"If this sort of thing is to continue, I will let Tress have his pipe again. He may have the laugh of me, but anything is better than this."
It was with almost funereal forebodings that I went to the cabinet in which I had placed the sandalwood box. But when I opened it my feelings of gloom partially vanished. Of what phantasies had I been guilty! It must have been an entire delusion on my part to have supposed that those tentacula had ever been twined about the bowl. The creature was in exactly the same position in which I had left it the day before—as, of course, I knew it would be—poised, as if about to spring. I was telling myself how foolish I had been to allow myself to dwell for a moment on Tress's words, when Martin Brasher was shown in.
Brasher is an old friend of mine. We have a common ground—ghosts. Only we approach them from different points of view. He takes the scientific—psychological—inquiry side. He is always anxious to hear of a ghost, so that he may have an opportunity of "showing it up."
"I've something in your line here," I observed, as he came in.
"In my line? How so? I'm not pipe mad."
"No; but you're ghost mad. And this is a haunted pipe."
"A haunted pipe! I think you're rather more mad about ghosts, my dear Pugh, than I am."
Then I told him all about it. He was deeply interested, especially when I told him that the pipe was drugged. But when I repeated Tress's words about its being haunted, and mentioned my own delusion about the creature moving, he took a more serious view of the case than I had expected he would do.
"I propose that we act on Tress's suggestion, and go and make inquiries of him."
"But you don't really think that there is anything in it?"