"Margot gave a weary little sigh and leaned closer to me, giving herself into my care as trustfully as a child. Until that time she had been just a figure in the great war game that might provide me with something to 'write up' into a book. That had been my principal thought. Now, all in a few moments, her beauty, the frightened look which had shone in her great grey eyes, her distress made me forget all that, drove all thoughts of traffic with publishers from my mind. I knew only that it was good to help her.
"Then I set about thinking how I could get Margot and Albertus Magnus to England. It was going to be a difficult game. I went carefully over all the good fellows I knew who could help me. There was old Longden of the A.S.C. depôt at St. Omer, there was Captain Chester, the transport officer at Boulogne, and Orgles of ammunition supply at Cassel, which is a small place where the strings of motors from the base unload.
"Well, (to get on,) we arrived late that night at St. Omer, and by a vast amount of bribery and cajolery I got some A.S.C. men to knock up a strong case for the Albertus Magnus and—but enough. It is sufficient to say that an officer who was going home on leave was kind enough to see Margot as far as Boulogne, and in the fullness of time both Albertus Magnus and the girl came safely to England.
"I have endeavoured to give you the facts of my strange story up to this point, without omission or exaggeration. I have been careful not to miss out the slightest items. If I have failed, it must not be put down to forgetfulness: for I do not think there is a single thing about old Ombos that has not been permanently fixed in my mind. Even now I have but to shut my eyes to see the leering face of Albertus, to stand once more trembling with terror and see that green shadow jump into the dusk with hellish glee and frolicsome skippings and toppings gallop away, to walk into the old library at home and see poor Price with his knees drawn up and eyes fixed open in extreme terror—But enough. I do not exaggerate.
"And now I must come to what you'll call the second part of the story—though it was all one long connected nightmare to me. I returned from France, as you know, six months ago, with a bullet in my leg, and thought myself in the best of luck to get a 'blighty' one; I mean a slight wound which necessitated me being sent back to England. I went down to a charming old house at Monk's Ely which my father had lately moved into, and soon drifted into peaceful ways of country life. The trivial little objects and customs of rustic life—those simple things that are best of all—attracted me surprisingly.
"A delightful room full of my books and pictures had been prepared on the ground floor of the house, but I was not often in it. Still, I accorded to my bronze statue a prominent corner in the room, where he frowned upon all my other possessions with that great look of disinterestedness which only bronze or death can typify.
"A week or two passed without incident, except that again and again a curious feeling that sometimes I was not alone was present in my mind. In a way I got used to it, because after being in the trenches and looking in the face of death as a kind of hobby the feeling of release and lightness that comes over one drives all other troubles clean away. But after a while this feeling seemed to be growing in poignancy. In fact at the end of the first fortnight I mentioned it to my father.
"'Strange you should have felt like that,' he said one night after dinner, 'because for the last day or so, the same sensation has been creeping over me. When is it that you have your ghostly visitor? Have you any feeling now of such a thing, for instance?'
"We were having a smoke on the lawn ... it was a beautiful evening of stars, and as he spoke I felt the unseen presence with terrific intensity. At that moment the door that led from the library quietly swung open, and just as quietly closed again, as if someone had passed out into the garden.
"'Did you see that?' I said. 'There is not a breath of wind stirring: odd thing that a door should play those kind of tricks.'