75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

If we stop here, I shall be frozen stiff.’

�That, madam,’ said the master slowly, and seating himself on an ice-cake – �that is why I have brought you here. We have been on this spot just ten minutes, we have fifty more. Take your time about it, madam, but freeze, that is all I ask of you.’

�I cannot move my right leg now,’ cried the ghost, in despair, �and my overskirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a fire, and let me go free from these icy fetters.

�Never, madam. It cannot be. I have you at last.’

�Alas!’ cried the ghost, a tear trickling down her frozen cheek. �Help me, I beg. I congeal!’

�Congeal, madam, congeal!’ returned Oglethorpe, coldly. �You have drenched me and mine for two hundred and three years, madam. To-night you have had your last drench.’

�Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then you’ll see. Instead of the comfortably tepid, genial ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be iced-water,’ cried the lady, threateningly.

�No, you won’t, either,’ returned Oglethorpe; �for when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there shall you remain an icy work of art forever more.’

�But warehouses burn.’

�So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fire-proof walls, and within those walls the temperature is now and shall forever be 416 degrees below the zero point; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world – or the next,’ the master added, with an ill-suppressed chuckle.

�For the last time let me beseech you. I would go on my knees to you, Oglethorpe, were they not already frozen. I beg of you do not doo—’

Here even the words froze on the water ghost’s lips and the clock struck one. There was a momentary tremor throughout the ice-bound form, and the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the rigid figure of a beautiful woman sculptured in clear, transparent ice.

The heir of Harrowby had won at last, and to-day in a large storage house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe and sea-water.