Harrison noticed the sound of a qualification in his friend’s reply.
“Well, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, oh yes; that’s all right,” Greatorex agreed. “I was only wondering why, after all, we should bother any more about it?”
Harrison was too clever a man to attempt evasions. He saw quite clearly that if he pretended some more or less plausible excuse such as being annoyed by the trespass, Greatorex would see through him. And he would not risk that. Instead, he took what seemed a perfectly safe line.
“To be quite honest, G.,” he said, “I am fully anticipating that Vernon will claim this—this experience, as being a spiritualistic phenomenon. And—and—well, I’ll admit that that attitude annoys me. It’s so childish. This seems to me a—a perfectly fair instance of the sort of thing that these credulous people take hold of and transform into what they call proof. Properly garbled, as no doubt it will be, this silly little incident will presently be figuring in the Proceedings of the S.P.R. as ‘new evidence.’ Vernon could dress it up to look as circumstantial as the evidence in a police-court—give all our names and addresses, and make out affidavits for us to sign—affidavits that would not contain a single mis-statement of fact so far as we can see, but taken altogether would have an entirely false significance. You know how the....” He broke off suddenly in the middle of his sentence. “What the devil’s that?” he asked sharply.
He had paused in his walk, as was his habit when he wished to elaborate an argument, and they had not yet left the bank of the lake for the path through the plantation. What had so abruptly diverted his attention was the beginning of a sound in that airless night, a sound that, as they waited and listened, waxed from the first insistent whispering with which it had begun, to a fierce rustling that seemed to swell almost to a roar, before it died again to the hushed sibilance of the outset.
“What the devil is it?” Greatorex muttered.
Harrison gave a little scream of half-hysterical laughter.
“Our—our nerves must have been very thoroughly upset, G.,” he said in a strained voice, “if—if you and I can be startled by the sound of wind in the poplars. They’re on the island there, a big clump of them. Now I think of it, that’s one of the things that made this place so confoundedly unfamiliar to-night. It’s the first time I’ve ever been here when it has been so still that the poplars weren’t talking.”
“Wind!” ejaculated Greatorex. “There is no wind.”