Sidney Dickinson

“ The scaffold of the Melbourne jail is a permanent structure with several traps; and across [114] and above it runs a heavy beam, its ends fixed in the solid masonry of the walls, and the greater part of its length scarred and grooved by the chafing of the ropes which, from time to time, have given despatch to the souls of several hundred murderers. As I looked up at this fearsome tally-stick, I turned to the oldest warder of the jail, a man of nearly seventy years, who had been present at my interview with Deeming a few days before, and who now stood beside me. ”

“ It is somewhat disquieting, to be sure, when walking through the hall, to hear the bell above one's head break out in rattling clangor, and, looking through the wide-open front door, to perceive that no visible visitor was at the other end of the wire:—and in spite of many former experiences, we could not restrain ourselves from jumping in our seats when, at dinner, all the doors in the house would slam in rapid succession with a violence that set the dishes dancing on the board. ”

“ The figure began to fade away, as if reabsorbed in the light that enveloped it, but the voice came again as before:—"Go to your room and look in your bureau drawer!"—and only the sunlight was to be seen in the spot where the phantom had stood.
For some moments my wife remained reclining in her chair, completely overcome by her strange vision; then she got upon her feet, and half ran, half staggered, into the next room [33] where Mrs. Candler and her companion were still conversing.
"Why, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Candler, "what in the world is the matter? You are as pale as a ghost!" ”

“ I left them after a time, and went out for an after-dinner smoke on the back doorstep. I had hardly lighted my pipe when I heard a cry blended of two voices in the kitchen—a shriek from my wife, and a mildly profane ejaculation from our friend. Rushing in, I saw an astonishing sight—our friend, with staring eyes and [176] blanched face, supporting himself against the table as if staggered by a blow, my wife kneeling in front of the open iron door beneath the fireplace, and the baking pan and its dozen tomatoes lying before her on the floor! ”

“ The visitation had been so brief that my wife, although she at once arose and lighted the gas, argued with herself that she had been dreaming, and after a few minutes extinguished the light and returned to bed, where she slept soundly until six o'clock the next morning. Always an early riser, she dressed at once and went from her bedroom, where the child was still sleeping, to her parlor. In the centre of the room was a table, covered with a green cloth, and as she entered and happened to glance at it she saw, to her surprise, a number of dried flowers scattered over it. ”

“ I lighted my pipe as another means of affording the companionship that I somehow craved, and for an hour or so applied myself assiduously to the task in hand.
I was seated facing the window, my back to the open door that led into the hall. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, I heard behind me a long and dismal groan. "A-a-ah!"—thus it came; a woman's voice, apparently, and with an indescribable but certain accent in it of mental or physical pain. ”

“ I do not know what the emotions of other attendants on the trial may have been, but I remember my own mental attitude as one of distaste that my duties as a correspondent required my presence. To see one weak human being contending for his life against the organized and tremendous forces of the Law is always a pitiful and moving spectacle; in this case, with recollections of the repulsive incidents of the inquest in mind, one nerved oneself for some scene of desperation and horror. ”

“ Every tourist knows and has visited that beautiful memorial—so I do not need to describe its massive walls, its roof (now fallen and leaving the sepulchre open to the sky) and the heavy turf which covers the earth of its interior. This green carpet of Nature, when I visited the tomb, was thickly strewn with fragrant violets, and of these, as of the daisylike flowers I had found in Capri, I collected several, and placed them in my guide-book—this time Baedeker's "Central Italy." ”

“ But my wife opposed this grisly suggestion:—it was not the shade of the murderer, she affirmed, that had attacked her, although she could give no description of her assailants—they were dark, formless shapes—resembling neither man nor beast; things more felt than seen, even to her.
Yet in spite of this assurance, when I re-entered the house and saw in its usual place above my writing table the plaster mould which I had carried from the murderer's cell in the Melbourne jail, I recalled with a new appreciation of their appositeness the words of the worthy governor. ”

“ Now John Weiss steps out of the shadow into the moonlight; the horse sees him and stops—he rears up in the air and whirls about and begins to run back in the direction from which he came. The man on his back pulls him up, lashes him with his whip, turns him around, and tries to make him go forward. The horse is terrified and backs again, trying to break away from his rider; the man strikes him again, but he will not advance. ”

“ This point conceded, the question arose as to what particular section of the Colonies seemed to offer the most attractive opportunities. The bride-elect objected to New South Wales as being too near home (she had always been a home-body, and wished to see the world) ; Victoria, also, was not to her taste for some other feminine but conclusive reason; Western Australia had just begun to come into notice as likely to become one of the world's greatest gold-producers—there, it seemed to her, was the land of promise for a young and experienced mining-engineer. ”

“ So we went into the kitchen, where we found the table already laid for us.
"Before we sit down," said my wife, turning smilingly to our friend, "I am going to show you the treat you were so clever in guessing. But you are not to have it at once; that will come after the cold meat. The tomatoes are nice and hot, and I have put them in here to keep them from cooling too fast:"—and with these words she kneeled upon the floor and opened the iron door which shut in a wide but shallow cavity in the masonry that formed the base of the open fireplace. ”

“ It was my wife's delight to tempt our friend's appetite with all sorts of culinary novelties, which the new and more liberal order of things allowed her to prepare. With true British conservatism he would venture gingerly upon an unfamiliar dish, admit it "wasn't half bad," and end by eating as much of it as both of us others together. It was finally discovered that a particularly effective way of appeal to his nature was through the medium of baked stuffed tomatoes:—of these he seemed never to have enough, and, as a consequence, they were frequently upon our bill-of-fare during the summer. ”

“ I am not a believer, any more than I am a sceptic, in regard to so-called "Spiritualism," and have consistently held to my non-committal attitude in this matter by refraining, all my life, from consulting a medium or attending a professional séance. In the scientific study of Psychology I have a layman's interest, but even that is curious rather [6] than expectant;—my experience, which I think this book will show to have been considerable, in the observation of occult phenomena has failed to afford me anything like a positive clue to their causes or meaning. ”

“ And it is certainly true that he has a sort of fit about two o'clock every morning, and wakes up screaming and crying out that his mother is in the cell with him; and talks in a frightful, blood-curdling way to someone that nobody can see, and scares the death-watch half out of their wits. ”

“ Taken to her hotel and revived with difficulty, she told her sensational story, with which the newspapers of the whole country were filled next day; then, broken and trembling, she returned to her home, there to remain until summoned again to Melbourne to give her testimony at the trial which took place a month later.
Most strangely had it happened that by her unwitting influence the criminal career of Frederick Bailey Deeming had been brought to an end. Had she consented to live, after her anticipated marriage, in New South Wales or Victoria, he might never have been apprehended. ”

“ The hearth-stone was wrenched from its place, and in the hollow space beneath, encased in cement, knees trussed up to chin and bound with cords, lay the body of a young woman—nude save for the mantle of luxuriant dark hair that partly shrouded her, and with her throat cut from ear to ear. ”

“ Much as has been attributed to the influence of fear, I believe curiosity to be the stronger passion; and few days passed without a fillip being given to our interest by some new absurdity, while events of graver suggestion were few and far between.
I need not say that the affair which had been most sinister and disquieting was the coming to my wife of the evident apparition of Deeming. ”

“ The little girl was passionately fond of flowers, and her indulgent grandfather, himself a zealous horticulturist and grower of choice fruits, had that summer allotted to her sole use a plot six feet square in his spacious gardens, which became the pride of her heart from the brilliant array of blooms which she had coaxed to grow in it. Her favorite flowers were pansies, with the seeds of which she had planted nearly one-half of the space at her disposal. ”

“ The suburb of Windsor enjoyed its share in this evidence of prosperity, and sanguine speculators, viewing through the glasses of a happy optimism a rush of new inhabitants to the fortunate city, erected in gleeful haste a multitude of dwellings for their purchase and occupancy. ”

“ In fact, I have long ago arrived at the opinion that any one who devotes himself to the study of what, for want of a better word, we may call "supernatural" will inevitably and at last find himself landed in an impasse. ”

“ There was something so personal and intimate in these mid-day visits of the apparition, it was itself so seemingly tangible and even human, and in its expressions of thought and manifestations of emotion seemed to have experienced so slight an essential change from the conditions with which the living man had been acquainted, that there was little to excite horror in the event, after all. ”

“ Science, to be sure, has its explanation, and in fairness that explanation should be heard. To quote an eminent authority who has favored me with his views on the subject:—"The power that moved the pansies was a psychic force inherent in the human personality [of your wife] and exercised without the knowledge or cooperation of the objective self." ”

“ Reaching nearly to the window was the slanting roof, formed by heavy plate glass, of the conservatory, which opened from the dining-room on the lower floor—and in the snow which covered this was a furrow which indicated that someone had by this means allowed himself to slide from the second story to the ground. Further investigation below showed, by the tell-tale marks in the snow, that the person who had thus escaped from the house, and who, after gliding down the glass roof of the conservatory, had fallen sprawling under it, had lost no time in picking himself up, and making good his escape. ”