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Updated: May 25, 2025
Pierrepont come up to Gauntmoor for the night?" A groom in a plum-colored livery stood at my elbow. A light station wagon was waiting just outside. How the deuce did Hobson know my name? What did he want of me at Gauntmoor this time of night? Yet prospects of bed and breakfast away from the Commercial lured me strangely. "Sure, Mr.
Spike sternly, as he pointed over the local livery stable, over Smith Brothers' Plow Works, over Odd Fellows' Hall, and up, up to the bleak hills beyond, where, poised like a stony coronet on a giant's brow, rose the great Norman towers and frowning buttresses of Gauntmoor Castle. I rubbed my eyes. No, it couldn't be real it must be a wizard's work! "What's old Hobson got out of it?" said Mr.
Spike. "Is it open for visitors?" I asked innocently. "Hobson?" cackled Spike. "He'd no more welcome a stranger to that place than he'd welcome a ghost. He's a hol-ee terror, Hobson!" Mr. Spike turned away to referee a pool game down in the barroom. The fires of a December sunset flared behind Gauntmoor and cast the grim shadows of Medievalism over Mediocrity, which lay below.
By permission of Everybody's and Wallace Irwin. The Transplanted Ghost When Aunt Elizabeth asked me to spend Christmas with her at Seven Oaks she appended a peculiar request to her letter. "Like a good fellow," she wrote, "won't you drop off at Perkinsville, Ohio, on your way, and take a look at Gauntmoor Castle?
After a search he found the ancient Castle Gauntmoor still habitable and for sale. He thrilled the British comic papers by his offer to buy the castle and move it to America. Hobson saw the property, telegraphed to London, and closed the deal in two hours. And an army of laborers at once began taking the Gauntmoor to pieces, stone by stone.
"It ain't," announced Mr. Hobson. "Though it looks all right to a stranger, perhaps. There may be castles in the Old World got it on Gauntmoor for size thank God I didn't buy 'em! but for looks you can't beat Gauntmoor." "Comfortable?" I asked. "Can't complain. Modern plumbed throughout. Hard to heat, but I put an electric-light plant in the cellar.
Keep away from castles. They're like everything else sold by curio dealers all humbug. Look nice, yes. But get 'em over to America and they either fall to pieces or the paint comes off. Whether it's a chair or a castle same old story. The sly scalawags that sell you the goods won't live up to their contracts." "Hasn't Gauntmoor all the ancient inconveniences a Robber Baron could wish?" I asked.
When I bought Gauntmoor, the London scalawags that sold it to me gave me distinctly to understand that this was a Haunted Castle. They showed me a haunted chamber, showed me the haunted wall where the ghost walks, guaranteed the place to be the Spook Headquarters of the British Isles and see what I got!" He snapped his fingers in disgust. "No results?" "Results? Stung!
"Castle Gauntmoor is from the Middle Ages, and we all know about where in Ohio Perkinsville is. But is it possible that you, twenty-seven years old and a college graduate, haven't heard of Thaddeus Hobson, the Marvelous Millionaire?" I shook my head. "The papers have been full of Hobson in the past two or three years," said Tim.
Next morning being mild and bright for December, and Thaddeus Hobson and his mysterious daughter not having showed up for breakfast, I amused myself by inspecting the exterior of the castle. In daylight I could see that Gauntmoor, as now restored, consisted of only a portion of the original structure.
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