“‘Then,’ he observed, ignoring the intervention of his wife, whose apprehensions were only too plainly more on my account than on his, ‘we will step on to the verandah.’
“‘What!’ I said. ‘You don’t mean to say you actually fought a duel?’
“Jack nodded. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘We measured off twenty paces, and then, turning round, fired.’
“‘And you killed him?’
“‘That would be your natural surmise,’ was the reply. ‘But you are mistaken. It was I who was killed.’
“The moment he had said these words, he seemed to fade away, and before I could recover from my astonishment, he had completely disappeared, and I found myself staring not at him but the blank wall. And now comes the oddest part of it. I naturally expected to hear Jack was dead. I said nothing to my aunt, but I wrote off to his address at once.
“Judge, then, of my relief when I received a letter from him by return of post to say he was absolutely fit and well, and getting on splendidly. That was in February. In the following August my aunt wrote to me saying a very tragic occurrence had taken place. Jack was dead. He had been found on the verandah of an hotel in Mexico shot through the heart. Though the identity of his murderer was generally suspected, there was no actual proof, and as the man was very rich and influential, it was thought quite useless to take up the case. Now what kind of superphysical phenomenon do you call that?” Captain Tennison concluded.
“I can’t exactly say,” I replied. “It is one of those strange prognostications of the future that happen more often on New Year’s Eve than on any other day of the year.
“I don’t think the phantasm you saw was actually Wilmot’s spirit. I don’t see how it could have been. I think it was an impersonating neutrarian, one of that order of phantasms that have never inhabited any kind of material body, and whose special function is apparently to foretell the end of certain people, and certain people only.”
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