When Ghost Meets Ghost. William De Morgan
One prefers to think that Ibbetson knew of some less equivocal wickedness.
Perhaps this man, supposed to be drowned, would not have reappeared in this story had it not been for one of the witnesses at the inquest, the boy who overheard the conversation between him and his mate, before the arrival of the police-boat.
"This boy," said the Coroner's clerk, who seemed to have an impression that this was a State Prosecution, and that he represented the Crown, "can give evidence as to a conversation between the"—he wanted to say "the accused"; it would have sounded so well, but he stopped himself in time—"between the man whose body has not been found, and"—here he would have liked to say "an accomplice"—"and another person who has eluded the … that is to say, whom the police have, so far, failed to identify. … "
"That's all right," said the Coroner. "That'll do. Boy's got something he can tell us. What's your name, my man?"
"Wot use are you a-going to make of it?" said the boy. He did not appear to be over twelve years old, but his assurance could not have been greater had he been twelve score. A reporter put a dot on his paper, which meant "Laughter, in which the Coroner joined, in a parenthesis."
An old woman who had accompanied the boy, as tutelary genius, held up a warning finger at him. "Now, you Micky," said she, "you speak civil to the gentleman and answer his questions accordin'." She then said to the Coroner, as one qualified to explain the position:—"It's only his manners, sir, and the boy has not a rebellious spirit being my grandnephew." She utilised a lax structure of speech to introduce her relationship to the witness. She was evidently proud of being related to one, having probably met with few opportunities of distinction hitherto.
The witness, under the pressure at once of family influence and constituted authority, appeared to give up the point. "'Ave it your own way!" said he. "Michael Ragstroar."
"How am I to spell it?" said the clerk, without taking his pen out of the ink, as though it would dry in the air.
"This ain't school!" said our young friend from Sapps Court, whom you probably remember. Michael had absconded from his home, and sought that of his great-aunt; the only person, said contemporary opinion, that had a hounce of influence with him. It was not clear why such a confirmed reprobate should quail before the moral force of a small old woman in a mysteriously clean print-dress, and tortoise-shell spectacles she would gladly have kept on while charing, only they always come off in the pail. But he did, and when reproached by her for his needlessly defiant attitude, took up a more conciliatory tone. "Carn't recollect, or p'r'aps I'd tell yer," said he.
"Never mind the spelling!" said the Coroner, who had to preside at another inquest at Kew very shortly. "Let's get the young man's evidence." But Michael objected to giving evidence. Whereupon the Coroner, perceiving his mistake, said: "Well, then, suppose we let it alone for to-day. You may go home, Micky, and find out how your name's spelt, against next time it's wanted. Where's the other boy that heard what the men were saying? Call him."
"There warn't any other boy within half a mile," exclaimed Michael indignantly. "I should have seen him. Think I've got no eyes? There warn't another blooming bloke in sight."
"Didn't the other boy see several other men in the back-garden of the ale-house?" said the Coroner. And the Inspector of Police had the effrontery to reply: "Oh yes, three or four!" And then both of them looked at Michael, and waited.
Michael's indignation passed all bounds, and betrayed him into the use of language of which his great-aunt would have deemed him incapable. She was that shocked, she never! The expressions were not Michael's own vocabulary at all, but corruptions that had crept into his phraseology from associations with other boys, chance acquaintances, who had evolved them among themselves, nourishing them from the corruption of their own hearts. As soon as Michael—deceived by the mendacious dialogue of the Coroner and the Inspector, and under the impression that the particulars he was giving, whether true or false, were not evidence—had told with some colouring about the two men in the garden and what they said, the old lady made a powerful effort to detain the Coroner to give him particulars of Michael's parentage and education, and to exculpate herself from any possible charge of neglecting her grandnephew, to whom she was a second parent. In fact, had her niece Ann never married Daniel Rackstraw, she and her—Ann, that is—would have done much better by Michael and his sisters. Which left a false impression on her hearers' minds, that Michael was an illegitimate son; whereas really she was only dealing with his existence as rooted in the nature of things, and certain to have come about without the intrusion of a male parent in the family.
As for the details of his testimony, surrendered unconsciously as mere facts, not evidence, there was little in them that has not been already told. The conversation of the two men, as given in the text, was taken from Michael's version, and he was the only hearer. But he only saw their backs, except that when the struggle came off he caught sight of the ex-convict's face for a moment. He would know him again if he saw him any day of the week. Some days, he seemed to imply, were worse for his powers of identification than others. It was unimportant, as both the survivors of the accident had noted the man's face carefully enough, considering that he was to them at first nothing beyond a chance bystander. He wasn't a bad-looking man; that was clear. But he was possibly not in very good drawing, as they agreed that he had a peculiarity—his two halves didn't square. This no doubt referred to the same thing Michael described by calling him "a sideways beggar."
The Coroner's Jury had some trouble to agree upon a verdict. "Death by Misadventure" seemed wrong somehow. How could drowning with the finger-nails of an adversary in his throat be accounted misadventure? No doubt Abel died by misadventure, in a sense. But no other verdict seemed possible, except Manslaughter by the person whom Ibbetson supposed this man to be when he laid hands on him. And how if he was mistaken? "Manslaughter against some person unknown" sounded well. Only if the person was unknown, why Manslaughter? If Brown is ever so much justified in dragging Smith under water by the honest belief that he is Jones, is Smith guilty of anything but self-defence when he does his best to get out of Brown's clutches? Moreover, the annals of life-saving from drowning show that the only chance of success for the rescuer often depends on whether the drowning man can be made insensible or overpowered. Otherwise, death for both. If this unknown man was not the object of Police interest he was supposed to have been taken for, he might only have been doing his best to save the lives of both. In that case, had the inquest been on both, the verdict must have been one that would ascribe Justifiable Homicide to him and Manslaughter to Ibbetson. For surely if the police-sergeant had been the survivor, and the other man's body had been found to be that of some inoffensive citizen, Ibbetson would have been tried for manslaughter. In the end a verdict was agreed upon of Death by Drowning, which everybody knew as soon as it was certain that Life was extinct.
Somewhat later Ibbetson was supposed to have taken him for a returned convict, whose name was variously given, but who had been advertised for as Thornton, one of his aliases; and in consequence of this discovery the vigilance of the Police for the apprehension of the missing man, under this name, was increased and the reward doubled. And this, in spite of a universal inference that he was dead, and that his body was flavouring whitebait below bridge. This did not interfere with a belief on the part of the crew of the patrolling boat—known to Michael—owing to a popular chant of boys of his own age—as "two blackbeetles and one water-rat," that his corpse would float up one day near the place of his disappearance. But their eyes looked for it in vain; and though the companion with whom he was discussing the burglary to be executed at Barn Elms was caught in flagrante delicto and sent to Portland Island, nothing was heard of him or known of his whereabouts.
Michael ended his stay with his great-aunt shortly afterwards, returning home with a budget of legends founded on his waterside experience. As he had a reputation for audacious falsehood without foundation, it is no matter of surprise that the whole story of the water-rat's death and the inquest were looked upon as exaggerations too outrageous for belief even by the most credulous. Probably his version of the incidents, owing to its rich substratum of the marvellous yet true, was much more accurate than was usual with him when the marvellous depended on his ingenuity to provide it. It was, however, roundly discredited in his own circle, and nothing in it could have evoked recognition in Sapps