How long this unpleasant state of things continued I do not know. I was perfectly well aware that a ghost should be addressed in sympathetic terms, should be asked if any human help can be rendered, but at the time it never once occurred to me to speak. Gradually, as I watched that retreating then advancing form, at moments opaque, then almost transparent, I lost consciousness and fell asleep again.
I was awakened a few hours later by a loud knocking at my door. I slid instantly out of bed, turned the key, and was confronted by the chambermaid, bringing my early tea.
"Who was the man who killed himself in this room?"
Luckily, the woman did not drop the tray, as I hurled at her this abrupt question. She set the tea down on a table and turned to me a scared face, as she answered by another question:
"How ever did you find out that?"
"Never mind how I found out. Please answer me. I won't get you into trouble," I said firmly.
"It was an army gentleman. He shot himself here the night before last. That's all I know," was her subdued answer.
Poor "army gentleman"! So you were revisiting the scene of your last tragedy, or had you ever left that confined space between four walls which witnessed the supreme mental agony of the suicide?
What had prompted me to put that sudden question to the chambermaid? I could not tell. In the moment of waking, slipping out of bed and opening the door, no recollection had come to me of my earlier experience, but betwixt that experience and my abrupt waking at her knock knowledge must have been somehow afforded me of the tragedy. I knew a man had done himself to death in that room shortly before I occupied it.
A day or two afterwards I read an account of the inquest held upon the body. A rankling sense of unjust treatment had preyed upon his brain.