E. F. Benson: Complete Short Stories Collection (70+ Classic, Ghost, Spook, Supernatural, Mystery & Haunting Tales). Эдвард Бенсон

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      The chaplain sat down again.

      “You must forgive me,” he said, “but I can’t go into this. These are dangerous matters to meddle with. Besides, how do you know it is not a hoax?”

      “Played by whom?” asked the doctor. “Hark!”

      The telephone bell suddenly rang. It was clearly audible to the doctor.

      “Don’t you hear it?” he said.

      “Hear what?”

      “The telephone bell ringing.”

      “I hear no bell,” said the chaplain, rather angrily. “There is no bell ringing.”

      The doctor did not answer, but went through into his study, and turned on the lights. Then he took the receiver and mouthpiece off its hook.

      “Yes?” he said, in a voice that trembled. “Who is it? Yes: Mr. Dawkins is here. I will try and get him to speak to you.” He went back into the other room.

      “Dawkins,” he said, “there is a soul in agony. I pray you to listen. For God’s sake come and listen.”

      The chaplain hesitated a moment.

      “As you will,” he said.

      He took up the receiver and put it to his ear.

      “I am Mr. Dawkins,” he said.

      He waited.

      “I can hear nothing whatever,” he said at length. “Ah, there was something there. The faintest whisper.”

      “Ah, try to hear, try to hear!” said the doctor.

      Again the chaplain listened. Suddenly he laid the instrument down, frowning.

      “Something—somebody said, ‘I killed her, I confess it. I want to be forgiven.’ It’s a hoax, my dear Teesdale. Somebody knowing your spiritualistic leanings is playing a very grim joke on you. I can’t believe it.”

      Dr. Teesdale took up the receiver.

      “I am Dr. Teesdale,” he said. “Can you give Mr. Dawkins some sign that it is you?”

      Then he laid it down again.

      “He says he thinks he can,” he said. “We must wait.”

      The evening was again very warm, and the window into the paved yard at the back of the house was open. For five minutes or so the two men stood in silence, waiting, and nothing happened. Then the chaplain spoke.

      “I think that is sufficiently conclusive,” he said.

      Even as he spoke a very cold draught of air suddenly blew into the room, making the papers on the desk rustle. Dr. Teesdale went to the window and closed it.

      “Did you feel that?” he asked.

      “Yes, a breath of air. Chilly.”

      Once again in the closed room it stirred again.

      “And did you feel that?” asked the doctor.

      The chaplain nodded. He felt his heart hammering in his throat suddenly.

      “Defend us from all peril and danger of this coming night,” he exclaimed.

      “Something is coming!” said the doctor.

      As he spoke it came. In the centre of the room not three yards away from them stood the figure of a man with his head bent over on to his shoulder, so that the face was not visible. Then he took his head in both his hands and raised it like a weight, and looked them in the face. The eyes and tongue protruded, a livid mark was ’round the neck. Then there came a sharp rattle on the boards of the floor, and the figure was no longer there. But on the floor there lay a new rope.

      For a long while neither spoke. The sweat poured off the doctor’s face, and the chaplain’s white lips whispered prayers. Then by a huge effort the doctor pulled himself together. He pointed at the rope.

      “It has been missing since the execution,” he said.

      Then again the telephone bell rang. This time the chaplain needed no prompting. He went to it at once and the ringing ceased. For a while he listened in silence.

      “Charles Linkworth,” he said at length, “in the sight of God, in whose presence you stand, are you truly sorry for your sin?”

      Some answer inaudible to the doctor came, and the chaplain closed his eyes. And Dr. Teesdale knelt as he heard the words of the Absolution.

      At the close there was silence again.

      “I can hear nothing more,” said the chaplain, replacing the receiver.

      Presently the doctor’s man-servant came in with the tray of spirits and syphon. Dr. Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had been.

      “Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker,” he said.

      There was a moment’s silence.

      “There is no rope, sir,” said Parker.

      At Abdul Ali’s Grave

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      Luxor, as most of those who have been there will allow, is a place of notable charm, and boasts many attractions for the traveller, chief among which he will reckon an excellent hotel containing a billiard-room, a garden fit for the gods to sit in, any quantity of visitors, at least a weekly dance on board a tourist steamer, quail shooting, a climate as of Avilion, and a number of stupendously ancient monuments for those archeologically inclined. But to certain others, few indeed in number, but almost fanatically convinced of their own orthodoxy, the charm of Luxor, like some sleeping beauty, only wakes when these things cease, when the hotel has grown empty and the billard-marker “has gone for a long rest” to Cairo, when the decimated quail and the decimating tourist have fled northwards, and the Theban plain, Dana to a tropical sun, is a gridiron across which no man would willingly make a journey by day, not even if Queen Hatasoo herself should signify that she would give him audience on the terraces of Deir-el-Bahari.

      A suspicion however that the fanatic few were right, for in other respects they were men of estimable opinions, induced me to examine their convictions for myself, and thus it came about that two years ago, certain days toward the beginning of June saw me still there, a confirmed convert.

      Much tobacco and the length of summer days had assisted us to the analysis of the charm of which summer in the south is possessed, and Weston—one of the earliest of the elect—and myself had discussed it at some length, and though we reserved as the principal ingredient a nameless something which baffled the chemist, and must be felt to be understood, we were easily able to detect certain other drugs of sight and sound, which we were agreed contributed to the whole. A few of them СКАЧАТЬ