“Mighty queer business altogether,” Greatorex replied. And then with a sudden drop in his voice, he added on a note of alarm, “What the devil is that you’ve got on your back, Harrison?”
“Eh? What? What d’you mean?” Harrison asked nervously.
Greatorex took a step towards him, and after a moment’s pause in which he hesitated as if afraid to touch some uncanny thing, laid hold of a long wisp of drapery and stripped it from his host’s back and shoulders. It seemed to Greatorex that the flimsy thing clung slightly to the smooth cloth of the dinner jacket.
“What is it? What is it?” asked Harrison impatiently.
“Looks like that scarf the apparition was wearing,” Greatorex remarked, displaying it.
Harrison clutched at it eagerly.
“By Jove, so it is!” he said; “tangible proof, this, G., of the lady’s substantiality. Good, solid evidence of fact. They must all have seen it. Emma even mentioned it to me as being of rather common material.” As he spoke he was fingering the stuff of the scarf; running it through his hands, as if he found an almost sensual pleasure in the reassuring quality of its undoubted substance.
“Why, of course,” Greatorex answered, little less relieved than his companion; but anxious, now, to prove that he had never for one instant been under any delusion as to the nature of the apparition. “You never thought, did you, that the lady was a ghost?” His laugh as he asked the question had a slightly insincere ring, but Harrison was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice that.
“A ghost! My dear G.!” he said. “The ghost of what, in Heaven’s name? No, no, she was solid enough. But what’s puzzling me is whether she was insane, or whether, as seems to me more probable, the whole thing was a hoax of some kind.”
“You don’t suggest that Vernon, or Lady Ulrica....” Greatorex began, but Harrison cut him short.