The Golden Leg Read Online Free PDF Page B

finished, they
     thanked her for the drink, and she in turn thanked them once more for coming to
     her aid. She showed them to the door, and shook their hands, blessing each of
     them with a heartbreakingly beautiful smile.
    The two men wished her a good night, and as they stepped out onto the street,
     they heard the click of the heavy iron key turning in the lock behind them. They
     followed the street downward toward the harbour, and before too long they found
     themselves by the gangplank leading to their ship.
    Before they boarded, they decided they would have another quick smoke. The
     sailor with the cigarettes reached down into his pocket, but found it
     empty.
    “Blast!” he exclaimed to his mate. “I’ve left my cigarette case behind.”
    His friend readily agreed to go back with him, so the two men
     walked back up the hill, retracing their steps, and made their way to the house
     of the woman in black.
    When they arrived at Number 16, they looked at the house in some confusion. It
     was the same house, but looked dramatically different from the stately home they
     had visited earlier that evening. The front door was weathered, with peeling
     paint, and the brass door knocker was old and tarnished. The shutters were gone
     completely from the windows on the main floor, and the windows themselves had
     been boarded over. No lights could be seen through the broken panes of the glass
     in the windows up above. The house looked completely abandoned.
    Mystified, the men knocked on the door, but though the sounds of their banging
     echoed through the street, no one answered their call. They went to the windows,
     and peered through the cracks in the boards, but saw nothing. Noticing that a
     few of the boards were loose, they pried them off. Once more, one of the sailors
     used his knife to jimmy open the window latch. He pushed open the sash, and
     climbed through.
    This time, the sailor found himself in pitch darkness. He struck a match, and
     looking around, saw that the room was completely empty. The antique furniture,
     the fine paintings, everything was gone, and in their place were only shadows
     and long cobwebs. He hastened to the front entrance, found the old iron key
     still in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door with a rusty
     screech.
    The two men found the stub of an old candle on the floor near
     the doorway, and lighting it, they made their way back to the parlour where the
     woman had served them wine. It was empty as well. With a quaking hand, one of
     them pointed down. The floor was thick with dust, but the dust had clearly been
     disturbed recently, as there were two distinct sets of footprints that led into
     the room, and back. The men stepped into the room, and comparing the footprints
     to their own, they saw that they were exactly identical.
    Both men could feel the hair rising on the backs of their necks. They
     immediately turned to leave the room, and as they did so, one of them kicked
     something with his foot, and it skittered across the floor with a metallic
     clang. He reached down, and picked up the object. It was his own cigarette
     case.
    The men had no desire to remain a minute longer in the house. Quickly, they
     fled the property, hurrying back to the safety of their bunks on board ship.
     Later, they asked some of the local people if anyone lived in the old house at
     Number 16, and were told that it had been abandoned for as long as anyone could
     remember. Eventually, they were directed to a very old man who had lived on the
     street as a boy.
    The old man said that he too had never known anyone to live in the house at
     Number 16, and that he was sorry he could not help them in their quest for
     answers. He told them that as children, they had been directed to stay away from
     the house, as it was believed to be haunted by the ghost of a young woman, who
     had died in the property many years before he was born.
    “I ofttimes looked at that house, hoping to see