"On this there came a tremendous crash, and----"
Just then the door of the drawing-room flew open with a startling noise.
And just as Ottmar read those words, the door of the summer-house in which the friends were sitting flew open, also with a startling noise, and they saw a dark form, wrapped in a mantle, approaching slowly, with noiseless footfalls, as of a spirit. They all gazed at this form, a little startled, holding their breaths.
"Is it right," said Lothair at length, when the full light of the lamps, falling upon his face, displayed their friend Cyprian. "Is it right to try to frighten good folks with foolish playing the ghost? However, I know, Cyprian, that you don't content yourself with studying spirits and all sorts of strange, visionary matters; you would often fain be a spook or ghost yourself. But where have you appeared from so suddenly? How did you find out that we were here?"
"I came back to-day from my journey," Cyprian said. "I went at once to see Theodore, Lothair, and Ottmar, but found none of them at home. In the fullness of my annoyance I ran out here into the open; and chance so willed it that, as I was returning to the town, I struck into the walk which leads past this summer-house. Then I seemed to hear a well-known voice; I peeped in at the window, and saw my worthy Serapion Brethren, and heard Ottmar reading 'The Uncanny Guest.'"
"What," interrupted Ottmar, "you know my tale?"
"You forget," said Cyprian, "that it was from me that you got the ingredients of the tale. It was I who told you of the 'Devil's Voice,' the aerial music of Ceylon, who even gave you the idea of the sudden appearing of the 'Uncanny Guest'; and I am curious to hear how you have worked out this 'Thema' of mine. You see that it was a matter of course that just when Ottmar had made the drawing-room door fly open I had necessarily to do the like, and appear to you myself."
"Not as an uncanny guest, though," said Theodore, "but as a true and faithful Serapion Brother, who, although he frightened me not a little, as I must perforce admit, is a thousand times welcome to me all the same."
"And," said Lothair, "if he insists on being a spirit, he must, at all events, not be an unquiet spirit, but sit down and drink tea, without making too much clattering with his cup, and listen to Ottmar, as to whose tale I am all the more curious, that this time it is a working up of a thema given to him by another."
Theodore, who was still easily excited after his recent illness, had been affected by Cyprian's proceedings rather more than was desirable. He was deadly pale, and it was evident that he had to put some constraint on himself to appear at his ease.