'My room is in the old part too then—I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity of the corridor and staircase—the first short one—after I came out. That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away, in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much impression on it), for half a mile.'
'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.
'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked.
His companion looked at him a moment. 'Ah, you know about that?'
'No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any luck—I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see—whatever there is, the regular thing. Is there a ghost here?'
'Of course there is—a rattling good one.'
'And have you seen him?'
'Oh, don't ask me what I've seen—I should tax your credulity. I don't like to talk of these things. But there are two or three as bad—that is, as good!—rooms as you'll find anywhere.'
'Do you mean in my corridor?' Lyon asked.
'I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to sleep there.'