“Yes. I had my hand outstretched for a book. It’s dark in this corner. When I want to find a book I light a candle, which is always placed on the ledge of the window for the purpose. The blind was not drawn that night. It seldom is. I had the book in my hand, and had found the required passage when I chanced to look at the window and saw her face.”
“Do you mind reconstructing the scene. This lamp was on the table, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Well, pull up the blind, light your candle, and find the book. Act the whole incident, in fact.”
Grant obeyed. He held the candlestick until he had picked out the particular volume; then he placed it in the recess of the window, and searched through the pages of the book.
Furneaux bent forward so as to watch the rehearsal and catch the effect of the light externally. The hour was not so late as when Adelaide Melhuish, or her ghost, gazed in through one of those narrow panes, but the night was dark enough to lend the necessary vraisemblance. Hart, deeply interested, looked on with rapt, eager eyes. For a full minute the tableau remained thus. Then, with a rapidity born of many a close ’scape in wild lands, Hart drew a revolver from a hip pocket, and fired at the window.
He alone was in a position to see through all parts of it. Grant was still thumbing a small brown volume in the manner of one who knew that a certain passage would be found therein but was ignorant of its exact place in the text. Furneaux, intent on his every movement, had only a side-long view of the window, which, it will be remembered, formed a tiny rectangle in a thick wall.
The revolver was a heavy-caliber weapon, and the explosion blew out the lamp. The flame of the candle flickered, owing either to the passage of the bullet or the disturbance of the air. But it burnt steadily again within the fifth part of a second, and they all saw a starred hole in the center pane of glass of the second tier from the bottom.
“What fool’s game are you playing?” shrilled Furneaux, nevertheless active as a wildcat in his spring to the French window, there to snatch at the blind and turn the knob which controlled a lever bolt.
“Laying another ghost—one with whiskers,” said Hart coolly. “I got him, too, I think.”