“Mr. Edge,” said the night-porter, “I’ve been looking out for you for weeks and weeks. The manager’s compliments, and he would like to see you in his room.”
Again I saw the youngish, alert manager.
“Mr. Edge,” he began at once, “it is probable that I owe you an apology. At any rate, I think it right to inform you that on the night of the fifth of November, the year before last, exactly twelve months before your last visit here, a stout man died in Room No. 222, at three a.m. I forgot the circumstance when you last came to see me in this room.”
“It seems queer,” I said coldly, “that you should have forgotten such a circumstance.”
“The fact is,” he replied, “I was not the manager at that time. My predecessor died two days after the discovery of the corpse in Room 222.”
“And the night-porter—is he, too, a new man?”
“Yes,” said the manager. “The porter who, with the late manager, found the corpse in Room 222, is now in Hanwell Lunatic Asylum.”
I paused, perhaps in awe.
“Then you think,” I said, “that I was the victim of a hallucination on my previous visit here? You think I had a glimpse of the world of spirits?”
“On these matters,” said the manager, “I prefer to think nothing.”