We left the premises together. All the way back to the town I thought—should I, or should I not, take the house? Seen as I had seen it, it was a ghoulish-looking place—as weird as a Paris catacomb—but then daylight makes all the difference. Viewed in the sunshine, it would be just like any other house—plain bricks and mortar. I liked the situation; it was just far enough away from a town to enable me to escape all the smoke and traffic, and near enough to make shopping easy. The only obstacles were the shadows—the strange, enigmatical shadows I had seen in the hall and passages, and the figure of the walker. Dare I take a house that knew such visitors? At first I said no, and then yes. Something, I could not tell what, urged me to say yes. I felt that a very grave issue was at stake—that a great wrong connected in some manner with the mysterious figure awaited righting, and that the hand of Fate pointed at me as the one and only person who could do it.
"Are you sure the house isn't haunted?" I demanded, as we slowly rolled away from the iron gate, and I leaned back in my seat to light my pipe.
"Haunted!" Mr. Baldwin scoffed, "why, I thought you didn't believe in ghosts—laughed at them."
"No more I do believe in them," I retorted, "but I have children, and we know how imaginative children are."
"I can't undertake to stop their imaginations."
"No, but you can tell me whether anyone else has imagined anything there. Imagination is sometimes very infectious."
"As far as I know, then, no; leastways, I have not heard tell of it."
"Who was the last tenant?"
"Mr. Jeremiah Dance."
"Why did he leave?"