The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

someone born in Paris of Irish origin, read philosophy and literature at Heidelberg and qualified as a surgeon in London. Instead of a medical profession, though, he turned to writing and enjoyed a huge success with his magnificent autobiographical Of Human Bondage published in 1915. The First World War saw him serving as a secret agent in Geneva followed by a time in Russia attempting to prevent the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution. Travels in France, Spain, the Far East and the South Seas provided the themes for some of Maugham’s greatest books including Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ashenden (1928) and Cakes and Ale (1930). He never discussed his conviction about ghosts, however, but his evident fascination with the supernatural and the occult is evident in The Magician (1908), a thinly disguised portrait of the Black Magician, Aleister Crowley, and three brilliant short stories, “The Taipan”, “The End of the Flight” and, especially, “A Man From Glasgow” which is an exercise in mounting terror and enough to make any reader dread the full moon.

It is not often that anyone entering a great city for the first time has the luck to witness such an incident as engaged the poet Shelley’s attention when he drove into Naples. A youth ran out of a shop pursued by a man armed with a knife. The man overtook him and with one blow in the neck laid him dead on the road. Shelley had a tender heart. He didn’t look upon it as a bit of local colour; he was seized with horror and indignation. But when he expressed his emotions to a Calabrian priest who was travelling with him, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, the priest laughed heartily and attempted to quiz him. Shelley says he never felt such an inclination to beat anyone.

I have never seen anything so exciting as that, but the first time I went to Algeciras I had an experience that seemed to me far from ordinary. Algeciras was then an untidy, neglected town. I arrived somewhat late at night and went to an inn on the quay. It was rather shabby, but it had a fine view of Gibraltar, solid and matter of fact, across the bay. The moon was full. The office was on the first floor, and a slatternly maid, when I asked for a room, took me upstairs. The landlord was playing cards. He seemed little pleased to see me. He looked me up and down, curtly gave me a number, and then, taking no further notice of me, went on with his game.

When the maid had shown me to my room I asked her what I could have to eat.

“What you like,” she answered.

I knew well enough the unreality of the seeming profusion.

“What have you got in the house?”

“You can have eggs and ham.”

The look of the hotel had led me to guess that I should get little else. The maid led me to a narrow room with whitewashed walls and a low ceiling in which was a long table laid already for the next day’s luncheon. With his back to the door sat a tall man, huddled over a brasero, the round brass dish of hot ashes which is erroneously supposed to give sufficient warmth for the temperate winter of Andalusia. I sat down at the table and waited for my scanty meal. I gave the stranger an idle glance. He was looking at me, but meeting my eyes he quickly turned away. I waited for my eggs. When at last the maid brought them he looked up again.

“I want you to wake me in time for the first boat,” he said.

“Si, senor.”

His accent told me that English was his native tongue, and the breadth of his build, his strongly marked features, led me to suppose him a northerner. The hardy Scot is far more often found in Spain than the Englishman. Whether you go to the rich mines of Rio Tinto, or to the bodegas of Jerez, to Seville or to Cadiz, it is the leisurely speech of beyond the Tweed that you hear. You will meet Scotsmen in the olive groves of Carmona, on the railway between Algeciras and Bobadilla, and even in the remote cork woods of Merida.

I finished eating and went over to the dish of burning ashes. It was midwinter and the windy passage across the bay had chilled my blood. The man pushed his chair away as I drew mine forwards.

“Don’t move,” I said. “There’s heaps of room for two.”

I lit a cigar and offered one to him. In Spain the Havana from Gib is never unwelcome.

“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, stretching out his hand.

I recognised the singing speech of Glasgow. But the stranger was not talkative, and my efforts at conversation broke down before his monosyllables. We smoked in silence. He was even bigger than I had thought, with great broad shoulders and ungainly limbs; his face was sunburned, his hair short and grizzled. His features were hard; mouth, ears and nose were large and heavy and his skin much wrinkled. His blue eyes were pale. He was constantly pulling his ragged, grey moustache. It was a nervous gesture that I found faintly irritating. Presently I felt that he was looking at me, and the intensity of his stare grew so irksome that I glanced up expecting him, as before, to drop his eyes. He did, indeed, for a moment, but then raised them again. He inspected me from under his long, bushy eyebrows.

“Just come from Gib?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes.”

“I’m going back tomorrow – on my way home. Thank God.”

He said the last two words so fiercely that I smiled.

“Don’t you like Spain?”

“Oh, Spain’s all right.”

“Have you been here long?”

“Too long. Too long.”

He spoke with a kind of gasp. I was surprised at the emotion my casual inquiry seemed to excite in him. He sprang to his feet and walked backwards and forwards. He stamped to and fro like a caged beast, pushing aside a chair that stood in his way, and now and again repeated the words in a groan. “Too long. Too long.” I sat still. I was embarrassed. To give myself countenance I stirred the brasero to bring the hotter ashes to the top, and he stood suddenly still, towering over me, as though my movement had brought back my existence to his notice. Then he sat down heavily in his chair.

“Do you think I’m queer?” he asked.

“Not more than most people,” I smiled.

“You don’t see anything strange in me?”

He leant forward as he spoke so that I might see him well.

“No.”

“You’d say so if you did, wouldn’t you?”

“I would.”

I couldn’t quite understand what all this meant. I wondered if he was drunk. For two or three minutes he didn’t say anything and I had no wish to interrupt the silence.

“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly. I told him.

“Mine’s Robert Morrison.”

“Scotch?”

“Glasgow. I’ve been in this blasted country for years. Got any baccy?”

I gave him my pouch and he filled his pipe. He lit it from a piece of burning charcoal.

“I can’t stay any longer. I’ve stayed too long. Too long.”

He had an impulse to jump up again and walk up and down, but he resisted it, clinging to his chair. I saw on his face the effort he was making. I judged that his restlessness was due to chronic alcoholism. I find drunks very boring, and I made up my mind to take an early opportunity of slipping off to bed.

“I’ve been managing some olive groves,” he went on. “I’m here working for the Glasgow and South of Spain Olive Oil Company Limited.”

“Oh, yes.”

“We’ve got a new process for refining oil, you know. Properly treated, Spanish oil is every bit as good as Lucca. And we can sell it cheaper.”

He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact, business-like way. He chose his words with Scotch precision. He seemed perfectly sober.

“You know, Ecija is more or less the centre of the olive trade, and we had a Spaniard there to look after the business. But I found he was robbing us right and left, so I had to turn him out. I used to live in Seville; it was more convenient for shipping the oil. However, I found I couldn’t get a trustworthy man to be at Ecija, so last year I went there myself. D’you know it?”

“No.”