After breakfast the whole party, in Sir James’s car, drove over to Friars House; and despite the up-to-date furniture and upholstery, I found it a very gloomy residence. Stripped of its ghostly atmosphere, Grange had been quite a charming seat for any man; but this dungeonesque place, with its lichened tower that had dominated the valley when John signed Magna Charta, with its massive walls and arrow-slit windows, its eccentrically designed apartments and crypt-like smell, was altogether too archaic to be comfortable. Moris Klaw, standing in the room which had been fitted up as a library, removed his flat-topped brown bowler and fumbled for his scent spray. “This place,” he said, “smells abominably of dead abbots!” He squirted verbena upon himself and upon Isis. He replaced the scent spray in the lining of the hat, and was about to replace the hat on his head, when he paused, staring straight up at the ceiling reflectively. “My notes!” he said, abruptly; “I have left those notes in my valise. I must have them. Curse me, for an old foolish! Sir James, you will show Isis this charming old tower in my absence? Do I intrude? But I would borrow the car and return to Grange for my notes!” “Not a bit!” replied the baronet, readily. “Clement can go with you!” “No, no! Certainly no! I could not think of it! My old friend, Mr. Searles, may come if he so likes; if not, I go alone.” Naturally, I agreed to accompany him; and, leaving the others at the ancient gateway, we set off in Sir James’s car back to Grange. Down into the valley we swept and up the slope to Grange, Moris Klaw sitting muttering in his beard, but offering no remark and patently desirous to avoid conversation. “Come, my friend,” he said, as the car drew up before the house, “and I will show you what my mental negative recorded to me last night, just before the great danger came.” He led the way into the billiard room, curtly directing the butler to leave us. When we were alone-- “You will note something,” he rumbled, swinging his arm vaguely around in the direction of the banqueting hall. “What you will note is this: the laughter--where is it heard? It is heard here, in the gun room on my right, in the banquet room before me. Great is the Science of the Mind! I will now test my negative.” I followed him with wondering gaze as he stepped into the deep old-fashioned fireplace which formed one of the quaintest features of the room. He bent his tall figure to avoid striking his head upon the stonework, and placed the historic brown bowler upon one of the settles. “Perhaps I cannot find it,” came his rumbling voice; “my negative was fogged by assassinations, murderous sieges, candle-light duels, and other thought-forms of the troubled past; but I may triumph--I may triumph!” He was standing on a settle with his head far up the chimney, and presently a faint grating sound proceeded from that sooty darkness.