With this comforting assurance I turned round, and in a few minutes fell into a deep sleep, after the varied excitements of the night. Next morning I stepped gaily into the smaller division of the room to begin my toilet, and triumphantly turned round to convince myself of the truth of my theory about the wardrobe door. To my infinite astonishment and perplexity _the wardrobe was securely locked_, just as I had left it in the middle of the night. I have never had any explanation of this mystery; but I changed my fine big room for a much less desirable one that morning, and made some excuse about wishing for a quieter room at the back of the house. The next evening, sitting in my new abode with my travelling companion, she showed far more interest in my adventure than in the Petersburg tragedy and subsequent vision of mine. So much so that I invited her to take a pencil and see if she could get any sort of explanation of the mystery; for although not at all _intuitive_, she knew something of what is called automatic writing. I give her narrative, not as being in the slightest degree evidential, but for its intrinsic interest, and because I am personally convinced that she had not sufficient imagination to have made it up on the spur of the moment. Miss Greenlow's "message" was to the following effect:-- About fifty years previously, a Russian gentleman (an officer, I _think_, but am not certain of this) and his mistress had occupied this large front room. The man had spent all day at a rifle competition, combined with some sort of merry-making, and had returned home very late--at one-thirty A.M., in fact--very much the worse for drink. He had opened the door very carefully, trusting he should find the lady asleep; but, unfortunately, she was not only wide awake, but extremely annoyed by his late return and the state in which he had come back to her. A desperate quarrel had ensued, and getting frightened by his violence, she seized his rifle, giving him a blow on the head with the butt end of it, hoping to stun him, but with no idea of murder in her mind. Whether she gave a more severe blow, in her nervousness, than she had intended, or whether the rifle fell on some specially vital spot, was not explained in the writing. Anyway, the blow proved fatal--to her extreme regret and remorse. Under these circumstances one would have supposed that it would be more reasonable for the lady to haunt the room, and not the gentleman; but I "tell the tale as 'twas told to us." It is, however, remarkable that in most of these stories it is the victim who appears--determined to enact the scene of his or her death--and not the murderer. I think we were also told, by-the-by, that I had slept in the room on the anniversary of the occurrence. It was obviously impossible to get any corroboration of such a story. Two small points in it, however, were proved to be true.