‘This is a strange sort of business altogether,’ Dick continued, after glancing round the vast and gloomy cellar. ‘But, upon my word, to tell you the truth, I’m half ashamed of myself for yielding to anything like superstition. It strikes me that you’ll find you are the victim of a trick of the imagination, and that these bogey fancies of yours have placed us in rather a ridiculous position.’ In answer to this I could not possibly resist reminding Dick that even scientists admitted that there were certain phenomena--they called them ‘natural phenomena’--that could not be accounted for by ordinary laws. Dick shrugged his shoulders and remarked with assumed indifference: ‘Perhaps--perhaps it is so.’ He proceeded to fill his pipe with tobacco, and having lit it he smoked with a nervous energy quite unusual with him. The gardener was only away about ten minutes, but it seemed infinitely longer. He brought both a pickaxe and a crowbar with him, and in obedience to his master’s orders he commenced to hack at the wall. A brick was soon dislodged. Then the crowbar was inserted in the hole, and a mass prized out. From the opening came forth a sickening odour, so that we all drew back instinctively, and I am sure we all shuddered, and I saw the pipe fall from Dick’s lips; but he snatched it up quickly and puffed at it vigorously until a cloud of smoke hung in the fœtid and stagnant air. Then, picking up a candle from the ground, where it had been placed, he approached the hole, holding the candle in such a position that its rays were thrown into the opening. In a few moments he started back with an exclamation: ‘My God! the ghost hasn’t lied,’ he said, and I noticed that his face paled. I peered into the hole and so did the gardener, and we both drew back with a start, for sure enough in that recess were decaying human remains. ‘This awful business must be investigated,’ said Dick. ‘Come, let us go.’ We needed no second bidding. We were only too glad to quit that place of horror, and get into the fresh air and bright sunlight. We verily felt that we had come up out of a tomb, and we knew that once more the adage, ‘Murder will out,’ had proved true. Half an hour later Dick and I were driving to the nearest town to lay information of the awful discovery we had made, and the subsequent search carried out by the police brought two skeletons to light. Critical medical examination left not the shadow of a doubt that they were the remains of a woman and a girl, and each had been brutally murdered. Of course it became necessary to hold an inquest, and the police set to work to collect evidence as to the identity of the bodies hidden in the recess in the wall.