"What sort of a looking chap is that Walker, Gertrude?" he asked!
"Rather tall, very dark, smooth-shaven. Not bad looking," Gertrude
said, putting down the book she had been pretending to read. Halsey
kicked a taboret viciously.
"Lovely place this village must be in the winter," he said
irrelevantly. "A girl would be buried alive here."
It was then some one rapped at the knocker on the heavy front door.
Halsey got up leisurely and opened it, admitting Warner. He was out of
breath from running, and he looked half abashed.
"I am sorry to disturb you," he said. "But I didn't know what else to
do. It's about Thomas."
"What about Thomas?" I asked. Mr. Jamieson had come into the hall and
we all stared at Warner.
"He's acting queer," Warner explained. "He's sitting down there on the
edge of the porch, and he says he has seen a ghost. The old man looks
bad, too; he can scarcely speak."
"He's as full of superstition as an egg is of meat," I said. "Halsey,
bring some whisky and we will all go down."
No one moved to get the whisky, from which I judged there were three
pocket flasks ready for emergency. Gertrude threw a shawl around my
shoulders, and we all started down over the hill: I had made so many
nocturnal excursions around the place that I knew my way perfectly.
But Thomas was not on the veranda, nor was he inside the house. The
men exchanged significant glances, and Warner got a lantern.
"He can't have gone far," he said. "He was trembling so that he
couldn't stand, when I left."
Jamieson and Halsey together made the round of the lodge, occasionally
calling the old man by name. But there was no response. No Thomas
came, bowing and showing his white teeth through the darkness. I began
to be vaguely uneasy, for the first time. Gertrude, who was never
nervous in the dark, went alone down the drive to the gate, and stood
there, looking along the yellowish line of the road, while I waited on
the tiny veranda.
Warner was puzzled. He came around to the edge of the veranda and
stood looking at it as if it ought to know and explain.
"He might have stumbled into the house," he said, "but he could not
have climbed the stairs. Anyhow, he's not inside or outside, that I
can see." The other members of the party had come back now, and no one
had found any trace of the old man. His pipe, still warm, rested on
the edge of the rail, and inside on the table his old gray hat showed
that its owner had not gone far.
He was not far, after all. From the table my eyes traveled around the
room, and stopped at the door of a closet. I hardly know what impulse
moved me, but I went in and turned the knob. It burst open with the
impetus of a weight behind it, and something fell partly forward in a
heap on the floor. It was Thomas--Thomas without a mark of injury on
him, and dead.