and could not. At the third attempt the words came “Yes, sir. He has been here. I saw him go into the room where the telephone is.”
“Ah! Did you speak to him?”
“No, sir: I sweated and prayed. And there’s half a dozen men as have been screaming in their sleep tonight. But it’s quiet again now. I think he has gone into the execution shed.”
“Yes. Well, I think there will be no more disturbance now. By the way, please give me Mr. Dawkins’s home address.”
This was given him, and Dr. Teesdale proceeded to write to the chaplain, asking him to dine with him on the following night. But suddenly he found that he could not write at his accustomed desk, with the telephone standing close to him, and he went upstairs to the drawing-room which he seldom used, except when he entertained his friends. There he recaptured the serenity of his nerves, and could control his hand. The note simply asked Mr. Dawkins to dine with him next night, when he wished to tell him a very strange history and ask his help. “Even if you have any other engagement,” he concluded, “I seriously request you to give it up. Tonight, I did the same.
“I should bitterly have regretted it if I had not.”
Next night accordingly, the two sat at their dinner in the doctor’s dining-room, and when they were left to their cigarettes and coffee the doctor spoke.
“You must