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‘Oh, don’t go to the end of it!’ exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.

‘Does it lead to the haunted room?’ Lyon asked.

His companion looked at him a moment. ‘Ah, you know about that?’

‘No, I don’t speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any luck–I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see–whatever there is, the regular thing. Is there a ghost here?’

‘Of course there is–a rattling good one.’

‘And have you seen him?’

‘Oh, don’t ask me what I’ve seen–I should tax your credulity. I don’t like to talk of these things. But there are two or three as bad–that is, as good!–rooms as you’ll find anywhere.’

‘Do you mean in my corridor?’ Lyon asked.

‘I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to sleep there.’

‘Ill-advised?’

‘Until you’ve finished your job. You’ll get letters of importance the next morning, and you’ll take the 10.20.’

‘Do you mean I will invent a pretext for running away?’

‘Unless you are braver than almost any one has ever been. They don’t often put people to sleep there, but sometimes the house is so crowded that they have to. The same thing always happens–ill-concealed agitation at the breakfast-table and letters of the greatest importance. Of course it’s a bachelor’s room, and my wife and I are at the other end of the house. But we saw the comedy three days ago–the day after we got here. A young fellow had been put there–I forget his name–the house was so full; and the usual consequence followed. Letters at breakfast–an awfully queer face–an urgent call to town–so very sorry his visit was cut short. Ashmore and his wife looked at each other, and off the poor devil went.’

‘Ah, that wouldn’t suit me; I must paint my picture,’ said Lyon. ‘But do they mind your speaking of it? Some people who have a good ghost are very proud of it, you know.’

What answer Colonel Capadose was on the point of making to this inquiry our hero was not to learn, for at that moment their host had walked into the room accompanied by three or four gentlemen. Lyon was conscious that he was partly answered by the Colonel’s not going on with the subject. This however on the other hand was rendered natural by the fact that one of the gentlemen appealed to him for an opinion on a point under discussion, something to do with the everlasting history of the day’s run. To Lyon himself Mr. Ashmore began to talk, expressing his regret at having had so little direct conversation with him as yet. The topic that suggested itself was naturally that most closely connected with the motive of the artist’s visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with Sir David–in most cases he found that so important. But the present sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to lose. ‘Oh, I can tell you all about him,’ said Mr. Ashmore; and for half an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have endeared himself so to a son who was evidently not a gusher. At last he got up–he said he must go to bed if he wished to be fresh for his work in the morning. To which his host replied, ‘Then you must take your candle; the lights are out; I don’t keep my servants up.’

In a moment Lyon had his glimmering taper in hand, and as he was leaving the room (he did not disturb the others with a good-night; they were absorbed in the lemon-squeezer and the soda-water cork) he remembered other occasions on which he had made his way to bed alone through a darkened country-house; such occasions had not been rare, for he was almost always the first to leave the smoking-room. If he had not stayed in houses conspicuously haunted he had, none the less (having the artistic temperament), sometimes found the great black halls and staircases rather ‘creepy’: there had been often a sinister effect, to his imagination, in the sound of his tread in the long passages or the way the winter moon peeped into tall windows on landings. It occurred to him that if houses without supernatural pretensions could look so wicked at night, the old corridors of Stayes would certainly give him a sensation. He didn’t know whether the proprietors were sensitive; very often, as he had said to Colonel Capadose, people enjoyed the impeachment. What determined him to speak, with a certain sense of the risk, was the impression that the Colonel told queer stories. As he had his hand on the door he said to Arthur Ashmore, ‘I hope I shan’t meet any ghosts.’