Having come to this conclusion, Adrian wrote a letter accepting the invitation, but declined to stay all night as he wanted to get back to his studies. The fact was that he was afraid during his absence something might happen to solve the difficulty, and he was unwilling to be absent should any chance of regaining his freedom present itself. The whole house was permeated with the influence of spirits, for, of course, Dr. Roversmire, during his tenancy of his earthly body had been constantly visited by his friends of the spirit world, and sometimes a weird feeling would seize Adrian as if he was in the centre of a crowd of ethereal beings whose bodies, impalpable and invisible, were pressing around him on all sides. He would have given anything could he have known of some invocation by which to communicate with them and find a means of release from his unpleasant position, but although he read most of the books in the house and all the favourite papers of Dr. Roversmire, no spell or ceremony presented itself by which he could do so.
There were times when the strange influence which brooded over the house almost proved too much for his nerves, and he longed to escape from this spirit-haunted atmosphere into the matter-of-fact frivolity of the outside world. By his prolonged fasts, by his terrible ordeals and his ascetic mode of life, Dr. Roversmire had rendered his body peculiarly sensitive to spiritual influences, and now that he had transferred this body to Adrian, the material soul of the unhappy young man felt strange to the subtle contact he seemed to feel with the unseen world about which he knew absolutely nothing. Dentham, of course, felt nothing, as his soul was too sensual and his body too gross to vibrate or come in contact with spiritual things, but Adrian's body being strange to him, was not under his control, and he felt as though he stood on neutral ground between two worlds, powerless to leave the one and equally powerless to enter the other.
"I'll go mad if this continues," he said to himself as he directed the envelope, "it is like putting a savage to live among people highly cultivated. I feel the influence, but cannot respond, so I have all the pain and none of the pleasures; an afternoon at Marlow will do me a lot of good and drive away all this phantasy of moonlight and spirituality."
So he sent the letter and told Dentham he was going to leave Hampstead the next day for a visit, at which the valet was highly delighted, and sent off a telegram that evening to Miss Maunders, telling her the house would be able to be searched the following day.
Olive, on her part, had told her father nothing of the revelations of Dentham, but had got him to ask Dr. Roversmire down to Marlow and then intimated her intention of going away. Sir John at first objected to this strange mode of proceeding, but was ultimately over-ruled by his clever daughter.
"I don't know what you mean to do," he grumbled good-naturedly, "but I'll be glad to see Roversmire, who is a very clever man, although you do not seem to like him."
"Whether I really like him or not depends entirely upon what I learn during the next few days," she replied.
"But where are you going to learn anything about Roversmire?" asked her father curiously.
"I'll tell you when I come back," responded Olive promptly.
"Well, have your own way," said the baronet with a sigh; "you certainly are an enigma."