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“They are important, believe me,” the doctor stopped him. “And you have it still, this hair?” he asked.

“It disappeared in the oddest way,” the Colonel explained. “It was curious looking stuff, something like asbestos, and I sent it to be analysed by the local chemist. But either the man got wind of its origin, or else he didn’t like the look of it for some reason, because he returned it to me and said it was neither animal, vegetable, nor mineral, so far as he could make out, and he didn’t wish to have anything to do with it. I put it away in paper, but a week later, on opening the package–it was gone! Oh, the stories are simply endless. I could tell you hundreds all on the same lines.”

“And personal experiences of your own, Colonel Wragge?” asked John Silence earnestly, his manner showing the greatest possible interest and sympathy.

The soldier gave an almost imperceptible start. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“Nothing, I think,” he said slowly, “nothing–er–I should like to rely on. I mean nothing I have the right to speak of, perhaps–yet.”

His mouth closed with a snap. Dr. Silence, after waiting a little to see if he would add to his reply, did not seek to press him on the point.

“Well,” he resumed presently, and as though he would speak contemptuously, yet dared not, “this sort of thing has gone on at intervals ever since. It spreads like wildfire, of course, mysterious chatter of this kind, and people began trespassing all over the estate, coming to see the wood, and making themselves a general nuisance. Notices of man-traps and spring-guns only seemed to increase their persistence; and–think of it,” he snorted, “some local Research Society actually wrote and asked permission for one of their members to spend a night in the wood! Bolder fools, who didn’t write for leave, came and took away bits of bark from the trees and gave them to clairvoyants, who invented in their turn a further batch of tales. There was simply no end to it all.”

“Most distressing and annoying, I can well believe,” interposed the doctor.

“Then suddenly, the phenomena ceased as mysteriously as they had begun, and the interest flagged. The tales stopped. People got interested in something else. It all seemed to die out. This was last July. I can tell you exactly, for I’ve kept a diary more or less of what happened.”

“Ah!”

“But now, quite recently, within the past three weeks, it has all revived again with a rush–with a kind of furious attack, so to speak. It has really become unbearable. You may imagine what it means, and the general state of affairs, when I say that the possibility of leaving has occurred to me.”

“Incendiarism?” suggested Dr. Silence, half under his breath, but not so low that Colonel Wragge did not hear him.

“By Jove, sir, you take the very words out of my mouth!” exclaimed the astonished man, glancing from the doctor to me and from me to the doctor, and rattling the money in his pocket as though some explanation of my friend’s divining powers were to be found that way.

“It’s only that you are thinking very vividly,” the doctor said quietly, “and your thoughts form pictures in my mind before you utter them. It’s merely a little elementary thought-reading.”

His intention, I saw, was not to perplex the good man, but to impress him with his powers so as to ensure obedience later.

“Good Lord! I had no idea–” He did not finish the sentence, and dived again abruptly into his narrative.

“I did not see anything myself, I must admit, but the stories of independent eye-witnesses were to the effect that lines of light, like streams of thin fire, moved through the wood and sometimes were seen to shoot out precisely as flames might shoot out–in the direction of this house. There,” he explained, in a louder voice that made me jump, pointing with a thick finger to the map, “where the westerly fringe of the plantation comes up to the end of the lower lawn at the back of the house–where it links on to those dark patches, which are laurel shrubberies, running right up to the back premises–that’s where these lights were seen. They passed from the wood to the shrubberies, and in this way reached the house itself. Like silent rockets, one man described them, rapid as lightning and exceedingly bright.”