'Let me put it another way,' said Mr Mulliner, patiently. 'Do you believe in haunted houses? Do you believe that it is possible for a malign influence to envelop a place and work a spell on all who come within its radius?'
I hesitated.
'Well, no—and yes.'
Mr Mulliner sighed a little. He seemed to be wondering if I was always as bright as this.
'Of course,' I went on, 'one has read stories. Henry James's Turn of The Screw....'
'I am not talking about fiction.'
'Well, in real life—Well, look here, I once, as a matter of fact, did meet a man who knew a fellow....'
'My distant cousin James Rodman spent some weeks in a haunted house,' said Mr Mulliner, who, if he has a fault, is not a very good listener. 'It cost him five thousand pounds. That is to say, he sacrificed five thousand pounds by not remaining there. Did you ever,' he asked, wandering, it seemed to me, from the subject, 'hear of Leila J. Pinckney?'
Naturally I had heard of Leila J. Pinckney. Her death some years ago has diminished her vogue, but at one time it was impossible to pass a bookshop or a railway bookstall without seeing a long row of her novels. I have never myself actually read any of them, but I knew that in her particular line of literature, the Squashily Sentimental, she had always been regarded by those entitled to judge as pre-eminent. The critics usually headed their reviews of her stories with the words:
ANOTHER PINCKNEY