The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

And she looked away with brilliant eyes, into the dark holly bushes. She must see something, for she smiled faintly, with subtle satisfaction, and she tossed her erect head in all the pride of vindication. The policeman looked at her instead of into the bushes. There was a certain brilliance of triumph and vindication in all the poise of her slim body.

“I always knew I should see him,” she said triumphantly to herself.

“Whom do you see?” shouted the man in the bowler hat.

“Don’t you see him too?” she asked, turning round her soft, arch, nymph-like face anxiously. She was anxious for the little man to see.

“No, I see nothing. What do you see, James?” cried the man in the bowler hat, insisting.

“A man.”

“Where?”

“There. Among the holly bushes.”

“Is he there now?”

“No! He’s gone.”

“What sort of a man?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?”

“I can’t tell you.”

But at that instant the man in the bowler hat turned suddenly, and the arch, triumphant look flew to his face.

“Why he must be there!” he cried, pointing up the grove. “Don’t you hear him laughing? He must be behind those trees.”

And his voice, with curious delight, broke into a laugh again, as he stood and stamped his feet on the snow, and danced to his own laughter, ducking his head. Then he turned away and ran swiftly up the avenue lined with old trees.

He slowed down as a door at the end of a garden path, white with untouched snow, suddenly opened, and a woman in a long-fringed black shawl stood in the light. She peered out into the night. Then she came down to the low garden gate. Crumbs of snow still fell. She had dark hair and a tall dark comb.

“Did you knock at my door?” she asked of the man in the bowler hat.

“I? No!”

“Somebody knocked at my door.”

“Did they? Are you sure? They can’t have done. There are no footmarks in the snow.”

“Nor are there!” she said. “But somebody knocked and called something.”

“That’s very curious,” said the man. “Were you expecting someone?”

“No. Not exactly expecting anyone. Except that one is always expecting Somebody, you know.” In the dimness of the snow-lit night he could see her making big, dark eyes at him.

“Was it someone laughing?” he said.

“No. It was no one laughing, exactly. Some one knocked, and I ran to open, hoping as one always hopes, you know—”

“What?”

“Oh— that something wonderful is going to happen.”

He was standing close to the low gate. She stood on the opposite side. Her hair was dark, her face seemed dusky, as she looked up at him with her dark, meaningful eyes.

“Did you wish someone would come?” he asked.

“Very much,” she replied, in her plangent Jewish voice. She must be a Jewess.

“No matter who?” he said, laughing.

“So long as it was a man I could like,” she said in a low, meaningful, falsely shy voice.

“Really!” he said. “Perhaps after all it was I who knocked – without knowing.”

“I think it was,” she said. “It must have been.”

“Shall I come in?” he asked, putting his hand on the little gate.

“Don’t you think you’d better?” she replied.

He bent down, unlatching the gate. As he did so the woman in the black shawl turned, and, glancing over her shoulder, hurried back to the house, walking unevenly in the snow, on her high-heeled shoes. The man hurried after her, hastening like a hound to catch up.

Meanwhile the girl and the policeman had come up. The girl stood still when she saw the man in the bowler hat going up the garden walk after the woman in the black shawl with the fringe.

“Is he going in?” she asked quickly.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” said the policeman.

“Does he know that woman?”

“I can’t say. I should say he soon will,” replied the policeman.

“But who is she?”

“I couldn’t say who she is.”

The two dark, confused figures entered the lighted doorway, then the door closed on them.

“He’s gone,” said the girl outside on the snow. She hastily began to pull off the band of her telephone-receiver, and switched off her machine. The tubes of secret light disappeared, she packed up the little leather case. Then, pulling on her soft fur cap, she stood once more ready.

The slightly martial look which her long, dark-blue, military-seeming coat gave her was intensified, while the slightly anxious, bewildered look of her face had gone. She seemed to stretch herself, to stretch her limbs free. And the inert look had left her full soft cheeks. Her cheeks were alive with the glimmer of pride and a new dangerous surety.

She looked quickly at the tall young policeman. He was clean-shaven, fresh-faced, smiling oddly under his helmet, waiting in subtle patience a few yards away. She saw that he was a decent young man, one of the waiting sort.

The second of ancient fear was followed at once in her by a blithe, unaccustomed sense of power.

“Well!” she said. “I should say it’s no use waiting.” She spoke decisively.

“You don’t have to wait for him, do you?” asked the policeman.