Pelamon was seated in his office one day reading Poe, when the telephone at his elbow started ringing.
"Only me--Phoebe Hunt," was the reply. (Phoebe Hunt was Pelamon Harrison's housekeeper.)
"Anything the matter?" Pelamon asked anxiously. "What is it?"
"Oh, nothing," Mrs. Hunt replied, "only a rather queer-looking gentleman has just called and seemed most anxious to see you. He says he has been told about you by Mr. Elliot O'Donnell, and he wants you to go at once to a house in Regency Square, Brighton, No. --. He says it is very badly haunted."
"Nimkin," Mrs. Hunt answered, and she very carefully spelt the name--"N I M K I N."
"I'll think it over," Pelamon said, "and if I'm not home by seven o'clock, don't expect me till the morning." He then rang off, and thinking it was time he did some work, he took up his account book.
Try as he would, however, he could not keep his mind from wandering. Something kept whispering in his ear "Nimkin," and something kept telling him that his presence was urgently needed in Regency Square.
At last, unable to stand it any longer, he threw down his pen and, picking up his hat and coat, hurried off to the railway station.
At seven o'clock that evening he stood on the pavement immediately in front of No. -- Regency Square. All the blinds were down, and this circumstance, combined with an atmosphere of silence and desolation, told him that the house was no longer inhabited. Somewhat perplexed, he asked the servant next door if she could tell him where Mr. Nimkin lived.
"Not in Heaven," the girl replied tartly. "He did live in No. -- till his wife died, but after that he went to live on the other side of the town. He died himself a few days ago, and I believe his funeral took place this afternoon."
"And No. -- where his wife died is now empty," Pelamon observed.
"Yes, it's been empty ever since," she replied, and, sinking her voice to a whisper, "folks say it's haunted. I can't altogether bring myself to believe in ghosts--but I've heard noises," and she laughed uneasily.
"No," the girl answered, "and he has left the money he hoarded--he was the meanest of old sticks--to the hospital for consumptives."
The girl nodded. "His wife was a consumptive," she went on. "I remember her well--a pretty, fair-haired creature with a lovely skin, and"--here she shuddered--"a shocking cough." Then, thrusting her head close to Pelamon, and fixing him with a frightened glance, she whispered, "It was the cough that killed her!"