“Personally, I’m quite convinced that it was Miss Messenger we saw,” his wife replied cheerfully. “Very probably, I should say,” Greatorex agreed. “It certainly seems the most likely explanation,” Mrs. Greatorex added. “And you, Lady Ulrica?” Harrison asked. “Well, of course, if you are all sure it was Miss Messenger, I don’t see that there’s anything more to be said,” Lady Ulrica replied. “All of us except Vernon,” Harrison amended. Vernon sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You’ve pretty effectively diddled my report to the S.P.R., anyway,” he said. “If no one is prepared to swear that the person we first saw was not Miss Messenger, I’ve got no evidence.” “There is still Fell, of course,” Harrison suggested. “I don’t think we can rely upon anything Mr. Fell might say,” Mrs. Harrison put in. “I’m afraid he had a reason for not _wanting_ to recognise Miss Messenger just then. I don’t think Mr. Fell has behaved at all nicely.” “I think we’ll drop it, Harrison,” Vernon said with a touch of magnanimity. “I can’t say that you’ve convinced me, even about last night’s experience, but you’ve got all the ordinary probabilities on your side. It’s curious how difficult it is even to _plan_ a perfect test case.” 4 Harrison had triumphed. He ought to have been content. But the truth is that he had satisfied everyone but himself. “That confounded scarf,” as he began to think of it, bothered and perplexed him. He stowed it away in a drawer when he went to bed, but in the small hours of the morning he found himself wide awake reconsidering all the evidence. It had come to him with a perfectly detestable clearness that if Vernon’s theory was a true one, that scarf was the single piece of common earthly material that had been used in the presentation of the phenomenon they had witnessed; and it was, at least, a strangely significant fact that the scarf should be the one thing they had all seen so clearly, the one thing the appearance of which had not been influenced by their mental emotion or the effect of moonlight. The coincidence bothered him. He could not find an explanation. It continued to bother him the next morning. It came between him and his work. And after lunch he put the scarf in his pocket and made it an excuse to call again on Miss Messenger. There were, perhaps, one or two further points that might be elucidated in conversation with her. She had taken, he judged, almost as violent an antipathy to the thing as he had himself. The sight of it might produce some kind of shock, might just possibly revive some memory of what had happened during her trance.