SHALL I tell you about the set at 7? It is quite a proper story. You might call it dramatic. If poor Nat Chaytor were alive he would turn it into one of his thrilling tales for the penny papers—and get it rejected because it wasn’t probable. In popular tales you must be probable, and you must be proper. You may cut as many throats and embezzle as much money as you please—always remembering to do it in a thoroughly respectable manner.
Orchard lived at 7—the left-hand set on the third floor. His was the most extraordinary affair. Poor Jimmy died there. Orion had the set—has it still, so they say. He comes back. We have a real, if rather foolish, ghost in the Inn.
The man who took that set after the Great Ormond Street murder—his name slips me, but he went down in the Drummond Castle—had never seen Orion. I forget his name, but we’ll call him Drummond.
Pearson went to see him one night. He happened to be just going out; he said he wouldn’t be more than half an hour, and he made Pearson comfortable with some whisky and the current Fortnightly. When he came back Pearson said, with annoyance, looking a little disgusted and jerking his head toward the bedroom door:
“Didn’t know you were so intimate with Orion.”
“Orion! Never heard the name. Yet—let me see. He had these rooms. I took them over with the furniture.”
“Never heard the name! Why, he’s in your bedroom at this moment. Walked about very much as if he were at home. Came strolling in with his old confounded jaunty air. I haven’t seen him for nearly three years, but he hasn’t altered a bit. You must have left the outer door ajar, or else he’s kept a key. That would be just one of Orion’s mean dodges. He walked about with his hands in his trousers’ pockets, just as usual. I didn’t speak; we had a row once. There was a bill; he wouldn’t pay his share. And one night when I was a bit on I broke the glass of the sideboard—threw a tumbler at it. He couldn’t stand that.
“Yet, why didn’t I speak? What made me keep so quiet? Why didn’t I ask him what the devil he meant by prying about another man’s rooms?
“He went and tinkered with the ornaments, scowled at the dust, picked up a match from the carpet—I could have sworn he picked it up, but it’s there still, just near your foot—and then went into the bedroom. He’s in there still. Confound it!” starting to his feet; “what was I doing to let him go in like that?”
Drummond was looking very queer.