“I’m going to give it up, Horace,” he said. “Perhaps you are right. We may be on the verge of some real discovery. But while I’m interested, so interested that it interferes with my work, I’m frankly afraid to go on. There are several reasons.”
I argued with him. There could be no question that if things were left as they were, a number of people would go through life convinced that Elinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look at the situation. She had sent out all the servants and the governess, surely an unusual thing in an establishment of that sort. And Miss Jeremy had been vindicated in three points; some stains had certainly been washed up, we had found the key where she had stated it to be, and Arthur had certainly been shaving himself.
“In other words,” I argued, “we can’t stop, Sperry. You can’t stop. But my idea would be that our investigations be purely scientific and not criminal.”
“Also, in other words,” he said, “you think we will discover something, so you suggest that we compound a felony and keep it to ourselves!”
“Exactly,” I said drily.
It is of course possible that my nerves were somewhat unstrung during the days that followed. I wakened one night to a terrific thump which shook my bed, and which seemed to be the result of some one having struck the foot-board with a plank. Immediately following this came a sharp knocking on the antique bed-warmer which hangs beside my fireplace. When I had sufficiently recovered my self-control I turned on my bedside lamp, but the room was empty.
Again I wakened with a feeling of intense cold. I was frozen with it, and curiously enough it was an inner cold. It seemed to have nothing to do with the surface of my body. I have no explanation to make of these phenomena. Like the occurrences at the seance, they were, and that was all.
But on Thursday night of that week my wife came into my bedroom, and stated flatly that there were burglars in the house.
Now it has been my contention always that if a burglar gains entrance, he should be allowed to take what he wants. Silver can be replaced, but as I said to my wife then, Horace Johnson could not. But she had recently acquired a tea set formerly belonging to her great-grandmother, and apprehension regarding it made her, for the nonce, less solicitous for me than usual.
“Either you go or I go,” she said. “Where’s your revolver?”