The Manifestations in Mincing Lane

“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “the manifestations of the Cock Lane Ghost were a nine-days’ wonder; and so may this be.”

He gave me the letter that he had been reading. The boy who had brought it waited stolidly by the door.

Writ in a sprawling hand on a yellowing scrap of old laid paper, I read:

SIR,

One who was an admiring Spectator, when Dr. Johnson interviewed the Cock Lane Ghost, makes bold, to recommend to his Consideration the Plight of Mr. Gudgeon, the worthy Sexton of All Hallows Staining. Mr. Gudgeon’s Daughter, an estimable and pious young Lady, has suffered considerable Distress of Mind, in Consequence of the Activities of such a rapping Spirit as infested Cock Lane. Mr. Gudgeon would take it very kindly if Dr. Johnson would look into the Matter; as would also,

Sir,

Your obliged humble Servant,

illegible scrawl

I looked up from the paper.

“Is this a jest?” I enquired.

“Not so,” replied Dr. Johnson. “My illegible friend is the Rector of All Hallows Staining, a most respectable man. If he says Scratching Fanny is walking again, ’tis so.”

We were sitting together, as we so often did, over our wonted table at the Mitre Tavern. The business of dining was happily over, and we were taking our ease in the smoky wainscotted room. ’Twas in the autumn of 1769. My distinguished friend was then in the full plenitude of his powers, and I longed to see his giant intellect grapple with those problems of the other world which held so powerful a fascination for his philosophical spirit of enquiry, as for my more volatile curiosity.

I glanced at the sleepy-looking boy, waiting for his answer, and read off the reverend Rector’s postscriptum.

“P. S. Mr. Gudgeon resides in Mincing Lane by Clothworkers’ Hall.”

“Come, then,” I cried eagerly, “let us call on the good sexton in Mincing Lane.”

“I am very well where I am,” returned my learned friend lazily.

“Parson bade me say,” said the stolid boy, “Miss did see a napparition last night a-floating in the air. So Gudgeon says, he bade me say.”

“An apparition!” cried my curious friend, rising. “Floating in the air! Why, this is an improvement over Cock Lane!”

I seized the moment.

“Run, boy,” I said, “and say that we will come down to Mincing Lane directly.”

My learned friend surveyed the house in Mincing Lane, a beetling dark half-timbered old place, perhaps a couple of centuries old.

“This is a most proper site,” said he, “for a haunting. I’ll lay a little the old place has a history.”

“It may be,” said I; “but do you then credit the reverend gentleman’s story?”

“Sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “I credit that the young woman believes in her apparitions; and I hold that in just such a house an hysterical miss may most likely give way to her fancies.”

He rapped smartly on the nearest door. The door was opened a crack, and a lowering, bottle-nosed, pock-scarred visage peered at us through the aperture.

“Mr. Gudgeon?” enquired Dr. Johnson affably.

A red-rimmed eye blinked suspiciously. The bald red head jerked.

“Next door,” said the surly creature, to my surprize in accents of breeding.

“Pray excuse a stranger,” began Dr. Johnson courteously, but his polite inclination was met by the slamming of the door.

We then perceived that the broad dark front of the old dwelling presented to the street two similar doors, side by side, and we hastened to announce our arrival by a sounding summons at the second door. This time the door was set wide for us, and we were greeted by a broad motherly woman in a brown stuff gown. About her feet clung a pair of babies in leading strings, a sulky little boy and a most exquisite Fragonard of a little girl. In the sunlight their hair gleamed like spun raw silk, the woman’s like tow. The woman identified herself as Mrs. Gudgeon. She was contemptuous when we disclosed our errand.

“Mally? The silly chit has a touch of the mother, naught else, believe me. I’d take the besom to her, were she mine. Lying in her bed the live-long day, and the best bed in the house she must have, too, and never lifting a finger to the housework, because, forsooth, she sees things! Sulky and pouty as she’s been these three weeks past, since we sent off young George Tucker the carpenter’s boy—mark me, ’tis all one of her tricks. Sir, if you’re a clergyman or one of them learned doctors you’ll be doing your Christian duty if you bring down the hussy’s pride a little and make her see reason. Spectres indeed! I’m fair disgusted with her fits and her folly. Ah, well, thank God she’s none of mine! The first Mrs. Gudgeon was a fool, and Gudgeon’s no better. This way, sir.”

Sweeping the two babes before her, the muttering woman led us up a narrow pair of stairs and past a closed door to where another heavy dark doorway led into the back room of the old house. Without knocking, the woman burst through the door and abruptly addressed a figure half hidden in the curtains of a massive bed.

“Come, then, Mally, leave off your snivelling and attend, for here’s Dr. Johnson come to show you your duty and do you good.—No, precious, wait for Mother in the passage, your sister Mally’s a bad girl and not fitten to be spoke to.—Mally! Did you hear me?”

The girl on the bed lifted her long dark lashes from her white cheeks for a flash of time, then veiled her eyes again. She was no more than fifteen, slim and undeveloped, with a round pale childish face and a small colourless mouth. She lay on the pillow in a cloud of soft dark hair.

As we gazed at the expressionless face, a long lank figure unfolded itself from a low chair on the other side of the bed. This was Gudgeon, the sexton of the old church of All Hallows Staining. The man was all run to bone. His dangling hands were enormous. His stooped and cadaverous figure towered above the sturdy height of my learned friend. His long bony countenance surmounted a great knob of an Adam’s apple, and was crowned with lanky unkempt locks of long dusty black hair.

“Let the lass be,” he said in a rumbling bass.

“Let her give over her sojering, then,” said his wife pettishly, and flounced out of the room.

I looked about the gloomy chamber. It was panelled in walnut, and had been fine in its day. The little thick leaded panes of the window gave upon a wide court and thence on the churchyard of All Hallows Staining; but only a trickle of dusty light came through. The room was sparsely furnished with a flimsy chest and a chair or two, and dominated by the great brass-bound bedstead sailing like a barge on the worn bare floor, canopied meanly in scanty homespun curtains.

“Your servant, Dr. Johnson,” said Gudgeon. “I’m grateful to you, sir, for coming, for I’m concerned for my girl.” His bony hand smoothed the coverlet gently.

“Why, sir,” returned Dr. Johnson kindly, “if Mally’s a good girl and says her prayers with attention, I’m sure she has naught to fear, she’ll have no more dreams.”

“Yes, sir,” said the girl Mally meekly. “Please, sir, they wasn’t dreams.”

“Of course they were, my child,” Dr. Johnson assured her. “You are to tell me, my dear, what have you been dreaming?”

The child’s lip quivered. Gudgeon began the story for her.

“’Tis now two nights gone,” he said, “that my girl woke us all with screaming and crying, and when we came to her she swore that she’d heard the spirits rapping at her bed head and moaning and mumbling and trying to tell her something. She was fair beside herself, screaming and crying that she’d lie in that room no more.”

“Now I find,” said Dr. Johnson, “that the child has sense. Let her lie elsewhere and she’ll lie in peace.”

“’Tis not so easy done, sir,” rejoined Gudgeon. “Our gear is but scant, and there’s no bed for Mally but this one.”

“Let it be moved, then.”

“’Tis fixed where it is, and so we found it when we moved here last year. The little tykes lie with us in front, and my sister on a pallet by the kitchen fire. No, sir, Mally must still lie here and conquer her dreams.”

“Well, sir, and so Mally lay in this chamber again last night.”

“Ay, and ’twas worse than before. Last night she saw It.”

“What did you see, my dear?”

The child’s eyelids flickered up.

“It was in the air,” she said. “The wall melted, and It was in the air.”

“What was in the air?”

“It held a corpse-candle before It,” whispered Mally. “It was in Its shroud, and I could see Its face all white, all but the finger-marks. There was a screech, and I opened my eyes, and there It was in the air.”

“Then what did It do?” asked Dr. Johnson gently.

“Then It came down and walked on the floor, and It bent over me.” The small voice died dry in the child’s throat. The frightened eyes closed.

“Then she cried out,” Gudgeon finished the tale, “and I bundled on my night-gown and came to her, and stayed by her the same as the night before.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“Naught at all. Come morning I told Rector, and he said ’twas the same like Cock Lane, and so he was so good as to send to you, sir, and I beg you’ll study this out.”

“Sir, I’ll do so.” Dr. Johnson prowled about the room, knocking and tapping on the wainscot.

“Hark,” he said, “hear how hollow the panelling sounds over against the other room, and how thick where the house wall gives on the garden.” He sounded the side walls. Behind the bed the wall was thick; but opposite, the panelling resounded hollowly.

“This is no house wall,” said he, looking questioningly at Gudgeon.

“That is so, sir,” replied Gudgeon, “’tis but a partition, for we dwell in but half a house, and Mr. Harkebus the surgeon has the other half. But come, sir, let us leave the lass to rest.”

He led us to a lower room, where his buxom wife sat plying her needle. Beside the fire sat a gaunt woman, so bony and long that I knew her at once for Gudgeon’s sister. Her skinny fingers impelled her knitting needles in jerks. She bobbed her head at us, but said nothing.

“Well, sir,” said the wife crisply, “I hope you have spoke seriously to Mally and made her see her duty.”

“She’ll never sleep again,” said the thin woman abruptly. Her voice was deep and hollow, like a tired man’s. “She’ll never sleep again till the ghost is laid that haunts this house.”

Dr. Johnson looked at the craggy features attentively.

“What ghost, ma’am?”

“There’s more than one ghost could haunt this house,” muttered she.

“The house has a history, then?”

The woman made no reply. Gudgeon answered for her.

“’Twas from this house that the Master of the Cloth-workers’ Company was led, and with him the priest he was harbouring, in the troubled times of Elizabeth. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.”

The gaunt woman gave a snort.

“’Tis never him,” she asserted, “for the spectre Mall saw was all in one piece.” Dr. Johnson looked surprized at this specimen of close metaphysical reasoning.

“The Clothworkers sold the house,” continued Gudgeon, “though their hall is so close at hand; but he who bought it fared no better. ’Twas gutted in the great fire; he refurbished the shell, and built the second door and turned it into two houses, as part of his daughter’s portion; but in the end they say the same daughter’s husband was the death of him, and the house got a bad name. In my memory, in the years I’ve lived hereabouts as sexton of All Hallows Staining, it has been let to a parcel of riff-raff.”

“Riff-raff indeed,” snorted the buxom wife, “and in my opinion that Harkebus is the worst with his wine-bibber’s nose and his anatomies. Depend upon it, if the house is haunted indeed, you may thank Mr. Harkebus and his body-snatchers.”

“There was another,” said the thin sister in her hollow voice, “brought up from the river in the same basket, not above two days since. Drowned he was, and now Harkebus has got him.”

“You see!” said Mrs. Gudgeon, and bit off an end of thread.

“’Tis never him,” said the gaunt woman, “though I grant them that’s drowned do walk. But this is never him—’cause why? ’Cause this one is dry and in his shroud, ’stead of coming a-dripping and all over seaweed. The drowned anatomy will haunt Mr. Harkebus, as like as not. He’ll haunt him in the garret where he cuts them up, he will, dripping river-water and river-weed.”

“Hold your tongue, Pall,” said Gudgeon sharply.

“I hope,” said Dr. Johnson seriously, “that Miss Gudgeon does not talk in this strain to Miss Mally.”

“Oh, don’t she, though,” exclaimed Mrs. Gudgeon, adding not quite under her breath, “Old crow!”

“I know,” exclaimed Miss Gudgeon, her voice rising to a rusty screech, “I know who lived in this house in his prosperity, ay and Mally’s sleeping in his very bed. I know who lived in this house till they hanged him.”

“This sort of thing,” frowned Dr. Johnson, “must be powerfully unsettling for the child.”

“Who, Miss Gudgeon?” I asked eagerly, unable to restrain my curiosity. “Who lived here till they hanged him?”

“Ah!” said Miss Gudgeon. She beckoned me mysteriously to a tall press that stood in the corner. Scrabbling in rags, she drew forth an untidy, much-thumbed pile of broadsheets. Lugging them to the fire-light, she squatted awkwardly down beside them and began to turn them over. Dr. Johnson peered over her shoulder, and chuckled.

“Why,” said he, “my friend Thomas Percy should see these broadsheets. He’d call them treasure trove, and make them into a fourth volume of reliques of ancient poetry. The Diceys, eh? Why, these are great specimens of their art. What’s this? A ballad! A True and Perfect Relation from the Faulcon at the Bankeside: of the strange and wonderful aperition of one Mr. Powel a Baker lately deceased, and of his appearing in several shapes, both at Noon-day and at night, with the several speeches which past between the spirit of Mr Powel and his maid Jone and divers Learned men who went to alay him and the manner of his appearing to them in the Garden upon their making a circle, and burning of wax Candels and Jenniper wood, lastly how it vanished. Small wonder Mally sees things in shrouds! What would you have us do, Miss Gudgeon? Make a circle and burn jenniper wood?”

Miss Gudgeon tossed her head, and went on turning over the coarse grey paper of the broadsheets. I picked up one at random: A Terrible and True Relation of one Melcher a Cut-purse who being taken at his Trade, for the which he was hanged at Tyburn, was expeditiously cut down and conveyed thence by his Friends; and being by GOD’s Mercy restor’d, doth to this day ply the trade of a WATERMAN, a very notable example of GOD’s just Judgements. 1661. God save the King.

“God save Melcher!” I added, laughing heartily.

Dr. Johnson scanned the crude rhymes of Melcher’s recrudescence, as Miss Gudgeon with a triumphant nod and a cadaverous smile handed me still another ballad. I read out the title:

“An Account of the notorious High-way-man, Viz. WHITE WILL by Name; with his Compact with the Devil, in token whereof he was mark’d with the Divil’s Fingers, as many can attest; his Robberies on the Great North Road; his Scheam to commence Gentleman beyond the seas; with the manner of his taking, and how he was turned off at Tyburn, and his last dying Words of Repentance. 1768.”

“Last dying words of repentance!” said Gudgeon contemptuously. “I saw him turned off. He never said a word. Jack Ketch was in a hurry, and turned him off and bundled him away to the indignation of the holiday-makers.”

“Ah,” said Miss Gudgeon. “White Will! ’Twas here in this very house he set up for a gentleman before they took him; and many’s the time I’ve seen him at All Hallows Staining, wearing his Mechlin lace and a ring on his thumb.”

“Indeed, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, wearying of the subject. “Well, Mr. Gudgeon, as to the strange manifestations in the back room—”

“The house is haunted,” cried Miss Gudgeon, breaking in, “and ’tis White Will that haunts it. My niece has seen him plainly.” She held a bony finger on the margin of the ballad and nodded triumphantly. I read out the stanza she indicated:

“He was prenticed to the Devil

Which same doth appear,

The Devil’s claws upon his cheek

In scarlet doth appear

The which with daubs of white clay

He made to disapear.”

“A fustian verse,” cried the learned critick in disgust.

“Nevertheless it was so,” insisted Miss Gudgeon, “and my niece saw him walking in his shroud, with his face all white, except for the marks of fingers.”

“Why, so she did,” said Gudgeon slowly.

Even Dr. Johnson looked impressed.

“Well, well, Miss Gudgeon,” he said thoughtfully, “if you dwelt upon this knight of the road and his fate in your niece’s presence, perhaps all is explained. Nevertheless, I would ask the privilege of watching tonight in Miss Mally’s room, with my astute friend Mr. Boswell, to ascertain whether White Will will submit himself to philosophick scrutiny or no.”

“I’ll watch with you,” cried Miss Gudgeon.

“And I,” said Mrs. Gudgeon; “you will have need of a person of sense about you.”

“Why, ’tis better so,” assented Dr. Johnson, much to my surprize. “Do you join our wake too, Mr. Gudgeon; and pray, could not you perswade your neighbour the surgeon to make one? Say to him that we desire the presence of a medical man.”

“I will try,” replied Gudgeon, “but indeed his temper is uncertain, and I cannot vouch for him.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Harkebus readily consented to make one; we found him drinking hot tea by the fire when we returned to Mincing Lane after supper. Miss Gudgeon was embroidering her theory of the apparition’s identity into his inattentive ear.

“Yes, yes, you may be right, ma’am,” said Mr. Harkebus absently, eating bread-and-butter. His hot red eye was sardonick. Portly Mrs. Gudgeon regarded him with aversion.

“Pray, ladies,” said Dr. Johnson, “do you be so kind as to repair to the child’s chamber and see that all is ready for the night. Be particular to search the child and the bedstead and make sure that she has no way of producing these noises by mechanical means.”

“You may count upon me,” replied Mrs. Gudgeon grimly. “The chit shan’t diddle me, you may be sure.”

Dr. Johnson shook his head as the two women mounted the stair with determined tread.

“I hope for the child’s sake,” he observed to me in a low tone, “that these manifestations are indeed of supernatural origin, and not a wilful freak of her own. ’Twill go hard with her if she is caught out by her stepmother.”

“Think you the child is mad?” I murmured in reply.

“Perhaps rather the bony spinster. The events of the night will show,” replied my philosophical friend. “If ’tis the step-mother, there’s method in it.”

Upon summons from above, we men mounted the creaking stair and solemnly took our places in a circle of chairs about the bed. The white-faced child lay wide-eyed in the middle of the great bed. It was the watchers who drowsed as the silent minutes passed. The dark-panelled walls seemed to advance and recede into darkness as somnolence overtook me in that silent circle; when suddenly the silence was broken by a sharp triple knock, thrice repeated. The child moaned; someone in the circle drew in a sibilant breath. Sitting beside the bed, Dr. Johnson reached for Mally’s hand.

“Bozzy,” he said to me in a low voice across the bed, “take the child’s hand in yours; and let every one of us stretch out his hands to his neighbours.”

I took Mally’s small cold hand in mine, and accepted in the other palm the bony fingers of Miss Gudgeon. The darkness was intense. Dr. Johnson called our names around the circle. Unless two sitting together lied in concert, we now knew that Dr. Johnson, Mr. Harkebus, Mrs. Gudgeon, Gudgeon, his sister, and I sat finger to finger in the darkened room, with the moaning girl in the bed closing the circle. The triple raps came again, more insistent.

“This is no trickery,” muttered Mr. Harkebus hoarsely.

“’Tis an unquiet spirit,” said the hollow voice of Miss Gudgeon. “We must alay it.”

“We must speak to it,” said Mr. Harkebus, “and ’twill answer by rapping. ’Twas so in Cock Lane.”

“Why, then, I will speak to it,” said Dr. Johnson sturdily, “and let it make answer, rapping once for yes and twice for no.”

“Once for yes and twice for no,” repeated the surgeon in as firm a voice. “So be it. You shall speak first, Dr. Johnson.”

“Then say,” cried Dr. Johnson in an awful voice, “whether you be a human thing?”

In the tense silence a single rap sounded. Miss Gudgeon’s bony fingers tensed in mine. Her words came in a rush.

“Whether you be—” her voice stuck in her throat—“White Will?” My scalp prickled at the awful import of her question, and the chill ran down my spine in flakes as the single sharp rap answered Yes.

I wet my lips with my tongue. No power in earth or heaven could have kept me from asking the question I had so often posed in vain. I gasped it out as if I had been running:

“Whether you seek our prayers?”

The two raps came immediately, quick and negligent. I felt rebuked, and enquired no further.

“Then what do you seek?” asked Gudgeon in his deep tones. A perfect volley of raps seemed to echo from every corner of the darkened room.

“We must ask according to the method,” said Dr. Johnson, “as thus: is something to be done by us, or by one of us?” The single rap was almost crisp in reply.

“Which of us?” whispered Mrs. Gudgeon, so far drawn in that she no longer scoffed at Mally’s spectre. A sharp rap sounded.

“It said Yes,” murmured the rigid spinster. “Yes to what?”

“Perhaps,” suggested the surgeon, “Mrs. Gudgeon is to do something.” There was an encouraging knock.

“Alone?—Oh, I couldn’t,” gasped the frightened matron. Two negative knocks cut her off.

“Not alone,” interpreted Mr. Harkebus. “With Gudgeon?” Rap. “And Miss Gudgeon?” Rap. “And Miss Mally?” Rap. “And Dr. Johnson?” Rap. Rap. “And Mr. Boswell?” Raprap.

“And,” added Dr. Johnson, “Mr. Harkebus?” Rap … rap.

“So,” said the surgeon, “it is something all who dwell in this house must do to alay the spectre of White Will. What must they do—leave it?” There was a tremendous heavy rap, and then a long silence.

“Why,” says Gudgeon heavily at last, “how can I do that? Where can I go?” There were no more rappings, but suddenly the charged silence was broken by a series of low moans, that rose in a crescendo to a blood-curdling wail, and then broke off in the horrible gasps of a man strangling in a noose.

“Indeed, Gudgeon, I’ll not live in this house another night,” cried his wife in terror. “You may e’en pack my boxes in the morning, for with you or without you, out I go before another night falls.”

“Look to the child,” cried Dr. Johnson, “she can stand no more.”

He struck a light. The ladies hastened to burn a feather under the unconscious child’s nose, and in the flurry to fetch hartshorn and a hot brick for the feet the first horror of the night’s experience passed. Dr. Johnson was firm that the house must be emptied before the next day’s twilight. Just as firmly he stipulated that the child was not to be left alone until she could be moved from the house altogether. He drank early tea by her bedside, and had the satisfaction of seeing her fall into a natural sleep before he left her.

We came out of the house into the sunrise, and took leave of Dr. Harkebus on the step. He looked redder than ever in the dawn light; but for the events of the night he had the most respectably philosophical open mind.

“I am perswaded, sir,” said he, “that this is no trickery, but a genuine communication; and I hold that in obeying the behest of the rapping spirit Gudgeon shows the truest regard for the welfare of all.”

“It is strange,” mused Dr. Johnson, “that you were never disturbed by the rappings.”

“Nay, sir, they could have no meaning for me, because White Will was never a tenant on this side. I have lived here for many years.”

“You may be right, sir,” said Dr. Johnson. “Well, I wish you good morning and good repose.”

The portly old man bowed with what grace he could muster, and entered his house.

“’Tis a gentle body-snatcher,” said I as we strolled along, “and a well-instructed one. But who is this disarrayed youth who seems bent on accosting us?”

The lad in question was a well-made tall-standing youth in the blue apron of an apprentice, and he barred our way at the mouth of Mincing Lane.

“What has gone wrong with Mally Gudgeon,” he cried, “that the whole medical fraternity must watch with her till morning?”

“So, George Tucker,” cries Dr. Johnson, “you spy on Mally Gudgeon.”

“Call it what you will, she needs watching over,” replied the lad with spirit. “What has the old witch done to her?”

“Miss Gudgeon?” enquired I.

“Miss Gudgeon is our friend. Not Miss Gudgeon; the step-mother, the cold fish who hates her, the enemy that parted us when we were as good as wed, for lack of ten pounds to buy my indenture with. What has happened to Mally?”

“Walk along with us,” said Dr. Johnson. “Mally is well, and she is in no danger. But if you have a hammer and nails you may do Mally a service tonight.”

“I’ll do it with all my heart.”

“Then bring them under cover of darkness, and a stout crow to boot, to Mally’s chamber. Come around by Fenchurch Street and take care that nobody marks you. I will engage that the door shall be unlocked. You must steal in quietly as soon as you shall see Gudgeon and his women-folk depart.”

“I will be there,” promised the carpenter’s apprentice.

As dusk was falling Dr. Johnson and I put Mally Gudgeon and her relatives into a coach and saw them off for their new lodgings. Then we strolled without hurry around the corner into Fenchurch Street, where George Tucker joined us with his tools wrapped in a blue cloth; and so we slipped into the churchyard of All Hallows Staining. Tucker looked uneasily about him, and seemed as if he mightily wished to cross himself, if truth were known, and so did I too; but Dr. Johnson led the way without faltering. I gave him a leg up, and he got his decent brown small-cloathes easily over the wall, and so we slipped into the deserted house by the back passage, and bolted the door behind us.

It took all my friend’s intrepidity to hearten me as we stole noiselessly into the haunted room and huddled against the wall in the dark. We sat so without moving for hours, it seemed, while the chimes of All Hallows told the quarters, and my knees prickled because they were asleep and my spine prickled because I was afraid. But nothing rapped, and nothing cried out in the night like a man being hanged. I was beginning to think that we had exorcised the spirit after all, and my eyelids were drooping shut, when there was a screeching sound like a rat in the wainscot, and when I opened my eyes the wall had melted, and It was standing in the air above the level of my eyes. It was swathed in something whitish. It held a corpse-candle in its hand, and I could see its eyes glitter, and the marks of three red fingers stretching along the cheek from the ear. Then it came down and walked on the floor, and bent over the bed, and I heard a rending sound like body-snatchers riving open a coffin. My tongue clove to my palate, and my head swam.

“Ego te exorciso!” cried Dr. Johnson suddenly in a sonorous voice. The ghostly apparition stiffened by the bed.

“Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,” intoned my intrepid friend appropriately, “non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu …”

The white-robed figure was gone. I saw this time how it went through the wall and up the stair, and the panel shut behind it with a squeak like a rat in a wainscot.

“Quick, George,” cried Dr. Johnson, making a light, “the hammer and nails.”

To my utter astonishment the sturdy carpenter lad proceeded to nail the panel shut and brace it with timbers laid crosswise.

“Sir, sir,” I cried, “will you not pursue the marauder?”

“I will not,” replied Dr. Johnson. “The unfortunate creature has been hanged once; let that suffice.”

George knocked the last nail in place, and none too soon, for there was a mighty wrenching at the other side of the panel, and muffled voices raised in anger.

“Now, my lad,” said Dr. Johnson, “let us detimbrify this accursed bed, and lay the spectre for good and all.”

“Alas,” cried the carpenter’s boy in professional dismay, “’tis a shame of so stout a bed!—all of solid oak, and bound with brass besides!”

“’Twill not be so difficult,” returned Dr. Johnson. “See, the spectre has made a start.”

He pointed to a breach in the edge, where the side had been forced away. George inserted his crow and pulled mightily. The panel came away with a rending sound.

“Let us see,” cried Dr. Johnson, directing the light, “what’s within this brass-bound chest.”

“’Tis only a spare feather-bed,” said the carpenter’s apprentice.

“An odd place to store an old feather-bed,” mused I, “while the sleeper lies cold above.”

“Pull it out,” said Dr. Johnson.

George and I seized each an end, and tugged. The thing was heavy. With a heave it came out onto the floor, clinking as it came.

“Rip it up, my lad,” cried Dr. Johnson, “’tis Mally’s dowry, or I much mistake.”

George wielded his case-knife, and cried out as he saw the golden guineas among the drift of feathers. He counted them swiftly.

“Sixty-nine—ninety—one hundred and seventeen—’tis a fortune! Pray, Dr. Johnson, how came this money here? Whose is it? Is it Mally’s?”

“’Tis ours, George, we found it,” replied my upright friend. “But were you to ask me, whose was it, I could only reply, it came out of well-lined pockets on the Great North Road. Come, I will divide it with you.”

And sitting on the edge of White Will’s bed, holding up the single candle dangerously near to the foretop of his little brown scratch-wig, Dr. Johnson picked up guinea for guinea with the awkward young apprentice. I was too stupefied to protest against this high-handed appropriation of treasure trove, or even to ask for my share.

“And the odd one for you,” concluded Dr. Johnson.

“Come,” cried the overjoyed apprentice, “let us run and tell Mally.”

“Run into Mincing Lane at midnight with a pocket full of guineas!” exclaimed Dr. Johnson loudly. “No, no, my lad! We’ll e’en stay here behind locks and bars till the day comes and the good sexton returns with the bailiffs. Pocket your guineas and lock the door behind you. We’ll lie in the lower room by the fire till day.”

But when the haunted room was locked behind us, Dr. Johnson laid finger to lip and moved his powerful bulk quietly out at the back passageway. The stars were quietly shining in the moonless sky as he went easily over the courtyard wall. George and I scrambled after, and so we came out by the churchyard into Fenchurch Street.

Strolling up Fleet Street the next morning, I met the sturdy Doctor walking out betimes in the sunny day.

“Well met, Bozzy,” cried he. “Pray walk along with me.”

“To what destination?” I enquired curiously.

JOHNSON: “To Mincing Lane.”

BOSWELL: “To what end? The family Gudgeon lie in lodgings in Stepney.”

JOHNSON: “Not so; I have already advertized them that their ghost is laid for good.”

Though I was eager to review the events of the night as we walked along, not a word would he say, but dwelt upon the advantages of emigration for those ambitious to reform their way and begin a new life. On this matter he was very fluent, until still discoursing eloquently he turned out of Eastcheap into Mincing Lane and knocked peremptorily at the door.

“Sir, sir,” I cried, “see how events repeat themselves! This is again the wrong house!”

Already the surly surgeon had wrenched open the heavy black door and was scowling truculently at my venerable companion.

“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “it has come to my ears that you and your friend have in mind to emigrate and mend your fortunes, which no longer can prosper in London.”

“Emigrate!” cried the bonesetter with an oath. “No such thing!”

“You amaze me,” replied Dr. Johnson, “for as I hear it, an information is about to be laid against you, and ’twill go hard with you if you and your friend are found in London.”

The black scowl grew blacker, but with belated courtesy the burly surgeon stepped back and invited us to enter. I bowed and advanced, but a touch from my intrepid friend deterred me.

“I thank you,” replied Dr. Johnson courteously, “but my errand is almost done. There remains only to have a word with your friend.”

“I have no friend,” said the body-snatcher sullenly.

“I mean your friend,” said Dr. Johnson patiently, “who last year was brought to you from Tyburn in a basket, and astounded you by being still in life. You have been a good friend to him. You have kept him in the country this twelve months past, have you not, for the easing of his throat.”

“What if I have?” cried Harkebus hoarsely.

“Come, man, lay aside this stubbornness,” said Dr. Johnson with asperity. “If I meant harm to your friend I would come with a pack of bailiffs at my back. I mean him only good; but what I have for him I will lay in no hands but his own.”

The surgeon favoured my friend with a long searching scrutiny, then bellowed “Will!” There was a light step in the passage, and the sunlight from the open door fell on the veritable apparition of Mincing Lane. I saw the gaunt white face, with the marks of St. Andrew’s fire reaching along the cheek from the ear like a map of the Peloponnesus; the head on one side and the twisted neck swathed in white cloth. The gaunt creature was wrapped in a dirty fawn-coloured night-gown and wore a kerchief on his cropped head.

“What’s to do, cully?” he croaked hoarsely.

Dr. Johnson extended to him a knitted purse weighted down with something heavy.

“For your journey,” said he.

“Journey?” croaked the gallows-bird.

“You are leaving London,” said Dr. Johnson, “and I counsel you to amend your ways in your new life.”

“The old fogram’s honest!” gasped White Will, hefting the purse of gold.

“Middling,” replied Dr. Johnson with a smile. “Pray, Mr. Harkebus, satisfy my curiosity.”

“If I can, sir.”

“How had your friend the good fortune to be brought to you from Tyburn?”

“Why, sir, as an accommodation to a business associate of long standing—I bought the anatomy in advance.”

“Did you so? Who was the gentleman’s heir?”

“Mumping Mag,” said the surgeon, “my friend’s—ah—doxy.”

White Will let slip an incomprehensible oath.

“Ay,” he croaked bitterly, “but she was lagged on Tyburn Hill that very day.”

“The better, I tell you, Will,” said Harkebus, “or you’d have seen your brass-bound bed no more.”

Footsteps came around the corner into Mincing Lane. Promptly the burly surgeon slammed the door, and we stood gaping on the door-step as George Tucker stepped proudly towards us.

He wore his Sunday suit, with a fire-new fire-coloured neckerchief and on his head a cocked hat with lacing. In his hand was something wrapped in a white silk handkerchief, which he handled tenderly.

“For Mally,” he said with a grin. “I reckon to be a welcome suitor now.”

I thought the fat step-mother scowled at the metamorphosed apprentice, but Gudgeon’s melancholy smile gave him candid welcome, and Mally was wearing her Sunday gown. All greeted Dr. Johnson respectfully, and besought him to narrate the laying of the ghost.

“There’ll be a ballad made on it,” declared Miss Gudgeon fervently.

At the instance of the philosopher we mounted to the back bedroom.

“Alack,” cried Miss Gudgeon, “’twas the Devil after all!”

The brass-bound bedstead was torn apart. In the wall where the sliding panel had been a great hole gaped; on the floor lay George Tucker’s timbers in splinters. The circle of chairs was flung about in disorder.

“Why,” says Dr. Johnson with a smile, “this was a determined ghost; but I think you’ll see him no more.”

He poked his head through the aperture; I was not far behind him. We gazed at a pair of shallow steps leading up to a narrow, dusky, airless chamber running the length of the wall.

“’Tis the priest’s hole,” said Dr. Johnson. “See yonder niche at the end. This was the Clothworker’s oratory.”

“How knew you it was there?”

“Why, I was looking for it.” His sonorous voice re-sounded in the enclosed space. “The Master of the Clothworkers had a priest in the house when they took him; in the days of Elizabeth that argues a priest’s hole.”

Over our shoulders the elder Gudgeons were craning their necks. When we had stared our fill, we turned to the room again. The young folks were sitting demurely, six feet apart, but something was in the air. George’s face was all one grin. Though Miss Mally’s long lashes were dropped, her cheeks were pink; she wore a posy ring and cradled in her hands a kerchief of white silk.

She seemed to know that the apparition had been White Will in the flesh, and that the young apprentice had been enriched from the highwayman’s ill-gotten hoard. I was curious to learn by what processes of ratiocination my astute friend had penetrated the deception practised on her, and Dr. Johnson was ready to enlighten us.

“Sir,” said he, “though I am ready to believe in the supernatural origin of the manifestations of such spectres as Scratching Fanny and White Will, yet I am ever as ready to seek out a more natural explanation. ’Twas clear to me, when I had talked with Mally and her kin, that the rapping, the moaning, and even the apparition, might have been engineered from the priest’s hole by someone desiring to frighten the child.”

“By whom?” I enquired with interest.

“Nay, it was too soon to know. I noted Miss Gudgeon’s eagerness to engender belief in the spirit; I noted Mrs. Gudgeon’s eagerness to engender belief that the child was somehow responsible; and I resolved—pray excuse me, ladies—to watch the proceedings of both.”

“Pray how did I escape notice?” asked Gudgeon in his melancholy voice.

Dr. Johnson smiled.

“You did not escape,” he replied, “for though you courted investigation, I bore in mind that perhaps ’twas all done to gain notice to yourself.”

“Surely,” said I, “those without access to the priest’s hole were not under suspicion.”

“This is true,” replied Dr. Johnson, “but though it was easy to locate the priest’s hole, I could not know that it did not have means of entrance from every room in the house, ay, and even out of the house, for when it was made, the surgeon’s lodging next door was part of the Clothworker’s domain.”

“Therefore you summoned Harkebus to watch with us!” I exclaimed.

“Therefore,” agreed Dr. Johnson. “Watching with Miss Mally, I had every suspected person under my eye. I was able to make sure that no one of them was actually doing the rapping. There was, then, an accomplice in the imposture—or we had to do with a genuine shade. But before the sitting was over, I was sure I knew who was at the bottom of it, and why.”

“I made sure that it was a ghost indeed,” said Miss Gudgeon, rather regretfully, I thought. “What told you otherwise?”

“The conduct of Harkebus. Under his guidance we wasted no time in learning the purpose of the imposture. He led us to ask exactly the right questions for his purposes. It must have jolted him when Miss Gudgeon asked who it was, and White Will, not expecting the question, rapped out the truth in answer.”

“What was their purpose?” asked Mrs. Gudgeon.

“Why, to frighten Miss from the room, better still from the house. Consider: the first night there come frightening noises only. Miss screams out in terror that she will not sleep here again. Taking her word, the second night a man with a candle enters the supposedly empty room, only to be frightened away by screams. The third night, piloted by Dr. Harkebus, the spirit bids you abandon the house, and by blood-curdling howls frightens you into declaring you will do so. What is bound to happen the fourth night?”

“The man with the candle will again enter the room through the priest’s hole. But what for?”

“It seemed as if the departed highwayman had left something behind him of interest to his former neighbour Mr. Harkebus. I determined to watch and know what it was. You know the rest. Recognizing White Will for a living man, I knew the answer to the last question which had puzzled me.”

“What was that?” enquired Gudgeon.

“Why Harkebus had not entered the room at his pleasure at any time while the lodgings stood empty.”

“Why did he not so?”

“Because he knew naught of what the room contained till White Will returned—in the body-snatcher’s basket lest he be seen and recognized—from the Surrey side, where he had been rusticated for the recruiting of his health, since Harkebus received his anatomy more dead than alive from Tyburn Hill.”

“Sir,” said Gudgeon, “I am your debtor in this matter.”

“And I,” cried George Tucker, “for I took up my indentures this morning, and I mean to commence undertaker for myself—at All Hallows Staining, if Mally will name the day and father-in-law will have me.”

“Done,” cried Gudgeon. Mally said nothing, but looked sidewise and for a moment showed a dimple.

“Pray, Dr. Johnson,” enquired Tucker, “to what use will you put your share of this treasure trove?”

“I have applied it,” replied my philanthropick friend, “to eleemosynary purposes.”

“Ah,” said the pious sexton, “worthy purposes, I make no doubt.”

“Mammy, mammy,” cried the little Fragonard, running into the room in excitement, “the men are riding away on big horses, and the skinny one, mammy, his face is all white like flour.”

“Worthy purposes?” repeated Dr. Johnson. “Well, no.”