THE PANIC ROOM: 30+ Ghost Tales by Sheridan Le Fanu. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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      Chapter II.

      Mr. Peters

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      One night during the session of 1746 this old Judge went down in his chair to wait in one of the rooms of the House of Lords for the result of a division in which he and his order were interested.

      This over, he was about to return to his house close by, in his chair; but the night had become so soft and fine that he changed his mind, sent it home empty, and with two footmen, each with a flambeau, set out on foot in preference. Gout had made him rather a slow pedestrian. It took him some time to get through the two or three streets he had to pass before reaching his house.

      In one of those narrow streets of tall houses, perfectly silent at that hour, he overtook, slowly as he was walking, a very singular-looking old gentleman.

      He had a bottle-green coat on, with a cape to it, and large stone buttons, a broad-leafed low-crowned hat, from under which a big powdered wig escaped; he stooped very much, and supported his bending knees with the aid of a crutch-handled cane, and so shuffled and tottered along painfully.

      “I ask your pardon, sir,” said this old man, in a very quavering voice, as the burly Judge came up with him, and he extended his hand feebly towards his arm.

      Mr. Justice Harbottle saw that the man was by no means poorly dressed, and his manner that of a gentleman.

      The Judge stopped short, and said, in his harsh peremptory tones, “Well, sir, how can I serve you?”

      “Can you direct me to Judge Harbottle’s house? I have some intelligence of the very last importance to communicate to him.”

      “Can you tell it before witnesses?” asked the Judge.

      “By no means; it must reach his ear only,” quavered the old man earnestly.

      “If that be so, sir, you have only to accompany me a few steps farther to reach my house, and obtain a private audience; for I am Judge Harbottle.”

      With this invitation the infirm gentleman in the white wig complied very readily; and in another minute the stranger stood in what was then termed the front parlour of the Judge’s house, tête-à-tête with that shrewd and dangerous functionary.

      He had to sit down, being very much exhausted, and unable for a little time to speak; and then he had a fit of coughing, and after that a fit of gasping; and thus two or three minutes passed, during which the Judge dropped his roquelaure on an arm-chair, and threw his cocked-hat over that.

      The venerable pedestrian in the white wig quickly recovered his voice. With closed doors they remained together for some time.

      There were guests waiting in the drawing-rooms, and the sound of men’s voices laughing, and then of a female voice singing to a harpsichord, were heard distinctly in the hall over the stairs; for old Judge Harbottle had arranged one of his dubious jollifications, such as might well make the hair of godly men’s heads stand upright for that night.

      This old gentleman in the powdered white wig, that rested on his stooped shoulders, must have had something to say that interested the Judge very much; for he would not have parted on easy terms with the ten minutes and upwards which that conference filched from the sort of revelry in which he most delighted, and in which he was the roaring king, and in some sort the tyrant also, of his company.

      The footman who showed the aged gentleman out observed that the Judge’s mulberry-coloured face, pimples and all, were bleached to a dingy yellow, and there was the abstraction of agitated thought in his manner, as he bid the stranger good-night. The servant saw that the conversation had been of serious import, and that the Judge was frightened.

      Instead of stumping upstairs forthwith to his scandalous hilarities, his profane company, and his great china bowl of punch — the identical bowl from which a bygone Bishop of London, good easy man, had baptised this Judge’s grandfather, now clinking round the rim with silver ladles, and hung with scrolls of lemon-peel — instead, I say, of stumping and clambering up the great staircase to the cavern of his Circean enchantment, he stood with his big nose flattened against the window-pane, watching the progress of the feeble old man, who clung stiffly to the iron rail as he got down, step by step, to the pavement.

      The hall-door had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels under excitement sometimes indulge in now-a-days, with a stamp or two of his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air. He commanded the footman to overtake the old gentleman in the white wig, to offer him his protection on his way home, and in no case to show his face again without having ascertained where he lodged, and who he was, and all about him.

      “By — — sirrah! if you fail me in this, you doff my livery to-night!”

      Forth bounced the stalwart footman, with his heavy cane under his arm, and skipped down the steps, and looked up and down the street after the singular figure, so easy to recognize.

      What were his adventures I shall not tell you just now.

      The old man, in the conference to which he had been admitted in that stately panelled room, had just told the Judge a very strange story. He might be himself a conspirator; he might possibly be crazed; or possibly his whole story was straight and true.

      The aged gentleman in the bottle-green coat, in finding himself alone with Mr. Justice Harbottle, had become agitated. He said,

      “There is, perhaps you are not aware, my lord, a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail, charged with having forged a bill of exchange for a hundred and twenty pounds, and his name is Lewis Pyneweck, a grocer of that town.”

      “Is there?” says the Judge, who knew well that there was.

      “Yes, my lord,” says the old man.

      “Then you had better say nothing to affect this case. If you do, by — — I’ll commit you! for I’m to try it,” says the judge, with his terrible look and tone.

      “I am not going to do anything of the kind, my lord; of him or his case I know nothing, and care nothing. But a fact has come to my knowledge which it behoves you to well consider.”

      “And what may that fact be?” inquired the Judge; “I’m in haste, sir, and beg you will use dispatch.”

      “It has come to my knowledge, my lord, that a secret tribunal is in process of formation, the object of which is to take cognisance of the conduct of the judges; and first, of your conduct, my lord; it is a wicked conspiracy.”

      “Who are of it?” demands the Judge.

      “I know not a single name as yet. I know but the fact, my lord; it is most certainly true.”

      “I’ll have you before the Privy Council, sir,” says the Judge.

      “That is what I most desire; but not for a day or two, my lord.”

      “And why so?”

      “I have not as yet a single name, as СКАЧАТЬ