Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile, John Kendrick Bangs [best romantic books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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Mr. Morley's letter fluttered from his nerveless hand to the floor, and, despite its severity, was forgotten before it touched the handsome rug beneath Hopkins' table. The new sensation—the sensation of fear—had taken possession of his whole being, and, for an instant, he was as one paralyzed. Then, recovering his powers of motion, he whirled about in his revolving chair and started to his feet as if he had been shot.
"This is unbearable!" he cried, glancing nervously about the room. "It's bad enough to have an office-boy who whistles, but when you[32] get the whistle in the abstract without the advantage of the office-boy, it is too much."
Then Hopkins rang the bell and summoned the janitor.
"Tell the agent I want to see him," he said when that worthy appeared, and then, returning to his desk, he sat down and mechanically opened a copy of the Daily Register and tried to read it.
"It's no use," he cried in a moment, crumpling the paper into a ball and throwing it across the room. "That vile whistle has regularly knocked me out."
The paper ball reached the door just as the agent entered, and struck him athwart the watch chain.
"Beg pardon," said Hopkins, "I didn't mean that for you. Everything here seems to be bewitched this morning, that dull compilation of legal woe included."
"It's of no consequence, sir, I assure you," returned the agent uneasily.
"No, I don't think it amounts to a row of beans to a man who hates trouble," said Hopkins, referring more to the journal than to the untoward act of the paper ball. "But I say, Mr. Stubbs, I've been having a devil of a time in this room this morning, and when I say devil I mean devil."[33]
Stubbs paled visibly. The moment he had feared had come.
"Wh—wh—what sus—seems to b—be the m—mum—matter, sir?" he stammered.
"Nothing seems, something is the matter," returned Hopkins. "I don't wonder you stammer. You'd stammer worse if you had been here with me three minutes ago. Stubbs, I believe this room is haunted!"
Mr. Stubbs's efforts at surprise at this point were painful to witness.
"Haunted, sir?" he said.
"Yes, haunted!" retorted Hopkins; "and by a confoundedly impertinent something or other that not only sighs and knocks on the door but whistles, Stubbs—actually whistles. Has this room a history?"
"Well, a sort of a one," returned Stubbs; "but I never heard any one complain about it on the score of whistling, sir."
"Stubbs, I believe you are lying. Hasn't somebody killed an office-boy in this apartment, for whistling?" queried Hopkins, gazing sternly at the shuffling agent.
"I'll take an affidavit that nothing of the kind ever happened," returned the agent, gaining confidence.
"That won't be necessary," said Toppleton. "I am satisfied with your assurance. But,[34] Stubbs, to what do you attribute these beastly disturbances? Ghosts?"
"Of course not, Mr. Toppleton," replied Mr. Stubbs. "I fancy you must have heard some boy whistling in the hall."
"How about the knock and the sigh?" demanded the American.
"The knock is easily accounted for," returned the agent. "Somebody in the room above you must have dropped something on the floor, while the sigh was probably the wind blowing through the key-hole."
"Or a bit of fog coming down the chimney, eh, Stubbs?" put in Hopkins, satirically.
"No, sir," replied poor Stubbs, growing red where he had been white; "there is no fog to-day, sir."
"True, Stubbs; and you will likewise observe there is no wind to sough through key-holes," retorted Hopkins, severely, rising and walking to the window.
Stubbs stood motionless, without an answer. Toppleton had cornered him in a flimsy pretext, and then came the climax to his horrible experience.
From behind him in the corner whence had come the sigh and the whistle, there now proceeded a smothered laugh—a sound which curdled his blood and left him so limp that he[35] staggered to the mantel and grasped it to keep himself from falling to the floor.
Hopkins turned upon him, his face livid with anger, and the two men gazed at each other in silence for a moment, the one endeavouring to master his fear, the other to smother his wrath.
"Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Stubbs, by laughing in my face when I send for you to request explanations as to the conduct—as to the—er—the conduct of your room? It sounds ridiculous to say that, but there is no other way to put it, for it is the conduct of the room of which I complain. What do you mean by your ill-timed levity?"
"I pass you my word, Mr. Toppleton, I will swear to you, sir, that nothing was further from my thoughts than mirth. I agree with you that it is no laughing matter for—"
"But I heard you laugh," said Toppleton, eyeing the agent, his anger now not unmixed with awe. "You laughed as plainly as it is possible for any one to laugh, except that you endeavoured to smother the sound."
"I did nothing of the sort, Mr. Toppleton," pleaded Stubbs, his hand shaking and his eyes wandering fearsomely over toward the mysterious corner where all was still and innocent-looking. "That laugh came from other lips[36] than mine—if, indeed, it came from lips at all, which I doubt."
"You mean," cried Toppleton, grasping Stubbs by the arm with a grip that made the agent wince, "you mean that this room is—"
"Khee-hee-hee-hee-hee!" came the derisive laugh from the corner, followed by the mysterious whistle and heartrending sigh which Hopkins had already so unpleasantly heard.
Toppleton was transfixed with terror, and the agent, with an ejaculation of fear, ran from the room, and scurried down the stairs out into the court as fast as his legs could carry him, where he fell prostrate in a paroxysm of terror.
Deserted by the agent and shut up in the room with his unwelcome visitor—for the agent had slammed the door behind him with such force that the catch had slipped and loosened the bolt, so that Toppleton was to all intents and purposes a prisoner—Hopkins exerted what little nerve force he had left, and pulled himself together again as best he could. He staggered to his table, and taking a small bottle of whiskey from the cupboard at its side, poured at least one half of its fiery contents down into his throat.
"Similia similibus," said he softly to himself. "If I have to fight spirits, I shall use spirits." Then facing about, he gazed into the[37] corner unflinchingly for a moment, following up his glance with one of the hand fire grenades that hung in a wire basket on the wall, which he hurled with all his force into the offending void. To this ebullition of heroic indignation, the only reply was a repetition of the sounds whose origin was so mysterious, but this time they proceeded directly from Toppleton's chair which stood at his side.
Another grenade, smashed into the maroon leather seat of the chair, was Hopkins' rejoinder, whereupon he was infuriated to hear the smothered laugh emanate from the depths of a treasured bit of cloisonné standing upon the mantel, within which it had been Hopkins' custom, in his apartments at home, to keep the faded leaves of the roses given to him by his friends of the fairer sex—a custom which, despite the volumes of tobacco smoke poured into the room by Hopkins and his companions night and day, kept the atmosphere thereof as sweet as a garden.
"You are a bright spirit," said Hopkins with a forced laugh. "You know mighty well that you are safe from violence there; but if you'll get out of that and give me one fair shot at you over on the washstand, you'll never haunt again."
"At last!" came the smothered voice, this[38] time from the top of the jar. "At last, after years of weary waiting and watching, I may speak without breaking my vow."
"Then for heaven's sake," cried Hopkins, sinking back into his chair and staring blankly at the jar, "for heaven's sake speak and explain yourself, if you do not wish to drive me to the insane asylum. Who in the name of my honoured partners are you?"
There was a moment's pause, and then the answer came,—
"I am a weary spirit—a spirit in exile—harmless and unhappy, whose unhappiness you may be able to relieve."
"I?" cried Hopkins, wildly.
"Yes, you. I am come to intrust my affairs to your hands."
"You are—"
"A client," returned the spirit.
Hopkins gasped twice, closed his eyes, clutched wildly at his heart, and slid down to the floor an inert mass.
He had fainted.
[39]
CHAPTER IV."Don't look at me that way, I beg of you, Mr. Toppleton," said the spirit after it had sighed a half dozen times and given an occasional nervous whistle. "I don't deserve all that your glance implies, and if you could only understand me, I think you would sympathize with me in my trials."
"I? I sympathize with you? Well, I like that," cried Toppleton, raising himself on his elbow and staring blankly at the vase. "It appears to me that I am the object of sympathy this time. What the deuce are you, anyhow? How am I to understand you, when you sit around like a maudlin void lost in a vacuum? Are you an apparition or what?"
"I am neither an apparition nor a what," returned the spirit. "I couldn't be an apparition without appearing. I suppose you might call me a limited perception; that is, I can be perceived but not seen, although I am human."
"You must be a sort of cross between a rumour and a small boy, I suppose; is that it?" queried Toppleton, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone.
"If you mean that I am half-way between things which should be seen and not heard, and other things which should be heard and not seen, I fancy your surmise approximates correctness. For my part, a love of conciseness[41] leads me to set myself down as a Presence," was the spirit's answer.
"I'll give you a liberal reward," retorted Toppleton, eagerly, "if you'll place yourself in the category of an Absence as regards me and my office here; for, to tell you the truth, I am addicted more or less to heart disease, and I can't say I care to risk an association with a vocally inclined zero, such as you seem to be. What's your price?"
"You wrong me, Toppleton," returned the Presence, indignantly, floating from the edge of the vase over to the large rocking chair in the corner by the window, which began at once to sway to and fro, to the undisguised wonderment of its owner. "I am not a blackmailer, as you might see at once if you could look into my face."
"Where do you keep your face?" asked Hopkins, sitting up and embracing his knees. "If you have brought it along with you for heaven's sake trot it out. I can't ruin my eyes on you as you are now. Have you no office hours, say from ten to two, when you may be seen by those desirous of feasting their eyes upon your tangibility?"
"I am afraid you are joking, Hopkins," said the spirit, growing familiar. "If you are, I beg that you will stop. What is a good joke[42] to some eyes is a very serious matter to others."
"That, my dear Presence," returned Toppleton, "is a very true observation, as is borne out by the large percentage of serious matter that appears in comic journals."
"Please do not be flippant," said the voice from the rocking-chair, sadly. "I have come to you as a suppliant for assistance. The fact that I have come without my body is against me, I know, but that is a circumstance over which I have absolutely no control. My body has been stolen from me, and I am at present a shapeless wanderer with nowhere to lay my head, and no head to lay there, if perchance the world held some corner that I might call my own."
"I can't see what you have to complain about on that score," said Toppleton, rising from the floor and seizing a large magnifying glass from his table and gazing searchingly through it into the chair which still rocked violently. "An individual like yourself, if you are an individual, ought to be able to find comfort anywhere. The avidity with which you have seized upon that chair, and the extraordinary vitality you
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