‘As to that, Mr Lawford,’ came the still voice out of the darkness; ‘the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proof positive that you’re not. Insanity is on another plane, isn’t it? in which one can’t compare one’s states. As for what you say being credible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninety-nine hundredths of this amiable world of ours would have guffawed the poor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. To such poor credulous creatures as my sister and I he is no more and no less a fact, a personality, an amusing reality than—well, this teacup. Here we are, amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scores of books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; and there’s not a single one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yet grope between the lines of any autobiography, it’s pretty clear what one has got—a feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the indescribable. As for what you say _your_ case is, the bizarre—that kind very seldom gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all our pretence, how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. The real question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You just trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and—but one moment, I’ll light up.’ A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the night air straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candles that stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford’s head. Then sauntering over to the window again, almost as if with an affectation of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. ‘Nothing much struck me,’ he went on, leaning back on his hands, ‘I mean on Sunday evening, until you said good-bye. It was then that I caught in the moon a distinct glimpse of your face.’ ‘This,’ said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the heart. Herbert nodded. ‘The fact is, I have a print of it,’ he said. ‘A print of it?’ ‘A miserable little dingy engraving.’ ‘Of this?’ Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. ‘Where?’ ‘That’s the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant I got home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere in the house and it will turn up all in good time. It’s the frontispiece of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together by some amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper cover—confessions, travels, trials and so on. All eighteenth century, and all in French.’ ‘And mine?’ said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight. Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost birdlike fashion across the room at his visitor. ‘Sabathier’s,’ he said. ‘Sabathier’s!’ ‘A really curious resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only from memory; and perhaps it’s not quite so vivid in this light; but still astonishingly clear.’