"Does it matter? Since you are not interested..
Martin took a step forward. "What is the test?"
Stannard's movements were deliberate. From a tapestry wing-chair beside the mantlepiece he took up a thick blue-bound book with faded gilt lettering on the back.
"I have been looking through Atcheson's History of the Penal System," he continued. The round face, roughened as though by a nutmeg-grater, looked pleased. This was written in 1912, and there's, a chapter on Pentecost. I hadn’t realized what a fine lot of man-eating tigers were executed there. Old Mrs. Gill, for instance. And Bourke-Smith. And Hessler, who mutilated the bodies of women; Hessler actually tried to escape from the condemned cell.
"About ghosts," Stannard went on, "let me repeat my dictum. I don't say yes; I don't say no. What I can credit are the influences, released emotions. Haven't we all had the same experience, in a small way? We go into a house, usually an empty house. And for no reason at all someone says, I can't stand this place; let's get out'"
Martin was about to say, "Like this." He also noticed Ruth looking furtively around, and wondered if it touched her too. Yet the library was a web-lighted room, two windows east and
two south, though green-shaded by the trees.
The vibrations in that death-house," added Stannard, "must be like lying under a tolling bell."
"Never mind the vibrations. What's this test?"
"Ah!" murmured Stannard. He threw the book back into the chair and took up the pencil. "Observe this architect's plan of the prison!"