[CHAPTER XVIII.]
THE GHOST OF THREE OAKS APPEARS AGAIN.
For an instant Elijah Callister stood riveted to the floor.
Then, springing forward with a fierce imprecation upon his lips, he approached the door of the deserted chamber in the direction of which the ghostly figure of the dead Mrs. Marley had disappeared.
It was firmly locked.
He had himself thus locked it upon their first entrance, not from fear of intrusion—that was not to be expected in a mansion so utterly given over to rats and the dust of neglect as this—but from the natural tendency of a suspicious evil-doer to perform his acts behind barred doors.
And even as he had left it so remained that great oaken door now.
There had not been sufficient time for the woman, were she living, to have even turned the key, providing it had been in the lock.
But the key was not in the lock—it snugly reposed at that very moment in the pocket of the man himself.