machine, and banged the door on him. It was a very long drive, and less pleasant than it would have been in an open carriage.
The last part of the journey was through a wood; then came a churchyard and a church, and the bathing- machine turned in at a gate under heavy trees and drew up in front of a white house with bare, gaunt windows.
“Cheerful place, upon my soul!” Desmond told himself, as he tumbled out of the back of the bathing- machine.
The driver set his bag on the discoloured doorstep and drove off. Desmond pulled a rusty chain, and a big- throated bell jangled above his head.
Nobody came to the door, and he rang again. Still nobody came, but he heard a window thrown open above the porch. He stepped back on to the gravel and looked up.
A young man with rough hair and pale eyes was looking out. Not Wildon, nothing like Wildon. He did not speak, but he seemed to be making signs; and the signs seemed to mean, “Go away!”
“I came to see Mr Prior,” said Desmond. Instantly and softly the window closed.
“Is it a lunatic asylum I’ve come to by chance?” Desmond asked himself, and pulled again at the rusty chain.
Steps sounded inside the house, the sound of boots on stone. Bolts were shot back, the door opened, and Desmond, rather hot and a little annoyed, found himself looking into a pair of very dark, friendly eyes, and a very pleasant voice said: “Mr Desmond, I presume? Do come in and let me apologize.”
The speaker shook him warmly by the hand, and he found himself following down a flagged passage a man of more than mature age, well dressed, handsome, with an air of competence and alertness which we associate with what is called “a man of the world”. He opened a door and led the way into a shabby, bookish, leathery room.
“Do sit down, Mr Desmond.”
“This must be the uncle, I suppose,” Desmond thought, as he fitted himself into the shabby, perfect curves of the armchair. “How’s Wildon?” he asked, aloud. “All right, I hope?”
The other man looked at him. “I beg your pardon,” he said, doubtfully.
“I was asking how Wildon is?”
“I am quite well, I thank you,” said the other man, with some formality.
“I beg your pardon” – it was now Desmond’s turn to say it – “I did not realise that your name might be Wildon, too. I meant Wildon Prior.”
“I am Wildon Prior,” said the other, “and you, I presume, are the expert from the Psychical Society?”
“Good Lord, no!” said Desmond. “I’m Wildon Prior’s friend, and, of course, there must be two Wildon Priors.”
“You sent the telegram? You are Mr Desmond? The Psychical Society were to send an expert, and I thought —”
“I see,” said Desmond; “and I thought you were Wildon Prior, an old friend of mine – a young man,” he said, and half rose.
“Now, don’t,” said Wildon Prior. “No doubt it is my nephew who is your friend. Did he know you were coming? But of course he didn’t. I am wandering. But I’m exceedingly glad to see you. You will stay, will you not? If you can endure to be the guest of an old man. And I will write to Will tonight and ask him to join us.”
“That’s most awfully good of you,” Desmond assured him. “I shall be glad to stay. I was awfully pleased when I saw Wildon’s name in the paper, because—” and out came the tale of Elmstead, its loneliness and disappointment.
Mr Prior listened with the kindest interest. “And you have not found your friends? How sad! But they will write to you. Of course, you left your address?”
“I didn’t, by Jove!” said Desmond. “But I can write. Can I catch the post?”
“Easily,” the elder man assured him. “Write your letters now. My man shall take them to the post, and then we will have dinner, and I will tell you about the ghost.”
Desmond wrote his letters quickly, Mr Prior just then reappearing.
“Now I’ll take you to your room,” he said, gathering the letters in long, white hands. “You’ll like a rest. Dinner at eight.”
The bed-chamber, like the parlour, had a pleasant air of worn luxury and accustomed comfort.
“I hope you will be comfortable,” the host said, with courteous solicitude. And Desmond was quite sure that he would.
Three covers were laid, the swarthy man who had driven Desmond from the station stood behind the host’s chair, and a figure came towards Desmond and his host from the shadows beyond the yellow circles of the silver- sticked candles.
“My assistant, Mr Verney,” said the host, and Desmond surrendered his hand to the limp, damp touch of the man who had seemed to say to him, from the window of the porch, “Go away!” Was Mr Prior perhaps a doctor who received “paying guests”, persons who were, in Desmond’s phrase, “a bit balmy”? But he had said “assistant”.
“I thought,” said Desmond, hastily, “you would be a clergyman. The Rectory, you know – I thought Wildon, my friend Wildon, was staying with an uncle who was a clergyman.”
“Oh no,” said Mr Prior. “I rent the Rectory. The rector thinks it is damp. The church is disused, too. It is not considered safe, and they can’t afford to restore it. Claret to Mr Desmond, Lopez.” And the swarthy, blunt-faced man filled his glass.
“I find this place very convenient for my experiments. I dabble a little in chemistry, Mr Desmond, and Verney here assists me.”
Verney murmured something that sounded like “only too proud”, and subsided.
“We all have our hobbies, and chemistry is mine,” Mr Prior went on. “Fortunately, I have a little income which enables me to indulge it. Wildon, my nephew, you know, laughs at me, and calls it the science of smells. But it’s absorbing, very absorbing.”
After dinner Verney faded away, and Desmond and his host stretched their feet to what Mr Prior called a “handful of fire”, for the evening had grown chill.
“And now,” Desmond said, “won’t you tell me the ghost story?”
The other glanced round the room.
“There isn’t really a ghost story at all. It’s only that – well, it’s never happened to me personally, but it happened to Verney, poor lad, and he’s never been quite his own self since.”
Desmond flattered himself on his insight.
“Is mine the haunted room?” he asked.
“It doesn’t come to any particular room,” said the other, slowly, “nor to any particular person.”
“Anyone may happen to see it?”
“No one sees it. It isn’t the kind of ghost that’s seen or heard.”
“I’m afraid I’m rather stupid, but I don’t understand,” said Desmond, roundly. “How can it be a ghost, if you neither hear it nor see it?”
“I did not say it was a ghost,” Mr Prior corrected. “I only say that there is something about this house which is not ordinary. Several of my assistants have had to leave; the thing got on their nerves.”
“What became of the assistants?” asked Desmond.
“Oh, they left, you know; they left,” Prior answered, vaguely. “One couldn’t expect them to sacrifice their health. I sometimes think – village gossip is a deadly thing, Mr Desmond – that perhaps they were prepared to be frightened; that they fancy things. I hope that that Psychical Society’s expert won’t be a neurotic. But even without being a neurotic one might – but you don’t believe in ghosts, Mr Desmond. Your Anglo-Saxon common sense forbids it.”
“I’m afraid I’m not exactly Anglo-Saxon,” said Desmond. “On my father’s side I’m pure Celt; though I know I don’t do credit to the race.”
“And on your mother’s side?” Mr Prior asked, with extraordinary eagerness; an eagerness so sudden and disproportioned to the question that Desmond stared. A faint touch of resentment as suddenly stirred in him, the first spark of antagonism to his host.
“Oh,” he said lightly, “I think I must have Chinese blood, I get on so well with the natives in Shanghai, and they tell me I owe my nose to a Red Indian great grandmother.”
