Toppleton's Client; Or, A Spirit in Exile Read online

  CHAPTER III.

  MR. HOPKINS TOPPLETON ENCOUNTERS A WEARY SPIRIT.

  IT was well along in October when Hopkins returned to London, and he gotback to his office in the Temple none too soon. The agent had fully madeup his mind that he was gone for good, and was about taking steps toremove his effects from Number 17, and gain an honest penny bysub-letting that light and airy apartment for his own benefit, a visionof profit which Toppleton redivivus effectually dispelled.

  The return, for this reason, was of course a grave disappointment to Mr.Stubbs, but he rose to the occasion when the long lost lessee appearedon the scene, and welcomed him cordially.

  "Good morning, sir," he said. "Glad to see you back. Didn't know whathad become of you or should have forwarded your mail. Have a pleasanttrip?"

  "Very," said Toppleton, shortly.

  "It seems to have agreed with you,--you've a finer colour than you had."

  "Yes," replied Hopkins, drily. "That's natural. I've been to Norway. Thesun's been working day and night, and I'm tanned."

  "I hope everything is--er--everything was all right with the room, sir?"the agent then said somewhat anxiously.

  "I found nothing wrong with it," said Hopkins; "did you suspect thatanything was wrong there?"

  "Oh, no!--indeed not. Of course not," returned the agent with someconfusion. "I only asked--er--so that in case there was anything youwanted, you know, it might be attended to at once. There's nothing wrongwith the room at all, sir. Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

  "Well, that's good," said Toppleton, turning to his table. "I'm gladthere's nothing the matter. It will take a very small percentage of therental to remedy that. Good morning, Mr. Stubbs."

  "Good morning, sir," said Mr. Stubbs, and then he departed.

  "Now for the mail," said Hopkins, grasping his letter-opener, andrunning it deftly through the flap of a communication from Mr. Morley,written two months previously.

  "Dear Hoppy," he read. "We have just been informed of your singular acton the Saturday previous to your departure for London."

  "Hm! what the deuce did I do then?" said Hopkins, stroking his moustachethoughtfully. "Let me see. 'Singular act.' I've done quite a number ofsingular things on Saturdays, but what--Oh, yes! Ha, ha! That ConeyIsland dinner. Oh, bosh!--what nonsense! as if my giving the boys afeast were going to hurt the prospects of a firm like ours. By George,it'll work just the other way. It'll fill the force with an enthusiasmfor work which--"

  Here Hopkins stopped for a moment to say, "Come in!" Somebody hadknocked, he thought. But the door remained closed.

  "Come in!" he cried again.

  Still there was no answer, and on walking to the door and opening it,Toppleton discovered that his ears had deceived him. There was no onethere, nor was there any sign of life whatever in the hallway.

  "I'm glad," he said, returning to his chair and taking up Mr. Morley'sletter once more. "It might have been a client, and to a man at thehead of a big firm who has never been admitted to practice in any courtor country, that would be an embarrassment to say the least. It's queerthough, about that knock. I certainly heard one. Maybe there is sometelepathic influence between Morley and me. He usually punctuates hiscomplaints with a whack on a table or back of a chair. That's what itmust have been; but let's see what else he has to say."

  "Of course," he read, "if you desire to associate with those who aresocially and professionally your inferiors, we have nothing to say. Thatis a matter entirely beyond our jurisdiction, but when you commit thefirm to outrageous expenditures simply to gratify your own love ofgenerosity, it is time to call a halt."

  "What the devil is he talking about?" said Hopkins, putting the letterdown. "I paid for that dinner out of my own pocket, and never chargedthe firm a cent, even though it does indirectly reap all the benefits.I'll have to write Morley and call his attention to that fact. Howvulgar these disputes--"

  At this point he was again interrupted by a sound which, in describingit afterwards, he likened to a ton of aspirates sliding down a coalchute.

  "This room appears to be an asylum for strange noises," said he, lookingabout him to discover, if possible, whence this second interruptioncame. "I don't believe Morley feels badly enough about my behaviour forone of his sighs to cross the ocean and greet my ears, but I'm hanged ifI know how else to account for it, unless there's a speaking tube with awhistle in it somewhere hereabouts. I wonder if that's what Stubbsmeant!" he added, reflecting.

  "Bah!" he said in answer to his own question, picking up Mr. Morley'sletter for a third time. "This is the nineteenth century. Weird soundsare mortal-made these days, and I'm not afraid of them. If there wereanything supernatural about them, why didn't the air get blue, andwhere's my cold chill and my hair standing erect? I fancy I'll retain mycomposure until the symptoms are a little more strongly developed."

  Here he returned to his reading.

  "We desire to have you explain to us, at your earliest convenience," theletter went on to say, "why you have so extravagantly raised the salaryof every man, woman and child in our employ, utterly regardless ofmerit, and without consultation with those with whom you have beenassociated, to such a figure that the firm has been compelled to reduceits autumn dividend to meet the requirements of the pay roll. Yourprobable answer will be, I presume,--knowing your extraordinaryresources in the matter of explanations--that you cannot consent to be amere figure-head, and that you considered it your duty to impress uponour clerks the fact that you are not what they might suspect under thecircumstances, but a vital, moving force in the concern; but you may aswell spare yourself the trouble of making any such explanation, since itwill not be satisfactory either to myself or to the other members of thefirm, with the possible exception of our friend Mawson, who, with hiscustomary about-town manners, is disposed to make light of the matter.We desire to have you distinctly understand that your duties are to beconfined entirely to the London office, and to add that were it not foryour esteemed father's sake we should at once cancel our agreement withyou. The name you bear, honoured as it is in our profession, is of greatvalue to us: but it is, after all, a luxury rather than a necessity, andin these hard times we are strongly inclined to dispense with luxurieswhenever we find them too expensive for our pockets."

  Hopkins paused in his reading and pursed his lips to give a long, lowwhistle, a sound which was frozen _in transitu_, for the lips were nosooner pursed than there came from a far corner the very sound that hehad intended to utter.

  For the first time in his life Toppleton knew what fear was; for thefirst time since he was a boy, when he wore it that way, did he becomeconscious that his hair stood upon end. His blood seemed to congeal inhis veins, and his heart for a moment ceased to beat, and then, as ifdesirous of making up for lost time, began to thump against his ribs atlightning pace and with such force that Hopkins feared it might breakthe crystal of the watch which he carried in the upper left-hand pocketof his vest.

  Mr. Morley's letter fluttered from his nerveless hand to the floor, and,despite its severity, was forgotten before it touched the handsome rugbeneath Hopkins' table. The new sensation--the sensation of fear--hadtaken possession of his whole being, and, for an instant, he was as oneparalyzed. Then, recovering his powers of motion, he whirled about inhis revolving chair and started to his feet as if he had been shot.

  "This is unbearable!" he cried, glancing nervously about the room. "It'sbad enough to have an office-boy who whistles, but when you get thewhistle in the abstract without the advantage of the office-boy, it istoo 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 acopy of the _Daily Register_ and tried to read it.

  "It's no use," he cried in a moment, crumpling the paper into a ball andthrowing it across the room. "That vile whistle has regularly knocked meout."

  The paper ball reached the door just
as the agent entered, and struckhim athwart the watch chain.

  "Beg pardon," said Hopkins, "I didn't mean that for you. Everything hereseems to be bewitched this morning, that dull compilation of legal woeincluded."

  "It's of no consequence, sir, I assure you," returned the agentuneasily.

  "No, I don't think it amounts to a row of beans to a man who hatestrouble," said Hopkins, referring more to the journal than to theuntoward act of the paper ball. "But I say, Mr. Stubbs, I've been havinga devil of a time in this room this morning, and when I say devil I meandevil."

  Stubbs paled visibly. The moment he had feared had come.

  "Wh--wh--what sus--seems to b--be the m--mum--matter, sir?" hestammered.

  "Nothing seems, something _is_ the matter," returned Hopkins. "I don'twonder you stammer. You'd stammer worse if you had been here with methree 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 impertinentsomething or other that not only sighs and knocks on the door butwhistles, Stubbs--actually whistles. Has this room a history?"

  "Well, a sort of a one," returned Stubbs; "but I never heard any onecomplain about it on the score of whistling, sir."

  "Stubbs, I believe you are lying. Hasn't somebody killed an office-boyin this apartment, for whistling?" queried Hopkins, gazing sternly atthe 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 yourassurance. But, Stubbs, to what do you attribute these beastlydisturbances? Ghosts?"

  "Of course not, Mr. Toppleton," replied Mr. Stubbs. "I fancy you musthave 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 inthe room above you must have dropped something on the floor, while thesigh 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 soughthrough key-holes," retorted Hopkins, severely, rising and walking tothe window.

  Stubbs stood motionless, without an answer. Toppleton had cornered himin a flimsy pretext, and then came the climax to his horribleexperience.

  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 bloodand left him so limp that he staggered to the mantel and grasped it tokeep himself from falling to the floor.

  Hopkins turned upon him, his face livid with anger, and the two mengazed at each other in silence for a moment, the one endeavouring tomaster his fear, the other to smother his wrath.

  "Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Stubbs, by laughing in my face when Isend for you to request explanations as to the conduct--as tothe--er--the conduct of your room? It sounds ridiculous to say that, butthere is no other way to put it, for it _is_ the conduct of the room ofwhich I complain. What do you mean by your ill-timed levity?"

  "I pass you my word, Mr. Toppleton, I will swear to you, sir, thatnothing was further from my thoughts than mirth. I agree with you thatit is no laughing matter for--"

  "But I heard you laugh," said Toppleton, eyeing the agent, his anger nownot unmixed with awe. "You laughed as plainly as it is possible for anyone to laugh, except that you endeavoured to smother the sound."

  "I did nothing of the sort, Mr. Toppleton," pleaded Stubbs, his handshaking and his eyes wandering fearsomely over toward the mysteriouscorner where all was still and innocent-looking. "That laugh came fromother lips than mine--if, indeed, it came from lips at all, which Idoubt."

  "You mean," cried Toppleton, grasping Stubbs by the arm with a grip thatmade 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 Hopkinshad already so unpleasantly heard.

  Toppleton was transfixed with terror, and the agent, with an ejaculationof fear, ran from the room, and scurried down the stairs out into thecourt as fast as his legs could carry him, where he fell prostrate in aparoxysm of terror.

  Deserted by the agent and shut up in the room with his unwelcomevisitor--for the agent had slammed the door behind him with such forcethat the catch had slipped and loosened the bolt, so that Toppleton wasto all intents and purposes a prisoner--Hopkins exerted what littlenerve force he had left, and pulled himself together again as best hecould. He staggered to his table, and taking a small bottle of whiskeyfrom the cupboard at its side, poured at least one half of its fierycontents down into his throat.

  "_Similia similibus_," said he softly to himself. "If I have to fightspirits, I shall use spirits." Then facing about, he gazed into thecorner unflinchingly for a moment, following up his glance with one ofthe hand fire grenades that hung in a wire basket on the wall, which hehurled with all his force into the offending void. To this ebullition ofheroic indignation, the only reply was a repetition of the sounds whoseorigin was so mysterious, but this time they proceeded directly fromToppleton's chair which stood at his side.

  Another grenade, smashed into the maroon leather seat of the chair, wasHopkins' rejoinder, whereupon he was infuriated to hear the smotheredlaugh emanate from the depths of a treasured bit of cloisonne standingupon the mantel, within which it had been Hopkins' custom, in hisapartments at home, to keep the faded leaves of the roses given to himby his friends of the fairer sex--a custom which, despite the volumes oftobacco smoke poured into the room by Hopkins and his companions nightand day, kept the atmosphere thereof as sweet as a garden.

  "You are a bright spirit," said Hopkins with a forced laugh. "You knowmighty well that you are safe from violence there; but if you'll get outof that and give me one fair shot at you over on the washstand, you'llnever haunt again."

  "At last!" came the smothered voice, this time from the top of the jar."At last, after years of weary waiting and watching, I may speak withoutbreaking my vow."

  "Then for heaven's sake," cried Hopkins, sinking back into his chair andstaring blankly at the jar, "for heaven's sake speak and explainyourself, if you do not wish to drive me to the insane asylum. Who inthe 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, whoseunhappiness 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, andslid down to the floor an inert mass.

  He had fainted.