On the morning of Sickertorft's departure he and Sir George were arguing--Sir George, at the same time, perambulating the corridor of the ground floor of the house, for about the hundredth time--when Dr. Sickertorft suddenly remarked: "I wonder if this house is haunted?" "Haunted!" Sir George laughed. "Why, of course not. It's new. My father built it only sixty years ago. A house to be haunted must be old, must have some history. And the only tragedy that has occurred here was when a servant I once had, losing control of his temper, killed one of my most valuable dogs. That was a tragedy, both for the servant and the dog. There has been nothing else to my knowledge--nothing beyond one or two quite peaceful deaths from natural causes. But why do you ask?" "Because," Sickertorft replied, "that cupboard over there, opposite the foot of the stairs, to me, strongly suggests a ghost. Something peculiarly diabolical. Something that springs out on one and imparts the sensation of being strangled." "The only ghosts that haunt that cupboard," Sir George chuckled, "are boots and shoes, and, I believe, my fishing rods. Ghosts are all a delusion--a peculiar state of the brain due to some minute osseous depression or cerebral inflammation." "I don't agree with you," Sickertorft said quietly. "I am positively certain that there are such things as ghosts, that they are objective and of many kinds. Some, in all probability, have always existed, and have never inhabited any human body; some are the earth-bound spiritual egos of man and beast; and some we can create ourselves." "Create ghosts!" Sir George cried. "Come, now, we are talking sense. Of course we can create ghosts. Pepper did, Maskelyne and Devant still do, and so do all the so-called materialising mediums." "I don't mean spoof ghosts," Sickertorft responded. "I mean real ones. Real superphysical, objective phenomena. Man can at times create them, but only by intense concentration." "You mean materialised thought forms?" "If you like to term them such," Sickertorft replied. "I believe they are responsible for a certain percentage of hauntings, but not all." "Well, I've never seen any of your ghostly thought forms nor, in my opinion, am I ever likely to," Sir George growled. "Show me one and I'll believe. But you can't." "I don't know so much," Sickertorft muttered, and, with his eyes still on the cupboard, he followed Sir George into his study. * * * * * A week later Lucy, a maid at "The Mayfields," was walking past the cupboard on her way to the dining-room, when something, as she subsequently described it to the cook, came over her, and she ran for her life. "I didn't hear anything nor see anything," she explained. "I only felt there was something nasty hiding there, ready to spring out."