WANDERING GHOSTS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
"What?... It's gone, man, the skull is gone!!"
WANDERING GHOSTS
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "A ROMAN
SINGER," ETC.
WITH FRONTISPIECE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1911
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1894,
By G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
Copyright, 1899,
By STREET AND SMITH.
Copyright, 1903,
By F. MARION CRAWFORD
AND
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Copyright, 1905 and 1908,
By P. F. COLLIER AND SON.
Copyright, 1911,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1911.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| THE DEAD SMILE | 1 |
| THE SCREAMING SKULL | 41 |
| MAN OVERBOARD! | 97 |
| FOR THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE | 165 |
| THE UPPER BERTH | 195 |
| BY THE WATER OF PARADISE | 235 |
| THE DOLL'S GHOST | 279 |
THE DEAD SMILE
THE DEAD SMILE
CHAPTER I
Sir Hugh Ockram smiled as he sat by the open window of his study, in thelate August afternoon; and just then a curiously yellow cloud obscuredthe low sun, and the clear summer light turned lurid, as if it had beensuddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague. SirHugh's face seemed, at best, to be made of fine parchment drawnskin-tight over a wooden mask, in which two eyes were sunk out of sight,and peered from far withi