‘I want the file of the Times!’
‘I have the corkscrew of the good landlord; but the file of the Times I have it not. Have you your boots, your fish-sauce, your currycomb?’ he went on. Then, lapsing into irrelevant local gossip, ‘the granddaughter of the blacksmith has the landing-net of the bad tailor.’
‘I want my bill, my note, my addition, my consommation,’ I answered angrily.
‘Very good bed, very good post-horse,’ he replied at random, and I left the County Hotel without being able to find out why suspicion had fallen on “William Evans”.
We hailed one of the cabs which stood outside the hotel door, when a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and a voice, strange but not unfamiliar, exclaimed, ‘Dr. South, as I am a baronet—’
I turned round suddenly and found myself face to face with
Sir Runan Errand!
My brain once more began to reel. Here were the real victim and the true perpetrators of a murder come to view the trial of the man who was charged with having committed it!
Though I was trembling like an aspen leaf? I remembered that we lived in an age of ‘telepathy’ and psychical research.
Sir Runan was doubtless what Messrs. Myers and Gurney call a visible apparition as distinguished from the common invisible apparition.