A week later, however, an agent of the police called on Isabella Rodino, and did something more than hint that it was desirable that within twenty-four hours she should leave Rome as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. The result of this functionary’s call was that Isabella Rodino journeyed to Florence by that night’s mail train. It was known that she only sojourned two days in the fair city on the Arno. After that there is another hiatus of something like two years in her known career, and it is not easy to fill it up. And this brings us to that fatal night at Wiesbaden, when ill-starred Jack Redcar met the enchantress on the hotel stairs. From that point to the moment when, her rôle being finished, she disappeared for ever from the ken of men, the reader of the story can fill in for himself. She played out her last act under the name of Annette. In selecting her many names she seemed actuated by a fine sense of poetic euphony, and in selecting her victims she was guided by a ‘damnable’ discrimination. ‘Annette,’ as we will now call her, was a human riddle, and she illustrates for the millionth time the trite adage that ‘Truth is stranger than Fiction,’ besides which she presents the world with an object lesson in the study of the occult. III THE CORPSE LIGHT My name is John Patmore Lindsay. By profession I am a medical man, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London. I am also the author of numerous medical works, the best known, perhaps, being ‘How to Keep in Good Health and Live Long.’ I was educated at one of the large public schools, and took my degree at Oxford. I have generally been regarded as ‘a hard-headed man,’ and sceptical about all phenomena that were not capable of being explained by rational and known laws. Mysticism, occultism, spiritualism, and the like only served to excite my ridicule; and I entertained anything but a flattering opinion of those people who professed belief in such things. I was pleased to think it argued a weakness of mind. I have referred to the few foregoing facts about myself because I wish to make it clear that I do not belong to that class of nervous and excitable people who fall a prey to their own fancies; conjure up shapes and scenes out of their imaginings, and then vow and declare that they have been confronted with stern realities. What I am about to relate is so marvellous, so weird and startling, that I am fain to begin my story in a half apologetic way; and even now, as I dwell upon it all, I wonder why I of all men should have been subjected to the unnatural and unearthly influence. But so it is, and though in a sense I am only half convinced, I no longer scoff when somebody reminds me that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy.