The two friends laughed gaily.
‘That’s what we want to know,’ Hugh Curtis chuckled. ‘That’s why we called you: we thought you could help us.’
‘They’re Mr. Munt’s right enough,’ muttered the butler. ‘They must have got something heavy inside.’
‘Damned heavy,’ said Valentine, playfully grim.
Fascinated, the three men stared at the upturned soles, so close together that there was no room between for two thumbs set side by side.
Rather gingerly the butler stooped again, and tried to feel the uppers. This was not as easy as it seemed, for the shoes were flattened against the floor, as if a weight had pressed them down.
His face was white as he stood up.
‘There is something in them,’ he said in a frightened voice.
‘And his shoes were full of feet,’ carolled Valentine flippantly. ‘Trees, perhaps.’
‘It was not as hard as wood,’ said the butler. ‘You can squeeze it a bit if you try.’
They looked at each other, and a tension made itself felt in the room.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ declared Hugh Curtis suddenly, in a determined tone one could never have expected from him.
‘How?’
‘Take them off.’
‘Take what off?’
‘His shoes off, you idiot.’
‘Off what?’
‘That’s what I don’t know yet, you bloody fool!’ Curtis almost screamed; and kneeling down, he tore apart the laces and began tugging and wrenching at one of the shoes.
‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’ he cried. ‘Valentine, put your arms around me and pull, that’s a good fellow. It’s the heel that’s giving the trouble.’
Suddenly the shoe slipped off.
‘Why, it’s only a sock,’ whispered Valentine; ‘it’s so thin.’
‘Yes, but the foot’s inside it all right,’ cried Curtis in a loud strange voice, speaking very rapidly. ‘And here’s the ankle, see, and here’s where it begins to go down into the floor, see; he must have been a very small man; you see I never saw him, but it’s all so crushed—’
The sound of a heavy fall made them turn.
Franklin had fainted.
FEET FOREMOST
The house-warming at Low Threshold Hall was not an event that affected many people. The local newspaper, however, had half a column about it, and one or two daily papers supplemented the usual August dearth of topics with pictures of the house. They were all taken from the same angle, and showed a long, low building in the Queen Anne style flowing away from a square tower on the left which was castellated and obviously of much earlier date, the whole structure giving somewhat the impression to a casual glance of a domesticated church, or even of a small railway train that had stopped dead on finding itself in a park. Beneath the photograph was written something like ‘Suffolk Manor House re-occupied after a hundred and fifty years,’ and, in one instance, ‘Inset, (L.) Mr. Charles Ampleforth, owner of Low Threshold Hall; (R.) Sir George Willings, the architect responsible for the restoration of this interesting mediaeval relic’ Mr. Ampleforth’s handsome, slightly Disraelian head, nearly spiked on his own flagpole, smiled congratulations at the grey hair and rounded features of Sir George Willings who, suspended like a bubble above the Queen Anne wing, discreetly smiled back.
To judge from the photograph, time had dealt gently with Low Threshold Hall. Only a trained observer could have told how much of the original fabric had been renewed. The tower looked particularly convincing. While as for the gardens sloping down to the stream which bounded the foreground of the picture—they had that old-world air which gardens so quickly acquire. To see those lush lawns and borders as a meadow, that mellow brickwork under scaffolding, needed a strong effort of the imagination.
But the guests assembled in Mr. Ampleforth’s drawing-room after dinner and listening to their host as, not for the first time, he enlarged upon the obstacles faced and overcome in the work of restoration, found it just as hard to believe that the house was old. Most of them had been taken to see it, at one time or another, in process of reconstruction; yet even within a few days of its completion, how unfinished a house looks! Its habitability seems determined in the last few hours. Magdalen Winthrop, whose beautiful, expressive face still (to her hostess’ sentimental eye) bore traces of the slight disappointment she had suffered earlier in the evening, felt as if she were in an Aladdin’s palace. Her glance wandered appreciatively from the Samarcand rugs to the pale green walls, and dwelt with pleasure on the high shallow arch, flanked by slender columns, the delicate lines of which were emphasized by the darkness of the hall behind them. It all seemed so perfect and so new; not only every sign of decay but the very sense of age had been banished. How absurd not to be able to find a single grey hair, so to speak, in a house that had stood empty for a hundred and fifty years! Her eyes, still puzzled, came to rest on the company, ranged in an irregular circle round the open fireplace.
‘What’s the matter, Maggie?’ said a man at her side, obviously glad to turn the conversation away from bricks and mortar. ‘Looking for something?’
Mrs. Ampleforth, whose still lovely skin under the abundant white hair made her face look like a rose in snow, bent forward over the cream-coloured satin bedspread she was embroidering and smiled. ‘I was only thinking,’ said Maggie, turning to her host whose recital had paused but not died upon his lips, ‘how surprised the owls and bats would be if they could come in and see the change in their old home.’
‘Oh, I do hope they won’t,’ cried a high female voice from the depths of a chair whose generous proportions obscured the speaker.
‘Don’t be such a baby, Eileen,’ said Maggie’s neighbour in tones that only a husband could have used. ‘Wait till you see the family ghost.’
‘Ronald, please! Have pity on my poor nerves!’ The upper half of a tiny, childish, imploring face peered like a crescent moon over the rim of the chair.
‘If there is a ghost,’ said Maggie, afraid that her original remark might be construed as a criticism, ‘I envy him his beautiful surroundings. I would willingly take his place.’
‘Hear, hear,’ agreed Ronald. ‘A very happy haunting-ground. Is there a ghost, Charles?’
There was a pause. They all looked at their host.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, who rarely spoke except after a pause and never without a slight impressiveness of manner, ‘there is and there isn’t.
The silence grew even more respectful.
‘The ghost of Low Threshold Hall,’ Mr. Ampleforth continued, ‘is no ordinary ghost.’
‘It wouldn’t be,’ muttered Ronald in an aside Maggie feared might be audible.
‘It is, for one thing,’ Mr. Ampleforth pursued, ‘exceedingly considerate.’
‘Oh, how?’ exclaimed two or three voices.
‘It only comes by invitation.’
‘Can anyone invite it?’
‘Yes, anyone.’
There was nothing Mr. Ampleforth liked better than answering questions; he was evidently enjoying himself now.
‘How is the invitation delivered?’ Ronald asked. ‘Does one telephone, or does one send a card: “Mrs. Ampleforth requests the pleasure of Mr. Ghost’s company on—well—what is to-morrow?—the eighteenth August, Moaning and Groaning and Chain Rattling. R.S.V.P.”?’
‘That would be a sad solecism,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘The ghost of Low Threshold Hall is a lady.’
‘Oh,’ cried Eileen’s affected little voice. ‘I’m so thankful. I should be less frightened of a female phantom.’
‘She hasn’t attained years of discretion,’ Mr. Ampleforth said. ‘She was only sixteen when—’