Took photos from my copy of Phantoms of the Night & converted them to text. Hopefully it's out of copyright like many of his books/stories.
THE HAUNTED EARRINGS
I AM indebted to one of my relatives in Ireland for the following strange story:
One crisp December morning John Denman was writing a Jetter postcard in the General Post Office at Scarborough, when a pockets for something, probably a pencil, which apparently was young man in a dark suit took the chair next to him, felt in his not there, and uttered a swear word. He then grabbed a pen from the table, dipped the nib in the inkpot, and appeared to be about to write on a telegram form when he turned very pale and, in- stead of writing, drew something.
He appeared to be very agitated, crumpled up the telegram form and threw it in the wastepaper basket that was by the table. He then took another form from the box in front of him. The same thing happened again. Just as he seemed about to write, he sud- denly stopped and again made a sketch.
There had been something familiar about the young man, but Denman had not been able to place him until now, when it suddenly dawned on him that he was the young man whose arrival at the hotel he had witnessed that morning. He had seen him enter the building, followed by the hotel porter with his suitcase, and had heard him inquire if there were any letters for him. The young man did not give Denman time for closer observation.
Looking oddly agitated, he crumpled up the second spoilt form and, dropping it carefully into the basket, he hurried into the street.
Impelled by curiosity Denman went to the basket, found the two crumpled forms, returned to his seat and smoothed them. On each of them there was a skilfully drawn face of a girl with pretty features, wavy hair and very marked eyebrows. She wore flower earrings, and as Denman looked at them they seemed to suddenly
grow larger and resemble death-heads. They gave him a very eerie sensation.
He tried to persuade himself that it was just his fancy, but the feeling that there was something very strange about the drawings and the artist persisted. What made the young man turn so pale and seem so agitated after he had drawn the faces, and why had he crumpled up the forms and put them so very care- fully into the paper basket? Had he a guilty conscience? Denman resolved to keep an eye on him. He was rather a good-looking young man, with dark hair and eyes and well-formed features; possibly thirty years of age.
Denman slipped the telegram forms into one of his coat pockets, left the post office, went for a stroll on the esplanade, got bored with the sea and with the people, and returned to the hotel.
He inquired the name of the young man. It was Eustace Cazenove. Cazenove sat at a table near him at luncheon and shared it with an elderly parson, the Reverend James Price, and his much younger wife. Denman thought she would have been rather pretty, for she had neat features and big blue eyes, if she had had more colour and had not looked quite so peevish and discontented. Doubtless, her husband, who looked old enough to be her father, bored her.
Glancing every now and then at their table, Denman caught Cazenove looking at Mrs. Price with undisguised admiration and an expression that puzzled him. He had never seen it in a man's eyes before. It made him uneasy. Cazenove was better looking than he had first thought him, and when he smiled and showed his white, even teeth, quite handsome. It was not long before he got into conversation with the Prices, and when that happened Mrs. Price lost her discontented expression and became quite animated.
That was the beginning of the friendship. It progressed rapidly, not Denman fancied, with Mr. Price's entire approval. The not infrequently resentful, sullen expression in Mrs. Price's eyes, and the distressed look in her husband's face spoke of differences be- tween them, and several times when he was near them he heard Mrs. Price's voice raised in anger, and her husband mildly remon- strating.
The walks she went with Cazenove increased and were not con- fined to the daytime. More than once when Denman was out at
night, maybe just for an after-dinner stroll or at some place of amusement, he saw the two together, seemingly on terms more than the merely friendly. On one occasion, when they came back from one of their nocturnal rambles, Mr. Price was in the hall waiting for them. He looked so ill and upset that Denman felt Mrs. Price started on him at once. Denman could smell brandy, and her voice and face indicated that she had been drinking. 'You needn't look so shocked,' she said. 'It's not late, only half past ten. That's early; and Eustace has been taking care of me,
very sorry for him, haven't you, Eustace?
Your wife has been enjoying the sea air,' Cazenove said. 'We've been sitting on the esplanade. It's so much fresher than in here.' Denman did not want to eavesdrop, but where he was sitting he could not help hearing their conversation.
'I hope you wont stay out so late again,' Mr. Price said. 'You are not strong, and it's far too cold at night on the sea front at this time of year.' He ignored Cazenove.
'I shall stay out as long as I like, go where I like and with whom I like,' Mrs. Price exclaimed angrily. 'Because you are too old yourself to go to any amusements, you don't want me to go. Well, I shall.'
"Then you've been to some amusement tonight and not on the sea front,' Mr. Price said reproachfully. 'Why didn't you say so in the first place.'
'Your wife knows how prejudiced you are against the cinema,' Cazenove said, 'and thought you would only be upset if you knew she had been to one tonight. That's why she didn't tell you. There was nothing immoral in the picture we saw. It was more improv- ing and uplifting than many sermons I have heard. It's a pity you didn't see it, it might have done you good. Like so many of your persuasion, you live to much in a groove. You need broadening, and the pictures might help in that respect.'
Without taking any notice of the speaker, Mr. Price continued to address his wife in the same quiet voice. 'I think it's time to go to bed. It's nearly eleven o'clock, and if we stay talking here we may be disturbing the other visitors.'
You go if you like,' Mrs. Price shouted. 'I'm not tired. I'll go when I want to.'
'Mr. Price is quite right,' Cazenove interposed. 'We ought not to be talking here at this hour.'
He went off to bed, and the Prices followed suit.
Denman had seldom witnessed a more painful scene, or felt more sympathy for anyone than he did for meek, inoffensive Mr. Price. It was amazing that so delicate a looking woman as Mrs. Price could have behaved in such a deplorably common manner. Her friendship with Cazenove was very obviously doing her no good.
Denman noticed that Cazenove rarely spoke to any of the male visitors. He evidently preferred the company of the other sex.
Denman had not forgotten the mystery of the faces on the tele- gram forms. He was in the silent room one afternoon, when Cazenove entered and sat at a writing-table. Denman moved near to him, to see if there would be a repetition of what had happened at the post office. Cazenove started to write, stopped suddenly, drew something, became very agitated-Denman saw his hand shake- screwed up the spoilt sheet of note paper, and threw it into the nearest wastepaper basket.
He looked furtively round at Denman, but Denman was too quick for him. He pretended to be buried in a book. Cazenove again started to write, stopped, drew, became even more agitated, tore up the sheet of notepaper, and dropped the bits into the wastepaper basket. A third attempt was equally abortive, and ended in a similar way. He then got up, looking ghastly white, and left the room.
Denman waited a few minutes in case he should return, and then fished the crumpled sheet of notepaper out of the basket. On it was the same face, the same flower earrings, and as he looked at them he experienced the same phenomenal metamorphosis. They became transmuted into death-heads. That there was some strange mystery associated with Cazenove, and the face he constantly drew, now seemed certain, and Denman was more determined than ever to probe it to the core. Who and what kind of a man was Caze- nove; that he had to find out.
Tactful and cautious inquiries of the officials in the hotel brought him no information other than Cazenove had described himself in the hotel register as a British subject and had given Blackpool as his home address; nothing more. He had said that would always find him as he was so well known in Blackpool. He had not been to the Scarborough hotel before. He was a nicely spoken, somewhat reserved gentleman, that was all they could say about him.
Denman got in conversation with Mr. Price and adroitly led it round to Cazenove. He was not surprised to find Mr. Price did not gush over that gentleman.
'I don't know anything about Mr. Cazenove,' Mr. Price said, 'beyond what I've seen of him here. He's a worldly man than I and mainly perhaps for that reason we seem to have very little in common.' And that was all Denman could get out of Mr. Price.
Seeing Cazenove alone one afternoon in the lounge, he thought it might not be a bad plan to talk to him, so he made some very ordinary remark about the weather. Cazenove answered him quite pleasantly but tersely. Not to be put off, he tried again.
'Is this your first visit to Scarborough?' he inquired casually.
'If it will interest you to know,' Cazenove replied, 'yes."
'I seem to remember seeing you somewhere before,' Denman continued. "You look like a member of my profession.' Cazenove yawned. 'And what is that?'-carelessly.
'The stage,' Denman said. Cazenove was clean shaven, no vestige of hair on his face, and with his clean-cut features he might easily have been taken for an of being
actor.
'I was on the stage once,' Cazenove said. 'Is this by way an oral questionnaire, because if it is, you had better make haste, for I have to go out very soon.'
Denman flushed. The underlying insolence in the fellow's speech angered him. Cazenove was thoroughly objectionable but at the same time peculiarly magnetic. Unwilling to appear offend- ed, Denman checked the retort he would otherwise have made, and with a smile, which he hoped was not too palpably forced, said: 'No, far from it. I'm sorry if I've given you the impression of being inquisitive. Your appearance has interested me because, as I said just now, you look so like a fellow-actor, and I wondered if I had seen you at the Green Room Club or the Savage. That's all.' He offered Cazenove a cigarette.
Cazenove shook his head. "Thanks, no. I shan't have time.' He spoke a little more graciously and appeared about to say some- thing else, when Mrs. Price appeared in the open doorway, and he at once rose and joined her.
'An odd fellow, that,' a white-haired man remarked, who, unobserved by Denman, had been in the room all the time. 'I can't make him out. When I spoke to him in here a day or two ago, he jabbered av ay in a foreign language that might have been Dutch or Spanish-I'm no linguist-pretending he couldn't speak Eng- lish, and yet I've heard him talking to the waitresses in perfectly good English. He doesn't seem to want to be at all friendly with anyone here except them and Mrs. Price.'
So you've noticed his friendship with the parson's wife,' Denman said.
'Noticed it! Why, of course I have,' the white-haired man replied. 'Who hasn't! It's the talk of the whole hotel. Everyone here is sorry for Mr. Price. His wife treats him shamefully.'
'Do you know anything about Cazenove?' Denman asked, 'I mean, beyond what you see of him in this place?'
'Only what one of the chambermaids told me,' the white-haired man said. 'I'm a resident here, and she talks to me more than she would to anyone who is only here for a short time. She said she saw an envelope on his dressing table one morning, forwarded from Blackpool.'
'She didn't tell you from what address, did she?' Denman asked. 'Yes,' the white-haired man said. 'Being interested in the man, I made a note of it.' He opened his wallet and looked at a little memorandum book that was in it. 'Ah, here it is-The Gaythorne Hotel.'
Denman thanked him, and after talking a little while longer, principally about Scarborough, he went to a table and wrote the address down on a sheet of hotel writing paper.
He had not quite spoken the truth when he told Cazenove he was an actor; he should have said he had been an actor but was one no longer. As a matter of fact, he had quitted the stage, or more correctly the stage had quitted him, for several years and having come into money, he was now doing nothing, just lazing. Consequently, he was able to indulge his will and devote his entire time to any object that interested him. And the object at that moment was to find out all he could about Eustace Cazenove.
The following day gave the people at the hotel fresh food for gossip. Indeed, it produced a sensation of no small magnitude. Mr. Price was found lying on the ground under the window of his bed- room, which was on the second floor. He was seriously injured. Had he been younger he might have recovered, but being over 214
seventy he died from the effects of the fall without regaining consciousness. It was supposed that he had been leaning too far out of the window, and becoming perhaps a little giddy-his wife said he had complained several times recently of giddiness-he had overbalanced and fallen. No one admitted being in the room at
the time. There had, of course, to be an inquest, and the verdict was 'Accidental Death'.
For several days Mrs. Price went about with red eyes, looking very heart-broken, and then she suddenly left the hotel in company
with Eustace Cazenove.
The following day saw Denman on his way to Blackpool. He had booked by telephone a room at the small hotel where he had stayed several times when he was on tour. The manager of the hotel knew Joseph Griggs, the manager of the Gaythorne Hotel, extremely well; they were, in fact, cronies, and he was quite will- ing to give Denman an introduction to him. That naturally paved the way to the inquiries Denman had in mind. He learned, for a start, that Cazenove had been staying at the hotel for several months, and that he told the staff he had now left for good. His previous address had been the Park State Hotel, Douglas, Isle of Man. Mr. Griggs did remember one or two rather queer things about Cazenove. Certain members of the staff had shown him sheets of notepaper found in the lounge and in his bed- room, and on each of them was drawn the face of a pretty girl, wearing flower earrings. The chambermaid who found them in his bedroom said that when she looked at them, they seemed to turn into human skulls. They gave her the creeps.
Several of the staff had noticed that Cazenove was in the habit of suddenly starting and looking round, as if he expected someone was behind him. That was all Denman could elicit from Mr. Griggs.
He went to the Park State Hotel at Douglas, and learned that Cazenove had stayed there with a girl whom he said was his wife; that she did not appear to be at all happy; that they went out to- gether one day and Cazenove returned alone to the hotel in the evening, and left the next morning. Nothing had been heard of
him or her since.
The manager of the hotel had seen very little of the girl and could not remember her appearance, except that she was rather tall and very well dressed, but did not strike him as being a lady. One of the maids whom Denman questioned said Mrs. Cazenove was smart and very nice-looking, and wore pretty flower earrings. She remembered the earrings because when she was making the bed one morning she found one of the earrings in it. She said she did not like Cazenove; why exactly she did not know. She felt that he was cruel and was unkind to his wife, if she was his wife. The maid had her doubts about that.
And there the trail ended. Denman was unable to ascertain anything further of Cazenove.
Hope you enjoy the story later on.