# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 45/Number 2/The Man from America

Extracted from Red Book Magazine, June 1925, pp. 66–69, 114, 116, 119, 120. Illustrations by Gratton Condon may be omitted.
   Michael Arlen came to America in March to lend a hand in the production of the play he had made from his enormously successful novel “The Green Hat” and to see his new book “Mayfair” through the press. Up to the present he has not expressed himself about his impressions of America, but he has denied the widely circulated tale that his real concern in life is his collection of waistcoats.
Illustration: The gentleman from America took the candle. “Seldom,” said he, “have I seen a room look less haunted.”
$^{The}$ Man from America
By Michael Arlen
TOWARD twelve o’clock on a night in the month of November some years ago, three men were ascending, in the light of a candle, the noble stairway of a house in Grosvenor Square, which adorns that residential district of London known by the ancient and pretty name of Mayfair. The mansion, though ordered and appointed in every detail—to suit, however, an austere taste—had yet a sour and sensitive atmosphere, as of a house long untenanted but by caretakers.
The first of the men, for they ascended in single file, held aloft a kitchen candlestick, whilst his companions made the best progress they could among the dour shadows that the faulty light cast on the oaken stairway. He who went last, the youngest of the three, said gayly: “Mean old bird, my aunt! Cutting off the electric light just because she is away.”
The leader, whose face the candlelight revealed as thin almost to asceticism, a face white and tired, finely molded but soiled in texture by the dissipations of a man of the mode, contented himself with a curt request to his young friend not to speak so loud.
It was, however, the gentleman in between the two whom it will advantage the reader to consider. This was an unusually tall and strongly built man; yet it was not his stature, but rather the assurance of his bearing, which was remarkable. His very clothes, which, like those of his companions, were of the middle sort in male attire variously known as the “dinner-jacket,” “le smoking,” or “the Tuxedo,” sat on his huge frame with an air of firmness, of finality, that, as even a glance at his companions would show, is deprecated by English tailors, whose inflexible formula it is that the elegance of the casual is the only possible elegance for gentlemen of condition. His face had that handsome yet untired and eager look which is the enviable possession of many Americans, and is sometimes known, for reasons not very clearly defined, as Poise. Not, however, that this untired and eager look is, as some have supposed, the outward sign of a lack of interest in dissipation but rather of an enthusiastic and naïve curiosity as to the varieties of the same. The gentleman from America looked, in fine, to be a proper man, and one who, in his early thirties, had formed a philosophy of which his comfort and his assurance of retaining it were the two poles, his easy perception of humbug the pivot, and his fearlessness the latitude and longitude.
It was on the second landing that the leader, whose name was Sir Charles Hillier and on whom the dignity of an ancient baronetcy seemed to have an almost intolerably tiring effect, flung open a door. He did not pass into the room, but held the candlestick toward the gentleman from America. A black pearl stained his soft shirt-front, and his manner was so impersonal as to be almost rude, which is a fault of breeding when it is bored, a fault particularly annoying to gentlemen from America, and rightly.
“The terms of the bet,” said Sir Charles Hillier in his attractively tired voice, “are that this candle must suffice you for the night. That is understood?”
“Sure—why not?” smiled the gentleman from America.
“Further,” continued the tired, impersonal, pleasant voice, “that you are allowed no matches, and therefore cannot relight the candle when it has gone out. That if you can pass the night in that room, Anderson and I pay you five hundred pounds. And vice versa.”
“That’s all right, Hillier. We’ve got all that.” And the gentleman from America took the candle from Hillier’s hand and looked into the room, but with no more than the faintest interest. In that faulty light little could be seen but the oak paneling, the heavy hangings about the great bed, and a steel engraving of a Meissonier duelist lunging at them from a wall near by.
“Seldom,” said he, “have I seen a room look less haunted.”
“Ah,” vaguely said Sir Charles Hillier
“But,” said the gentleman from America, “since you and Kerr-Anderson insist on presenting me with five hundred pounds for passing the night in it, do I complain? No sir!”
“Got your pistol?” queried young Kerr-Anderson, a chubby youth whose profession was dining out.
“I sure have,” said the gentleman from America.
Hillier said: “Well, Puce, I don’t mind telling you that I had just as soon this silly business was over. I have been betting all my life, but I have always had a preference for those bets which did not turn on a man’s life or death—”
“You can’t frighten me with that junk, Hillier,” snapped Mr. Puce, and it was plain to see that Mr. Puce did not like Sir Charles Hillier, for Mr. Puce was full of “pep,” while Sir Charles was always very tired and always faintly amused.
“My aunt,” said young Kerr-Anderson, “will be very annoyed if anything happens and she gets to hear of it. She hates a corpse in her house more than anyone I know. You're sure you are going on with it, Puce?”
“Sure? Boy, if Abraham Lincoln was to come up this moment and tell me Queen Anne was dead, I’d be as sure he was speaking the truth as that I’m going to spend this night in this old haunted room of your aunt’s. Yes sir! And now I'll give you good night, boys. Get your elbows squared for shoving a pen along a check for the benefit of Howard Puce.”
“I like Americans,” said Sir Charles Hillier vaguely. “They are so enthusiastic. Good night, Puce, and God bless you. I hope you have better luck than the last man who spent a night in that room. He was strangled. Come along, Anderson. We can find our way out with matches. By the way, Puce, don’t let off that gun of yours unless you have to. In the next house Johnny Paramour is lying very ill of ptomaine poisoning, which he got from being bitten by a ghost while he was looking through the keyhole of a lady’s bedroom to see if she wore a wooden leg. Good night, my friend.”
THE gentleman from America, alone in the haunted room, lost none of his composure. Indeed if anything disturbed him at all it was that, irritated by Hillier’s manner at a dinner-party a few nights before, and knowing Hillier for a bankrupt wastrel, he had allowed himself to be dared into this silly adventure and had thus deprived himself for one night of the amenities of his suite at Claridge’s Hotel. For five hundred pounds more or less did not matter very much to Mr. Howard Puce, Junior—though it was some consolation to know that five hundred pounds more or less must matter quite a deal to Sir Charles Hillier, for all his swank.
[Illustration: In his impatience with the impossible work, he was making to hurl it across the room when his arm overturned the candle.]
Mr. Puce contented himself with a very cursory examination of the dim, large room: he rapped, in an amateurish way, on the oak panels here and there for any sign of any “secret passage junk,” but succeeded only in soiling his knuckles; and it was only when, fully clothed, he had thrown himself on the great bed, that it occurred to him that five hundred pounds sterling was quite a pretty sum to have staked about a damfool haunted room.
The conclusion that naturally leaped to one’s mind, thought Mr. Puce, was that the room must have something the matter with it; else would a hawk like Hillier have bet money on its qualities of terror? Mr. Puce had, indeed, suggested, when first the bet was put forward, that five hundred pounds was perhaps too pretty a sum to stake on so idiotic a fancy; but Hillier had said in a very tired way that he never bet less than five hundred on anything, but that if Mr. Puce preferred to bet with poppycock and chicken-food, he, Hillier, would be pleased to introduce him to some very jolly children of his acquaintance.
Such thoughts persuaded Mr. Puce to rise and examine more carefully the walls and appointments of the room. But as the furniture was limited to the barest necessities, and as the oak-paneled walls appeared in the faint light to be much the same as any other walls, the gentleman from America swore vaguely and again reclined on the bed.
He had made up his mind, however, that he would not sleep. He would watch out, thought Mr. Puce, for any sign of this old ghost, and he would listen like hell, thought Mr. Puce, for any hint of those tiresome rapping noises, rude winds, musty odors, clanking of chains and the like, with which, so Mr. Puce had always understood, the best family ghosts invariably heralded their foul appearance.
Mr. Puce, you can see, could not believe in ghosts. The only ghost he believed in was the Holy Ghost, for Mr. Puce was a religious man and a churchgoer. He could not but think, however, that some low trick might be played on him, since on the honor of Sir Charles Hillier, a peer though he was—for Mr Puce, like a good American, could not get on the right side of all this fancy title stuff—he had not the smallest reliance. But as to the supernatural, Mr. Puce’s attitude was always a wholesome skepticism—and a rather aggressive skepticism at that, as Hillier had remarked with amusement when he had spoken of the ghost in, as he had put it, the house of Kerr-Anderson’s aunt. Sir Charles had said: “There are two sorts of men on whom ghosts have an effect: those who are silly enough to believe in them, and those who are silly enough not to believe in them.” Mr. Puce had been annoyed. He detested clever back-chat. “Means nothing,” said Mr. Puce, “and gives you a headache.”
Mr. Puce, lying on the great bed, whose hangings depressed him, examined his automatic and found it good. He had every intention of standing no nonsense, and an automatic is, as Mr. Puce remembered having read somewhere, an Argument. Indeed, Mr. Puce was full of those dour witticisms about the effect of a “gun” on everyday life which go to make the less pretentious of the motion pictures so entertaining.
Mr. Puce placed the sleek little automatic on a small table by the bed, on which stood the candle and, as he realized for the first time, a book. One glance at the paper jacket of the book was enough to convince the gentleman from America that its presence there was due to one of Hillier’s tired ideas. It showed a woman of striking, if conventional, beauty fighting for her life with a shape which might or might not be the wraith of a bloodhound, but was certainly something quite outside a lovely woman’s daily experience. Mr. Puce laughed. The legend on the book ran: “Tales of Terror: for the diversion of those suffering from depression, skin troubles and generally septic complaints. By Basil Spain, author of ‘Rats and Rheumatism: a Romance of the Cornish Riviera.’”
The gentleman from America was a healthy man, and needed his sleep: so it was with relief that he turned to Basil Spain’s absurd-looking book as a means of keeping himself awake. The tale at which the book came open was called “The Phantom Footsteps; and Mr. Puce prepared himself to be entertained, for he was not of those who read for instruction. And this was the remarkable tale that he read:
[Illustration: Puce was roaring: “You, Hillier, right here’s where the strangling comes in, and it's me that's going to do it.”]
THE tale of the Phantom Footsteps (wrote Basil Spain) is still whispered with awe and loathing among the people of that decayed but genteel district of London known as Pimlico; although, to be sure, the stranger will undoubtedly find the lips of householders hermetically sealed about the affair, a reticence due, no doubt, to their natural desire not to increase the contempt in which. the neighborhood is already held, in spite of recent half-hearted attempts to smuggle it under the more modish title of Belgravia.
Julia and Geraldine Biggot-Baggot were twin sisters who lived with their father, a widower, in a town in Lancashire, called, possibly, Wigan or, very probably, Bolton. The tale finds Julia and Geraldine in their nineteenth year, for they were twins of the same age, and it finds them in a very bad temper, for they were yearning for a more spacious life than can be found in Wigan or, as the case may be, Bolton. This yearning their neighbors found all the more inexplicable since the parents of the girls were of Lancashire stock, their mother having been a Biggot from Wigan and their father a Baggot from Bolton.
The reader can imagine with what excess of gayety Julia and Geraldine heard one day from their father that he had inherited a considerable property from a distant relation, and the reader can go on imagining the exaltation of the girls when they heard that the property included a mansion in Pimlico, since that for which they had always yearned their hardest was to enjoy the glittering life of the famous metropolis.
Their father preceded them from Wigan or, it might be, Bolton, for he was a man of a tidy disposition, and wished to see that everything in the Pimlico house was ready against his daughters’ arrival. When Julia and Geraldine did arrive, however, they were admitted by a genial old person of repellent aspect and disagreeable odor, who informed them that she was doing a bit of charing about the house but would be gone by the evening, whereas their father, she told them, had gone into the country to engage servants, but would be back the next day; and he had instructed her to tell Julia and Geraldine not to be nervous of sleeping alone in a strange house, that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that he would, anyhow, be with them first thing in the morning.
Now, Julia and Geraldine, though twins, were of vastly different dispositions, for whereas Julia was a girl of gay and indomitable spirit who knew not fear, Geraldine suffered from agonies of timidity and knew nothing else. When, for instance, night fell and found them alone in the house, Julia could scarcely contain her delight at the adventure, while it was with difficulty that Geraldine could support the tremors that shook her girlish frame.
Imagine, then, how differently they were affected when, as they lay in bed in their room toward the top of the house, they distinctly heard from far below a noise, as of some one moving. Julia sat up in bed, intent, unafraid, curious. Geraldine swooned.
“It’s only a cat,” Julia whispered. “I’m going down to see.”
“Don’t!” sighed Geraldine. “For pity’s sake don’t leave me, Julia!”
“Oh, don’t be so childish!” snapped Julia. “Whenever there’s the chance of the least bit of fun, you get shivers down your spine. But as you are so frightened, I will lock the door from the outside and take the key with me, so that no one can get in when I am not looking. Oh, I hope it’s a burglar! I'll give him the fright of his life, see if I don’t.”
And the indomitable girl went, feeling her way to the door in darkness, for to have switched on the light would have been to warn the intruder, if there was one, that the house was inhabited: whereas it was the plucky girl's fancy to turn the tables on the burglar, if there was one, by appearing to him as a ghost, apparition, wraith or phantom, for having done not a little district-visiting in Wigan, or, possibly, Bolton, no one knew better than Julia of the depths of childish superstition among the vulgar.
A little calmed by her sister's brave nonchalance, Geraldine lay still as a mouse in the darkness with her pretty head beneath the bedclothes. From without came not a sound, and the very stillness of the house had impelled Geraldine to a new access of terror had she not concentrated on the works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, which tell of the grit of the English people.
Then, as though to test the grit of the English people in the most abominable way, came a dull noise from below. Geraldine restrained a scream, lay breathless in the darkness. The dull noise, however, was not repeated, and presently Geraldine grew a little calmer, thinking that maybe her sister had dropped a slipper or something of the sort. But the reader can imagine into what terror the poor girl had been plunged had she been a student of the detective-novels of the day, for then of course she must instantly have recognized the dull noise as a dull thud, and can a dull thud mean but one thing?
It was as she was praying that her ears grew aware of footsteps ascending the stairs. Her first feeling was one of infinite relief. Of course Julia had been right, and there had been nothing downstairs but a cat or, perhaps, a dog. And now Julia was returning, and in a second they would have a good laugh together. Indeed, it was all Geraldine could do to restrain herself from jumping out of bed to meet her sister, when she was assailed by a terrible doubt; and on the instant her mind grew so charged with fear that she could no longer hold back her sobs. Suppose it was not Julia ascending! Suppose— “Oh, God!” sobbed Geraldine.
Transfixed with terror, yet hopeful of the best, the poor girl could not even command herself to reinsert her head beneath the sheets. And always the ascending steps came nearer. As they approached the door she thought she would die of uncertainty. But as the key was fitted into the lock she drew a deep breath of relief—to be at once shaken by the most acute agony of doubt so that she had given anything in the world to be back again in Wigan or, even better, Bolton.
“Julia!” she sobbed. “Julia!”
For the door had opened, the footsteps were in the room, and Geraldine thought she recognized her sister's maidenly tread. But why did Julia not speak, why this unbearable silence? Geraldine, peer as hard as she might, could make out nothing in the darkness. The footsteps seemed to fumble in their direction, but came always nearer to the bed, in which poor Geraldine lay more dead than alive. Oh, why did Julia not speak, just to reassure her?
“Julia!” sobbed Geraldine. “Julia!”
The footsteps seemed to fumble about the floor, with an indecision maddening to Geraldine’s distraught nerves. But at last they came beside the bed—and there they stood! In the awful silence Geraldine could hear her heart beating like a hammer on a bell in a cellar.
“Oh!” the poor girl screamed. “What is it, Julia? Why don’t you speak?”
But never a sound nor a word gave back the livid silence, never a sigh nor a breath, though Julia must be standing within a yard of the bed.
“Oh, she is only trying to frighten me, the beast!” poor Geraldine thought; and unable for another second to bear the cruel silence, she timidly stretched out a hand to touch her sister. Imagine, then, her relief when her fingers touched the white rabbit-fur with which Julia’s dressing-gown was fringed!
“You beast, Julia!” she sobbed, she laughed. Never a word, however, came from the still shape. Geraldine, impatient of the continuation of a joke which seemed to her in the worst of taste, raised her hand from the fur, that she might touch her sister's face, but her fingers had risen no farther than Julia’s throat when they touched something wet and warm, and with a scream of unutterable terror Geraldine fainted. ....
When Mr. Biggot-Baggot admitted himself into the house early the next morning, his eyes were assailed by a dreadful sight. At the foot of the stairs was a pool of blood, from which, in a loathsome trail, drops of blood wound up the stairway.
Mr. Biggot-Baggot, fearful lest something out-of-the-way had happened to his beloved daughters, rushed frantically up the stairs. The trail of blood led to his daughters’ room; and there, in the doorway, the poor gentleman stood appalled, so foul was the sight that met his eyes. His beloved Geraldine lay on the bed, her hair snow-white, her lips raving with the shrill fancies of a maniac, while on the floor beside the bed lay stretched, in a pool of blood, his beloved Julia, her head half severed from her trunk
The tragic story unfolded only when the police arrived to take any footprints and thumb-marks that may have been left lying about; and it became clear that Julia, her head half severed from her body, and therefore a corpse, had yet come upstairs to warn her timid sister against the homicidal lunatic who, just escaped from an asylum near by, had penetrated into the house. Mr Biggot-Baggot cried, weeping: “Greater love than this hath no woman! Not that it did either of them any good.” But the police comforted him somewhat by pointing out that the escape of the homicidal lunatic from the asylum had done some good, insomuch as there would now be room for Geraldine in an asylum near her home.
WHEN the gentleman from America had read the last line of “The Phantom Footsteps” he closed the book with a slam.
“Of all the blasted junk!” And in his bitter impatience with the impossible work, he was making to hurl it across the room when, unfortunately, his circling arm overturned the candle, which of course went out.
“Aw, hell and prohibition!” said Mr. Puce bitterly, and he thought “Another good mark to Sir Charles Hillier, Bart.! Wont I Bart him one some day! Only a guy with a face like an overdraft would have bought a damfool book like that.”
That is what Mr. Puce thought, for the tale of “The Phantom Footsteps” had annoyed him very much; but what annoyed him even more was the candle’s extinction, for the gentleman from America knew himself too well to bet a dime (an American coin equivalent to an English coin of the same value) on his chances of remaining awake in a dark room.
He did, however, manage to keep awake for some time merely by concentrating on wicked words, on Hillier’s face—and how its mocking expression would change for the better were his, Puce’s, foot to be firmly pressed down on its surface—and on Julia and Geraldine. For the luckless twins, by the very idiocy with which they were presented, kept walking about Mr. Puce’s mind, and as he began to nod to the demands of a healthy and tired body, he could not resist wondering if their home town had been Wigan or Bolton, and if Julia’s head had been severed from ear to ear or only halfway. ....
WHEN Mr. Puce awoke, it was the stillness of the room that impressed his sharply awakened senses. The room was very still.
“Who's there?” snapped Mr. Puce; and then, really awake, he laughed at himself. “What would plucky little Julia have done?” he chuckled to himself. “Got up and looked.” But the gentleman from America discovered in himself a reluctance to move from the bed. He was very comfortable on the bed. Besides, he had no light and could see nothing if he did move. Besides, he had heard nothing at all, not the faintest noise. He had merely awakened rather more sharply than usual. ....
Suddenly he sat up on the bed, his back against the oak head. Something had moved in the room. He was certain something had moved. Somewhere by the foot of the bed!
His eyes peering into the darkness, Mr. Puce stretched his right hand to the table on which lay the automatic. The gesture reminded him of Geraldine’s when she had touched the white rabbit-fur. ... Aw, damn Geraldine! Those idiotic twins kept chasing about a man’s mind. Mr. Puce grasped the automatic firmly in his hand. His hand felt as though it had been born grasping an automatic.
“I guess,” said Mr. Puce into the darkness, “that some one is now going to have something coming to him, her or it.”
It was quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. He had always known he was a brave man. But he had never been quite certain. Now he was certain. He was the goods.
But if anything had moved, it moved no more. Maybe, though, nothing had moved at all, ever. Maybe it was only his half-awakened senses that had played him a trick. He was rather sorry, if that was so. He was just beginning to enjoy the evening. The room was very still. The gentleman from America could only hear himself breathing.
Something moved again, distinctly.
“What the hell!” snapped Mr. Puce.
He leveled the automatic toward the foot of the bed.
“I want to tell you,” said Mr. Puce grimly, “that I will shoot.”
The room was very still. The gentleman from America wished, forcibly, that he had a light. It was no good leaving the bed without a light. He'd only fall over the infernal thing, whatever it was. What would Julia have done? Aw, damn Julia! He strained his ears to catch another movement, but he could only hear himself breathing in short, sharp gasps! The gentleman from America pulled himself together.
“Listen,” he snapped into the darkness, “I am going to count ten. I am then going to shoot. In the meanwhile you can make up your mind whether or not you are going to stay right here to watch the explosions. One—two—three—four—”
Then Mr. Puce interrupted himself. He had to. It was so funny. He laughed. He heard himself laugh, and again it was quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. And wouldn't they laugh, the boys at the Booster Club back home, when he sprung this yarn on them! He could hear them. Oh, boy! Say, trying to scare him, Howard Puce, Junior, of Chicago, with a ghost like that! Why, it was like taking money from a child. Poor old Hillier! Never bet less than five hundred on anything, didn’t he, the poor boob! Well, there wasn't a ghost made, with or without a head on him, that could scare Howard Puce. No sir!
For as his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and helped by the mockery of light that the clouded, moonless night just managed to thrust through the distant window, the gentleman from America had been able to make out a form at the foot of the bed. He could only see its upper half, and that appeared to end above the throat. The phantom had no head—whereas Julia’s head had been only half-severed from— Aw, damn Julia!
“A family like the Kerr-Andersons,” began Mr. Puce, chuckling—but suddenly found, to his astonishment, that he was shouting at the top of his voice—anyhow, it sounded so. However, he began again, much lower, but still chuckling:
“Say, Mr. Ghost, a family like the Kerr-Andersons might have afforded a head and a suit of clothes for their family ghost. .... Git, you lousy phantom!” Again Mr. Puce found himself shouting at the top of his voice. “I'm going on counting.” he added grimly
And, his automatic leveled at the thing's heart, the gentleman from America went on counting. Steady his voice was, steady and grim.
“Five—six—”
HE sat crouched at the head of the bed, his eyes never off the thing’s breast. Phantom nothing! He didn’t believe in that no head bunk. He thought of getting a little nearer the foot of the bed and catching the thing a whack on that invisible head of his, but decided to stay where he was.
“Seven—eight—”
He hadn't seen the hands before. Gee, some hands! And arms! Holy Moses, he'd got long arms to him, he had!
“Nine!” said the gentleman from America.
Christopher and Columbus, but this would make some tale back home! Yes sir! Not a bad idea of Hillier’s, that, though! Those arms. Long as the bed! Not bad for old Hillier, that idea.
“Ten, damn you!” yelled the gentleman from America, and fired.
Some one laughed. Mr. Puce quite distinctly heard himself laughing, and that made him laugh again. Holy Moses, what a shot! Missed from that distance!
His eyes, as he made to take aim again, were bothered by the drops of sweat from his forehead. “Aw, hell!” said Mr. Puce, and fired again.
The silence after the shot was like a black cloud on the darkness. Mr. Puce thought out the wickedest word he knew, and said it. Well, he wasn't going to miss again. No sir! His hand was steady as iron, too. And again the gentleman from America found it quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. The drops of sweat from his forehead bothered him, though. Aw, that was only excitement.
He raised his arm for the third shot. Jupiter and Jane, but he'd teach that ghost to stop ghosting! Yes sir! He wished, though, that he could concentrate more on the actual body of the headless thing. There it was, damn it, at the foot of the bed, staring at him—well, it would have been staring at him if it had a head. Aw, of course it had a head! It was only Hillier with his boob’s face in a black wrap. Hillier'd get some lead in him this time, though. His own fault, the poor boob!
“Hillier,” said the gentleman from America, “I want to tell you that unless you quit, you are a corpse. I mean it. I've been shooting to miss so far. I am now annoyed.”
If only, though, he could concentrate more on the body of the thing! His, eyes kept wandering to the hands and arms. Gee, but they sure were long, those arms! As long as the bed, no less—just long enough for the hands to get at him from the foot of the bed. And that’s what they were at, what's more. Coming nearer. They were moving, those damfool arms, nearer and nearer. ....
Mr. Puce fired again
That was no miss. He knew that was no miss. Right through the heart, that boy must have gone. It was dark; he couldn't see more than just the shape of the thing. But it was still now. The arms were still. They weren't moving any more. The gentleman from America chuckled. That one had taught him to go ghosting! Yes sir! It would fall in a moment, dead.
Mr. Puce swore again. Those arms were moving again. The hands weren't a yard from him now. They were for his throat, no less.
“Damn you!” sobbed the gentleman from America, and fired again. But he wouldn't wait this time. No sir! He'd let that ghost have a ton of lead. Mr. Puce fired again. Those hands weren't half a yard from his throat now. No good shooting at the hands, though. Thing was to get the swine through the heart. Mr. Puce fired the sixth bullet. Right into the thing’s chest. The sweat bothered his eyes. “Aw, hell!” said Mr. Puce. He wished the bed was a bit longer. He couldn't get back any more. Those arms—holy Moses, long as hell, weren't they! Mr. Puce fired the seventh, eighth—right into the thing. The pistol fell from Mr Puce’s shaking fingers. ....
“The hands!” screamed Mr. Puce “Oh God, the hands!”
TOWARD noon on a summer's day several years later two men were sitting before an inn some miles from the ancient town of Lincoln. Drawn up in the shade of a towering ash was a large gray touring-car, covered with dust. On the worn table stood two tankards of ale. The travelers rested in silence and content, smoking.
The road by which the inn stood was really no more than a lane, and the content of the motorists was not disturbed by the traffic of a main road. Indeed, the only human being visible was a distant speck on the dust, coming toward them. He seemed, however, to be making a good pace, for he soon drew near.
“If,” said the elder of the two men in a low, tired voice, which was, so women had said, very attractive, as voices go, “if we take the shortcut through Carmion Wood, we will be at Malmanor for lunch.”
“If nothing!” said the other firmly. “I've heard enough tales about Carmion Wood to last me a lifetime without my adding one more to them. And as for spooks, one is enough for this child, thanks very much.”
The two men, for lack of any other distraction, watched the pedestrian draw near. He turned out to be a giant of a man, and had, apparently, no intention of resting at the inn. The very air of the tall pedestrian was a challenge to the lazy content of the sunlit noon. He was walking at a great pace, his felt hat swinging from his hand. A giant he was, his hair graying, his massive face set with assurance.
“By all that’s holy!” gasped the elder of the two observers. A little lean gentleman that was, with a lined face which had been handsome in a striking way but for the haggard marks of the dissipations of a man of the mode. He had only one arm, and that added a curiously flippant air of deviltry to his little, lean, sardonic person.
“Puce!” yelled the other, a man with a chubby, good-humored face, on whom the passing years sat as lightly as his increasing debts. “Puce, you silly old ass!”
The giant swung round at the good-natured cry, stared at the two smiling men. Then the massive face broke into the old genial smile by which his friends had always known and loved Howard Puce, Junior, of Chicago, and he came toward them with hand outstretched.
“Well, boys!” laughed Mr. Puce. “This is one big surprise. But it’s good to see you again, I'll say that.”
“The years have rolled on, Puce, the years have rolled on,” sighed Hillier in his tired way, but warmly enough he shook the gentleman from America with his one hand.
“They surely have,” said Mr. Puce, mopping his brow and smiling down on the two. And, so Hillier thought, they surely had, with the gentleman from America, for Puce looked old, worn, a wreck of the hearty giant who was once Howard Puce, Junior, of Chicago.
“Sit down, old Puce, and have a drink,” laughed Kerr-Anderson. Always gay, was Kerr-Anderson.
But the gentleman from America seemed, as he stood there, uncertain. He glanced down the way he had come. Hillier, watching him, saw that he was fagged out.
“Come, sit down, Puce,” he said kindly, and quite briskly for him. “Do you realize, man, that it’s eleven years since that idiotic night? What are you doing? Taking a walking tour?”
Mr. Puce sat down on the ancient bench beside them. His massive presence, his massive smile, seemed to fill the whole air about the two men.
“Walking tour? Why, yes, more or less,” smiled Mr. Puce, and with a flash of his old humor: “I want to tell you boys that I am the daughter of the king of Egypt, but I am dressed as a man because I am traveling incognito. Eleven years, is it, since we met? A whale of a time, eleven years.”
“Why, there’s been quite a war since then,” chuckled Kerr-Anderson, “and there's poor old Hillier’s arm to prove the same; and yet that night seems like last night. I am glad to see you again, old Puce! But by heaven, we owe you one for giving us the scare of our lives! Don't we, Hillier?”
“That's right, Puce,” smiled Hillier. “We owe you one, all right. But I am heartily glad that it was only a shock you had, and that you were quite yourself, after all. And so here we are gathered together again by blind chance, eleven years older, eleven years wiser. Have a drink, Puce.”
The gentleman from America was looking from one to the other of the two. The smile on the massive face seemed one of utter bewilderment. Hillier was as near shocked as he could be at the ravages of a mere eleven years on the man’s face.
“I gave you two a scare!” echoed Mr. Puce. “Aw, put it to music, boys! How the blazes did I give you two a scare?”
KERR-ANDERSON was delighted to explain. The scare of eleven years ago was part of the fun of today. Many a time he had told the tale to while away the boredom of Flanders and Mesopotamia, and had often wanted to let Puce in on it to enjoy the joke on Hillier and himself, but had never had the chance to get hold of him.
They had thought, that night, that Puce was dead. Hillier, naked from the waist up, had rushed down to Kerr-Anderson, waiting in the dark porch, and had told him that Puce had kicked the bucket. Hillier had sworn like nothing on earth as he dashed on his clothes. Awkward, Puce’s corpse, for Hillier and Kerr-Anderson Hillier, thank heavens, had had the sense not to leave the empty pistol on the bed, and they shoved back all the ghost-properties into a bag; and as, of course, the house wasn’t Kerr-Anderson’s aunt's house at all, but Johnny Paramour’s, who was away, they couldn't so easily be traced. Still, awkward for them, very. They cleared the country that night, Hillier swearing all the way about the weak hearts of giants. And it wasn't until the Orient Express had pitched them out at Vienna that they saw in the Continental Daily Mail that an American of the name of Puce had been found by the caretaker in the bedroom of a house in Grosvenor Square, suffering from shock and nervous breakdown. Poor old Puce! Good old Puce! But he’d had the laugh on them, all right.
THE gentleman from America appeared heartily enough to enjoy the joke on Hillier and Kerr-Anderson.
“That's good!” he laughed. “That's very good!”
“Of course,” said Hillier in his tired, deprecative way, “we took the stake, this boy and I. For if you hadn't collapsed, you would certainly have run out of that room like a millionaire from a Lyons tea-shop.”
“That’s all right,” laughed Mr. Puce “But what I want to know, Hillier, is how you got me so scared.”
Kerr-Anderson says now that Puce was looking at Hillier quite amiably. Full in the face, and very close to him, but quite amiably. And Hillier smiled, in his deprecating way.
“Oh, an old trick, Puce. A black rag over the head, a couple of yards of stuffed cloth for arms—”
“Aw, steady!” said Mr. Puce—but quite amiably. “Say, but I shot at you! Eight times. How about that?”
“Dear, oh dear!” laughed Kerr-Anderson. But that was the last time he laughed that day.
“My dear Puce,” said Hillier gently, slightly waving his one arm, “that is the oldest trick of all. I was in a panic all the time that you would think of it and chuck the gun at my head. Those shells in your automatic were blanks.”
Kerr-Anderson isn't at all sure what exactly happened then. All he remembers is that Puce’s huge face had suddenly gone crimson, which made his hair stand out shockingly white, and that Puce had Hillier's fragile throat between his hands, and that Puce was roaring into Hillier’s blackening face.
“You swine! You'd scare me like that, would you! You'd scare me with a chicken’s trick like that, would you! And you'd strangle me, eh? You, Hillier, you, right here’s where the strangling comes in, and it’s me that’s going to do it—”
Kerr-Anderson hit out and yelled. Hillier was helpless, the giant’s grip on his throat. The woman who kept the inn had hysterics. Puce roared blasphemies. Hillier was doubled back over the small table, Puce on top of him, tightening his death-hold. Kerr-Anderson hit, kicked, bit, yelled.
Suddenly there were shouts from all around.
“For God's sake, quick!” sobbed Kerr-Anderson. “He's almost killed him.”
The men in uniform had all they could do to drag Puce away from the little, lean, unconscious thing that had been Sir Charles Hillier. Then they manacled him. Puce looked sheepish, and grinned at Kerr-Anderson.
Two of the six warders helped to revive Hillier.
“But?” said Kerr-Anderson, staring at the gentleman from America, where he stood, huge, helpless, manacled, among his captors.
“Gets like that,” said one of the warders indifferently. “Gave us the slip this morning. Certain death for some one. Homicidal maniac, that’s 'im. Been like that eleven years. Got a shock, I fancy. Keeps on talking about a sister of his called Julia who was murdered, and how he'll be revenged for it.”
“Poor devil!’ muttered Hillier. “Poor devil!”
“Can't be helped,” said the warder. “Well, good day, gentlemen. Glad it was no worse.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1956, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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