“Carriage!” I said, “to Senor Kirby's house, North Road, in an hour.”
Then I prospected in the kitchen on tiptoe, and collected a spirit-lamp and such matters, got dressed, and breakfasted behind the shutters with a calmness that was a bit artificial. The City Guard wasn't breakfasting. By the calamitous features of the elderly officer sitting on my horse-block, they didn't expect to. El Capitano Lugo was his name, and a very friendly man, after breakfast.
I sat smoking behind the shutters, and waited for the carriage, which came along leisurely about nine. The soldiery destroyed the picket-fence getting into the road all together.
“What news?” said El Capitano Lugo.
The driver was a scared man.
“Eh!” he said. “But I know nothing, Senor Capitano, nothing! Carriage to Senor Kirby, North Road. A telephone.”
“It is an empty house, idiot!”
With that they were all crowded close about the carriage, talking in low tones, but excited. It was about ghosts, as the captain told me after, and there ran a theory among them that I had been a spirit for the last twelve hours, turning off lights and sending telephones to avenge the atrocity of my murder.
But it got no farther than a theory, because of the opening of the door, and me coming out on the porch in duck trousers, polka-dot tie, and a calm that was artificial.
“Is that my carriage?” I asked.