The Spectre Cook of Bangletop

I

For the purposes of this bit of history, Bangletop Hall stands upon a
grassy knoll on the left bank of the River Dee, about eighteen miles
from the quaint old city of Chester. It does not in reality stand there,
nor has it ever done so, but consideration for the interests of the
living compels me to conceal its exact location, and so to befog the
public as to its whereabouts that its identity may never be revealed to
its disadvantage. It is a rentable property, and were it known that it
has had a mystery connected with it of so deep, dark, and eerie a nature
as that about to be related, I fear that its usefulness, save as an
accessory to romance, would be seriously impaired, and that as an
investment it would become practically worthless.

The hall is a fair specimen of the architecture which prevailed at the
time of Edward the Confessor; that is to say, the main portion of the
structure, erected in Edward's time by the first Baron Bangletop, has
that square, substantial, stony aspect which to the eye versed in
architecture identifies it at once as a product of that enlightened era.
Later owners, the successive Barons Bangletop, have added to its original
dimensions, putting Queen Anne wings here, Elizabethan ells there, and an
Italian-Renaissance facade on the river front. A Wisconsin water tower,
connected with the main building by a low Gothic alleyway, stands to the
south; while toward the east is a Greek chapel, used by the present
occupant as a store-room for his wife's trunks, she having lately
returned from Paris with a wardrobe calculated to last through the first
half of the coming London season. Altogether Bangletop Hall is an
impressive structure, and at first sight gives rise to various emotions
in the aesthetic breast; some cavil, others admire. One leading architect
of Berlin travelled all the way from his German home to Bangletop Hall to
show that famous structure to his son, a student in the profession which
his father adorned; to whom he is said to have observed that,
architecturally, Bangletop Hall was "cosmopolitan and omniperiodic, and
therefore a liberal education to all who should come to study and master
its details." In short, Bangletop Hall was an object-lesson to young
architects, and showed them at a glance that which they should ever
strive to avoid.

Strange to say, for quite two centuries had Bangletop Hall remained
without a tenant, and for nearly seventy-five years it had been in the
market for rent, the barons, father and son, for many generations having
found it impossible to dwell within its walls, and for a very good reason:
no cook could ever be induced to live at Bangletop for a longer period
than two weeks. Why the queens of the kitchen