Colonel (Retd.) Frederick Bramlett-Foster sat at his green leather-topped antique writing desk, carefully constructing a letter. The thoughtfulness behind the letter's careful construction was vastly at odds with the Colonel's mood. He was furious.
He was just about to write a wonderfully scathing sentence (a sentence he'd just that moment thought up), when the vibrations from a passing lorry rattled the panes of glass in the French windows of his study. The rattling caused him to lose his concentration and forget the words he had been about to write.
"Damnation!" snapped the Colonel, as he threw his pen down onto the desk in exasperation. The pen clattered loudly against the leather surface and a large drop of ink sprayed from the nib and splashed onto the letter, obliterating the center of five lines of the Colonel's writing.
"Damnation!" the Colonel shouted again. Angrily, he pushed his chair back from his desk and got to his feet. He crossed his beautifully furnished study and stood at the French windows, looking out across the landscaped gardens, towards the object of his anger - the road.
From the moment the road had been completed (over six months ago), the Colonel had hated it. His was not an unreasoned hatred - he hated it because it bordered his property - in fact it was so proximate that every time a lorry drove past (which was frequently) the windows of his ancestral home would shake and rattle considerably.
When the road had first been built, the Colonel had soon discovered this unpleasant fact and he had immediately written to the construction company responsible for the road. He had blamed them for his unpleasant situation and demanded that they do something to rectify his unfortunate predicament immediately, either by closing their road or by repairing his windows. The construction company, much to the Colonel's chagrin, had not bothered to either acknowledge or reply to his letter.
Colonel (Retd.) Bramlett-Foster (not one to rest on his laurels) had then written a strong letter to his M.P., criticizing the Government's shabby treatment of private citizens and their property, especially those private citizens who had (by their military derring-do) helped the current Government be elected. In terse, fully factual sentences, the Colonel had explained his unfortunate situation in full to the M.P., and then demanded that he do something about it.
A letter had arrived that very morning, written by an apologetic under-secretary of the M.P., sympathizing fully with the Colonel, but claiming that there was absolutely nothing the M.P. could do to help. The under-secretary did suggest that the Colonel simply hire a good glazier to refit the house windows, thereby putting an end to any shakes or rattles that the Colonel might be suffering from.
The Colonel had thrown the letter away in disgust and was now in the (interrupted) process of writing to the Prime Minister, in an attempt to get something positive done (once and for all) about his windows.
As he stood at the French windows, looking out across his well-kept lawns, past the ornamental fountains, on past the tennis courts, and on to the twelve foot high stone wall that surrounded his property, hiding that ugly road from his view, the Colonel that by going to the (so-called) top that he would get some satisfaction from that quarter.
"Excuse me, please," a voice said from behind him. "I wonder if you could help me?"
After nearly falling through his loosely glazed French windows with surprise at hearing a voice other than his own in his study (for he never allowed any of his servants entry to his study), he turned to face the speaker and was greeted with a most unusual sight.
The person standing next to his desk was almost transparent, having only a silvery tinge to his or her body. The difficulty with identifying gender came from the fact that he or she had no head.
"Who the devil are you?" the Colonel snapped. "And how the blazes did you get in here?"
"I'm a ghost," the transparent person answered, "and I got in by walking through the walls."
The Colonel (a little disappointed that this strange-looking person wasn't a burglar) strode across his study and sat down behind his desk.
"A ghost? A ghost, you say?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Well, in that case you'd better explain yourself. Then tell me how I can help you," the Colonel added, deciding to be reasonably polite, simply because he'd never spoken to a ghost before.
"I appear to have lost my head," the ghost said, sounding very unhappy.
"Yes, so I'd observed," the Colonel said dryly. "But why have you come to me? I don't have your head."
