I saw she was very frightened, so I called up the servants, and had our
beds removed to a room on the other side of the house, and then she told
me what she had seen. She said: "I was sitting reading as you saw me,
when looking round, I saw the figure of an Englishman standing close by
my bedside, a fine-looking man with a large fair moustache and dressed
in a grey suit. I was so surprised that I could not speak, and we
remained looking at each other for about a minute. Then he bent over me
and whispered: 'Don't be afraid,' and with that there was the sound of a
shot, and everything was in darkness."
"My dear girl, you must have fallen asleep over your book and been
dreaming," I said.
"No, I was wide awake," she insisted; "you were asleep, but I was awake
all the time. But you heard the shot, did you not?"
"Yes," I replied, "that is what woke me--some one must have fired a shot
outside."
"But why should any one be shooting in our garden at nearly midnight?"
my wife objected.
It certain seemed strange, but it was the only explanation that
suggested itself; so we had to agree to differ, she being convinced that
she had seen a ghost, and that the shot had been inside the room, and I
being equally convinced that she had been dreaming, and that the shot
had been fired outside the house.
The next morning the owner of the bungalow, an old widow lady, Mrs. La
Chaire, called to make kindly enquiries as to whether she could be of
any service to us on our arrival. After thanking her, my wife said: "I
expect you will laugh at me, but I cannot help telling you there is
something strange about the bungalow"; and she then went on to narrate
what she had seen.
Instead of laughing the old lady looked more and more serious as she
went on, and when she had done asked to be shown exactly where the
apparition had appeared. My wife took her to the spot, and on being
shown it old Mrs. La Chaire exclaimed: "This is the most wonderful thing
I have ever heard of. Eighteen years ago my bed was on the very spot
where yours was last night, and I was lying in it too ill to move, when
my husband, whom you have described most accurately, stood where you saw
him and shot himself dead."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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