“Nothing.”
“That perhaps is saying a great deal.”
“Very true; but still, silence is not a charge of murder.”
“Then we need discuss it no further, if you are satisfied, M. Goefle. And after all, what does it matter to us? The past is past. Only, you said that the sight of that spectre had filled your mind with strange doubts.”
“That was only because it is a weakness of our profession to turn everything into a subject of investigation—though I have always tried to guard myself against it. We have enough to do to arrive at the facts of the different cases with which we are intrusted, without volunteering to batter our brains over those that do not concern us. Beyond a doubt, it is because I have been idle for a few days that my mind keeps at work in spite of myself, and that I have summoned up from the shades of the forgotten past, the form of the Baroness Hilda—”
“Particularly,” said Christian, “as the being who appeared to you was not perhaps a vision, but quite simply some living person, whose costume happened to be like that of the old picture.”
“I should be glad to think so, but people who pass through walls are none other than the sad inhabitants of the land of gloomy imaginations.”
“Wait a moment, M. Goefle; you saw the phantom enter; but you have not told me which way it disappeared.”
“I could not, since I do not know. I should say on the same side where it came in.”
“By the secret door, then.”