held him responsible for James's death-but now it was necessary to recall him as head of the family from his nine year exile.
He had sobered down, but he still had enough of the old humorous devil to make him good (sometimes dangerous) company. He had seen men and places. He had acquired a tolerant droop of the eyelid. Also, there was about him a certain fresh vitality and frankness which must have disturbed the somnolent air round Lancaster Gate. You liked his grin. He was very fond of beer, detective stories, and poker. Anyhow, things seemed to be going well for the returned prodigal; but I think he was lonely.
Then something happened. It was more than unexpected, because I had heard from my sister, a short time before, that he was 'understood' to be engaged to be married. After mentioning the girl's name as Marion Latimer, my sister had enlivened the afternoon with a rapid and Tarzan-like inspection of her family tree. When the branches were all tested, my sister had smiled grimly over her folded hands, looked in a sinister fashion at the canary, and said she hoped it would turn out all right.
But something had happened. Halliday was one of those people who carry their own atmospheres about with them. We felt it at the club, though he spoke to us as usual. Nobody said anything; Halliday would glance at us sharply, and try to be the jolly good fellow; and afterwards he would look confused. There was something wrong with his laugh. He used it too often, and spilled cards on the table when he shuffled sometimes, because he had not been looking at them. This went on for a week or two, not very pleasantly. Then, after a time, he stopped coming altogether.
One night I was sitting in the smoking-room after dinner. I had just ordered coffee, and I was in one of those thick sloughs of boredom where every face looks vapid; where you wonder why the whole rushing, solemn routine of a city doesn't get sick of its own nonsense and stop. It was a wet night, and the big, brown-leather smoking. room was deserted. I was sitting idly near the fire making nothing of a newspaper, when Dean Halliday walked in.
I sat up a little-there was something in the way he walked. He hesitated, looked around, and stopped again. He said, 'Hullo, Blake,' and sat down some distance away.
The silence was doubly uncomfortable. What he thought was in the air, was all about, was as palpable as the fire at which he was staring. He wanted to ask me something, and couldn't. I noticed that his shoes and the edges of his trousers were muddy, as though he had been walking far; he seemed unconscious of the damp-extinguished cigarette between his fingers. There was no humor now in the low chin, the high forehead, the high-muscled jaws.
I crackled my newspaper. Remembering it afterwards, I think it was then my eye caught a small headline towards the foot of the first page: 'STRANGE THEFT AT-' but I did not read it at the time, or notice any more.
Halliday inflated his chest. Quite suddenly he looked up.
'Look here, Blake,' he said in a sort of rush. 'I regard you as a pretty level-headed fellow....'
'Why don't you tell me about it?' I suggested.
'Ah,' he said, and sat back in his chair; and looked at me steadily. 'If you won't think I'm a jabbering ass. Or an old woman. Or-' As I shook my head he interposed: 'Wait, Blake. Wait a bit. Before I tell you about it, let me ask you whether you're willing to give me a hand in what you'll probably call an idiotic business. I want you to...'
'Go on”
'To spend the night in a haunted house,' said Halliday.
'What's idiotic about that?' I asked, trying to conceal the fact that my boredom had begun to disappear; I felt an anticipatory pleasure, and my- companion seemed to notice it.
He laughed a little, now. 'Right. I say, this is better than I'd hoped for! I didn't want you to think I was crazy, that's all. You see, I'm not interested in the blasted business; or I wasn't. They may return, or they may not. I don't know. All I do know is that, if matters keep on in the present way, then-I'm not exaggerating-two lives are going to be ruined.'
He was very quiet now, staring at the fire, speaking in an absent voice.
'Six months ago, you see, the whole thing would have seemed wildly absurd. I knew Aunt Anne was going to a medium-or mediums. I knew she had persuaded Marion to go along with her. Well, damn it-I couldn't see any harm in that.' He shifted. 'I suppose I thought of it, if I thought about it at all, as a fad like bagatelle or jigsaw puzzles. I certainly supposed that Marion at least would keep her sense of humor... ' He looked up. 'I'm forgetting something. Tell me, Blake. Do
I said I would always be prepared to accept satisfactory evidence, but that I had never come on it as yet.
'I wonder,' he mused. “`Satisfactory evidence'. Ha. What the devil is it, anyhow?' His short brown hair had tumbled partly across his forehead; his eyes were full of a hot, baffled anger; and muscles tightened down, his jaws. 'I think the man's a charlatan. Well and good. But I went myself to a God-forsaken house-alone-nobody else there-nobody knew I was going....
'Listen, Blake. I could tell you the whole story, if you insist on knowing. I don't want you to walk in blindfold. But I'd rather you didn't ask anything. I want you to go with me, tonight, to a certain house in London; to tell me whether you see or hear anything; and, if you do, whether you can explain it on natural grounds. There'll be no difficulty about getting into the house. It belongs to our family, as a matter of fact.... Will you go?'
'Yes. You expect a trick, then?'
Halliday shook his head. 'I don't know. But I can't tell you how grateful I'd be. I don't suppose you've had any experience in these matters? Old empty house-things.... Good God, if I only knew more people! If we could get somebody to go with us who knew all about fake.... What are you laughing at?'
'You need a good stiff drink. I wasn't laughing. I was only thinking that I knew our man, provided you don't object '
'Object?'
'To a Detective-Inspector from Scotland Yard.'
Halliday stiffened. 'Don't talk rot. Above everything else, I don't want the police in on this. Forget it, I tell you! Marion would never forgive me.
'Oh, not in an official capacity, you understand. Masters makes rather a hobby of this.' I smiled again, thinking of Masters the unruffled, Masters the ghost-breaker; the big, stout, urbane man who was as pleasant as a cardsharper and as cynical as Houdini. During the spiritualistic craze that took England after the war, he was a detective-sergeant whose chief business was the exposing of bogus mediums. Since then his interest had increased (apologetically) into a hobby In the workshop of his little house at Hampstead, surrounded by his approving children, he tinkered with ingenious devices of parlor magic; and was altogether highly pleased with himself.
I explained all this to Halliday. First he brooded, ruffling the hair at his temples. Then he turned a flushed, grim, rather eager face.
'By Jove, Blake, if you can get him-! You understand, we're not investigating mediums now: we're only going to a supposedly haunted house....'
'Who says it's haunted?'
There was a pause. You could hear tangled motor-horns shrilling and squawking outside the windows.
'I do,' he said quietly. 'Can you get in touch with this detective-fellow at once?'
'I'll 'phone him.' I got up, stuffing the newspaperinto my
pocket. 'I shall have to tell him something of where we're going, you know.'
'Tell him anything. Tell him-stop a bit! If he knows anything about London ghosts,' said Halliday grimly, 'just tell him 'the house in Plague Court'. That'll fetch him.'
The house in Plague Court! As I went out to the lobby and the telephone, some dubious memory stirred, but I could not place it.
Masters' slow, deep voice was a pleasant sanity over the telephone.
'Ah!' said he. 'Ah, sir? And how are you? Haven't seen you in a dog's age. Well, and is anything on your mind?'
'A good deal,' I told him, after the amenities. 'I want you to go ghost-hunting. Tonight, if you can manage it.'
'Hum!' remarked the unsurprised Masters, as though I had asked him to go to the theater. 'You've hit my weakness, you know. Now, if I can manage it.... What's it all about, then? Where are we to go?'
'I've been instructed to tell you 'the house in Plague Court'. Whatever that means.'
