"My dear friend, you fill me with alarm, and I am on the point of giving way! I begin to suspect that I shall never see the ghosts until I have passed to another world. I believe that I am doomed to die in this house to-night! It was indicated in the tone of your voice."
With a quick motion Panhandle swung round in his chair and looked me full in the face.
"How do you know," he said, "that you are not dead now, and already passed to the existence of which you speak?"
The effort to answer his question revived my courage. But in all my life I have never found a problem half so difficult. To prove that I was not dead already and become a ghost! Forty or fifty times did I lay down a new set of premises, only to be reminded by Panhandle that I begged the question in every one. My ingenuity was taxed to breaking point, my voice was exhausted, the sweat was pouring from my brows, when, once again, from the upper airs where the sky-sign was swinging, I heard the same fluttering and rustling which had arrested my attention at a former crisis. It was growing dark, and the arc-lamps which outlined the letters were all aglow. I watched the transformation, and suddenly saw, flashed out for a moment into the gathering darkness, these words:
"Give it up."
III
PANHANDLE'S REMARKABLE ADVENTURE. THE GHOST APPEARS
Dinner was now served. We dined alone, and, in the intervals when the footman was out of the room, I seized the opportunity to probe further into the mystery of the haunted house.
"The ghosts," I said, "have not appeared. Neither in my own apartment, nor in the corridors, nor in the various empty rooms which I have visited, have I seen or heard anything to suggest that the house is haunted."