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D'Odd in the scantiest of costumes and most furious of tempers was sufficiently impressive to recall all my scattered thoughts, and make me realize that I was lying on my back on the floor, with my head among the ashes which had fallen from last night's fire, and a small glass phial in my hand. I staggered to my feet, but felt so weak and giddy that I was compelled to fall back into a chair.
D'Odd says that she could distinguish his voice speaking in low and rapid whispers after this, but that may have been her imagination. I confess that I began to feel more impressed than I had deemed it possible to be. There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.
So there's an end of business," he concluded, hurling the ledger into the corner, "and now we'll have something to drink." We had several things to drink so many that my inventive faculties were dulled next morning, and I had some little difficulty in explaining to Mrs. D'Odd why it was that I hung my boots and spectacles upon a peg along with my other garments before retiring to rest.
The other servants sympathized with him in his opinion at least, I cannot account in any other way for their having left the house in a body the same afternoon. "My dear," Mrs. D'Odd remarked to me one day after dinner as I sat moodily sipping a cup of sack I love the good old names "my dear, that odious ghost of Jorrocks' has been gibbering again." "Let it gibber!" I answered recklessly. Mrs.
D'Odd, I could hear that after sitting for some time he rose up, and paced about the hall with quick impatient steps.
D'Odd who is a strong-minded woman to investigate the matter while I covered up my head with the bed-clothes and indulged in an ecstasy of expectation. Alas, the result was always the same! The suspicious sound would be traced to some cause so absurdly natural and commonplace that the most fervid imagination could not clothe it with any of the glamour of romance.
Under the circumstances, I think that, far from the sequel being an astonishing one, it would have been very surprising indeed to anyone versed in narcotics had you not experienced some such effects. I remain, dear sir, sincerely yours, "Argentine D'Odd, Esq., The Elms, Brixton." Guy de Maupassant
D'Odd in the distance, and at once plunged at her with another string of inquiries as to her health, delivered so volubly and with such an intense earnestness that I half expected to see him terminate his cross-examination by feeling her pulse and demanding a sight of her tongue.
D'Odd struck a few chords on her virginal and looked thoughtfully into the fire. "I'll tell you what it is, Argentine," she said at last, using the pet name which we usually substituted for Silas, "we must have a ghost sent down from London." "How can you be so idiotic, Matilda?" I remarked severely. "Who could get us such a thing?" "My cousin, Jack Brocket, could," she answered confidently.
I felt now that a ghost must be secured, but how to set about securing one was more than either Mrs. D'Odd or myself was able to determine. My reading taught me that such phenomena are usually the outcome of crime. What crime was to be done, then, and who was to do it?
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