"No delusion, eh, Bob?" I said, in a tone of sarcastic triumph. "You will not hunt up any more cases of spectral illusions to prove that I am on the road to madness."
"No, Ned. Don't harp upon my lack of faith; the doubts I entertained were reasonable doubts after all. It is altogether a most awful mystery, but I accept it, and place myself at your service. Heaven only knows if I can be of any assistance to you, but it may be that even the renewal of our old friendship, and our coming together after a separation of forty years, are not due to chance. If so, I stand within the charmed circle."
"It was not by chance we met, Bob; in the smallest incident that has occurred in connection with that house--which I can see now with my mind's eye, dark, silent, spirit-haunted--I perceive the hand of fate. You can be of service to me."
"In what way?"
"I wish to take the house in Lamb's Terrace!"
A startled exclamation escaped his lips, but he said immediately afterward, as if in apology, "Yes, Ned, yes."
"I should say, rather, that I wish to have the refusal for a certain time of taking it for a term of years. This can be managed, I think, through you, and the death of your client may make it easier than it would otherwise have been. Say to your employer that I have not made up my mind whether it will suit me, and that I want a few weeks for consideration. Pending my decision, I will pay three months' rent, and at the expiration of that period, if I do not then take it for a term of years, it will be open to another tenant. I have no doubt that Mr. Gascoigne has some sort of provisional power in the matter, and that he will be glad of the chance there is in my offer of securing a permanent and responsible tenant. Will you undertake to carry this through?"
"Yes."
"Then you may as well walk all the way home with me, and I will write a check to-night, which you can give to Mr. Gascoigne in the morning. There is another thing which I must seriously consider. On the two occasions to-day when we and your nephew, and this specter of Fate gliding at my heels, were together, he was troubled by the fancy that I had brought some creature with me of which we made no mention. Is this new to you, or has your nephew expressed himself to a like effect on other occasions?"
"It is quite new to me. Ronald has never had such a fancy before."