Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (132 page)

I
left
him,
and
crossed
the
corridor
to
my
own
room.
A
slight
rustle made
me
turn.
Mrs.
Lithway
stood
in
the
upper
hall,
looking
down
at me—the
same
creature,
to
every
detail
of
dress,
even
to
the
folded paper
in
her
hand,
that
I
had
seen
the
previous
morning.
This
time
I braced
myself
to
face
the
ghost,
to
examine
her
with
a
passionate keenness.
I
hoped
to
find
her
a
less
appalling
creature.
But,
at
once, Mrs.
Lithway
leaned
over
the
rail
and
spoke
to
me—a
little
sharply,
I remember.

"Would
you
please
telephone
to
the
garage
and
say
that
the
doctor thinks
we
ought
to
start
ten
minutes
earlier
than
we
had
planned? I
shall
be
down
directly."

The
hand
that
held
the
paper
was
by
this
time
hidden
in
the
folds of
her
skirt.
She
turned
and
sped
lightly
along
the
corridor
to
the trunk-loft.
Save
for
the
voice,
it
was
a
precise
repetition
of
what
had happened
the
day
before.

"Certainly,"
I
said;
but
I
did
not
turn
away
until
she
had
disappeared
into
the
trunk-loft.
I
went
to
the
telephone
and
gave
the
message;
it
took
only
a
few
seconds.
Then
I
went
to
my
own
room,
leaving the
door
open
so
that
I
commanded
the
hall.
In
a
few
minutes
Mrs. Lithway
came
down
the
stairs
from
the
third
story.
"Did
you
telephone?"
she
asked
accusingly,
as
she
caught
my
eye.
I
bowed.
She passed
on
into
Lithway's
room.
There
was
no
paper
in
her
hand.
I knew
that
this
time
there
had
been
no
ghost.

Well.
.
.
.
Lithway,
as
every
one
knows,
died
under
the
ether.
His heart
suddenly
and
unaccountably
went
back
on
him.
He
left
no
will; and,
as
he
had
no
relations
except
the
cousin
whom
he
had
married, everything
went
to
her.
I
had
once,
before
his
second
marriage,
seen a
will
of
Lithway's
myself;
but
I
didn't
care
to
go
into
court
with
that information,
especially
as
in
that
will
he
had
left
me
his
library.
I should
have
liked,
for
old
sake's
sake,
to
have
Lithway's
library.
His widow
sold
it,
and
it
is
by
now
dispersed
about
the
land.
She
told me,
after
the
funeral,
that
she
should
go
on
at
Braythe,
that
she
never wanted
to
leave
it;
but,
for
whatever
reason,
she
did,
after
a
few
years, sell
the
place
suddenly
and
go
to
Europe.
I
have
never
happened
to see
her
since
she
sold
it,
and
I
did
not
know
the
people
she
sold
it
to. The
house
was
burned
many
years
ago,
I
believe,
and
an
elaborate

golf-course
now
covers
the
place
where
it
stood.
I
have
not
been
to Bray
the
since
poor
Lithway
was
buried.

I
took
the
hunting-trip
that
Lithway
had
been
so
violently
and inexplicably
opposed
to.
I
think
I
was
rather
a
fool
to
do
it,
for
I
ought to
have
realized,
after
Lithway's
death,
the
secret
of
the
house,
its absolutely
unique
specialty.
But
such
is
the
peacock
heart
of
man that
I
still,
for
myself,
trusted
in
"common
sense"—in
my
personal immunity,
at
least,
from
every
supernatural
law.
Indeed,
it
was
not until
I
had
actually
encountered
my
savage,
and
got
the
wound
I
bear the
scar
of,
that
I
gave
entire
credence
to
Lithway's
tragedy.
I
put some
time
into
recovering
from
the
effect
of
that
midnight
skirmish in
the
jungle,
and
during
my
recovery
I
had
full
opportunity
to
pity Lithway.

It
became
quite
clear
to
me
that
the
presences
at
Braythe
concerned themselves
only
with
major
dooms.
If
Lithway's
ghost
had
been
his wife,
his
wife
must
have
been
a
bad
lot.
I
am
as
certain
as
I
can
be
of anything
that
he
was
exceedingly
unhappy
with
her.
It
was
a
thousand pities
that,
for
so
many
years,
he
had
misunderstood
the
vision;
that he
had
permitted
himself—for
that
was
what
it
amounted
to—to
fall in
love
with
her
in
advance.
She
was,
quite
literally,
his
"fate."
Of course,
by
this
time,
I
feel
sure
that
he
couldn't
have
escaped
her.
I don't
believe
the
house
went
in
for
kindly
warnings;
I
think
it
merely, with
the
utmost
insolence,
foretold
the
inevitable
and
dared
you
to escape
it.
If
I
hadn't
gone
out
for
big
game
in
Africa,
I
am
quite
sure that
my
nigger
would
have
got
at
me
somewhere
else—even
if
he
had to
be
a
cannibal
out
of
a
circus
running
amuck
down
Broadway.
That was
the
trick
of
the
house:
the
worst
thing
that
was
going
to
happen to
you
leered
at
you
authentically
over
that
staircase.
I
have
never understood
why
I
saw
Lithway's
apparition;
but
I
can
bear
witness
to the
fact
that
she
was
furious
at
my
having
seen
her—as
furious
as Mrs.
Lithway
was,
the
next
day,
if
it
comes
to
that.
It
was
a
mistake. My
step
may
have
sounded
like
Lithway's.
Who
knows?
At
least
it should
be
clear
what
Lithway
meant
when
he
said
that
he
didn't always
know
whether
he
saw
her
or
not.
The
two
were
pin
for
pin alike.
The
apparition,
of
course,
had,
from
the
beginning,
worn
the dress
that
Mrs.
Lithway
was
to
wear
on
the
day
that
Lithway
was taken
to
the
hospital.
I
have
never
liked
to
penetrate
further
into
the Lithways'
intimate
history.
I
am
quite
sure
that
the
folded
paper
was the
old
will,
but
I
have
always
endeavored,
in
my
own
mind,
not
to implicate
Margaret
Lithway
more
than
that.
Of
course,
there
could never
have
been
any
question
of
implicating
her
before
the
public.