“You haven’t told us anything yet,” reminded Jasper.
“I ain’t got anything much to tell.”
“Then we might as well be going.”
This was only a bluff, and I thought that Jasper had misjudged his man. I was exasperated because, without any pretense of being able to understand anybody, I knew that I could have had the whole story out of him.
“Ghosts are everywhere,” I remarked expansively. “We have them where we came from. I’m used to them.”
“I suppose you’re used to people dying two or three times and coming to life again, ain’t you?”
“Why? Do you think the old captain is still alive?”
“The ‘New Captain’!” he contradicted me; it seems as if I never could learn this title. “Well, if it ain’t him, who is it that’s sliding right through the house, vanishing into a blank wall that has no doors? People that’s been abroad at midnight has seen some one turning in off the back street, cutting across the lawn, but never coming out on the front.”
“Who’s seen him doing that?”
“Brown’s boy. Not that I say he seen him; but I say he says he seen him! Of course I know that all them Browns ain’t reliable; too much fish eating, it makes them that way!”