“I knew Pinkerton would do it,” he exclaimed,
triumphantly, as he looked round at his admiring family;
but no sooner had he said these words than a terrible
flash of lightning lit up the sombre room, a fearful
peal of thunder made them all start to their feet,
and Mrs. Umney fainted.
“What a monstrous climate!” said the American
Minister, calmly, as he lit a long cheroot. “I
guess the old country is so overpopulated that they
have not enough decent weather for everybody.
I have always been of opinion that emigration is the
only thing for England.”
“My dear Hiram,” cried Mrs. Otis, “what
can we do with a woman who faints?”
“Charge it to her like breakages,” answered
the Minister; “she won’t faint after that;”
and in a few moments Mrs. Umney certainly came to.
There was no doubt, however, that she was extremely
upset, and she sternly warned Mr. Otis to beware of
some trouble coming to the house.
“I have seen things with my own eyes, sir,”
she said, “that would make any Christian’s
hair stand on end, and many and many a night I have
not closed my eyes in sleep for the awful things that
are done here.” Mr. Otis, however, and
his wife warmly assured the honest soul that they
were not afraid of ghosts, and, after invoking the
blessings of Providence on her new master and mistress,
and making arrangements for an increase of salary,
the old housekeeper tottered off to her own room.
The storm raged fiercely all that night, but nothing
of particular note occurred. The next morning,
however, when they came down to breakfast, they found
the terrible stain of blood once again on the floor.
“I don’t think it can be the fault of
the Paragon Detergent,” said Washington, “for
I have tried it with everything. It must be the
ghost.” He accordingly rubbed out the stain
a second time, but the second morning it appeared
again. The third morning also it was there, though
the library had been locked up at night by Mr. Otis
himself, and the key carried up-stairs. The whole
family were now quite interested; Mr. Otis began to
suspect that he had been too dogmatic in his denial
of the existence of ghosts, Mrs. Otis expressed her
intention of joining the Psychical Society, and Washington
prepared a long letter to Messrs. Myers and Podmore
on the subject of the Permanence of Sanguineous Stains
when connected with Crime. That night all doubts
about the objective existence of phantasmata were
removed for ever.
The day had been warm and sunny; and, in the cool
of the evening, the whole family went out to drive.
They did not return home till nine o’clock,
when they had a light supper. The conversation
in no way turned upon ghosts, so there were not even
those primary conditions of receptive expectations
which so often precede the presentation of psychical
phenomena. The subjects discussed, as I have since
learned from Mr. Otis, were merely such as form the
