Dr Teesdale was a man of good nerve, and he recovered himself almost immediately, ashamed of his temporary panic. The terror that had blanched his face was chiefly the effect of startled nerves, not of terrified heart, and yet deeply interested as he was in psychical phenomena, he could not command himself sufficiently to go back there. Or rather he commanded himself, but his muscles refused to act on the message. If this poor earth-bound spirit had any communication to make to him, he certainly much preferred that it should be made at a distance. As far as he could understand, its range was circumscribed. It haunted the prison yard, the condemned cell, the execution shed, it was more faintly felt in the infirmary. Then a further point suggested itself to his mind, and he went back to his room and sent for Warder Draycott, who had answered him on the telephone last night. “You are quite sure,” he asked, “that nobody rang me up last night, just before I rang you up?” There was a certain hesitation in the man’s manner which the doctor noticed. “I don’t see how it could be possible, sir,” he said, “I had been sitting close by the telephone for half an hour before, and again before that. I must have seen him, if anyone had been to the instrument.” “And you _saw_ no one?” said the doctor with a slight emphasis. The man became more markedly ill at ease. “No, sir, I _saw_ no one,” he said, with the same emphasis. Dr Teesdale looked away from him. “But you had perhaps the impression that there was some one there?” he asked, carelessly, as if it was a point of no interest. Clearly Warder Draycott had something on his mind, which he found it hard to speak of. “Well, sir, if you put it like that,” he began. “But you would tell me I was half asleep, or had eaten something that disagreed with me at my supper.” The doctor dropped his careless manner. “I should do nothing of the kind,” he said, “any more than you would tell me that I had dropped asleep last night, when I heard my telephone bell ring. Mind you, Draycott, it did not ring as usual, I could only just hear it ringing, though it was close to me. And I could only hear a whisper when I put my ear to it. But when you spoke I heard you quite distinctly. Now I believe there was something--somebody--at this end of the telephone. You were here, and though you saw no one, you, too, felt there was someone there.” The man nodded. “I’m not a nervous man, sir,” he said, “and I don’t deal in fancies. But there was something there. It was hovering about the instrument, and it wasn’t the wind, because there wasn’t a breath of wind stirring, and the night was warm. And I shut the window to make certain. But it went about the room, sir, for an hour or more. It rustled the leaves of the telephone book, and it ruffled my hair when it came close to me. And it was bitter cold, sir.” The doctor looked him straight in the face.