“Then tell me where the McHugh diamonds are,” she said.
A look of desperate obstinacy came into the ghost’s face, through which could unpleasantly be seen the brass knobs of a tall secretary on the opposite side of the room. For some moments the pair confronted each other in silence, although the apparition continued its drinking. Irene watched the figure with unrelenting countenance, and at length made the curious discovery that it was standing upon tiptoe. In a moment more she saw that it was really rising, and that its feet from time to time left the carpet entirely. Her first thought was a fear that it was about to float away and escape, but upon looking closer she came to the conclusion that it was endeavoring to resist the tendency to rise into the air. Watching more sharply, she perceived that while with its right hand it raised its inexhaustible wine-cup, with its left it clung to the back of a chair in an evident endeavor to keep itself down.
“You seem to be standing on tiptoe,” she observed. “Were you looking for anything?”
“No,” the wraith responded, in evident confusion; “that is merely the levitation consequent upon this constant imbibing.”
Irene laughed contemptuously. “Do you mean,” she demanded unfeelingly, “that the sign of intoxication in a ghost is a tendency to rise into the air?”
“It is considered more polite in our circle to use the term employed by the occultists,” the apparition answered somewhat sulkily. “We speak of it as ‘levitation.’”
“But I do not belong to your circle,” Irene returned cheerfully, “and I am not in sympathy with the occultists. Does it not occur to you,” she went on, “that it is worth while to take into consideration the fact that in these progressive times you do not occupy the same place in popular or even in scientific estimation which was yours formerly? You are now merely an hallucination, you know, and there is no reason that I should regard you with anything but contempt, as a mere symptom of indigestion or of mental fatigue.”
“But you can see that I am not an hallucination, can you not?” quavered the poor ghost of the major, evidently becoming dreadfully discouraged.
“Oh, that is simply a delusion of the senses,” Irene made answer in a matter-of-fact way, which, even while she spoke, she felt to be basely cruel. “Any physician would tell me so, and would write out a prescription for me to prevent my seeing you again.”