“He may have joined them lately,” I said; but on reflection I decided that even this was improbable. “No,” I went on, “I am sure he does not live there. There was a cheery, open-air sound in his voice. I think he was very nice-looking. Tall and a very good figure, that I am sure of.”
Suddenly Isabel gave a little exclamation.
“What’s the matter?” I cried.
“Only something that has just struck me,” was the reply. “How stupid of me not to have thought of it before. I do believe that your man, Regina, was the younger of the two visitors who came to the Grim House not long ago!”
“Why should you think so?” I asked, a little desirous perhaps that my trouvaille should be entirely my own. “Especially as you said yourself that the others came and went openly?”
“I don’t quite know,” said Isabel slowly. “It was something in your way of describing him just now that seemed to recall the man who asked me the way to the church.”
Fortunately perhaps, at this moment Mr Wynyard overtook us, and our thoughts, which were becoming too absorbed in the mysterious subject, were for the time being distracted. Not for very long, however. The next morning found us, as we had planned, starting off on a search expedition.
The door in the wall was the object of our quest, and on the way to the spot where it must be, if it existed at all, I pointed out to Isabel the exact place where I had met the stranger, and the distance down the road that he had gone to look for his lost property.
“You see,” I explained, “if he were a ghost, this would be of importance, for everybody knows that ghosts are restricted to certain limits; and after all, dusk though it was, it was rather curious that I had not noticed the pocket-book, which seemed a pretty big one, as he waved it in his hand.”
“I can’t say that what you tell of him sounds at all ghost-like,” said Isabel. “He was too prosaic surely! However, what we have to do is to find if the door was a material reality or not.”