The Ghost: A Modern Fantasy

er, Rosa and I, acros

themselves again in my mind, coming, as it were, boldly out into the open from the dark, unexplored grottos wherein they had crouched and hidden. And

curb of an Oxford Street pavement afterwards. I remembered the disappearance of Sir Cyril Smart. I remembered all the inexplicable circumstances of Alresca's strange decay, and his equally strange recovery. I remembered that his recovery had coincided with an entire absence of communication between himself and Rosa.... And then she comes! And within an hour he is dead! "I love her. He has come again. This time it is-" How had Alresca meant to finish that sentence? "He has come again." Who had come again? Was there, then, another man involved in the enigma of this tragedy? Was it the man I had seen opposite the Devonshire Mansion on the night when I had found the dagg

r judge. I forgot for the instant the feelings with which she ha

anded of her in a calm and judic

d. "How sad it is!

hade of a suspicion that I might have cherished against her. Although she had avoided my question, although she had igno

. But she did not cry. Then she went abruptly out of the room and out of the house. And fo

"failure of the heart's action." A convenient phrase, whose convenience imposes perhaps oftener than may be imagined on persons of an unsuspecting turn of mind! And having accounted for Alresca's death to the Belgian authorities, I

to have no relatives whatever. Correspondents of English, French, and German newspapers flung themselves upon me in the race for information. They seemed to scent a mystery, but I made it my business to discourage such an idea. Nay, I went further, and deliberately stated to them, with a false air of perfect candor, that t

mare, in which, aided by the admirable Alexis, I was forever despatching

d certain effects sealed in the presence of an official, that my friend had made a will, bearing a date immediately before our arrival in Bruges, leaving the whole of h

id ceremony. Having condoled with me and also complimented me upon my succession to the dead man's estate, he intimated that the city

id that he had been sent by the Bishop to ask if I cared to witness the lying-in-state from some private vantage-ground. I went to the cathedral, and the Bishop himself escorted me t

and I received him in the drawing-room, where I was writing a letter to Totnes. He

piped, "that monsieur has not been offere

me, and I was at a

is profound regrets, and wi

efusal would have horr

it as an honor,"

k," answered the priest. "Th

ood," I said,

charged with my complim

went against not merely my inclinations but my instincts. How

ho carried in his hand a long lighted taper, admitted me at once. Save for this taper and f

wo young priests stood, one at either side of the lofty bier. One of them bowed to me, and I took his place. He disappeared into the ambulatory. The other prie

hich covered the remains of Alresca. We were alone-the priest, Alresca, and I-and I felt afraid. In vain I glanced round, in order to reassure myself, at the stained-glass

tling resonance, and twelve o'clock struck upon the stillnes

without stopping to consider whether I

ons, and turning to me, as it seemed, unwillingly. "Have you not heard it before? Every evening

remors which those suffer who pass wakeful nights, imagining every conceivable ill, and victimized by the most dreadful

vado into the dark, shadowed distances of the fane, and smiled at my nameless trepidations. And then, as my glance sought to penetrate the gloom of

t of the bier; he was within a yard of me. The priest had his back to him. The man seemed to ignore me; he looked fixedly at the bier. But I knew him. I knew that

ession of indescribable malice. With gestures of demoniac triumph he mocked the solemnity

e infamous sacrilege-I ought, at any rate, to have called to the priest-but I could do neither. I t

w dignity passed again down the length of the nave and disappeared. Then, and not till

cathedral," I said huskily. A

o me, Sathanas! I

was dry

id eagerly. "I

sly, and repeated th

imagination, that I had actually