Congratulate me, please. I thought it over for a moment. Yes, heartily, I said. I want to know a little more though. Well, my hearts all wrong, quite unmendably so. Heart disease! Doesnt it sound romantic? In midVictorian romance, heroes and heroines alone die of heart disease. But thats by the way. The fact is that I may die at any time without a moments warning. I shall give a couple of gasps, so he told me when I insisted on knowing details, and thatll be all. Now, perhaps, you understand why I was unwilling to come and stay with you. I dont want to die in your house; I think its dreadfully bad manners to die in other peoples houses. I long to see Tilling again, but I think I shall go to an hotel. Hotels are fair game, for the management overcharges those who live there to compensate themselves for those who die there. But it would be rude of me to die in your house; it might entail a lot of bother for you, and I couldnt apologize But I dont mind your dying in my house, I said. At least you see what I mean He laughed. I do, indeed, he said. And you couldnt give a warmer assurance of friendship. But I couldnt come and stay with you in my present plight without telling you what it was, and yet I didnt mean to tell you. But there we are now. Think again; reconsider your decision. I dont, I said. Come and die in my house by all means, if youve got to. I would much sooner you lived there your dying will, in any case, annoy me immensely. But it would annoy me even more to know that you had done it in some beastly hotel among plush and lookingglasses. You shall have any bedroom you like. And I want you dreadfully to see my house, which is adorable.  O Roddie, what a bore it all is! It was impossible to speak or to think differently. I knew well how trivial a matter death was to my friend, and I was not sure that at heart I did not agree with him. We were quite at one, too, in that we had so often gossiped about death with cheerful conjecture and interested surmise based on the steady assurance that something of new and delightful import was to follow, since neither of us happened to be of that melancholy cast of mind that can envisage annihilation. I had promised, in case I was the first to embark on the great adventure, to do my best to get through, and give him some irrefutable proof of the continuance of my existence, just by way of endorsement of our belief, and he had given a similar pledge, for it appeared to us both, that, whatever the conditions of the future might turn out to be, it would be impossible when lately translated there, not to be still greatly concerned with what the present world still held for us in ties of love and affection. I laughed now to remember how he had once imagined himself begging to be excused for a few minutes, directly after death, and saying to St. Peter May I keep your Holiness waiting for a minute before you finally lock me into Heaven or Hell with those beautiful keys? I wont be a minute, but I do want so much to be a ghost, and appear to a friend of mine who is on the lookout for such a visit. If I find I cant make myself visible I will come back at once.  Oh, thank you, your Holiness. So we agreed that I should run the risk of his dying in my house, and promised not to make any reproaches posthumously (as far as he was concerned) in case he did so. He on his side promised not to die if he could possibly help it, and next week or so he would come down to me in the heart of the country that he loved, and see April at work. And I havent told you anything about my house yet, I said. Its right at the top of the hill, square and Georgian and redbricked. A panelled hall, diningroom and panelled sittingroom downstairs, and more panelled rooms upstairs. And theres a garden with a lawn, and a high brick wall round it, and there is a big garden room, full of books, with a bowwindow looking down the cobbled street. Which bedroom will you have? Do you like looking on to the garden or on to the street? You may even have my room if you like. He looked at me a moment with eager attention. Ill have the square panelled bedroom that looks out on to the garden, please, he said. Its the second door on the right when you stand at the top of the stairs. But how do you know? I asked. Because Ive been in the house before, once only, three years ago, he said. Margaret Alton took it furnished and lived there for a year or so. She died there, and I was with her. And if I had known that this was your house, I should never have dreamed of hesitating whether I should accept your invitation. I should have thrown my good manners about not dying in other peoples houses to the winds. But the moment you began to describe the garden and gardenroom I knew what house it was. I have always longed to go there again. When may I come, please? Next week is too far ahead. Youre off there this afternoon, arent you? I rose the clock warned me that it was time for me to go to the station. Yes. Come this afternoon, I suggested. Come with me. I wish I could, but I take that to mean that it will suit you if I come tomorrow. For I certainly will. Good Lord! To think of your having got just that house! It ought to be a wonderfully happy one, for I sawBut Ill tell you about that perhaps when Im there. But dont ask me to Ill tell you if and when I can, as the lawyers say. Are you really off? I was really off, for I had no time to spare, but before I got to the door he spoke again. Of course, the room I have chosen was the room, he said, and there was no need for me to ask what he meant by the room. I knew no more than the barest and most public outline of that affair, distant now by the space of many years, but, so I conceived, ever green in Rodericks heart, and, as my train threaded its way through the gleams of this translucent spring evening, I retraced this outline as far as I knew it. It was the one thing of which Roderick never spoke (even now he was not sure that he could manage to tell me the end of it), and I had to rummage in my memory for the reconstruction of the halfobliterated lines. Margarether maidenname would not be conjured back into memoryhad been an extremely beautiful girl when Roderick first met her, and, not without encouragement, he had fallen head over ears in love with her. All seemed to be going well with his wooing, he had the air of a happy lover, when there appeared on the scene that handsome and outrageous fellow, Richard Alton. He was the heir to his uncles barony and his really vast estates, and the girl, when he proceeded to lay siege, very soon capitulated. She may have fallen in love with him, for he was an attractive scamp, but the verdict at the time was that it was her ambition, not her heart, that she indulged. In any case, there was the end of Rodericks wooing, and before the year was out she had married the other. I remembered seeing her once or twice in London about this time, splendid and brilliant, of a beauty that dazzled, with the world very much at her feet. She bore him two sons; she succeeded to a great position; and then with the granting of her hearts desire, the leanness withal followed. Her husbands infidelities were numerous and notorious; he treated her with a subtle cruelty that just kept on the right side of the law, and, finally, seeking his freedom, he deserted her, and openly lived with another woman. Whether it was pride that kept her from divorcing him, or whether she still loved him (if she had ever done so) and was ready to take him back, or whether it was out of revenge that she refused to have done with him legally, was an affair of which I knew nothing. Calamity followed on calamity; first one and then the other of her sons was killed in the European War, and I remembered having heard that she was the victim of some malignant and disfiguring disease, which caused her to lead a hermit life, seeing nobody. It was now three years or so since she had died. Such, with the addition that she had died in my house, and that Roderick had been with her, was the sum of my meagre knowledge, which might or might not, so he had intimated, be supplemented by him. He arrived next day, having motored down from London for the avoidance of fatigue, and certainly as we sat after dinner that night in the gardenroom, he had avoided it very successfully, for never had I seen him more animated. Oh, I have been so right to come here, he said, for I feel steeped in tranquillity and content. Theres such a tremendous sense of Margarets presence here, and I never knew how much I wanted it. Perhaps that is purely subjective, but what does that matter so long as I feel it? How a scene soaks into the place where it has been enacted; my room, which you know was her room, is alive with her. I want nothing better than to be here, prowling and purring over the memory of the last time, which was the only one, that I was here. Yes, just that; and I know how odd you must think it. But its true, it was here that I saw her die, and instead of shunning the place, I bathe myself in it. For it was one of the happiest hours of my life. Because I began. No; not because it gave her release, if thats in your mind, he said. Its because I saw He broke off, and remembering his stipulation that I should ask him nothing, but that he would tell me if and when he could, I put no question to him. His eyes were dancing with the sparkle of fire that burned on the hearth, for though April was here, the evenings were still chilly, and it was not the fire that gave them their light, but a joyousness that was as bright as glee, and as deep as happiness. No, Im not going on with that now, he said, though I expect I shall before my days are out. At present I shall leave you wondering why a place that should hold such mournful memories for me, is such a wellspring. And as I am not for telling you about me, let me enquire about you. Bring yourself up to date; what have you been doing, and much more important, what have you been thinking about? My doings have chiefly been confined to settling into this house, I said. Ive been pulling and pushing furniture into places where it wouldnt go, and cursing it. He looked round the room. It doesnt seem to bear you any grudge, he said. It looks contented. And what else? In the intervals, when I couldnt push and curse any more, I said, Ive been writing a few spook stories. All about the borderland, which I love as much as you do. He laughed outright. Do you, indeed? he said. Then its no use my saying that it is quite impossible. But I should like to know your views on the borderland. I pointed to a sheaf of typewritten stuff that littered my table. Thems my sentiments, I said, and quite at your service. Good; then Ill take them to bed with me when I go, if youll allow me. Ive always thought that you had a pretty notion of the creepy, but the mistake that you make is to imagine that creepiness is characteristic of the borderland. No doubt there are creepy things there, but so there are everywhere, and a thunderstorm is far more terrifying than an apparition. And when you get really close to the borderland, you see how enchanting it is, and how vastly more enchanting the other side must be. I got right on to the borderland once, here in this house, as I shall probably tell you, and I never saw so happy and kindly a place. And without doubt I shall soon be careering across it in my own person. Thatll be, as weve often determined, wildly interesting, and it will have the solemnity of a first night at a new play about it. Therell be the curtain close in front of you, and presently it will be raised, and you will see something you never saw before. How well, on the whole, the secret has been kept, though from time to time little bits of information, little scraps of dialogue, little descriptions of scenery have leaked out. Enthrallingly interesting; one wonders how they will come into the great new drama. You dont mean the sort of thing that mediums tell us? I asked. Of course I dont. I hate the sloshyreally theres no other word for it, and why should there be, since that word fits so admirablythe sloshy utterances of the ordinary highclass, beyondsuspicion medium at half a guinea a sitting, who asks if theres anybody present who once knew a Charles, or if not Charles, Thomas or William. Naturally somebody has known a Charles, Thomas or William who has passed over, and is the son, brother, father or cousin of a lady in black. So when she claims Thomas, he tells her that he is very busy and happy, helping people.  O Lord, what rot! I went to one such sance a month ago, just before I was taken ill, and the medium said that Margaret wanted to get into touch with somebody. Two of us claimed Margaret, but Margaret chose me and said she was the spirit of my wife. Wife, you know! You must allow that this was a very unfortunate shot. When I said that I was unmarried, Margaret said that she was my mother, whose name was Charlotte. Oh dear, oh dear! Well, I shall go to bed with joy, bringing your spooks with me.  Sheaves, said I. Yes, but arent they the sheaves? Isnt ones gleaning of sheaves in this world what they call spooks? That is, the knowledge of what one takes across? I dont understand one word, said I. But you must understand. All the knowledgeworth anythingwhich you or I have collected here, is the beginning of the other life. We toil and moil, and make our gleanings and our harvestings, and all our decent efforts help us to realize what the real harvest is. Surely we shall take with us exactly that which we have reaped.  After he had gone up to bed I sat trying to correct the errors of a typist, but still between me and the pages there dwelt that haunting sense of all that we did here being only the grist for what was to come. Our achievements were rewarded, so he seemed to say, by a glimpse. And those glimpsesso I tried to follow himwere the hints that had leaked out of the drama for which the curtain was twitching. Was that it? Roderick came down to breakfast next morning, superlatively frank and happy. I didnt read a single line of your stories, he said. When I got into my bedroom I was so immeasurably content that I couldnt risk getting interested in anything else. I lay awake a long time, pinching myself in order to prolong my sheer happiness, but the flesh was weak, and at last, from sheer happiness, I slept and probably snored. Did you hear me? I hope not. And then sheer happiness dictated my dreams, though I dont know what they were, and the moment I was called I got up, because  because I didnt want to miss anything. Now, to be practical again, what are you doing this morning? I was intending to play golf, I said, unless There isnt an unless, if you mean me. My plan made itself for me, and I intendthis is my planto drive out with you, and sit in the hollow by the fourth tee, and read your stories there. Theres a great southwesterly wind, like a celestial housemaid, scouring the skies, and I shall be completely sheltered there, and in the intervals of my reading, I shall pleasantly observe the unsuccessful efforts of the golfers to carry the big bunker. I cant personally play golf any more, but I shall enjoy seeing other people attempting to do it. And no prowling or purring? I asked. Not this morning. Thats all right its there. Its so much all right that I want to be active in other directions. Sitting in a windless hollow is about the range of my activities. I say that for fear that you should. I found a match when we arrived at the clubhouse, and Roderick strolled away to the goal of his observations. Half an hour afterwards I found him watching with criminally ecstatic joy the soaring drives that, in the teeth of the great wind, were arrested and blown back into the unholiest bunker in all the world or the low clever balls that never rose to the height of the shoredup cliff of sand. The couple in front of my partner and me were sarcastic dogs, and bade us wait only till they had delved themselves over the ridge, and then we might follow as soon as we chose. After violent deeds in the bunker they climbed over the big dune, thirty yards beyond which lay the green on which they would now be putting. As soon as they had disappeared, Roderick snatched my driver from my hand. I cant bear it, he said. I must hit a ball again. Tee it low, caddie.  No, no tee at all. He hit a superb shot, just high enough to carry the ridge, and not so high that it caught the opposing wind and was stopped towards the end of its flight. He gave a loud croak of laughter. Thatll teach them not to insult my friend, he said. It must have been pitched right among their careful puttings. And now I shall read his ghoststories. I have recorded this athletic incident because better than any analysis of his attitude towards life and death it conveys just what that attitude was. He knew perfectly well that any swift exertion might be fatal to him, but he wanted to hit a golf ball again as sweetly and as hard as it could be hit. He had done it he had scored off death. And as I went on my way I felt perfectly confident that if, with that brisk free effort, he had fallen dead on the tee, he would have thought it well worth while, provided only that he had made that irreproachable shot. While alive, he proposed to partake in the pleasures of life, amongst which he had always reckoned that of hitting golf balls, not caring, though he liked to be alive, whether the immediate consequence was death, just because he did not in the least object to being dead. The choice was of such little consequence.  The history of that I was to know that evening. The stories which Roderick had taken to read were designed to be of an uncomfortable type one concerned a vampire, one an elemental, the third the reincarnation of a certain execrable personage, and as we sat in the gardenroom after tea, he with these pages on his knees, I had the pleasure of seeing him give hasty glances round, as he read, as if to assure himself that there was nothing unusual in the dimmer corners of the room.  I liked that; he was doing as I intended that a reader should. Before long he came to the last page. And are you intending to make a book of them? he asked. What are the other stories like? Worse, said I, with the complacency of the horrormonger. Thendid you ask for criticism? I shall give it in any caseyou will make a book that not only is inartistic, all shadows and no light, but a false book. Fiction can be false, you know, inherently false. You play godfather to your stories, you see you tell them in the first person, those at least that I have read, and that, though it need not be supposed that those experiences were actually yours, yet gives a sort of guarantee that you believe the borderland of which you write to be entirely terrible. But it isnt there are probably terrors thereI think for instance that I believe in elemental spirits, of some ghastly kindbut I am sure that I believe that the borderland, for the most part, is almost inconceivably delightful. Ive got the best of reasons for believing that. Im willing to be convinced, said I. Again, as he looked at the fire, his eye sparkled, not with the reflected flame, but with the brightness of some interior vision. Well, theres an hour yet before dinner, he said, and my story wont take half of that. Its about my previous experience of this house; what I saw, in fact, in the room which I now occupy. It was because of that, naturally, that I wanted the same room again. Here goes, then. For the twenty years of Margarets married life, he said, I never saw her except quite accidentally and casually. Casually, like that, I had seen her at theatres and whatnot with her two boys whom thus I knew by sight. But I had never spoken to either of them, nor, after her marriage, to their mother. I knew, as all the world knew, that she had a terrible life, but circumstances being what they were, I could not bring myself to her notice, the more so because she made no sign or gesture of wanting me. But I am sure that no day passed on which I did not long to be able to show her that my love and sympathy were hers. Only, so I thought, I had to know that she wanted them. I heard, of course, of the death of her sons. They were both killed in France within a few days of each other; one was eighteen, the other nineteen. I wrote to her then formally, so long had we been strangers, and she answered formally. After that, she took this house, where she lived alone. A year later, I was told that she had now for some months been suffering from a malignant and disfiguring disease. I was in London, strolling down Piccadilly when my companion mentioned it, and I at once became aware that I must go to see her, not tomorrow or soon, but now. It is difficult to describe the quality of that conviction, or tell you how instinctive and overmastering it was. There are some things which you cant help doing, not exactly because you desire to do them, but because they must be done. If, for instance, you are in the middle of the road, and see a motor coming towards you at topspeed, you have to step to the side of the road, unless you deliberately choose to commit suicide. It was just like that; unless I intended to commit a sort of spiritual suicide there was no choice. A few hours later I was at your door here, asked to see her, and was told that she was desperately ill and could see nobody. But I got her maid to take the message that I was here, and presently her nurse came down to tell me that she would see me. I should find Margaret, she said, wearing a veil so as to conceal from me the dreadful ravages which the disease had inflicted on her face, and the scars of the two operations which she had undergone. Very likely she would not speak to me, for she had great difficulty in speaking at all, and in any case I was not to stay for more than a few minutes. Probably she could not live many hours I had only just come in time. And at that moment I wished I had done anything rather than come here, for though instinct had driven me here, yet instinct now recoiled with unspeakable horror. The flesh wars against the spirit, you know, and under its stress I now suggested that it was better perhaps that I should not see her.  But the nurse merely said again that Margaret wished to see me, and guessing perhaps the cause of my unwillingness, Her face will be quite invisible, she added. There will be nothing to shock you. I went in alone Margaret was propped up in bed with pillows, so that she sat nearly upright, and over her head was a dark veil through which I could see nothing whatever. Her right hand lay on the coverlet, and as I seated myself by her bedside, where the nurse had put a chair for me, Margaret advanced her hand towards me, shyly, hesitatingly, as if not sure that I would take it. But it was a sign, a gesture. He paused, his face beaming and radiant with the light of that memory. I am speaking of things unspeakable, he said. I can no more convey to you all that meant than by a mere enumeration of colours can I steep your soul in the feeling of a sunset.  So there I sat, with her hand covered and clasped in mine. I had been told that very likely she would not speak, and for myself there was no word in the world which would not be dross in the gold of that silence. And then from behind her veil there came a whisper.  I couldnt die without seeing you, she said. I was sure you would come. Ive one thing to say to you. I loved you, and I tried to choke my love. And for years, my dear, I have been reaping the harvest of what I did. I tried to kill love, but it was so much stronger than I. And now the harvest is gathered. I have suffered cruelly, you know, but I bless every pang of it. I needed it all.  Only a few minutes before, I had quaked at the thought of seeing her. But now I could not suffer that the veil should cover her face.  Put up your veil, darling, I said. I must see you.  No, no, she whispered. I should horrify you. I am terrible.  You cant be terrible to me, I said. I am going to lift it. I raised her veil. And what did I see? I might have known, I think I might have guessed that at this moment, supreme and perfect, I should see with vision. There was no scar or ravage of disease or disfigurement there. She was far lovelier than she had ever been, and on her face there shone the dawn of the everlasting day. She had shed all that was perishable and subject to decay, and her immortal spirit was manifested to me, purged and punished if you will, but humble and holy. There was granted to my frail mortal sight the power of seeing truly; it was permitted to me to be with her beyond the bounds of mortality.  And then, even as I was lost in an amazement of love and wonder, I saw we were not alone in the room. Two boys, whom I recognized, were standing at the other side of the bed, looking at her. It seemed utterly natural that they should be there.  Weve been allowed to come for you, mother darling, said one. Get up. She turned her face to them.  Ah, my dears, she said. How lovely of you. But just one moment. She bent over towards me and kissed me.  Thank you for coming, Roderick, she said. Goodbye, just for a little while. At that my power of sightmy power of true sightfailed. Her head fell back on the pillows and turned over on one side. For one second, before I let the veil drop over it again, I had a glimpse of her face, marred and cruelly mutilated. I saw that, I say, but never then nor afterwards could I remember it. It was like a terrible dream, which utterly fades on the awaking. Then her hand, which had been clasping mine, in that moment of her farewell slackened its hold, and dropped on to the bed. She had just moved away, somewhere out of sight, with her two boys to look after her. He paused. Thats all, he said. And do you wonder that I chose that room? How I hope that she will come for me. My room was next to Rodericks, the head of his bed being just opposite the head of mine on the other side of the wall. That night I had undressed, lain down, and had just put out my light, when I heard a sharp tap just above me. I thought it was some fortuitous noise, as of a picture swinging in a draught, but the moment after it was repeated, and it struck me that it was perhaps a summons from Roderick who wanted something. Still quite unalarmed, I got out of bed, and, candle in hand, went to his door. I knocked, but receiving no answer, opened it an inch or two. Did you want anything? I asked, and, again receiving no answer, I went in. His lights were burning, and he was sitting up in bed. He did not appear to see me or be conscious of my presence, and his eyes were fixed on some point a few feet away in front of him. His mouth smiled, and in his eyes was just such a joy as I had seen there when he told me his story. Then, leaning on his arm, he moved as if to rise. Oh, Margaret, my dear.  he cried. He drew a couple of short breaths, and fell back. The BusConductor My friend, Hugh Grainger, and I had just returned from a two days visit in the country, where we had been staying in a house of sinister repute which was supposed to be haunted by ghosts of a peculiarly fearsome and truculent sort. The house itself was all that such a house should be, Jacobean and oakpanelled, with long dark passages and high vaulted rooms. It stood, also, very remote, and was encompassed by a wood of sombre pines that muttered and whispered in the dark, and all the time that we were there a southwesterly gale with torrents of scolding rain had prevailed, so that by day and night weird voices moaned and fluted in the chimneys, a company of uneasy spirits held colloquy among the trees, and sudden tattoes and tappings beckoned from the windowpanes. But in spite of these surroundings, which were sufficient in themselves, one would almost say, to spontaneously generate occult phenomena, nothing of any description had occurred. I am bound to add, also, that my own state of mind was peculiarly well adapted to receive or even to invent the sights and sounds we had gone to seek, for I was, I confess, during the whole time that we were there, in a state of abject apprehension, and lay awake both nights through hours of terrified unrest, afraid of the dark, yet more afraid of what a lighted candle might show me. Hugh Grainger, on the evening after our return to town, had dined with me, and after dinner our conversation, as was natural, soon came back to these entrancing topics. But why you go ghostseeking I cannot imagine, he said, because your teeth were chattering and your eyes starting out of your head all the time you were there, from sheer fright. Or do you like being frightened? Hugh, though generally intelligent, is dense in certain ways; this is one of them. Why, of course, I like being frightened, I said. I want to be made to creep and creep and creep. Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid. Well, the fact that neither of us saw anything, he said, confirms what I have always believed. And what have you always believed? That these phenomena are purely objective, not subjective, and that ones state of mind has nothing to do with the perception that perceives them, nor have circumstances or surroundings anything to do with them either. Look at Osburton. It has had the reputation of being a haunted house for years, and it certainly has all the accessories of one. Look at yourself, too, with all your nerves on edge, afraid to look round or light a candle for fear of seeing something! Surely there was the right man in the right place then, if ghosts are subjective. He got up and lit a cigarette, and looking at himHugh is about six feet high, and as broad as he is longI felt a retort on my lips, for I could not help my mind going back to a certain period in his life, when, from some cause which, as far as I knew, he had never told anybody, he had become a mere quivering mass of disordered nerves. Oddly enough, at the same moment and for the first time, he began, to speak of it himself. You may reply that it was not worth my while to go either, he said, because I was so clearly the wrong man in the wrong place. But I wasnt. You for all your apprehensions and expectancy have never seen a ghost. But I have, though I am the last person in the world you would have thought likely to do so, and, though my nerves are steady enough again now, it knocked me all to bits. He sat down again in his chair. No doubt you remember my going to bits, he said, and since I believe that I am sound again now, I should rather like to tell you about it. But before I couldnt; I couldnt speak of it at all to anybody. Yet there ought to have been nothing frightening about it; what I saw was certainly a most useful and friendly ghost. But it came from the shaded side of things; it looked suddenly out of the night and the mystery with which life is surrounded. I want first to tell you quite shortly my theory about ghostseeing, he continued, and I can explain it best by a simile, an image. Imagine then that you and I and everybody in the world are like people whose eye is directly opposite a little tiny hole in a sheet of cardboard which is continually shifting and revolving and moving about. Back to back with that sheet of cardboard is another, which also, by laws of its own, is in perpetual but independent motion. In it too there is another hole, and when, fortuitously it would seem, these two holes, the one through which we are always looking, and the other in the spiritual plane, come opposite one another, we see through, and then only do the sights and sounds of the spiritual world become visible or audible to us. With most people these holes never come opposite each other during their life. But at the hour of death they do, and then they remain stationary. That, I fancy, is how we pass over.


Now, in some natures, these holes are comparatively large, and are constantly coming into opposition. Clairvoyants, mediums are like that. But, as far as I knew, I had no clairvoyant or mediumistic powers at all. I therefore am the sort of person who long ago made up his mind that he never would see a ghost. It was, so to speak, an incalculable chance that my minute spyhole should come into opposition with the other. But it did and it knocked me out of time. I had heard some such theory before, and though Hugh put it rather picturesquely, there was nothing in the least convincing or practical about it. It might be so, or again it might not. I hope your ghost was more original than your theory, said I, in order to bring him to the point. Yes, I think it was. You shall judge. I put on more coal and poked up the fire. Hugh has got, so I have always considered, a great talent for telling stories, and that sense of drama which is so necessary for the narrator. Indeed before now, I have suggested to him that he should take this up as a profession, sit by the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, when times are, as usual, bad, and tell stories to the passersby in the street, Arabian fashion, for reward. The most part of mankind, I am aware, do not like long stories, but to the few, among whom I number myself, who really like to listen to lengthy accounts of experiences, Hugh is an ideal narrator. I do not care for his theories, or for his similes, but when it comes to facts, to things that happened, I like him to be lengthy. Go on, please, and slowly, I said. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is the ruin of storytelling. I want to hear when and where and how it all was, and what you had for lunch and where you had dined and what Hugh began It was the 24th of June, just eighteen months ago, he said. I had let my flat, you may remember, and came up from the country to stay with you for a week. We had dined alone here I could not help interrupting. Did you see the ghost here? I asked. In this square little box of a house in a modern street? I was in the house when I saw it. I hugged myself in silence. We had dined alone here in Graeme Street, he said, and after dinner I went out to some party, and you stopped at home. At dinner your man did not wait, and when I asked where he was, you told me he was ill, and, I thought, changed the subject rather abruptly. You gave me your latchkey when I went out, and on coming back, I found you had gone to bed. There were, however, several letters for me, which required answers. I wrote them there and then, and posted them at the pillarbox opposite. So I suppose it was rather late when I went upstairs. You had put me in the front room, on the third floor, overlooking the street, a room which I thought you generally occupied yourself. It was a very hot night, and though there had been a moon when I started to my party, on my return the whole sky was cloudcovered, and it both looked and felt as if we might have a thunderstorm before morning. I was feeling very sleepy and heavy, and it was not till after I had got into bed that I noticed by the shadows of the windowframes on the blind that only one of the windows was open. But it did not seem worth while to get out of bed in order to open it, though I felt rather airless and uncomfortable, and I went to sleep. What time it was when I awoke I do not know, but it was certainly not yet dawn, and I never remember being conscious of such an extraordinary stillness as prevailed. There was no sound either of footpassengers or wheeled traffic; the music of life appeared to be absolutely mute. But now instead of being sleepy and heavy, I felt, though I must have slept an hour or two at most, since it was not yet dawn, perfectly fresh and wideawake, and the effort which had seemed not worth making before, that of getting out of bed and opening the other window, was quite easy now, and I pulled up the blind, threw it wide open, and leaned out, for somehow I parched and pined for air. Even outside the oppression was very noticeable, and though, as you know, I am not easily given to feel the mental effects of climate, I was aware of an awful creepiness coming over me. I tried to analyse it away, but without success; the past day had been pleasant, I looked forward to another pleasant day tomorrow, and yet I was full of some nameless apprehension. I felt, too, dreadfully lonely in this stillness before the dawn. Then I heard suddenly and not very far away the sound of some approaching vehicle; I could distinguish the tread of two horses walking at a slow foots pace. They were, though yet invisible, coming up the street, and yet this indication of life did not abate that dreadful sense of loneliness which I have spoken of. Also in some dim unformulated way that which was coming seemed to me to have something to do with the cause of my oppression. Then the vehicle came into sight. At first I could not distinguish what it was. Then I saw that the horses were black and had long tails, and that what they dragged was made of glass, but had a black frame. It was a hearse. Empty. It was moving up this side of the street. It stopped at your door. Then the obvious solution struck me. You had said at dinner that your man was ill, and you were, I thought, unwilling to speak more about his illness. No doubt, so I imagined now, he was dead, and for some reason, perhaps because you did not want me to know anything about it, you were having the body removed at night. This, I must tell you, passed through my mind quite instantaneously, and it did not occur to me how unlikely it really was, before the next thing happened. I was still leaning out of the window, and I remember also wondering, yet only momentarily, how odd it was that I saw thingsor rather the one thing I was looking atso very distinctly. Of course, there was a moon behind the clouds, but it was curious how every detail of the hearse and the horses was visible. There was only one man, the driver, with it, and the street was otherwise absolutely empty. It was at him I was looking now. I could see every detail of his clothes, but from where I was, so high above him, I could not see his face. He had on grey trousers, brown boots, a black coat buttoned all the way up, and a straw hat. Over his shoulder there was a strap, which seemed to support some sort of little bag. He looked exactly likewell, from my description what did he look exactly like? Whya busconductor, I said instantly. So I thought, and even while I was thinking this, he looked up at me. He had a rather long thin face, and on his left cheek there was a mole with a growth of dark hair on it. All this was as distinct as if it had been noonday, and as if I was within a yard of him. Butso instantaneous was all that takes so long in the tellingI had not time to think it strange that the driver of a hearse should be so unfunereally dressed. Then he touched his hat to me, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.  Just room for one inside, sir, he said. There was something so odious, so coarse, so unfeeling about this that I instantly drew my head in, pulled the blind down again, and then, for what reason I do not know, turned on the electric light in order to see what time it was. The hands of my watch pointed to halfpast eleven. It was then for the first time, I think, that a doubt crossed my mind as to the nature of what I had just seen. But I put out the light again, got into bed, and began to think. We had dined; I had gone to a party, I had come back and written letters, had gone to bed and had slept. So how could it be halfpast eleven?  Orwhat halfpast eleven was it? Then another easy solution struck me; my watch must have stopped. But it had not; I could hear it ticking. There was stillness and silence again. I expected every moment to hear muffled footsteps on the stairs, footsteps moving slowly and smally under the weight of a heavy burden, but from inside the house there was no sound whatever. Outside, too, there was the same dead silence, while the hearse waited at the door. And the minutes ticked on and ticked on, and at length I began to see a difference in the light in the room, and knew that the dawn was beginning to break outside. But how had it happened then that if the corpse was to be removed at night it had not gone, and that the hearse still waited, when morning was already coming? Presently I got out of bed again, and with the sense of strong physical shrinking I went to the window and pulled back the blind. The dawn was coming fast; the whole street was lit by that silver hueless light of morning. But there was no hearse there. Once again I looked at my watch. It was just a quarterpast four. But I would swear that not half an hour had passed since it had told me that it was halfpast eleven. Then a curious double sense, as if I was living in the present and at the same moment had been living in some other time, came over me. It was dawn on June 25th, and the street, as natural, was empty. But a little while ago the driver of a hearse had spoken to me, and it was halfpast eleven. What was that driver, to what plane did he belong? And again what halfpast eleven was it that I had seen recorded on the dial of my watch? And then I told myself that the whole thing had been a dream. But if you ask me whether I believed what I told myself, I must confess that I did not. Your man did not appear at breakfast next morning, nor did I see him again before I left that afternoon. I think if I had, I should have told you about all this, but it was still possible, you see, that what I had seen was a real hearse, driven by a real driver, for all the ghastly gaiety of the face that had looked up to mine, and the levity of his pointing hand. I might possibly have fallen asleep soon after seeing him, and slumbered through the removal of the body and the departure of the hearse. So I did not speak of it to you. There was something wonderfully straightforward and prosaic in all this; here were no Jacobean houses oakpanelled and surrounded by weeping pinetrees, and somehow the very absence of suitable surroundings made the story more impressive. But for a moment a doubt assailed me. Dont tell me it was all a dream, I said. I dont know whether it was or not. I can only say that I believe myself to have been wide awake. In any case the rest of the story isodd. I went out of town again that afternoon, he continued, and I may say that I dont think that even for a moment did I get the haunting sense of what I had seen or dreamed that night out of my mind. It was present to me always as some vision unfulfilled. It was as if some clock had struck the four quarters, and I was still waiting to hear what the hour would be. Exactly a month afterwards I was in London again, but only for the day. I arrived at Victoria about eleven, and took the underground to Sloane Square in order to see if you were in town and would give me lunch. It was a baking hot morning, and I intended to take a bus from the Kings Road as far as Graeme Street. There was one standing at the corner just as I came out of the station, but I saw that the top was full, and the inside appeared to be full also. Just as I came up to it the conductor who, I suppose, had been inside, collecting fares or whatnot, came out on to the step within a few feet of me. He wore grey trousers, brown boots, a black coat buttoned, a straw hat, and over his shoulder was a strap on which hung his little machine for punching tickets. I saw his face, too; it was the face of the driver of the hearse, with a mole on the left cheek. Then he spoke to me, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.  Just room for one inside, sir, he said. At that a sort of panicterror took possession of me, and I knew I gesticulated wildly with my arms, and cried, No, no! But at that moment I was living not in the hour that was then passing, but in that hour which had passed a month ago, when I leaned from the window of your bedroom here just before the dawn broke. At this moment too I knew that my spyhole had been opposite the spyhole into the spiritual world. What I had seen there had some significance, now being fulfilled, beyond the significance of the trivial happenings of today and tomorrow. The Powers of which we know so little were visibly working before me. And I stood there on the pavement shaking and trembling. I was opposite the postoffice at the corner, and just as the bus started my eye fell on the clock in the window there. I need not tell you what the time was. Perhaps I need not tell you the rest, for you probably conjecture it, since you will not have forgotten what happened at the corner of Sloane Square at the end of July, the summer before last. The bus pulled out from the pavement into the street in order to get round a van that was standing in front of it. At the moment there came down the Kings Road a big motor going at a hideously dangerous pace. It crashed full into the bus, burrowing into it as a gimlet burrows into a board. He paused. And thats my story, he said. The Cat Many people will, doubtless, remember that exhibition at the Royal Academy, not so many seasons ago, which came to be known as Alinghams year, when Dick Alingham vaulted, with one bound, as it were, out of the crowd of strugglers and seated himself with admirably certain poise on the very topmost pinnacle of contemporary fame. He exhibited three portraits, each a masterpiece, which killed every picture within range. But since that year nobody cared anything for pictures whether in or out of range except those three, it did not signify so greatly. The phenomenon of his appearance was as sudden as that of the meteor, coming from nowhere and sliding large and luminous across the remote and starsown sky, as inexplicable as the bursting of a spring on some dustridden rocky hillside. Some fairy godmother, one might conjecture, had bethought herself of her forgotten godson, and with a wave of her wand bestowed on him this transcendant gift. But, as the Irish say, she held her wand in her left hand, for her gift had another side to it. Or perhaps, again, Jim Merwick is right, and the theory he propounds in his monograph, On certain obscure lesions of the nerve centres, says the final word on the subject. Dick Alingham himself, as was indeed natural, was delighted with his fairy godmother or his obscure lesion (whichever was responsible), and (the monograph spoken of above was written after Dicks death) confessed frankly to his friend Merwick, who was still struggling through the crowd of rising young medical practitioners, that it was all quite as inexplicable to himself as it was to anyone else. All I know about it, he said, is that last autumn I went through two months of mental depression so hideous that I thought again and again that I must go off my head. For hours daily, I sat here, waiting for something to crack, which as far as I am concerned would end everything. Yes, there was a cause; you know it. He paused a moment and poured into his glass a fairly liberal allowance of whisky, filled it half up from a syphon, and lit a cigarette. The cause, indeed, had no need to be enlarged on, for Merwick quite well remembered how the girl Dick had been engaged to, threw him over with an abruptness that was almost superb, when a more eligible suitor made his appearance. The latter was certainly very eligible indeed with his good looks, his title, and his million of money, and Lady Madingleyexfuture Mrs. Alinghamwas perfectly content with what she had done. She was one of those blonde, lithe, silken girls who, happily for the peace of mens minds, are rather rare, and who remind one of some humanised yet celestial and bestial cat. I neednt speak of the cause, Dick continued, but, as I say, for those two months I soberly thought that the only end to it would be madness. Then one evening when I was sitting here aloneI was always sitting alonesomething did snap in my head. I know I wondered, without caring at all, whether this was the madness which I had been expecting, or whether (which would be preferable) some more fatal breakage had happened. And even while I wondered, I was aware that I was not depressed or unhappy any longer. He paused for so long in a smiling retrospect that Merwick indicated to him that he had a listener. Well? he said. It was well indeed. I havent been unhappy since. I have been riotously happy instead. Some divine doctor, I suppose, just wiped off that stain on my brain that hurt so. Heavens, how it hurt! Have a drink, by the way? No, thanks, said Merwick. But what has all this got to do with your painting? Why, everything. For I had hardly realised the fact that I was happy again, when I was aware that everything looked different. The colours of all I saw were twice as vivid as they had been, shape and outline were intensified too. The whole visible world had been dusty and blurred before, and seen in a half light. But now the lights were turned up, and there was a new heaven and a new earth. And in the same flash, I knew that I could paint things as I saw them. Which, he concluded, I have done. There was something rather sublime about this, and Merwick laughed. I wish something would snap in my brain, if it kindles the perceptions in that way, said he, but it is just possible that the snapping of things in ones brain does not always produce just that effect. That is possible. Also, as I gather, things dont snap unless you have gone through some such hideous period as I have been through. And I tell you frankly that I wouldnt go through that again even to ensure a snap that would make me see things like Titian. What did the snapping feel like? asked Merwick. Dick considered a moment. Do you know when a parcel comes, tied up with string, and you cant find a knife, he said, and therefore you burn the string through, holding it taut? Well, it was like that quite painless, only something got weaker and weaker, and then parted, softly without effort. Not very lucid, Im afraid, but it was just like that. It had been burning a couple of months, you see. He turned away and hunted among the letters and papers which littered his writingtable till he found an envelope with a coronet on it. He chuckled to himself as he took it up. Commend me to Lady Madingley, he said, for a brazen impudence in comparison with which brass is softer than putty. She wrote to me yesterday, asking me if I would finish the portrait I had begun of her last year, and let her have it at my own price. Then I think you have had a lucky escape, remarked Merwick, I suppose you didnt even answer her. Oh, yes, I did why not? I said the price would be two thousand pounds, and I was ready to go on at once. She has agreed, and sent me a cheque for a thousand this evening. Merwick stared at him in blank astonishment. Are you mad? he asked. I hope not, though one can never be sure about little points like that. Even doctors like you dont know exactly what constitutes madness. Merwick got up. But is it possible that you dont see what a terrible risk you run? he asked. To see her again, to be with her like that, having to look at herI saw her this afternoon by the way, hardly humanmay not that so easily revive again all that you felt before? It is too dangerous much too dangerous. Dick shook his head. There is not the slightest risk, he said, everything within me is utterly and absolutely indifferent to her. I dont even hate her if I hated her there might be a possibility of my again loving her. As it is, the thought of her does not arouse in me any emotion of any kind. And really such stupendous calmness deserves to be rewarded. I respect colossal things like that. He finished his whisky as he spoke, and instantly poured himself out another glass. Thats the fourth, said his friend. Is it? I never count. It shows a sordid attention to uninteresting detail. Funnily enough too, alcohol does not have the smallest effect on me now. Why drink then? Because if I give it up this entrancing vividness of colour and clarity of outline is a little diminished. Cant be good for you, said the doctor. Dick laughed. My dear fellow, look at me carefully, he said, and then if you can conscientiously declare that I show any signs of indulging in stimulants, Ill give them up altogether. Certainly it would have been hard to find a point in which Dick did not present the appearance of perfect health. He had paused, and stood still a moment, his glass in one hand, the whiskybottle in the other, black against the front of his shirt, and not a tremor of unsteadiness was there. His face of wholesome sunburnt hue was neither puffy nor emaciated, but firm of flesh and of a wonderful clearness of skin. Clear too was his eye, with eyelids neither baggy nor puckered; he looked indeed a model of condition, hard and fit, as if he was in training for some athletic event. Lithe and active too was his figure, his movements were quick and precise, and even Merwick, with his doctors eye, trained to detect any symptom, however slight, in which the drinker must betray himself, was bound to confess that no such was here present. His appearance contradicted it authoritatively, so also did his manner; he met the eye of the man he was talking to without sideway glances; he showed no signs however small, of any disorder of the nerves. Yet Dick was altogether an abnormal fellow; the history he had just been recounting was abnormal, those weeks of depression, followed by the sudden snap in his brain which had apparently removed, as a wet cloth removes a stain, all the memory of his love, and of the cruel bitterness that resulted from it. Abnormal too was his sudden leap into high artistic achievement from a past of very mediocre performance. Why should there then not be a similar abnormality here? Yes, I confess you show no sign of taking excessive stimulant, said Merwick, but if I attended you professionallyah, Im not toutingI should make you give up all stimulant, and go to bed for a month. Why in the name of goodness? asked Dick. Because, theoretically, it must be the best thing you could do. You had a shock, how severe, the misery of those weeks of depression tells you. Well, common sense says, Go slow after a shock; recoup. Instead of which you go very fast indeed and produce. I grant it seems to suit you; you also became suddenly capable of feats whichoh, its sheer nonsense, man. Whats sheer nonsense? You are. Professionally, I detest you, because you appear to be an exception to a theory that I am sure must be right. Therefore I have got to explain you away, and at present I cant. Whats the theory? asked Dick. Well, the treatment of shock first of all. And secondly, that in order to do good work, one ought to eat and drink very little and sleep a lot. How long do you sleep by the way? Dick considered. Oh, I go to bed about three usually, he said; I suppose I sleep for about four hours. And live on whisky, and eat like a Strasburg goose, and are prepared to run a race tomorrow. Go away, or at least I will. Perhaps youll break down, though. That would satisfy me. But even if you dont, it still remains quite interesting. Merwick found it more than quite interesting in fact, and when he got home that night he searched in his shelves for a certain dusky volume in which he turned up a chapter called Shock. The book was a treatise on obscure diseases and abnormal conditions of the nervous system. He had often read it before, for in his profession he was a special student of the rare and curious. And the following paragraph which had interested him much before, interested him more than ever this evening. The nervous system also can act in a way that must always even to the most advanced student be totally unexpected. Cases are known, and wellauthenticated ones, when a paralytic person has jumped out of bed on the cry of Fire. Cases too are known when a great shock, which produces depression so profound as to amount to lethargy, is followed by abnormal activity, and the calling into use of powers which were previously unknown to exist, or at any rate existed in a quite ordinary degree. Such a hypersensitised state, especially since the desire for sleep or rest is very often much diminished, demands much stimulant in the way of food and alcohol. It would appear also that the patient suffering from this rare form of the afterconsequences of shock has sooner or later some sudden and complete breakdown. It is impossible, however, to conjecture what form this will take. The digestion, however, may become suddenly atrophied, delirium tremens may, without warning, supervene, or he may go completely off his head.  But the weeks passed on, the July suns made London reel in a haze of heat, and yet Alingham remained busy, brilliant and altogether exceptional. Merwick, unknown to him, was watching him closely, and at present was completely puzzled. He held Dick to his word that if he could detect the slightest sign of overindulgence in stimulant, he would cut it off altogether, but he could see absolutely none. Lady Madingley meantime had given him several sittings, and in this connection again Merwick was utterly mistaken in the view he had expressed to Dick as to the risks he ran. For, strangely enough, the two had become great friends. Yet Dick was quite right, all emotion with regard to her on his part was dead, it might have been a piece of stilllife that he was painting, instead of a woman he had wildly worshipped. One morning in midJuly she had been sitting to him in his studio, and contrary to custom he had been rather silent, biting the ends of his brushes, frowning at his canvas, frowning too at her. Suddenly he gave a little impatient exclamation. Its so like you, he said, but it just isnt you. Theres a lot of difference! I cant help making you look as if you were listening to a hymn, one of those in four sharps, dont you know, written by an organist, probably after eating muffins. And thats not characteristic of you! She laughed. You must be rather ingenious to put all that in, she said. I am. Where do I show it all? Dick sighed. Oh, in your eyes of course, he said. You show everything by your eyes, you know. It is entirely characteristic of you. You are a throwback; dont you remember we settled that ever so long ago, to the brute creation, who likewise show everything by their eyes. Ohh. I should have thought that dogs growled at you, and cats scratched. Those are practical measures, but short of that you and animals use their eyes only, whereas people use their mouths and foreheads and other things. A pleased dog, an expectant dog, a hungry dog, a jealous dog, a disappointed dogone gathers all that from a dogs eyes. Their mouths are comparatively immobile, and a cats is even more so. You have often told me that I belong to the genus cat, said Lady Madingley, with complete composure. By Jove, yes, said he. Perhaps looking at the eyes of a cat would help me to see what I miss. Many thanks for the hint. He put down his palette and went to a side table on which stood bottles and ice and syphons. No drink of any kind on this Sahara of a morning? he asked. No, thanks. Now when will you give me the final sitting? You said you only wanted one more. Dick helped himself. Well, I go down to the country with this, he said, to put in the background I told you of. With luck it will take me three days hard painting, without luck a week or more. Oh, my mouth waters at the thought of the background. So shall we say tomorrow week? Lady Madingley made a note of this in a minute gold and jewelled memorandum book. And I am to be prepared to see cats eyes painted there instead of my own when I see it next? she asked, passing by the canvas. Dick laughed. Oh, you will hardly notice the difference, he said. How odd it is that I always have detested cats sothey make me feel actually faint, although you always reminded me of a cat. You must ask your friend Mr. Merwick about these metaphysical mysteries, said she. The background to the picture was at present only indicated by a few vague splashes close to the side of the head of brilliant purple and brilliant green, and the artists mouth might well water at the thought of the few days painting that lay before him. For behind the figure in the long panelshaped canvas was to be painted a green trellis, over which, almost hiding the woodwork, there was to sprawl a great purple clematis in full flaunting glory of varnished leaf and starry flower. At the top would be just a strip of pale summer sky, at her feet just a strip of greygreen grass, but all the rest of the background, greatly daring, would be this diaper of green and purple. For the purpose of putting this in, he was going down to a small cottage of his near Godalming, where he had built in the garden a sort of outdoor studio, an erection betwixt a room and a mere shelter, with the side to the north entirely open, and flanked by this green trellis which was now one immense constellation of purple stars. Framed in this, he well knew how the strange pale beauty of his sitter would glow on the canvas, how she would start out of the background, she and her huge grey hat, and shining grey dress, and yellow hair and ivory white skin and pale eyes, now blue, now grey, now green. This was indeed a thing to look forward to, for there is probably no such unadulterated rapture known to men as creation, and it was small wonder that Dicks mood, as he travelled down to Godalming, was buoyant and effervescent. For he was going, so to speak, to realise his creation every purple star of clematis, every green leaf and piece of trelliswork that he put in, would cause what he had painted to live and shine, just as it is the layers of dusk that fall over the sky at evening which make the stars to sparkle there, jewellike. His scheme was assured, he had hung his constellationthe figure of Lady Madingleyin the sky and now he had to surround it with the green and purple night, so that it might shine. His garden was but a circumscribed plot, but walls of old brick circumscribed it, and he had dealt with the space at his command with a certain originality. At no time had his grass plot (you could scarcely call it lawn) been spacious; now the outdoor studio, twentyfive feet by thirty, took up the greater part of it. He had a solid wooden wall on one side and two trellis walls to the south and east, which creepers were beginning to clothe and which were faced internally by hangings of Syrian and Oriental work. Here in the summer he passed the greater part of the day, painting or idling, and living an outdoor existence. The floor, which had once been grass, which had withered completely under the roof, was covered with Persian rugs; a writingtable, and a diningtable were there, a bookcase full of familiar friends and a halfdozen of basket chairs. One corner, too, was frankly given up to the affairs of the garden, and a mowing machine, a hose for watering, shears, and spade stood there. For like many excitable persons, Dick found that in gardening, that incessant process of plannings and designings to suit the likings of plants, and make them gorgeous in colour and high of growth, there was a wonderful calm haven of refuge for the brain that had been tossing on emotional seas. Plants, too, were receptive, so responsive to kindness; thought given to them was never thought wasted, and to come back now after a months absence in London was to be assured of fresh surprise and pleasure in each foot of gardenbed. And here, with how regal a generosity was the purple clematis to repay him for the care lavished on it. Every flower would show its practical gratitude by standing model for the background of his picture.


The evening was very warm, warm not with any sultry premonition of thunder, but with the clear, clean heat of summer, and he dined alone in his shelter, with the afterflames of the sunset for his lamp. These slowly faded into a sky of velvet blue, but he lingered long over his coffee looking northwards across the garden towards the row of trees that screened him from the house beyond. These were acacias, most graceful and feminine of all green things that grow, summerplumaged now, yet still fresh of leaf. Below them ran a little raised terrace of turf and nearer the beds of the beloved garden; clumps of sweet peas made an inimitable fragrance, and the rosebeds were pink with Baroness Rothschild and La France, and coppercoloured with Beaut Inconstante, and the Richardson rose. Then, nearer at hand, was the green trellis foaming with purple. He was sitting there, hardly looking, but unconsciously drinking in this great festival of colour, when his eye was arrested by a dark slinking form that appeared among the roses, and suddenly turned two shining luminous orbs on him. At this he started up, but his movement caused no perturbation in the animal, which continued with back arched for stroking, and pokerlike tail, to advance towards him, purring. As it came closer Dick felt that shuddering faintness, which often affected him in the presence of cats, come over him, and he stamped and clapped his hands. At this it turned tail quickly a sort of dark shadow streaked the gardenwall for a moment, and it vanished. But its appearance had spoiled for him the sweet spell of the evening, and he went indoors. The next morning was pellucid summer a faint north wind blew, and a sun worthy to illumine the isles of Greece flooded the sky. Dicks dreamless and (for him) long sleep had banished from his mind that rather disquieting incident of the cat, and he set up his canvas facing the trelliswork and purple clematis with a huge sense of imminent ecstasy. Also the garden, which at present he had only seen in the magic of sunset, was gloriously rewarding, and glowed with colour, and though lifethis was present to his mind for the first time for monthsin the shape of Lady Madingley had not been very propitious, yet a man, he argued to himself, must be a very poor hand at living if, with a passion for plants and a passion for art, he cannot fashion a life that shall be full of content. So breakfast being finished, and his model ready and glowing with beauty, he quickly sketched in the broad lines of flowers and foliage and began to paint. Purple and green, green and purple was there ever such a feast for the eye? Gourmet like and greedy as well, he was utterly absorbed in it. He was right too as soon as he put on the first brush of colour he knew he was right. It was just those divine and violent colours which would cause his figure to step out from the picture, it was just that pale strip of sky above which would focus her again, it was just that strip of greygreen grass below her feet that would prevent her, so it seemed, from actually leaving the canvas. And with swift eager sweeps of the brush which never paused and never hurried, he lost himself in his work. He stopped at length with a sense of breathlessness, feeling too as if he had been suddenly called back from some immense distance off. He must have been working some three hours, for his man was already laying the table for lunch, yet it seemed to him that the morning had gone by in one flash. The progress he had made was extraordinary, and he looked long at his picture. Then his eye wandered from the brightness of the canvas to the brightness of the gardenbeds. There, just in front of the bed of sweetpeas, not two yards from him, stood a very large grey cat, watching him. Now the presence of a cat was a thing that usually produced in Dick a feeling of deadly faintness, yet, at this moment, as he looked at the cat and the cat at him, he was conscious of no such feeling, and put down the absence of it, in so far as he consciously thought about it, to the fact that he was in the open air, not in the atmosphere of a closed room. Yet, last night out here, the cat had made him feel faint. But he hardly gave a thought to this, for what filled his mind was that he saw in the rather friendly interested look of the beast that expression in the eye which had so baffled him in his portrait of Lady Madingley. So, slowly, and without any sudden movement that might startle the cat, he reached out his hand for the palette he had just put down, and in a corner of the canvas not yet painted over, recorded in half a dozen swift intuitive touches, what he wanted. Even in the broad sunlight where the animal stood, its eyes looked as if they were internally smouldering as well as being lit from without it was just so that Lady Madingley looked. He would have to lay colour very thinly over white.  For five minutes or so he painted them with quiet eager strokes, drawing the colour thinly over the background of white, and then looked long at that sketch of the eye to see if he had got what he wanted. Then he looked back at the cat which had stood so charmingly for him. But there was no cat there. That, however, since he detested them, and this one had served his purpose, was no matter for regret, and he merely wondered a little at the suddenness of its disappearance. But the legacy it had left on the canvas could not vanish thus, it was his own, a possession, an achievement. Truly this was to be a portrait which would altogether outdistance all he had ever done before. A woman, real, alive, wearing her soul in her eyes, should stand there, and summer riot round her. An extraordinary clearness of vision was his all day, and towards sunset an empty whiskybottle. But this evening he was conscious for the first time of two feelings, one physical, one mental, altogether strange to him the first an impression that he had drunk as much as was good for him, the second a sort of echo in his mind of those tortures he had undergone in the autumn, when he had been tossed aside by the girl, to whom he had given his soul, like a soiled glove. Neither were at all acutely felt, but both were present to him. The evening altogether belied the brilliance of the day, and about six oclock thick clouds had driven up over the sky, and the clear heat of summer had given place to a heat no less intense, but full of the menace of storm. A few big hot drops, too, of rain warned him further, and he pulled his easel into shelter, and gave orders that he would dine indoors. As was usual with him when he was at work, he shunned the distracting influence of any companionship, and he dined alone. Dinner finished, he went into his sittingroom prepared to enjoy his solitary evening. His servant had brought him in the tray, and till he went to bed he would be undisturbed. Outside the storm was moving nearer, the reverberation of the thunder, though not yet close, kept up a continual growl any moment it might move up and burst above in riot of fire and sound. Dick read a book for a while, but his thoughts wandered. The poignancy of his trouble last autumn, which he thought had passed away from him forever, grew suddenly and strangely more acute, also his head was heavy, perhaps with the storm, but possibly with what he had drunk. So, intending to go to bed and sleep off his disquietude, he closed his book, and went across to the window to close that also. But, halfway towards it, he stopped. There on the sofa below it sat a large grey cat with yellow gleaming eyes. In its mouth it held a young thrush, still alive. Then horror woke in him his feeling of sickfaintness was there, and he loathed and was terrified at this dreadful feline glee in the torture of its prey, a glee so great that it preferred the postponement of its meal to a shortening of the other. More than all, the resemblance of the eyes of this cat to those of his portrait suddenly struck him as something hellish. For one moment this all held him bound, as if with paralysis, the next his physical shuddering could be withstood no longer, and he threw the glass he carried at the cat, missing it. For one second the animal paused there glaring at him with an intense and dreadful hostility, then it made one spring of it out of the open window. Dick shut it with a bang that startled himself, and then searched on the sofa and the floor for the bird which he thought the cat had dropped. Once or twice he thought he heard it feebly fluttering, but this must have been an illusion, for he could not find it. All this was rather shaky business, so before going to bed he steadied himself, as his unspoken phrase ran, with a final drink. Outside the thunder had ceased, but the rain beat hissing on to the grass. Then another sound mingled with it, the mewing of a cat, not the long drawn screeches and cries that are usual, but the plaintive calls of the beast that wants to be admitted into its own home. The blind was down, but after a while he could not resist peeping out. There on the windowsill was seated the large grey cat. Though it was raining heavily its fur seemed dry, for it was standing stiffly away from its body. But when it saw him it spat at him, scratching angrily at the glass, and vanished. Lady Madingley  heavens, how he had loved her! And, infernally as she had treated him, how passionately he wanted her now. Was all his trouble then to begin over again? Had that nightmare dawned anew on him? It was the cats fault the eyes of the cat had done it. Yet just now all his desire was blurred by this dullness of brain that was as unaccountable as the reawakening of his desire. For months now he had drunk far more than he had drunk today, yet evening had seen him clearheaded, acute, master of himself, and revelling in the liberty that had come to him, and in the cool joy of creative vision. But tonight he stumbled and groped across the room. The neutralcoloured light of dawn awoke him, and he got up at once, feeling still very drowsy, but in answer to some silent imperative call. The storm had altogether passed away, and a jewel of a morning star hung in a pale heaven. His room looked strangely unfamiliar to him, his own sensations were unfamiliar, there was a vagueness about things, a barrier between him and the world. One desire alone possessed him, to finish the portrait. All else, so he felt, he left to chance, or whatever laws regulate the world, those laws which choose that a certain thrush shall be caught by a certain cat, and choose one scapegoat out of a thousand, and let the rest go free. Two hours later his servant called him, and found him gone from his room. So as the morning was so fair, he went out to lay breakfast in the shelter. The portrait was there, it had been dragged back into position by the clematis, but it was covered with strange scratches, as if the claws of some enraged animal or the nails perhaps of a man had furiously attacked it. Dick Alingham was there, too, lying very still in front of the disfigured canvas. Claws, also, or nails had attacked him, his throat was horribly mangled by them. But his hands were covered with paint, the nails of his fingers too were choked with it. The Confession of Charles Linkworth Dr. Teesdale had occasion to attend the condemned man once or twice during the week before his execution, and found him, as is often the case, when his last hope of life has vanished, quiet and perfectly resigned to his fate, and not seeming to look forward with any dread to the morning that each hour that passed brought nearer and nearer. The bitterness of death appeared to be over for him it was done with when he was told that his appeal was refused. But for those days while hope was not yet quite abandoned, the wretched man had drank of death daily. In all his experience the doctor had never seen a man so wildly and passionately tenacious of life, nor one so strongly knit to this material world by the sheer animal lust of living. Then the news that hope could no longer be entertained was told him, and his spirit passed out of the grip of that agony of torture and suspense, and accepted the inevitable with indifference. Yet the change was so extraordinary that it seemed to the doctor rather that the news had completely stunned his powers of feeling, and he was below the numbed surface, still knit into material things as strongly as ever. He had fainted when the result was told him, and Dr. Teesdale had been called in to attend him. But the fit was but transient, and he came out of it into full consciousness of what had happened. The murder had been a deed of peculiar horror, and there was nothing of sympathy in the mind of the public towards the perpetrator. Charles Linkworth, who now lay under capital sentence, was the keeper of a small stationery store in Sheffield, and there lived with him his wife and mother. The latter was the victim of his atrocious crime; the motive of it being to get possession of the sum of five hundred pounds, which was this womans property. Linkworth, as came out at the trial, was in debt to the extent of a hundred pounds at the time, and during his wifes absence from home, on a visit to relations, he strangled his mother, and during the night buried the body in the small backgarden of his house. On his wifes return, he had a sufficiently plausible tale to account for the elder Mrs. Linkworths disappearance, for there had been constant jarrings and bickerings between him and his mother for the last year or two, and she had more than once threatened to withdraw herself and the eight shillings a week which she contributed to household expenses, and purchase an annuity with her money. It was true, also, that during the younger Mrs. Linkworths absence from home, mother and son had had a violent quarrel arising originally from some trivial point in household management, and that in consequence of this, she had actually drawn her money out of the bank, intending to leave Sheffield next day and settle in London where she had friends. That evening she told him this, and during the night he killed her. His next step, before his wifes return, was logical and sound. He packed up all his mothers possessions and took them to the station, from which he saw them despatched to town by passenger train, and in the evening he asked several friends in to supper, and told them of his mothers departure. He did not (logically also, and in accordance with what they probably already knew) feign regret, but said that he and she had never got on well together, and that the cause of peace and quietness was furthered by her going. He told the same story to his wife on her return, identical in every detail, adding, however, that the quarrel had been a violent one, and that his mother had not even left him her address. This again was wisely thought of it would prevent his wife from writing to her. She appeared to accept his story completely indeed there was nothing strange or suspicious about it. For a while he behaved with the composure and astuteness which most criminals possess up to a certain point, the lack of which, after that, is generally the cause of their detection. He did not, for instance, immediately pay off his debts, but took into his house a young man as lodger, who occupied his mothers room, and he dismissed the assistant in his shop, and did the entire serving himself. This gave the impression of economy, and at the same time he openly spoke of the great improvement in his trade, and not till a month had passed did he cash any of the banknotes which he had found in a locked drawer in his mothers room. Then he changed two notes of fifty pounds and paid off his creditors. At that point his astuteness and composure failed him. He opened a deposit account at a local bank with four more fiftypound notes, instead of being patient, and increasing his balance at the savings bank pound by pound, and he got uneasy about that which he had buried deep enough for security in the back garden. Thinking to render himself safer in this regard, he ordered a cartload of slag and stone fragments and with the help of his lodger employed the summer evenings when work was over, in building a sort of rockery over the spot. Then came the chance circumstance which really set match to this dangerous train. There was a fire in the lost luggage office at Kings Cross Station (from which he ought to have claimed his mothers property) and one of the two boxes was partially burned. The company was liable for compensation, and his mothers name on her linen, and a letter with the Sheffield address on it, led to the arrival of a purely official and formal notice, stating that the company were prepared to consider claims. It was directed to Mrs. Linkworth, and Charles Linkworths wife received and read it. It seemed a sufficiently harmless document, but it was endorsed with his deathwarrant. For he could give no explanation at all of the fact of the boxes still lying at Kings Cross Station, beyond suggesting that some accident had happened to his mother. Clearly he had to put the matter in the hands of the police, with a view to tracing her movements, and if it proved that she was dead, claiming her property, which she had already drawn out of the bank. Such at least was the course urged on him by his wife and lodger, in whose presence the communication from the railway officials was read out, and it was impossible to refuse to take it. Then the silent, uncreaking machinery of justice, characteristic of England, began to move forward. Quiet men lounged about Smith Street, visited banks, observed the supposed increase in trade, and from a house near by looked into the garden where ferns were already flourishing on the rockery. Then came the arrest and the trial, which did not last very long, and on a certain Saturday night the verdict. Smart women in large hats had made the court bright with colour, and in all the crowd there was not one who felt any sympathy with the young athleticlooking man who was condemned. Many of the audience were elderly and respectable mothers, and the crime had been an outrage on motherhood, and they listened to the unfolding of the flawless evidence with strong approval. They thrilled a little when the judge put on the awful and ludicrous little black cap, and spoke the sentence appointed by God. Linkworth went to pay the penalty for the atrocious deed, which no one who had heard the evidence could possibly doubt that he had done, with the same indifference as had marked his entire demeanour since he knew his appeal had failed. The prison chaplain who had attended him had done his utmost to get him to confess, but his efforts had been quite ineffectual, and to the last he asserted, though without protestation, his innocence. On a bright September morning, when the sun shone warm on the terrible little procession that crossed the prison yard to the shed where was erected the apparatus of death, justice was done, and Dr. Teesdale was satisfied that life was immediately extinct. He had been present on the scaffold, had watched the bolt drawn, and the hooded and pinioned figure drop into the pit. He had heard the chunk and creak of the rope as the sudden weight came on to it, and looking down he had seen the queer twitchings of the hanged body. They had lasted but a second or two; the execution had been perfectly satisfactory. An hour later he made the postmortem examination, and found that his view had been correct the vertebrae of the spine had been broken at the neck, and death must have been absolutely instantaneous. It was hardly necessary even to make that little piece of dissection that proved this, but for the sake of form he did so. And at that moment he had a very curious and vivid mental impression that the spirit of the dead man was close beside him, as if it still dwelt in the broken habitation of its body. But there was no question at all that the body was dead it had been dead an hour. Then followed another little circumstance that at the first seemed insignificant though curious also. One of the warders entered, and asked if the rope which had been used an hour ago, and was the hangmans perquisite, had by mistake been brought into the mortuary with the body. But there was no trace of it, and it seemed to have vanished altogether though it was a singular thing to be lost it was not here; it was not on the scaffold. And though the disappearance was of no particular moment, it was quite inexplicable. Dr. Teesdale was a bachelor and a man of independent means, and lived in a tallwindowed and commodious house in Bedford Square, where a plain cook of surpassing excellence looked after his food, and her husband his person. There was no need for him to practise a profession at all, and he performed his work at the prison for the sake of the study of the minds of criminals. Most crimethe transgression, that is, of the rule of conduct which the human race has framed for the sake of its own preservationhe held to be either the result of some abnormality of the brain, or of starvation. Crimes of theft, for instance, he would by no means refer to one head; often it is true they were the result of actual want, but more often dictated by some obscure disease of the brain. In marked cases it was labelled as kleptomania, but he was convinced there were many others which did not fall directly under the dictation of physical need. More especially was this the case where the crime in question involved also some deed of violence, and he mentally placed underneath this heading, as he went home that evening, the criminal at whose last moments he had been present that morning. The crime had been abominable, the need of money not so very pressing, and the very abomination and unnaturalness of the murder inclined him to consider the murderer as lunatic rather than criminal. He had been, as far as was known, a man of quiet and kindly disposition, a good husband, a sociable neighbour. And then he had committed a crime, just one, which put him outside all pales. So monstrous a deed, whether perpetrated by a sane man or a mad one, was intolerable; there was no use for the doer of it on this planet at all. But somehow the doctor felt that he would have been more at one with the execution of justice, if the dead man had confessed. It was morally certain that he was guilty, but he wished that when there was no longer any hope for him, he had endorsed the verdict himself. He dined alone that evening, and after dinner sat in his study which adjoined the diningroom, and feeling disinclined to read, sat in his great red chair opposite the fireplace, and let his mind graze where it would. At once almost, it went back to the curious sensation he had experienced that morning, of feeling that the spirit of Linkworth was present in the mortuary, though life had been extinct for an hour. It was not the first time, especially in cases of sudden death, that he had felt a similar conviction, though perhaps it had never been quite so unmistakable as it had been today. Yet the feeling, to his mind, was quite probably formed on a natural and psychical truth. The spiritit may be remarked that he was a believer in the doctrine of future life, and the nonextinction of the soul with the death of the bodywas very likely unable or unwilling to quit at once and altogether the earthly habitation, very likely it lingered there, earthbound, for a while. In his leisure hours Dr. Teesdale was a considerable student of the occult, for like most advanced and proficient physicians, he clearly recognised how narrow was the boundary of separation between soul and body, how tremendous the influence of the intangible was over material things, and it presented no difficulty to his mind that a disembodied spirit should be able to communicate directly with those who still were bounded by the finite and material. His meditations, which were beginning to group themselves into definite sequence, were interrupted at this moment. On his desk near at hand stood his telephone, and the bell rang, not with its usual metallic insistence, but very faintly, as if the current was weak, or the mechanism impaired. However, it certainly was ringing, and he got up and took the combined ear and mouthpiece off its hook. Yes, yes, he said, who is it? There was a whisper in reply almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible. I cant hear you, he said. Again the whisper sounded, but with no greater distinctness. Then it ceased altogether. He stood there, for some half minute or so, waiting for it to be renewed, but beyond the usual chuckling and croaking, which showed, however, that he was in communication with some other instrument, there was silence. Then he replaced the receiver, rang up the Exchange, and gave his number. Can you tell me what number rang me up just now? he asked. There was a short pause, then it was given him. It was the number of the prison, where he was doctor. Put me on to it, please, he said. This was done. You rang me up just now, he said down the tube. Yes; I am Doctor Teesdale. What is it? I could not hear what you said. The voice came back quite clear and intelligible. Some mistake, sir, it said, We havent rang you up. But the exchange tells me you did, three minutes ago. Mistake at the Exchange, sir, said the voice. Very odd. Well, good night. Warder Draycott, isnt it? Yes, sir; good night, sir. Dr. Teesdale went back to his big armchair, still less inclined to read. He let his thoughts wander on for a while, without giving them definite direction, but ever and again his mind kept coming back to that strange little incident of the telephone. Often and often he had been rung up by some mistake, often and often he had been put on to the wrong number by the exchange, but there was something in this very subdued ringing of the telephone bell, and the unintelligible whisperings at the other end that suggested a very curious train of reflection to his mind, and soon he found himself pacing up and down his room, with his thoughts eagerly feeding on a most unusual pasture. But its impossible, he said, aloud. He went down as usual to the prison next morning and once again he was strangely beset with the feeling that there was some unseen presence there. He had before now had some odd psychical experiences, and knew that he was a sensitiveone, that is, who is capable, under certain circumstances, of receiving supernormal impressions, and of having glimpses of the unseen world that lies about us. And this morning the presence of which he was conscious was that of the man who had been executed yesterday morning. It was local, and he felt it most strongly in the little prison yard, and as he passed the door of the condemned cell. So strong was it there that he would not have been surprised if the figure of the man had been visible to him, and as he passed through the door at the end of the passage, he turned round, actually expecting to see it. All the time, too, he was aware of a profound horror at his heart, this unseen presence strangely disturbed him. And the poor soul, he felt, wanted something done for it. Not for a moment did he doubt that this impression of his was objective, it was no imaginative phantom of his own invention that made itself so real. The spirit of Linkworth was there. He passed into the infirmary, and for a couple of hours busied himself with his work. But all the time he was aware that the same invisible presence was near him, though its force was manifestly less here than in those places which had been more intimately associated with the man. Finally, before he left, in order to test his theory he looked into the execution shed. But next moment with a face suddenly stricken pale, he came out again, closing the door hastily. At the top of the steps stood a figure hooded and pinioned, but hazy of outline and only faintly visible. But it was visible, there was no mistake about it. Dr. Teesdale was a man of good nerve, and he recovered himself almost immediately, ashamed of his temporary panic. The terror that had blanched his face was chiefly the effect of startled nerves, not of terrified heart, and yet deeply interested as he was in psychical phenomena, he could not command himself sufficiently to go back there. Or rather he commanded himself, but his muscles refused to act on the message. If this poor earthbound spirit had any communication to make to him, he certainly much preferred that it should be made at a distance. As far as he could understand, its range was circumscribed. It haunted the prison yard, the condemned cell, the execution shed, it was more faintly felt in the infirmary. Then a further point suggested itself to his mind, and he went back to his room and sent for Warder Draycott, who had answered him on the telephone last night. You are quite sure, he asked, that nobody rang me up last night, just before I rang you up? There was a certain hesitation in the mans manner which the doctor noticed. I dont see how it could be possible, sir, he said, I had been sitting close by the telephone for half an hour before, and again before that. I must have seen him, if anyone had been to the instrument. And you saw no one? said the doctor with a slight emphasis. The man became more markedly ill at ease. No, sir, I saw no one, he said, with the same emphasis. Dr. Teesdale looked away from him. But you had perhaps the impression that there was someone there? he asked, carelessly, as if it was a point of no interest. Clearly Warder Draycott had something on his mind, which he found it hard to speak of. Well, sir, if you put it like that, he began. But you would tell me I was half asleep, or had eaten something that disagreed with me at my supper. The doctor dropped his careless manner. I should do nothing of the kind, he said, any more than you would tell me that I had dropped asleep last night, when I heard my telephone bell ring. Mind you, Draycott, it did not ring as usual, I could only just hear it ringing, though it was close to me. And I could only hear a whisper when I put my ear to it. But when you spoke I heard you quite distinctly. Now I believe there was somethingsomebodyat this end of the telephone. You were here, and though you saw no one, you, too, felt there was someone there. The man nodded. Im not a nervous man, sir, he said, and I dont deal in fancies. But there was something there. It was hovering about the instrument, and it wasnt the wind, because there wasnt a breath of wind stirring, and the night was warm. And I shut the window to make certain. But it went about the room, sir, for an hour or more. It rustled the leaves of the telephone book, and it ruffled my hair when it came close to me. And it was bitter cold, sir. The doctor looked him straight in the face. Did it remind you of what had been done yesterday morning? he asked suddenly. Again the man hesitated. Yes, sir, he said at length. Convict Charles Linkworth. Dr. Teesdale nodded reassuringly. Thats it, he said. Now, are you on duty tonight? Yes, sir, I wish I wasnt. I know how you feel, I have felt exactly the same myself. Now whatever this is, it seems to want to communicate with me. By the way, did you have any disturbance in the prison last night? Yes, sir, there was half a dozen men who had the nightmare. Yelling and screaming they were, and quiet men too, usually. It happens sometimes the night after an execution. Ive known it before, though nothing like what it was last night. I see. Now, if thisthis thing you cant see wants to get at the telephone again tonight, give it every chance. It will probably come about the same time. I cant tell you why, but that usually happens. So unless you must, dont be in this room where the telephone is, just for an hour to give it plenty of time between half past nine and half past ten.