Smee & Other Stories

Smee

‘No,’ said Jackson, with a deprecatory smile, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset your game. I shan’t be doing that because you’ll have plenty without me. But I’m not playing any games of hide-and-seek.’

It was Christmas Eve, and we were a party of fourteen with just the proper leavening of youth. We had dined well; it was the season for childish games; and we were all in the mood for playing them—all, that is, except Jackson. When somebody suggested hide-and-seek there was rapturous and almost unanimous approval. His was the one dissentient voice.

It was not like Jackson to spoil sport or refuse to do as others wanted. Somebody asked him if he were feeling seedy.

‘No,’ he answered, ‘I feel perfectly fit, thanks. But,’ he added with a smile which softened without retracting the flat refusal, ‘I’m not playing hide-and-seek.’

One of us asked him why not. He hesitated for some seconds before replying.

‘I sometimes go and stay at a house where a girl was killed through playing hide-and-seek in the dark. She didn’t know the house very well. There was a servants’ staircase with a door to it. When she was pursued she opened the door and jumped into what she must have thought was one of the bedrooms—and she broke her neck at the bottom of the stairs.’

We all looked concerned, and Mrs Femley said:

‘Brenda Ford—she told me her name was.’

Sangston put down his glass and laid a hand on my shoulder.

‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind a joke, but don't let it go too far. We don’t want all the women in the house getting hysterical. Brenda Ford is the name of the girl who broke her neck on the stairs playing hide-and-seek here ten years ago.’

‘There was somebody there,’ I maintained, ‘because I touched her.’

‘So did I,’ said Mrs Gorman in a voice which had lost its steadiness.

‘And I don’t see how she could have got up and gone without our knowing it.’

Reggie uttered a queer, shaken laugh. He, too, had had an unpleasant experience that evening.

‘Somebody’s been playing the goat,’ he remarked. ‘Coming down?’

We were not very popular when we arrived in the drawing-room. Reggie rather tactlessly gave it out that he had found us sitting on a window-seat behind a curtain. I taxed the tall, dark girl with having pretended to be ‘Smee’ and afterwards slipping away. She denied it. After which we settled down and played other games. ‘Smee’ was done with for the evening, and I for one was glad of it.

Some long while later, during an interval Sangston told me, if I wanted a drink, to go into the smoke-room and help myself. I went, and he presently followed me. I could see that he was rather peeved with me, and the reason came out during the following minute or two. It seemed that in his opinion, if I must sit out and flirt with Mrs Gorman—in circumstances which would have been considered highly compromising in his young days—I needn’t do
it during a round game and keep everybody else waiting for us.

‘But there was somebody else there,’ I protested, ‘somebody pretending to be “Smee”. I believe it was that tall, dark girl, Miss Ford, although she denied it. She even whispered her name to me.’

Sangston stared at me and nearly dropped his glass.

‘Miss Who?’ he shouted.