He felt dejected, and his suspicions colored everything—a most deplorable state of mind for a gentleman. Agnes, too, looked guilty, as he thought, and hardly addressed a smile to him as he passed up to his room.
Duff Salter put on his slippers, lighted his gas, drew the curtains down and set the door ajar, for in the increasing warmth of spring his grate fire was almost an infliction.
"I have not been wise nor just," he said to himself. "My pleasing reception in this house, and feminine arts, have altogether obliterated my great duty, which was to avenge my friend. Yes, suspicion was my duty. I should have been suspicious from the first. Even this vicious young Van de Lear, shallow as he is, becomes my unconscious accuser. He says, with truth, that every obligation of friendship impels me to discover the murderers of William Zane."
Duff Salter arose, in the warmth of his feelings, and paced up and down the floor.
"Ah, William Zane," he said, "how does thy image come back to me! I was the only friend he would permit. In pride of will and solitary purpose he was the greatest of all. Rough, unpolished, a poor scholar, but full of energy, he desired nothing but he believed it his. He desired me to be his friend, and I could not have resisted if I would. He made me go with him even on his truant expeditions, and carry his game bag along the banks of the Tacony, or up the marshes of Rancocus. Yet it was a happy servitude; for beneath his impetuous mastery was a soul of devotion. He loved like Jove, and permitted no interposition in his flame; his dogmatism and force were barbarous, but he gave like a child and fought like a lion. I saw him last as he was about to enter on business, in the twenty-first year of his age, an anxious young man with black hair in natural ringlets, a pale brow, gray eyes wide apart, and a narrow but wilful chin. He was ever on pivot, ready to spring. And murdered!"
Duff Salter looked at the door standing ajar, attracted there by some movement, or light, or shadow, and the very image he was describing met his gaze. There were the black ringlets, the pale forehead, the anxious yet wilful expression, and the years of youthful manhood. It was nothing in this world if not William Zane!
Duff Salter felt paralyzed for a minute, as the blood flowed back to his heart, and a sense of fright overcame him. Then he moved forward on tip-toe, as if the image might dissolve. It did dissolve as he advanced; with a tripping motion it receded and left a naked space. In the darkness of the stairway it absorbed itself, and the deaf man grasped the balustrade where it had stood, and by his trembling shook the rails violently. He then staggered back to his mantel, first bolting the door, as if instinctively, and swallowed a draught of brandy from a medicinal bottle there.
"There is a ghost abroad!" exclaimed Duff Salter with a shudder. "I have seen it."
He turned the gas on very brightly, so as to soothe his fears with companionable light. Then, while the perspiration stood upon his forehead, Duff Salter sat down to think.
"Why does it haunt me?" he said. "Yet whom but me should it haunt?—the executor of my friend, intrusted with his dying wishes, bound to him by ancient ties, and recreant to the high duty of punishing his murderers? The ghost of William Zane admonishes me that there can be no repose for my spirit until I take in hand the work of vengeance. Yes, if women have been accessory to that murder, they shall not be spared. Miss Agnes is under surveillance; let her be blameless, or beware!"