“Absolutely, they couldn’t get through.”
“What about Stebbins? Could he have been concealed in the house all night?”
“No; and if he had, how could he have got out? All the doors and windows are locked on the inside, just as they’ve been all night. He couldn’t lock them behind him.”
“Thorpe could let him in and out, if he wanted to.”
“Into the back part of the house. But Thorpe himself can’t get into the main house, the rooms that we use, after I lock the doors between. Come, now, Professor, you know all that as well as I do. Either you dreamed your ghost, or it’s the real thing, this time. Take your choice.”
Landon was so cheerful and took the thing so lightly, that Hardwick began to feel more at ease, and recounted his story in further detail. “It was the real thing,” he concluded. “I wish Rudolph or Mr. Tracy had been here. They sleep in this wing, and they would have come to me more quickly than you did, Wynne.”
“I came the moment I heard you call, at least, as soon as I could slip into a bathrobe.”
“I know you did, and it wouldn’t have mattered. That thing didn’t walk away down the corridor, you know, it just faded away,—vanished into the air. I could see it——”
“How could you, with no light?”
“I don’t know how I did. It wasn’t exactly luminous, and yet it gave out a very faint glow, enough for me to see it, anyhow. Oh, I shall never forget its awful grin!”