The curious events related in these pages would, many of them, most likely never have happened, if a person named Trottle had not presumed, contrary to his usual custom, to think for himself.
The subject on which the person in question had ventured, for the first time in his life, to form an opinion purely and entirely his own, was one which had already excited the interest of his respected mistress in a very extraordinary degree. Or, to put it in plainer terms still, the subject was no other than the mystery of the empty House.
Feeling no sort of objection to set a success of his own, if possible, side by side with a failure of Mr. Jarber’s, Trottle made up his mind, one Monday evening, to try what he could do, on his own account, towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House. Carefully dismissing from his mind all nonsensical notions of former tenants and their histories, and keeping the one point in view steadily before him, he started to reach it in the shortest way, by walking straight up to the House, and bringing himself face to face with the first person in it who opened the door to him.
It was getting towards dark, on Monday evening, the thirteenth of the month, when Trottle first set foot on the steps of the House. When he knocked at the door, he knew nothing of the matter which he was about to investigate, except that the landlord was an elderly widower of good fortune, and that his name was Forley. A small beginning enough for a man to start from, certainly!
On dropping the knocker, his first proceeding was to look down cautiously out of the corner of his right eye, for any results which might show themselves at the kitchen-window. There appeared at it immediately the figure of a woman, who looked up inquisitively at the stranger on the steps, left the window in a hurry, and came back to it with an open letter in her hand, which she held up to the fading light. After looking over the letter hastily for a moment or so, the woman disappeared once more.
Trottle next heard footsteps shuffling and scraping along the bare hall of the house. On a sudden they ceased, and the sound of two voices — a shrill persuading voice and a gruff resisting voice — confusedly reached his ears. After a while, the voices left off speaking — a chain was undone, a bolt drawn back — the door opened — and Trottle stood face to face with two persons, a woman in advance, and a man behind her, leaning back flat against the wall.
“Wish you good evening, sir,” says the woman, in such a sudden way, and in such a cracked voice, that it was quite startling to hear her. “Chilly weather, ain’t it, sir? Please to walk in. You come from good Mr. Forley, don’t you, sir?”
“Don’t you, sir?” chimes in the man hoarsely, making a sort of gruff echo of himself, and chuckling after it, as if he thought he had made a joke.
If Trottle had said, “No,” the door would have been probably closed in his face. Therefore, he took circumstances as he found them, and boldly ran all the risk, whatever it might be, of saying, “Yes.”
“Quite right sir,” says the woman. “Good Mr. Forley’s letter told us his particular friend would be here to represent him, at dusk, on Monday the thirteenth — or, if not on Monday the thirteenth, then on Monday the twentieth, at the same time, without fail. And here you are on Monday the thirteenth, ain’t you, sir? Mr. Forley’s particular friend, and dressed all in black — quite right, sir! Please to step into the dining-room — it’s always kep scoured and clean against Mr. Forley comes here — and I’ll fetch a candle in half a minute. It gets so dark in the evenings, now, you hardly know where you are, do you, sir? And how is good Mr. Forley in his health? We trust he is better, Benjamin, don’t we? We are so sorry not to see him as usual, Benjamin, ain’t we? In half a minute, sir, if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll be back with the candle. Come along, Benjamin.”
“Come along, Benjamin,” chimes in the echo, and chuckles again as if he thought he had made another joke.
Left alone in the empty front-parlour, Trottle wondered what was coming next, as he heard the shuffling, scraping footsteps go slowly down the kitchen-stairs. The front-door had been carefully chained up and bolted behind him on his entrance; and there was not the least chance of his being able to open it to effect his escape, without betraying himself by making a noise.
Not being of the Jarber sort, luckily for himself, he took his situation quietly, as he found it, and turned his time, while alone, to account, by summing up in his own mind the few particulars which he had discovered thus far. He had found out, first, that Mr. Forley was in the habit of visiting the house regularly. Second, that Mr. Forley being prevented by illness from seeing the people put in charge as usual, had appointed a friend to represent him; and had written to say so. Third, that the friend had a choice of two Mondays, at a particular time in the evening, for doing his errand; and that Trottle had accidentally hit on this time, and on the first of the Mondays, for beginning his own investigations. Fourth, that the similarity between Trottle’s black dress, as servant out of livery, and the dress of the messenger (whoever he might be), had helped the error by which Trottle was profiting. So far, so good. But what was the messenger’s errand? and what chance was there that he might not come up and knock at the door himself, from minute to minute, on that very evening?
While Trottle was turning over this last consideration in his mind, he heard the shuffling footsteps come up the stairs again, with a flash of candle-light going before them. He waited for the woman’s coming in with some little anxiety; for the twilight had been too dim on his getting into the house to allow him to see either her face or the man’s face at all clearly.
The woman came in first, with the man she called Benjamin at her heels, and set the candle on the mantel-piece. Trottle takes leave to describe her as an offensively-cheerful old woman, awfully lean and wiry, and sharp all over, at eyes, nose, and chin — devilishly brisk, smiling, and restless, with a dirty false front and a dirty black cap, and short fidgetty arms, and long hooked finger-nails — an unnaturally lusty old woman, who walked with a spring in her wicked old feet, and spoke with a smirk on her wicked old face — the sort of old woman (as Trottle thinks) who ought to have lived in the dark ages, and been ducked in a horse-pond, instead of flourishing in the nineteenth century, and taking charge of a Christian house.
“You’ll please to excuse my son, Benjamin, won’t you, sir?” says this witch without a broomstick, pointing to the man behind her, propped against the bare wall of the dining-room, exactly as he had been propped against the bare wall of the passage. “He’s got his inside dreadful bad again, has my son Benjamin. And he won’t go to bed, and he will follow me about the house, up-stairs and downstairs, and in my lady’s chamber, as the song says, you know. It’s his indisgestion, poor dear, that sours his temper and makes him so agravating — and indisgestion is a wearing thing to the best of us, ain’t it, sir?”
“Ain’t it, sir?” chimes in agravating Benjamin, winking at the candle-light like an owl at the sunshine.
Trottle examined the man curiously, while his horrid old mother was speaking of him. He found “My son Benjamin” to be little and lean, and buttoned-up slovenly in a frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very watery, his cheeks very pale, and his lips very red. His breathing was so uncommonly loud, that it sounded almost like a snore. His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, lazy hands pottered about the wall on either side of him, as if they were groping for a imaginary bottle. In plain English, the complaint of “My son Benjamin” was drunkenness, of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind. Drawing this conclusion easily enough, after a moment’s observation of the man, Trottle found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes fixed much longer than was necessary on the ugly drunken face rolling about in the monstrous big coat collar, and looking at it with a curiosity that he could hardly account for at first. Was there something familiar to him in the man’s features? He turned away from them for an instant, and then turned back to him again. After that second look, the notion forced itself into his mind, that he had certainly seen a face somewhere, of which that sot’s face appeared like a kind of slovenly copy. “Where?” thinks he to himself, “where did I last see the man whom this agravating Benjamin, here, so very strongly reminds me of?”
It was no time, just then — with the cheerful old woman’s eye searching him all over, and the cheerful old woman’s tongue talking at him, nineteen to the dozen — for Trottle to be ransacking his memory for small matters that had got into wrong corners of it. He put by in his mind that very curious circumstance respecting Benjamin’s face, to be taken up again when a fit opportunity offered itself; and kept his wits about him in prime order for present necessities.
“You wouldn’t like to go down into the kitchen, would you?” says the witch without the broomstick, as familiar as if she had been Trottle’s mother, instead of Benjamin’s. “There’s a bit of fire in the grate, and the sink in the back kitchen don’t smell to matter much to-day, and it’s uncommon chilly up here when a person’s flesh don’t hardly cover a person’s bones. But you don’t look cold, sir, do you? And then, why, Lord bless my soul, our little bit of business is so very, very little, it’s hardly worth while to go downstairs about it, after all. Quite a game at business, ain’t it, sir? Give-and-take that’s what I call it — give-and-take!”
With that, her wicked old eyes settled hungrily on the region round about Trottle’s waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle like her son, holding out one of her skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm with the knuckles of the other. Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got an idea of his own into his muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it out charitably for the benefit of Trottle.
“I say!” says Benjamin, settling himself against the wall and nodding his head viciously at his cheerful old mother. “I say! Look out. She’ll skin you!”
Assisted by these signs and warnings, Trottle found no difficulty in understanding that the business referred to was the giving and taking of money, and that he was expected to be the giver. It was at this stage of the proceedings that he first felt decidedly uncomfortable, and more than half inclined to wish he was on the street-side of the house-door again.
He was still cudgelling his brains for an excuse to save his pocket, when the silence was suddenly interrupted by a sound in the upper part of the house.
It was not at all loud — it was a quiet, still, scraping sound — so faint that it could hardly have reached the quickest ears, except in an empty house.
“Do you hear that, Benjamin?” says the old woman. “He’s at it again, even in the dark, ain’t he? P’raps you’d like to see him, sir!” says she, turning on Trottle, and poking her grinning face close to him. “Only name it; only say if you’d like to see him before we do our little bit of business — and I’ll show good Forley’s friend up-stairs, just as if he was good Mr. Forley himself. MY legs are all right, whatever Benjamin’s may be. I get younger and younger, and stronger and stronger, and jollier and jollier, every day — that’s what I do! Don’t mind the stairs on my account, sir, if you’d like to see him.”
“Him?” Trottle wondered whether “him” meant a man, or a boy, or a domestic animal of the male species. Whatever it meant, here was a chance of putting off that uncomfortable give-and-take-business, and, better still, a chance perhaps of finding out one of the secrets of the mysterious House. Trottle’s spirits began to rise again and he said “Yes,” directly, with the confidence of a man who knew all about it.
Benjamin’s mother took the candle at once, and lighted Trottle briskly to the stairs; and Benjamin himself tried to follow as usual. But getting up several flights of stairs, even helped by the bannisters, was more, with his particular complaint, than he seemed to feel himself inclined to venture on. He sat down obstinately on the lowest step, with his head against the wall, and the tails of his big great-coat spreading out magnificently on the stairs behind him and above him, like a dirty imitation of a court lady’s train.
“Don’t sit there, dear,” says his affectionate mother, stopping to snuff the candle on the first landing.
“I shall sit here,” says Benjamin, agravating to the last, “till the milk comes in the morning.”
The cheerful old woman went on nimbly up the stairs to the first floor, and Trottle followed, with his eyes and ears wide open. He had seen nothing out of the common in the front-parlour, or up the staircase, so far. The House was dirty and dreary and close-smelling — but there was nothing about it to excite the least curiosity, except the faint scraping sound, which was now beginning to get a little clearer — though still not at all loud — as Trottle followed his leader up the stairs to the second floor.
Nothing on the second-floor landing, but cobwebs above and bits of broken plaster below, cracked off from the ceiling. Benjamin’s mother was not a bit out of breath, and looked all ready to go to the top of the monument if necessary. The faint scraping sound had got a little clearer still; but Trottle was no nearer to guessing what it might be, than when he first heard it in the parlour downstairs.
On the third, and last, floor, there were two doors; one, which was shut, leading into the front garret; and one, which was ajar, leading into the back garret. There was a loft in the ceiling above the landing; but the cobwebs all over it vouched sufficiently for its not having been opened for some little time. The scraping noise, plainer than ever here, sounded on the other side of the back garret door; and, to Trottle’s great relief, that was precisely the door which the cheerful old woman now pushed open.
Trottle followed her in; and, for once in his life, at any rate, was struck dumb with amazement, at the sight which the inside of the room revealed to him.
The garret was absolutely empty of everything in the shape of furniture. It must have been used at one time or other, by somebody engaged in a profession or a trade which required for the practice of it a great deal of light; for the one window in the room, which looked out on a wide open space at the back of the house, was three or four times as large, every way, as a garret-window usually is. Close under this window, kneeling on the bare boards with his face to the door, there appeared, of all the creatures in the world to see alone at such a place and at such a time, a mere mite of a child — a little, lonely, wizen, strangely-clad boy, who could not at the most, have been more than five years old. He had a greasy old blue shawl crossed over his breast, and rolled up, to keep the ends from the ground, into a great big lump on his back. A strip of something which looked like the remains of a woman’s flannel petticoat, showed itself under the shawl, and, below that again, a pair of rusty black stockings, worlds too large for hi............