They had been making their way steadily back to the house as they talked, but Greatorex stopped now in the middle of the meadow, and took Harrison by the lapel of his dinner-jacket. “Bad line, my friend,” he said gravely. “Take my advice and don’t attempt it before Vernon. I’m advising you for your good.” “Well, then, who the devil was it?” Harrison snapped impatiently. “Ah! there you have me,” Greatorex said. “But, good God, G.,” Harrison expostulated. “_You_ don’t believe that it was a--er--an apparition.” “Dunno what to think,” Greatorex said. Harrison blew a deep breath of disgust. “I thought you had more sense,” he snapped out. “Well, I’m willing to be convinced,” Greatorex replied; “if you have any other explanation to offer.” But Harrison had nothing further to say in the matter just then. He wanted to see Phyllis Messenger first, alone. When he had got his evidence, he would be ready to offer his explanation. They found only Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Greatorex in the drawing-room when they entered by the French window. Messenger, his daughter, Stevens and Fell had gone back to the hotel, she explained, and Vernon and Lady Ulrica were in the morning-room, conferring, so Mrs. Harrison suggested, over the events of the evening. “I don’t quite know whether Mr. Fell means to come back,” Mrs. Harrison concluded with a lift of her eyebrows. “He seemed--well, rather ashamed of himself altogether. I’m not sure that he hasn’t taken his things.” “Just as well, perhaps,” her husband said. And then his observant glance fell on the tulle scarf thrown over the back of a chair. “Did you find out whom that belonged to?” he asked sharply. “Oh!” ejaculated Mrs. Harrison. “They left it behind after all. It’s Miss Messenger’s. She identified it at once and wondered how it had got here.” “Certain it was hers, I suppose?” Harrison asked. “Oh yes! It’s got her initials worked on it,” his wife told him. For a few seconds Harrison stood thoughtfully drawing the scarf through his hands, then dropping it back on to the chair, he said: “That’s all right, then. Hadn’t we better be going to bed? It’s after one o’clock.” 2 When Charles Harrison set about the investigation of that night’s mystery, he was still intent upon the theory that the appearance he had seen and spoken to was in fact the living personality of some stranger who had been staying either in the village or possibly at Orton Park, the grounds of which sloped down to the other side of the lake. There were a couple of canoes and a punt in Lord Orton’s boathouse, and the crossing presented no real difficulty. He was, however, finally deflected from that theory in the course of his interview with Miss Messenger. He had been quite firm at breakfast. As a result, no doubt, of the “conference” they had held the night before, Lady Ulrica and Vernon were eager to begin an immediate discussion of what they called the “phenomenon.” Harrison effectively stopped that.