“No. He couldn’t even swear that it quite touched him.”
“Then why did it worry him?”
Lithway hesitated. “I suppose the uncertainty——”
“Uncertainty! If there’s anything less dreadful than an imaginary snake that has struck, it is an imaginary snake that hasn’t struck. What has got into Wender?”
“Fear, apparently,” said Lithway shortly. “He won’t come back. Says a real rattlesnake probably wouldn’t get into a house in Braythe more than once, but an unreal rattlesnake might get in any day. I don’t blame him.”
“May I ask,” I said blandly, “if you are so far gone that you think rattlesnakes have ghosts?”
Lithway lost his temper. “If you want to jeer at the thing, for God’s sake have the manners not to do it in this house! I tell you we have all three seen ghosts.”
“The ghost of a rattlesnake,” I murmured to myself. “It beats everything!” And I looked once more into the mirror. The scar that the knife had made was still perceptible, but very faint. “Did you hunt the house over for the snake?”
“Of course we did.”
“Did you find it?”