A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE (IN RESULT).
"Hullo, Jim, whatever made you come off?"—"Why, the Brute bucked!"—"Bucked! Nonsense, Man, she only Coughed!"
KICKED!
(By the Foot of Clara Groomley.)
In Four Chapters.—III.
Nothing done! The whole Detective force of London, having nothing better to do, were placed at my disposal, and, after three weeks' search, they found a girl called Smith; but it was the wrong one. My darling is blonde, and this was a dark, almost a black, Smith. I came back to Ryde in a passion and a third-class carriage. I find from Mademoiselle that Miss Smith has not yet returned.
James seemed pleased to see me, but he noticed that in my anxiety and preoccupation I had forgotten to have my hat ironed. The hotel is quite full, and I am to sleep in the Haunted Room to-night.
I am not a hysterical man, and this is not a neurotic story. It is, as a matter of fact, the same old rot to which the shilling shockers have made us accustomed. I cannot account in any way for my experiences last night in the Haunted Room, but they certainly were not due to nervousness. I had not been asleep long before I had a most curious and vivid dream. I felt that I was not in the hotel, and that at the same time I was not out of it. I had a curious sense of being everywhere in general, and nowhere in particular.
I saw before me a gorgeously furnished room. On the tiger-skin rug before the fire was a basket with a crewel-worked chair-back spread over it. What was in the basket? Again and again I asked myself that question. I felt like a long-division sum, and a cold shiver went down my quotient.