With a bottle of valerian, his slippers, and a nightcap in his pocket, Doctor Drake did consent to return, and be smuggled into Gilroyd Hall.
“I don’t know what to make of that spirit-rapping quite,” said the doctor, as side by side they approached the Hall. “There’s a quantity of books published on it—very unaccountable if half what they say is true. I suppose you’ve read it all. You read a lot, Miss Perfect tells me.”
“I’ve read very little about it, except in the papers. She fancies she has had a message, telling her she is to die sometime to-morrow. I can’t believe there’s really anything more than self-deception; but is there not a danger?”
“How?” asked the doctor.
“I mean, being so nervous as you suppose, and quite convinced that she is to die at a particular time; might not her own mind—you know Lord Lyttelton died in consequence of such a persuasion.”
William paused, Doctor Drake lowered, between his fingers, the cigar he was smoking, and they came to a halt, with a little wheel to the left, and the doctor, with his head aside, blowing the smoke up in a thin stream, looked with a thoughtful scrutiny up at the clear bright moon; perhaps a not unsuitable source of inspiration upon their crazy theme.
“I forget which Lord Lyttelton that was,” said the doctor, wisely. “Isn’t it Lyttelton, you say? But the thing is quite possible. There’s a spirit you know she’s always talking about. She calls him Henbane. Egad, Sir, I was devilish near laughing at tea when she named him so suddenly that time; I’d have been up a tree if I had, you know. You did not see what she was at, but I did. That Henbane’s her gospel, egad, and she thinks it was he who told her—d’ye see? Come along. She’ll be wondering where you are.”
So on they went towards Gilroyd Hall, whose outline, black and sharp, against the luminous sky, was relieved at one point by the dull glow of candle-light through the red curtains of what William Maubray knew to be Aunt Dinah’s bed-chamber window.
“She is in her room, I think—there’s light in her window,” said William. The doctor nodded, chucking his cigar stump far away, for he knew Aunt Dinah’s antipathy to tobacco, and they were now on the door-step. He was thinking, if the case were to end tragically, what a capital paper he would make of it, beside the interesting letter he would send to the editor of the Spatula.
“Winnie’s bin a callin’ over the stairs for you, Master Willie. Missis wants ye to her room,” said Tom, who awaited them on the door-steps.