Classic Ghost Stories by Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, Charles Dickens and Others Read Free Book Online Page A

yet, Sir. I have never confused the spectre’s ring with the man’s. The ghost’s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don’t wonder that you failed to hear it. But I heard it.”
    â€œAnd did the spectre seem to be there when you looked out?”
    â€œIt was there.”
    â€œBoth times?”
    He repeated firmly: “Both times.”
    â€œWill you come to the door with me, and look for it now?”
    He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. There were the stars above them.
    â€œDo you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot.
    â€œNo,” he answered. “It is not there.”
    â€œAgreed,” said I.
    We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.
    â€œBy this time you will fully understand, Sir,” he said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre mean?”
    I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
    â€œWhat is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. “What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do?”
    He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead.
    â€œIf I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. “I should get into trouble and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work—Message: ‘Danger! Take care!’ Answer: ‘What Danger? Where’? Message: ‘Don’t know. But, for God’s sake, take care!’ They would displace me. What else could they do?”
    His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.
    â€œWhen it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident was to happen—if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted—if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signalman on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?”
    When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand