# The Seen and the Unseen/A Pack of Cards

​ III.
A PACK OF CARDS
PART I.
"YOU see these? They belong to Francis Farmer; Colonel Farmer he called himself; the Colonel he was known as among his pals. Did you ever hear of him?"
I could not say that I ever had.
"He was a card himself, the Colonel was. An American. He had had something to do with the army, once upon a time, I fancy; but he had had more to do with the police. He was one of the greatest swindlers of modern times—an artist the Colonel was."
"And these are some of the implements of his profession?"
I was paying a visit to the Rogues' Museum at Scotland Yard, that queer establishment in which they preserve mementoes of criminals who, at various periods, have, in some way or other, had dealings with the police. The constable who was acting as my cicerone was holding in his hand a pack of cards. I took them into mine. They were a pack of what are commonly called "squeezers." They ​had rounded corners, and in the corner of each card was a statement of its value. Such a pack, indeed, as is generally used by properly constituted persons for the game of poker. There was nothing about the cards in any way remarkable, so far as I could see, except that on their backs was painted a large, bluish-red rose, as it seemed to me, by hand. But according to the constable they had a history.
"The Colonel won thousands with those cards."
"By the exercise of his skill?"
"It's as you choose to call it They're hand-painted" (I thought they were), "and excellently painted too. If you look at them closely you'll see that the rose is not placed in exactly the same position on the back of each of them. There's just a shade of difference."
I did look at them closely. It was as the constable said. But it needed good eyes to observe the fact, the difference in position was so slight.
"He used to travel up and down the line to Brighton."
"That's odd I'm going down to Brighton myself by the 2.30 this afternoon. I live there."
"Ah! He was well known upon that road. They used to think he was a big pot in the City who liked his hand at cards. City gentlemen often have a game as they come up to town. If s a regular thing. It was a well-known pack, the Colonel's. He won his fare, and a bit over, many a time."
"And where is this enterprising person now?"
"He's dead, that's where he is. Francis Farmer ​was sentenced for the term of his natural life for attempted murder. Perhaps you remember the case. It was on the Brighton line. They spotted him at last—he was a little too fond of winning, the Colonel was. He drew a revolver and put a bullet into the man who spotted him. For that he was sent to Portland. He tried to escape, and when they nabbed him he committed suicide in his cell."
"Then there is quite a curious interest connected with this pack of cards?"
"You may say so. There are some very queer tales told about them—very queer. They say they're haunted. I don't know much about that sort of thing myself, but some of our chaps do say that wherever those cards are the Colonel isn't very far away." I smiled. The constable seemed a little huffed. "I only know that I shouldn't care to carry them about with me myself"
As we were going out a gentleman entered. The constable seemed to know him, for he allowed him to pass without challenge. I went to Simpson's to lunch. I was thinking, as I ate, about what I had seen, memorials of hideous murders, a unique collection of burglars' tools, coiners' moulds, forgers' presses, ingenious implements for every sort of swindling—a perfect arsenal of crime! I am free to confess that that pack of cards was present to my mind. What a relic for a man to possess—a haunted pack of swindler's cards! I ought to have looked at them more closely: perhaps some of the victim's blood was on the back of one of them. De gustibus non disputandum. Some men would give a good round sum for such a curio!
​After luncheon I strolled along the Embankment to Victoria. I caught the 2.30 to Brighton. As I was standing at the door of the carriage two other persons entered in front of me, brushing past me as they went When I had taken my seat a third person entered just as the train was starting. I was seated with my back to the engine, at the end which was farthest from the platform. The new-comer sat facing the engine at the other end of the carriage. He was a tall, slight, military-looking individual, with a slight moustache, and, as I could see under the brim of his top-hat, crisp, curly black hair. The two persons who had entered previously were seated in front of me at my end of the carriage.
I had some papers with me, but felt disinclined to read. I had had a heavy lunch, and the result was to make me drowsy. I fancy that I was all but dropping off, when someone spoke to me.
"Haven't we met before?"
I glanced up. The man speaking was the man in front of me, who sat nearest to the door. When I eyed him closely. I remembered him. He had sat next to me at a dinner which had been given, a few days previously, to Lord Labington, whose political exertions, as everyone is aware who is of the right way of thinking, have saved the country! An amusing neighbour I had found him. He had struck me as a fellow of lively wit and of infinite jest. I was glad to meet him again. I told him so.
"Awfully slow this kind of thing." I suppose he meant going down by rail to Brighton. He did! "This train is a dreadful slow-coach; takes no end of a time."
​"It's a pity," I said, thinking of the Colonel's exploits upon that very line, "that we haven't such a thing as a pack of cards!"
While I was speaking I thrust my right hand into the pocket of the light summer overcoat which I was wearing. It lighted upon something whose presence in my pocket I had not been conscious of before. There were several articles, in fact Supposing that I had put some things there and forgotten all about them, I drew one of them out to see what it could be. It was a playing-card. I drew more of them out They were more playing-cards. There was an entire pack. And—could I be dreaming?—it was the pack of cards which had belonged to "Colonel" Francis Farmer!
It was entirely out of the question to suppose that I was mistaken. I had seen them too recently, observed them too attentively, and bore them too well in mind for that. They were altogether unmistakable, with the hand-painted red roses on their backs. But how came they in my pocket? To describe my feelings when I realised that they really were that "haunted" pack is altogether beyond my power. I remembered returning them to a constable; I remembered his replacing them in a glass case; I remembered his turning the key in the lock; and yet——
I suppose that there was something in the expression of my countenance which to an onlooker was comical, for I was all at once conscious of the sound of laughter.
"Hallo!" exclaimed my opposite neighbour. "Why—you do appear to have a pack of cards!"
​"I—I do appear to have a pack of cards; but—but how I have them is more than I can say."
"You didn't steal them, I suppose?"
"Not—not consciously."
My opposite neighbour and his friend began to laugh again. The man at the other end of the carriage sat quietly cold. How I knew I cannot say, but I did know that his eyes were fixed upon me all the time.
"Never mind how you got them, you have got them; that is the point. Supposing we have a hand at Nap, What do you say, Armitage?" He turned to his friend. Then to me: "I don't know if you're aware of it—I don't think we got so far as exchanging cards the other night—but my name's Burchell."
"And my name's Ranken."
"Very well, Mr. Ranken, supposing after this general naming of names we set to work. Hand me over the cards."
He stretched out his hand. I hesitated before I gave him these. To put it gently, they were not mine. And—should I tell him their history or should I not? He did not give me time for reflection.
"Come along! Are you afraid I'm going to steal them?"
He took them out of my grasp. I was so bewildered by the discovery of their presence that I had really not recovered sufficient presence of mind to say him either yea or nay.
"What points? Suppose we say pounds?"
Pounds! I started. Pound points at Nap! Not if I knew it. Pennies were more in my line. I was ​pleased to observe that his friend, Mr. Armitage, did not second his suggestion.
"Don't you think pound points are a trifle stiff?"
"Well, make it half-sovereigns then, and a pound in the pool"
"I don't mind half-sovereigns."
But I did most emphatically. Why, with a pound in the pool, I might lose fifty pounds and more before I reached the other end. I have played penny Nap, and risen poorer by half a sovereign. I had been up to draw my dividends; I wondered what Mrs. Ranken would say if I returned to her minus fifty pounds!
"I—I'm no player. I—I couldn't think of playing for half-sovereigns."
"Make it dollars then. We must have something on the game."
Something on the game! If we had five-shilling points we should have a good deal more than I cared to have upon the game. But without waiting for my refusal Mr. Burchell commenced to deal the cards—the "Colonel's" cards!
I never had such luck before. It really was surprising. From the very first I won. Not spasmodically, but persistently—hand after hand, with a regularity which, in its way, was quite phenomenal.
"It's a pity," said Mr. Burchell, when I had made Nap for the third time within a quarter of an hour, "that we didn't make it pounds. I don't think anything could stand against your cards."
"I have had some decent hands," I agreed. "It's rather odd too, because generally I do no good at Nap."
​"No? I should imagine, by the way in which you're going it, that you're like that third player in Punch, who held thirteen trumps at whist."
I laughed. Curiously enough, my luck continued. It was quite a record in its way. I never lost; I always had three trumps.
"Do you know," observed Mr. Armitage, when I again took Nap, "that I'm nearly thirty sovereigns to the bad? I think it's quite as well we didn't make it pounds."
"I'm about that much nearer the workhouse since I left Victoria," chimed in his friend.
I was amazed.
"You don't mean that I've won sixty pounds?"
"It looks uncommonly like it."
It was incredible. And yet my luck continued. I went three tricks that round, and made them. Then another three, then four, and then another Nap. Reckon that up, and you'll find that, with the points and the dealer's ten shilling contribution to the pool, I had made thirteen pounds in considerably less than half that number of minutes.
"You will excuse my asking you," said Mr. Burchell, as he was settling for the Nap, "if that pack of cards is bewitched?"
"I think it possible," I answered, half in jest and half in earnest "There is a curious history attached to them, at any rate."
"There will be another curious history attached to them if this goes on much longer."
It did go on. In the very next hand I signalled four, and made them. My antagonists began to look blank; no wonder!
​"We ought to send this to the Field. It ought to have a niche among curious games," said Mr. Armitage.
Mr. Burchell shuffled, Mr. Armitage cut, and I dealt the hand. Burchell went three, Armitage four, and I went Nap! I had ace, king, queen, and four of clubs, and king of diamonds. Not a bad Nap hand when three are playing.
"What, Nap again!" cried Burchell. "Great Scott!"
"Never mind," said Mr. Armitage, "I'm prepared for anything."
I was about to lead the ace of clubs when the stranger, who was seated at the other end of the carriage, left his end and advanced towards ours.
"Excuse me, gentlemen!"—he addressed himself to my antagonists—"you are being robbed. This gentleman is too clever a player for you. I should say that he was a professional swindler!"
"What the dickens do you mean?" asked Mr. Armitage. "And who are you?"
"I'm an old traveller. I've seen this kind of thing before. But I've never seen quite such beautiful simplicity as yours. I do believe you'd let him get Napoleon in continuous succession, right from here to Brighton, and still think it all serene—just a little accident worth sending to the Field."
There was silence. Armitage and Burchell both looked at me. I felt that suspicion was in their glances. As for myself, I was so startled by the enormity of the charge that I momentarily was stricken dumb. I could not realise that the fellow was actually accusing me of theft.
​"Do you—do you mean to suggest," I gasped, when I had sufficient breath to gasp, "that I—I've been cheating?"
"That is what I do mean. You have hit it on the head. It is inconvenient for you, no doubt. But I'm going to make it more inconvenient still. I'm going to prove it before the sitting's ended."
"You—you infernal scoundrel!"
I sprang up, as if to strike the fellow to the ground. But he remained entirely unmoved. His calmness, or assurance, rather reacted on me, and I refrained.
"Suppose we leave the adjectives till a little later on? Then, it is just possible that each man will have a few of his own to scatter round."
He turned to my antagonists.
"It's funny, gentlemen, very—but directly I saw those cards I thought I'd seen that pack before. I have a good eye for a card. The more I saw of them the more I felt that we had met before. And now I'll swear we have. A pack of cards very like that pack once belonged to a very famous personage; more famous, perhaps, than worthy. His name was Francis Farmer."
My surprise at hearing this name from the stranger's lips must have betrayed itself in my countenance. He immediately turned to me.
"I fancy that is a name which this gentleman has heard before. Is that not so?"
"I—I have heard it before," I stammered.
"I thought you had. Yes, gentlemen, there is the own brother to this pack of cards at this moment in the museum at Scotland Yard. Perhaps this gentle​man's knowledge of the profession which he adorns so well will enable him to corroborate that fact."
"This—this is the pack."
"Do tell! That's candid, now. What, the Colonel's own! It's beautiful: for, gentlemen, Francis Farmer was a swindler, a card-sharper, a thief. He had all the talents. Permit me, sir, to exploit his favourite pack of cards."
The stranger took the cards which Mr. Armitage was holding in his hand.
"If you observe the beautiful rose which adorns their rears, you will observe that there is a slight variation in its position on the back of every card."
"I don't deny it for a moment."
I regained my presence of mind when I perceived that the fellow was not a mere impudent vagabond who wished to make himself objectionable, but that, in appearance, he really had something on which to base his assumptions.
"That is very good of you; more especially as we have eyes of our own which would enable us to perceive it for ourselves even if you didn't."
"If you will allow me I will explain how I became possessed of this pack of cards, which I believe really were the property of the infamous individual of whom this gentleman speaks. You will remember that I was surprised when I found them in my pocket?"
I addressed myself to Armitage.
"I remember that you appeared to be."
I did not like his tone at all.
"I not only appeared to be, I was. But before I explain, I suppose, Mr. Burchell, that you do not ​require an explanation. The place in which I met you is sufficient proof of the absurdity of what this person alleges."
"How so? I sat next to you at a public dinner. Anyone could go who chose to buy a ticket. It does not require a great effort of the imagination to suppose it possible that one might light upon a doubtful character at such a function."
I liked Mr. Burchell's tone even less than his friend's.
"You scarcely state the case correctly. It was not by any means open to anyone to buy a ticket. However, I will pass on to my explanation."
"We are waiting," murmured the stranger.
"I was this morning at Scotland Yard."
"And they let you out again? I always said the English police were fools."
"Where I saw this pack of cards."
"And pinched it? Under the constable's nose. The man's a genius."
"No, sir; I did not, as you phrase it, pinch it, under the constable's nose."
"Did he give it you?"
"No, sir, he didn't give it me."
"Did he sell it you?"
"He did not"
"How, then, does it come here?"
The stranger, thrusting his hands into his pockets, tilted his hat over his eyes.
"That, unfortunately, is exactly what I am myself unable to understand."
"Hark at that! And that is what you call your explanation? Well, sir, you are the most promising ​disciple of the late Francis Farmer's I have had the pleasure of meeting. You have what made him the man he was—his impudence."
"I pay no attention at this moment to this person's insinuations. After what has passed I insist on returning the moneys I have won."
"That would be advisable. It will save us trouble afterwards."
"Please to understand that I shall remain with you in this carriage until we reach Brighton. I shall then require you to accompany me to my residence. There I shall place before you ample proof that this person is an impudent traducer, and a barefaced liar."
"Softly at that. Let us wait for the adjectives still a little longer. There are one or two little points which you have forgotten in the excellent and copious explanation with which you have seen fit to favour us. Perhaps you will allow me to glance at the cards which you are holding in your hand?"
I gave him them.
"Here we have the ace, king, queen, four of clubs, and king of diamonds. A nice little hand. Perhaps you will be so kind as to tell me how many cards there are in the remainder of that pack?"
Mr. Armitage, being thus appealed to, took up the pack of cards which was lying on the seat at my side, and having added his own hand and Mr. BurcheU's, proceeded to count them. He announced the result.
"There are forty-two cards here."
"And five I hold make forty-seven. It is perhaps ​my ignorance, but I have always supposed that fifty-two constitute a pack of cards. Perhaps you will be able to tell us what has become of the other five?"
The inquiry was addressed to me.
"How should I know?"
"You have not got them, by the merest chance, in either of your pockets."
"If you are not careful you will go too far!"
"That would be a pity. I should think that, for you, I've gone far enough already. Perhaps it would not be too much trouble to feel, say, in the left-hand pocket of that elegant summer overcoat which you have on."
"You impudent——"
I stopped short. Thrusting my hand into my left pocket, to my unutterable amazement, it lighted upon what unmistakably were cards. I drew them out The stranger snatched them from me. He held them up in the air.
"Hey, presto—the missing five! I thought there might have been an accident. Now let us see what cards they are. Ace, king, queen, and four of hearts, the ace of clubs—another pretty little hand! Perhaps, gentlemen, you commence to see how it is done?"
"I think I do," said Mr. Armitage.
"I am sure I do," said Mr. Burchell.
"If—if you think that I put those cards in my pocket," I began to stammer. Mr. Burchell interrupted me—
"Pray do not trouble to offer any wholly unnecessary explanations. Perhaps you will be so good as to return the money which you have won."
​He laid a wholly unmistakable accent upon "won."
"It is I who insist on that, sir, not you."
"Pray do not let us quarrel as to phrases," said Mr. Burchell with a smile—a smile for which I could have strangled him. I counted out the moneys. Just as I had completed the act of restitution—restitution! To think that an honest man should have had to endure such humiliation!—the train drew up at Red Hill Junction—it was scarcely more than three-quarters of an hour since we left Victoria. Mr. Burchell rose.
"I wish you good-day, Mr. Ranken."
"A wish in which I join." And Mr. Armitage rose too.
"You are not going?" I cried.
"But indeed we are."
"Then I say that you shall do nothing of the kind. Do you think that I am going to allow you to place on me such a stigma without offering me an opportunity to prove my innocence?"
"If you dare to touch me, Mr. Ranken"—in my excitement I had grasped Mr. Burchell by the arm—"I shall summon an officer. As I am unwilling to appear as your accuser in a police-court, if you take my advice, you will let me go."
PART II.
A police-court! In my amazement at being threatened with a policeman I let them go. I sank back upon the seat, feeling as though I had been stunned. The train started. I still sat there. My faculties were so disorganised as to render me unable to realise my situation. To have had contemptuous compassion dealt out to me as though I were a swindler and a thief!
It was only when Red Hill had been left behind that I became conscious of the fact that I had not been left alone in the carriage. My accuser remained. He himself drew my attention to his presence,
"Well, how do you feel?"
I looked up. He had placed himself on the opposite seat, right in front of me. I glared at him. He smiled. Had I obeyed the impulse of the moment I should have caught him by the throat and crushed the life right out of him. But I restrained my indignation.
"You—you villain!" He laughed—a curious, mirthless laugh. It was like adding fuel to the flame. "Do you know what you have done? You have endeavoured to put a brand of shame upon a man who never, consciously, was guilty of a dishonourable action in his life."
"Well, and how do you feel?"
"Feel! God forgive me, but I feel as though I should like to kill you."
​He put up his hand and stroked his beardless chin.
"Yes, that is how I used to feel at first."
"What do you mean?"
He leaned forward and looked me keenly in the face.
"Do you not know me?"
I paused before I answered. So far as my recollection went his face was strange to me. Still, my memory might err.
"Is it possible that we have met before? Can I have given you any, even the slightest, cause to do this thing?"
"You are right in your inference. I did it all. It was I who put the cards in your pocket."
"You—you devil!"
This time my indignation did get the better of me. I sprang forward to seize him by the throat, but, with a dexterous movement, he eluded me. Missing my aim, I fell on my knees on the floor. Rising to his feet he looked down at me, and smiled.
"Do you not know me now?"
"Know you? No!"
"I am Francis Farmer."
"Francis Farmer!"
"I am the guardian of the cards. Did not the constable tell you that where they were I was always close at hand?"
"But—Farmer's dead!"
"That is so. He's dead."
Scrambling to my feet I caught hold, for support, of the railing which was intended for light luggage. What did he mean? Was the fellow, after all, some ​wandering lunatic who should not have been suffered to be at large? He was standing at the other end of the carriage regarding me with his curiously mirthless smile. He did not look a lunatic; on the contrary, he appeared to be a person of even unusual intelligence. He was very tall. He was dressed from head to foot in black, after the undertaker fashion, which is so common in the United States. His cheeks were colourless, his eyes almost unnaturally bright With those two exceptions there was nothing about him which was in any way uncommon, and even pale cheeks and flashing eyes are not phenomenal
"Still, I am Francis Farmer."
His voice was not at all American; it was soft and gentle. Stooping, he picked up the pack of cards. He began, as it were, to fondle them with his hands.
"My cards! My own old cards! The tools which have so often won for me both bread and cheese! Is it strange that I should regard them almost as my own children, sir? That I should be careful where they are—to be always close at hand? I fashioned them with my own fingers. And so fine was the art I used that skilled eyes have beheld them many and many a time, yet never perceived a flaw."
"Do I understand you to say deliberately that you are Francis Farmer?"
"Indeed I am."
"Then at the next station at which we stop I will give information to the police. So notorious a rogue cannot be allowed to be at large."
"But Francis Farmer's dead."
​"He was supposed to be. You are not the first rogue who has feigned to be dead."
"But, in truth, he's dead. They sat upon his corpse. They brought it in that he'd been guilty of felo-de-se. And, since no one came to claim his body, they buried him at Portland, among his brother rogues; and there he lies, within hearing of the sea. Permit me to show you the place where the rope was about his neck, and where he thrust the knife into his breast."
Tearing his waistcoat open he advanced towards me, as if to show me the hall-marks of the suicide. I waved him back again.
"Do not think to fool me with such tricks!"
He paused, and eyed me—always with his curious smile.
"You are a shrewd man. I perceived it when I saw you at Scotland Yard."
"You saw me at Scotland Yard!"
"Where else? I was with you in the Museum, when you were seeing all the sights. And when the constable took out the cards—my cards!—I perceived that you were a man after my own heart. So when the superstitious fellow—you remember, he was a little superstitious, was he not?—put them back into their place, I took the liberty to borrow them—why not? They were my own, the works of my own hand!—and I went with you down the stairs."
"You went with me down the stairs!"
"And along the Strand, to Simpson's. I sat beside you as you lunched—you did not see me. It was not strange. Permit me but one word—you are ​too fond of beef! It was a meat which, in my hungriest days, I never loved. When you had lunched, I slipped my arm through yours——"
"You slipped your arm through mine!"
"But indeed I did, and at the same moment I slipped my cards into the pocket of your overcoat. For I liked you, although for your beef I had a constitutional disrelish."
I had a constitutional disrelish for the style of conversation which he appeared to favour. As I listened to him talking in that cold-blooded way, of what, to say the least of it, were absolute impossibilities, I began to be conscious of a fit of shivering, as though I had plunged, unawares, into a bath of ice-cold water.
"You—you don't expect me to believe these fairy tales?"
"I went with you to the station; then, when the train was starting, I thought it time I should appear. So I appeared. I resolved that you should win, say, sixty pounds, and then—I would expose you."
"Expose me! Good heavens! man or demon—why?"
"Because I hoped to find in you a worthy successor to my fame."
I stared at him aghast. What could he mean?
"Do you—do you mean that you hoped to find in me the making of a thief?"
"Such words are hard. I hoped to find in you an artist, my dear sir."
"You consummate scoundrel! Man or demon, I shall be very much tempted, in half a minute, to throw you through the carriage window."
​"Try it" The fellow stood upright, his arms to his sides. There was no appearance of bravado in his tone. He seemed completely at his ease. "Touch me! Grasp me, if you can!"
I took up his challenge on the instant But scarcely had I advanced a step than I was seized with a sickening faintness, so that I was compelled to take refuge on the seat. He stood and watched me for a moment. Then he came and touched me. His touch was real enough, but I shrank from it with a sense of loathing which I am powerless to put into words.
"See, I am quite real." Strangely enough it was then that, for the first time, I doubted it "It is only when I wish it that I am a thing of air." Bending over, he fixed his bright eyes upon my face. His glance had on me that paralysing effect which is popularly supposed to be an attitude of certain members of the serpent tribe. "Let me teach you the secret of my cards."
He held the pack in front of me—I knew he held it, although for the life of me I could not have removed my eyes from off his face. So we remained in silence for some moments. Then he went on, his tone seeming to steal like some stupefying poison into my veins.
"This is a great day for me. It is a day I have looked forward to ever since I—died. It was not an heroic death—to stab oneself with a common warder's common knife, to hang oneself with a prison sheet from the bar of a broken window. One would not choose a death like that And yet, if die one must, what matters it how one dies? And time has ​its revenges! All things come to those who wait—at last! at last! After many days I've found a friend."
I tried to breathe. I could not. Something seemed to choke me. I was overcome by a great weight of horror and disgust It seemed to stifle me.
"Do you know where we are sitting, you and I? This carriage is an old familiar friend. It was here I shot John Osborn."
"What!"
The sense of loathing, even the sense of fear, with which I heard him make, so callously, this hideous confession, gave me strength to snap the spell with which he had seemed to bind me to the seat I sprang from him with a cry. He was not in the least disturbed.
"Yes, it was in this very carriage. Some strange fate has led us hither. See, he was seated there." He pointed to the comer of the carriage which was behind my back. Turning, I glanced over my shoulder with an irrepressible shudder. "I almost think I see him now. Ah, John Osborn, where's your ghost? Would it not be a strange encounter were we ghosts to meet? He was seated there. I was seated just in front of him, behind you on the other side. There were four other men with us in the carriage. I think I see them. Would that all we ghosts were met again, so that we might react the scene before your eyes! I had won—ah! what a sum I'd won. John Osborn's temper was a little warped. He had said a nasty thing or two. He did not like to lose. I made an awkward pass with an ace of clubs. He caught me by the wrist, crying, ​'Got you, you thief!' I looked round the carriage. I saw that the others were on his side. They all had lost, you see. I replied, 'Release my wrist.' 'Not,' he said, 'till you show me that card!' 'Take it!' I cried, and flung it in his face. I have not so sweet a temper as you, my friend. As I flung the card into his face, with my other hand I drew a revolver, which it was my custom to carry, so that any little difficulties which might arise might be settled without any unnecessary delay. I fired at John Osborn. Someone struck up my wrist. I missed. I fired again. That time the shot went home. It burst his eye. I flattered myself that it had entered into what he called his brain. He gave just one gasp, and dropped. I fancy that I hear him gasping now. It seemed as though the passage of his throat was choked with blood. There was a fight They all went for me. I emptied my revolver. And then—then I was done."
He paused and smiled. I was cowering at the other end of the carriage—close to the spot on which, according to his account, this hideous tragedy had happened. And the chief actor was standing there in front of me, bringing back the scene, so that it all seemed to be happening before my very eyes. A wild desire flashed across my mind that an accident would happen, that the train would go off the line, so that in some way I might escape this man.
"See here." He was holding the pack of cards. He advanced towards me with them in his hand. I would have opened the door of the carriage and got out upon the footboard, if I had dared to turn. ​"As I fired a few drops spurted from John Osborn's eye and fell upon a card. See, here they stand as a record unto this day."
He held out to me a card with this horrid memorial upon its back. I tried to close my eyes, but the lids rebelled. I was compelled to look.
"I have often wondered where that first bullet went with which I missed. I was seated there. My wrist was struck up—so! I never heard that it was found. It was not produced against me at the trial It must have gone in this direction. Let us see."
He began at a particular place to prod the cushioned back of the seat with the fingers of his right hand. I watched, as a man might be supposed to watch with his mental eye, the horrors of a nightmare. At last he gave an exclamation. "Oh! What have we here?"
Actually, with his finger-nails, he commenced to pick a hole in the cushion. What an officer of the railway company would have thought of the proceedings is more than I can say. I could but look on. With diabolical dexterity he tore a hole in the cushion, and into this hole he inserted his finger and thumb. With these he groped about inside. When he withdrew them he held them up.
"You see, my friend, that it is found. The missing bullet! It is a little shapeless, but I know it well." He pressed it to his lips. He advanced to me. "The first shot which I fired at John Osborn. Take it and keep it, my friend, in memory of me."
It was a nice keepsake to offer to a friend. Conceive a notorious murderer returning to these shades and offering you as a token of his regard and ​continuing esteem the hatchet, say, with which the deed was done.
"No," I gasped; "not I."
"Let me entreat you, my dear friend."
He pressed it on me, as though it were a gift of priceless worth.
"I won't."
"Consider the interest which attaches to this thing. It is not much to look at, but a little lump of shapeless lead, but consider the scene on which it figured. Oh, my friend, it might have burst John Osborn's eye—I almost think it grazed his head."
The train was slackening. Thank the powers! I thrust my arm through the window of the carriage, intending to grasp the handle of the door. Was I to have this reeking relic forced on me by a ghost! He misunderstood my meaning.
"Is it suicide you seek?"
"It—it's escape from you!"
"Then let us go together."
"How are we to go together, if I am to get away from you?"
"Ah, my friend, but that you cannot do."
"Cannot! I at least can try."
"Remove your grasp from the handle of that door, or I swear that I will not leave you, never for an instant, night or day, till you, like me, are dead."
He did not raise his tones, but his eyes were strangely light Thank heaven, the train was slackening fast. In a few moments we should reach a station. Then—then we should see! He read my thoughts.
​"You think to escape me when we reach the station. Bah, my friend, I shall disappear, but to return again!"
Still—we should see!
The train stopped The platform was on the opposite side. I made a movement towards the other door. He stood in the way. Unmistakably then he was flesh and blood enough. I could not pass unless I forced him to one side. In my rage I grappled him. For an instant a struggle would have undoubtedly ensued, but in the very nick of time the opposite door was opened. Other passengers came in.
"Thank God!" I cried. "Someone has come at last."
I turned to see who the new-comers were. They were Messrs. Burchell and Armitage. In my surprise I lost my presence of mind again. The stranger stood like a figure of Mephistopheles, and smiled at me. He addressed himself to my late antagonists.
"Well, gentlemen, have you decided to make it a case for the police? I think, if you will take the advice of an unprejudiced onlooker, you would be wise if you did."
This insolence was more than I could stand.
"Gentlemen," I cried, "this—this demon has confessed to me that it was he who did it all."
I looked at Mr. Burchell and his friend. They met my troubled glances with what seemed, in my confusion, to be a meaningless stare. The stranger still continued to regard me with his careless smile.
"I am afraid," he murmured, "that you're an old, old hand."
​What was I to say? How was I to refute his calumnies?
"Gentlemen, you will understand what sort of character this person is when I tell you that he informs me he's a ghost."
"A ghost!"
The exclamation came from Burchell, I was sure.
"Yes, a ghost He tells me that he is Francis Farmer."
"Not Francis Farmer." The stranger touched me on the arm.
"You said that you were Francis Farmer."
"But Francis Farmer's ghost. The difference is essential. You will do me the favour to admit that I stated that I was Francis Farmer's ghost. I was prepared to show you where the rope was passed about my throat and the exact spot where the knife was thrust into my breast."
Was he in jest? His manner was all the time so calm that it was difficult to tell if he was in jest or earnest.
"If you're not a ghost then you're a raving lunatic."
"If I'm not a ghost."
He stood close in front of me, wagging his forefinger in my face. There was silence. For my part, I knew neither what to do nor say. At last, taking out my handkerchief, with it I wiped the perspiration from my brow.
"I think I'm going mad."
As I uttered these words in a tone which, I do not doubt, sufficiently suggested the confusion which was paralysing my mental faculties, there came a sound very like a titter from the other end of the carriage. ​I turned. Mr. Armitage was laughing. At first it seemed that he was endeavouring to restrain his mirth, but, as I continued to stare, it gathered force until it became a veritable roar. His example was contagious. Suddenly Mr. Burchell burst into peals of merriment. And directly he began the Mephistophelian stranger, bending double, sank back upon the seat and indulged in laughter to such an immoderate extent that I really thought that there was imminent danger that he would crack his sides. As I gazed at this amazing spectacle I daresay that, from one point of view, which was not mine, the expression of my face was comical enough. Was I going off my head? Or had fate destined me to journey down to Brighton in the society of lunatics?
"Oh, man!" gasped Mr. Burchell between his bursts of laughter, "don't look like that, or I shall die!"
I endeavoured, doubtless quite ineffectually, to assume an imposing attitude.
"Perhaps, gentlemen, when you have quite finished, you will condescend to favour me with an explanation of this extraordinary scene."
"If I'm not a ghost!" screamed the Mephistophelian stranger.
And off they all went again.
"There may be something comical in the present situation, and perhaps it is owing to some constitutional defect that I altogether fail to see it—but I don't!"
"Oh, man!" Mr. Burchell gasped again, "don't talk like that or you will kill me." All at once he rose and clapped me on the shoulder. "Why, don't you see it's all a joke?"
​"A joke!"
I stared at him. Could he be joking?
"Yes, a practical joke, my boy."
"A practical joke!" I fancy that I was the colour of a boiled beetroot "Perhaps, Mr. Burchell, you will explain what you mean by a practical joke."
"Why, we three were outside the door when the bobby was showing you the things at the Yard, and we heard him pitch the yam about Francis Farmer and his cards, and how they were haunted, and all the rest of it, so we thought we'd have a game with you."
"A game with me? Still I fail to understand."
"I'm a clerk at the Yard, you know."
"Excuse me, but I do not know that you're a clerk at the Yard."
"Well, I am—in the Criminal Investigation Department. Of course they know me, and directly you went out I walked in as bold as brass and collared the cards." I remembered that someone had gone in as we came out. "I arranged that Bateman—this is Bateman"—he jerked his thumb towards the Mephistophelian stranger; that individual raised his hat, possibly to acknowledge the introduction—"should shadow you. He was to play the ghost. We had heard you tell the bobby that you were going down to Brighton by the 2.30 from Victoria, so we agreed that we would all go down together—this happening to be an afternoon on which the exigencies of the public service were not too pressing. We found you at the station, standing outside the carriage door. As I brushed past you on one side I slipped forty-seven cards into one pocket ​of your overcoat, and as Armitage brushed past you on the other side he slipped five cards into the other. I am a bit of a conjurer, and Armitage is a dab at all that kind of thing; so between us we manipulated the cards so that you were forced to win. And you won!—sixty pounds!—until the exposure came off in style. I say, old man, how did the ghost go off?"
The venerable Mr. Burchell turned to Mr. Bateman. For my part, not for the first time on that occasion, I felt too bewildered to speak. The modest Mr. Bateman smoothed his chin.
"I am afraid that for details of the ghost I must refer you to Mr. Ranken. But I may mention that I discovered that this was the actual carriage in which the tragedy took place, and that there was a memorial of the victim's fate on the back of one of the cards. I also alighted on the identical bullet which almost did the deed. What the railway company will say about the damage to their cushion is more than I can guess. It may turn out to be a couple of pounds."
"Mr. Burchell," I spluttered—I was reduced to such a condition that spluttering was all I was fit for—"I have only one thing to say to you, since your idea of what constitutes a joke seems to be so radically different to mine, and that is to remind you that you have been guilty of this extraordinary behaviour towards an entire stranger."
"Not an entire stranger!"
"Yes, sir, an entire stranger!"
"But henceforth one whom I hope to be allowed to call a friend."
He had the assurance to offer me, with an in​sinuating smile, his hand. I put my hands behind my back.
"There is one other point, Mr. Burchell. I won from you and your friend nearly sixty pounds. I returned it to you on an imputation being made of cheating. I presume that imputation is now withdrawn!"
"Of course. It was only a joke."
"In that case I must request you to repay me the amount I won!"
The fellow looked a little blank.
"Isn't it rather a curious case?"
"It is exactly on that account that I insist on your refunding what you obtained from me by means of what looks very like a subterfuge. I intend to present the amount, as a memorial of what you very rightly call a curious case, to the Home for Lost Dogs."
"A joke may be made a little expensive," murmured Mr. Burchell, as he counted out the coin.
"And the laugh, after all, be on the other side," said Mr. Armitage.
"The laugh," I answered, as I received my winnings, "is with the curs."