"On the day of his death he was followed from a distance by two policemen in plain clothes. They watched him leave the cottage in which he lived at Kilcash, take to the downs, and make straight for Kilcash House. They were not able to get near him until he had just gained the house. He then became aware that he was followed, and ran straight for the cliffs. The rest I have already told you. There never was an inquest, for, as you may know, the bodies of people drowned there are never found.
"A week ago I was in the neighbourhood of Kilcash House. I had left my horse and car at Kilcash, and was walking over the downs to the village, when on the cliffs, just over the Black Rock, I cast my eyes down, and there, on that large shelf of rock, as plain as I see you now, I saw him. The same coat, the same Scotch bonnet, the same trousers--not a thing altered since the first day he stood in my office, going on eleven years ago."
"What time of the day was it?"
"Broad day. About three o'clock in the afternoon."
"It must have been some one of about his stature dressed identically."
"Must it?" cried the lawyer, scornfully. "You have not heard all yet. I made up my mind to be sure. I ran--I ran to the top of the path, and went down to the rocks below. There was nobody there. You know the place. Tell me how a living man could get away alive, except up the path that I went down? It was Michael Fahey's ghost, as sure as I am a living man."
"I confess," said Jerry, in perplexity, "I cannot explain away what you say, except upon the supposition that you were suffering from delusion. How do you account for the appearance yourself?"
"This is my way of reasoning it out. I either saw the ghost of Michael Fahey or I did not. If I did, I account for it by the fact that Davenport and he were associated together in something while they were alive, and now that both are dead, one of them has to come back and see that something left undone--a wrong unrighted, a debt unpaid, an explanation unmade--is put straight."
"But why should the one be Fahey? And why should it be at the Black Rock? And why should he appear to you?"
"The first, because I had nothing to do with Mr. Davenport; the second, because seeing Fahey's ghost there would recall to my mind most vividly the circumstance of his death; and the third, because I hold the documents to which I have referred."