Mr Corbett's Ghost Read Free

apothecary’s chemistry.)
    His right-hand pocket was bulky with the bottle for the queer old customer, and his left hand banged against his knee, reminding him of Mister Corbett’s little joke—the empty jar for ‘the piece of a ghost’.
    â€˜A piece of you, Mister Corbett—that’s what I’d like in your jar! And I’d set it on me mantelshelf at home, as neatly labelled as you’d like. Apothecary’s heart. Very small. Very hard. Very difficult to find.’
    Now the wind came wilder yet, and it seemed—to the buffeted boy—to have a strange smell upon its breath. It smelled fishy and riverish (as became its Wapping origins) and sweetish in a penetrating kind of way.
    The Lord knew where it had been or what unsavoury heads it had blown through! Heads of chained pirates drowned under three tides at Shadwell Stair, full of water fury; heads of smiling traitors, spiked on the Tower, full of double hate; heads of lurking murderers in Lamb’s Conduit Fields, heads of lying attorneys, false witnesses, straw friends, iron enemies, foxes, spies, and adders . . .
    A sudden screaming from Caen Wood caused Benjamin Partridge to clap his hands to his ears and fairly fly. What had it been? A committee of owls over a dead starling? Most likely . . . most likely . . .
    Ahead lay a little nest of lights winkling out the dark. The Spaniards’ Inn. Sounds of singing and laughter came faintly from within. A cheerful company, drinking out the dying year.
    The turnpike keeper in his tiny house hard by saw the boy pause and stare towards the inn with miserable longing on his face.
    Poor devil! he thought. To be out on such a night!
    Then he saw the boy shake his head violently and mouth the word ‘No!’ several times before hurrying on into the cheerless dark.
    â€˜God send you a happy New Year!’ he murmured. ‘And spare you from some of this bitter wind.’
    Benjamin Partridge’s head had suddenly been filled with dreams of another, more cheerful company, made up of his friends and his mother: candle-lit and fire-warmed faces to the window, waiting on his coming.
    Then the wind had blown out these dreams and left nothing but darkness within him.
    There seemed to come over his hastening form a curious difference. His running was grown more purposeful. At times, he seemed to outpace the wind itself—bending low and rushing with an oddly formidable air. His coat tails flapped blackly, like the wings of a bird of ill omen.
    â€˜Coming for you, Mister Corbett. Coming for you!’
    Already he could see the top of Hampstead Hill. On either side of him the trees bent and pointed, and high upstairs the tattered clouds flew all in the same direction. The dark wind was going to Hampstead, too, and it was in the devil of a hurry.
    At last, he could see Jack Straw’s Castle: a square-built, glum and lonely inn scarce half a mile ahead. Doubtless, the queer customer was sat by the parlour fire, snuffling for his mixture. Then let him snuffle till the cows came mooing home! Benjamin Partridge was on a different errand now.
    He continued for maybe another thirty yards. Then he stopped. To his left lay a path, leading down into the dark of the Heath.
    A curious darkness. Earlier, there had been rain and certain roots and growths had caught a phosphorescence; spots of light glimmered in the bushy nothingness.
    Before, these uneasy glintings might have frightened the boy, for they were very like eyes—and malignant ones at that. But now he scarcely saw them: the dreadful wind had blown out of his head all thoughts but hatred for the mean and pale apothecary who’d sent him forth.

    He began to descend the path. The earth was wet and sobbed under his feet.
    â€˜May you sob likewise, Mister Corbett—when I’m done with you!’
    For the first part of its length the path dropped pretty sharply, and soon Benjamin was out of