The Phantom Rickshaw Read online

  The dog was Strickland’s dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and looking through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift on her back, and her feet planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that someone wanted me very badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. Then the thunder ceased and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through the house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamouring above my head or on the door.

  I ran into Strickland’s room and asked him whether he was ill and had been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed, with a pipe in his mouth. ‘I thought you’d come,’ he said. ‘Have I been walking around the house at all?’

  I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the smoking-room and two or three other places; and he laughed and told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but in all my dreams I was sure I was doing someone an injustice in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell, but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring, loitering someone was reproaching me for my slackness and through all the dreams I heard the howling of Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing of the rain.

  I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but for all that, it was fully occupied by a tenant with whom I had no desire to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair erect, and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and made it all light and habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches, watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.

  I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. ‘Stay on,’ he said, ‘and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?’

  I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

  Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would be happy to see him in the daytime, but that I didn’t care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the veranda.

  ‘’Pon my soul, I don’t wonder,’ said Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling-cloth. ‘Look at that!’

  The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamp-light. ‘If you are afraid of snakes, of course—’ said Strickland. ‘I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of man’s fall, and that it feels all the contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser legs.’

  ‘You ought to get your thatch overhauled,’ I said. ‘Give me a masheer rod, and we’ll poke ’em down.’

  ‘They’ll hide among the roof beams,’ said Strickland. ‘I can’t stand snakes overhead. I’m going up. If I shake ’em down, stand by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.’

  I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener’s ladder from the veranda and set it against the side of the room. The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear the danger of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Strickland. ‘They’re sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for ’em, and the heat of the room is just what they like.’ He put his hand to the corner of the cloth and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice. It gave a great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

  ‘H’m,’ said Strickland; and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof. ‘There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove! someone is occupying ’em.’

  ‘Snakes?’ I said down below.

  ‘No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer rod, and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main beam.’

  I handed up the rod.

  ‘What a nest for owls and serpents. No wonder the snakes live here,’ said Strickland, climbing further into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. ‘Come out of that, whoever you are! Look out! Heads below there! It’s tottering.’ I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room sag with a shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the lighted lamps on the table. I snatched a lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

  He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the thing on the table.

  ‘It strikes me,’ said he, pulling down the lamp, ‘our friend Imray has come back. Oh! you would, would you?’

  There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the masheer rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

  Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks liberally.

  The thing under the cloth made no more signs of life.

  ‘Is it Imray?’ I said.

  Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment and looked.

  ‘It is Imray,’ he said, ‘and his throat is cut from ear to ear.’ Then we spoke both together and to ourselves: ‘That’s why he whispered about the house.’

  Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved upon the dining-room door.

  She sniffed and was still. The broken and tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.

  Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her teeth bared and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.

  ‘It’s bad business, old lady,’ said he. ‘Me
n don’t go up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling-cloth behind ’em. Let’s think it out.’

  ‘Let’s think it out somewhere else.’ I said.

  ‘Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.’

  I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lighted tobacco and thought. Strickland did the thinking. I smoked furiously because I was afraid.

  ‘Imray is back,’ said Strickland. ‘The question is, who killed Imray? Don’t talk—I have a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn’t he?’

  I agreed, though the heap under the cloth looked neither one thing nor the other.

  ‘If I call the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?’

  ‘Call ’em in one by one,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,’ said Strickland.

  ‘We must segregate ’em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?’

  ‘He may, for aught I know, but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days.’

  ‘What’s your notion?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get on the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?’

  There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had woken from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

  ‘Come in,’ said Strickland. ‘It is a very warm night, isn’t it?’

  Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned six-foot Mohammedan, said that it was a very warm night, but that there was more rain pending, which, by his honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.

  ‘It will be so, if God pleases,’ said Strickland, tugging off his boots. ‘It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days—ever since that time when thou first camest into my service. What time was that?’

  ‘Has the heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given, and I—even I—came into the honoured service of the Protector of the Poor.’

  ‘And Imray Sahib went to Europe?’

  ‘It is so said among the servants.’

  ‘And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?

  ‘Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master and cherished his dependents.’

  ‘That is true. I am very tired, but I can go buck-shooting tomorrow. Give me the little rifle that I use for black buck; it is in the case yonder.’

  The man stooped over the case, handed barrels, stock and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted them together. Yawning dolefully, then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid drawn cartridge and slipped it into the breech of the .360 express.

  ‘And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly? That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?’

  ‘What do I know of the ways of the white man, heavenborn?

  ‘Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.’

  ‘Sahib!’

  The lamp-light slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled themselves against Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.

  ‘Go, then, and look!’ said Strickland. ‘Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits. Go!’

  The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room, Strickland following and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth, at the carcass of the mangled snake under foot and last, a grey glaze setting on his face, at the thing under the table-cloth.

  ‘Hast thou seen?’ said Strickland, after a pause.

  ‘I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the presence do?’

  ‘Hang thee within a month! What else?’

  ‘For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever.

  My child!’

  ‘What said Imray Sahib?’

  ‘He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he came back from office and was sleeping. The heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven-born.’

  Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular: ‘Thou art witness to this saying. He has killed.’

  Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly.

  ‘I am trapped,’ he said, ‘but the offense was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,’ he glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him, ‘only such could know what I did.’

  ‘It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!’

  A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat still.

  ‘Take him to the station,’ said Strickland. ‘There is a case toward.’

  ‘Do I hang then?’ said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape and keeping his eyes on the ground.

  ‘If the sun shines or the water runs, thou wilt hang,’ said Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back one pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.

  ‘Go!’ said Strickland.

  ‘Nay; but I go very swiftly,’ said Bahadur Khan. ‘Look! I am even now a dead man.’

  He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

  ‘I come of land-holding stock,’ said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. ‘It were a disgrace for me to go to the public scaffold, therefore I take this way. Be it be remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his wash-basin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me? My honour is saved, and—and—I die.’

  At the end of an hour he died as they die who are bitten by the little kariat, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the table-cloth to their appointed places. They were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.

  ‘This,’ said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, ‘is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?’

  ‘I heard,’ I answered. ‘Imray made a mistake.’

  ‘Simply and solely through not knowing the nature and coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years.’

  I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found him waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.

  ‘What has befallen Bahadur Khan?’ said I.

  ‘He was bitten by a snake and died; the rest the Sahib knows,’ was the answer.

  ‘And how much of the matter hast thou known?’

  ‘As much as might be gathered from one coming in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.’

  I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house:

  ‘Tietjens has come back to her room!’

  And so she had. The great deerhound was couched on her own bedstead, on her own blanket and in the next room the idle, empty ceiling-cloth wagged lightheartedly as it flailed on the table.

  My Own True Ghost Story

  As I came through the Desert thus it was—

  As I came through the Desert.

  The City of Dreadful Night

  SOMEWHERE IN THE Other World, wh
ere there are books and pictures and plays and shop-windows to look at, and thousands of men who spend their lives in building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories about the real insides of people; and his name is Mr Walter Besant. But he will insist upon treating his ghosts—he has published half a workshopful of them—with levity. He makes his ghostseers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a vernacular paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently towards a ghost, and particularly an lndian one.

  There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveller passes. Then they drop upon his neck and remain.

  There are also terrible ghosts of women who have died in child-bed. These wander along the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops near a village and call seductively. But to answer their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backwards that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well-curbs and fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpseghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman; but many English ghosts have scared the life out of both white and black.

  Nearly every other station owns a ghost. They are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree dak-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a white lady is supposed to do nightwatchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her horses ‘repeats’ on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are officers’ quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawar possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something—not fever—wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older provinces simply bristle with haunted houses, and march phantom armies along their main thoroughfares.