"She is his niece—the only child of a younger sister; and the things which I am about to relate have caused her much alarm. She fears that some strange danger threatens him. He has always been kind to her, and she is very much attached to him.
"Dr. Morse is an Englishman and a graduate in medicine; but having large means has given but little time to the practice of his profession. As his published works have shown, he detests all governments; however, that of Russia has always been his pet aversion. He has declared it the most corrupt system extant, and maintained that not a patriotic pulse was to be found among the ruling class throughout the vast empire. Its mighty army, he predicted, would crumble before the first determined foe.
"When the war broke out between Japan and Russia, Dr. Morse at once placed his niece in safe hands; then he disappeared for more than a year. Upon his return it was learned that he had, somehow, managed to have himself enrolled upon the medical staff of the Russian army, and had witnessed most of the operations in Manchuria. Though he came back rather worn and with a slow-healing wound, he seemed much elated.
"'I now have the direct proof which I desired,' he said. 'The Muscovite army reeks with chicanery; and the book that I'm going to write will set the whole world talking.'
"But before beginning the book he determined to have a long rest; he took a fine old house, just outside Sharsdale, in Kent; and with him were his niece and an old French woman servant who had been in the family for many years. They lived very snugly there for some three months; then there began a most singular train of incidents. Of these I have but a slight personal knowledge, for, as I have said, Dr. Morse is a secretive man. But, little by little, Stella and I gathered up the fragments and put them together; the result was rather an alarming whole. Odd happenings became of daily occurrence; a peculiar, nameless something seemed hovering about the place; a vague agency was felt in the commonest things; the household began to live in the expectation of some indefinite calamity."
"Pardon me. You were at Sharsdale at the time, I take it?"
"Yes; stopping at the village inn. My excuse was that I was doing some sketching; but," with great simplicity, "as a matter of fact, I was there in order to be near Stella Corbin."
"I see. Please go on."
"Gradually we came to know, from the doctor's manner more than anything else, that he fancied himself watched. Indeed, more than once I personally noted traces of what I can call mysterious visitations. And twice within as many months the house was broken into and ransacked from top to bottom."
"A moment ago," said Ashton-Kirk, "you spoke of odd happenings. Just what were the nature of these?"