Nurse Chaffen talked away to her heart's content, enlarging upon points of her story. Not one of them interrupted her: not one but would have listened with interest had she run on until midnight. Mrs. Jinks from her love of marvellous tales; the detective because he believed this might be the clue he wanted to Philip Salter; and Miss Blake in her resentful condemnation of Sir Karl Andinnian. For, that the "gentleman in dinner dress" was no other than Sir Karl, who had stolen in on one of his secret visits, she could have staked her life upon. "A tall gentleman with dark hair, you say it looked like?" questioned Mr. Strange indifferently. "Tall for certain, sir. As to his hair, I don't know; it might have been darkish. I see he had nice white teeth." "Salter had good teeth," was the mental comment of the detective. "_I have found him_." "And in dinner dress?" added Miss Blake with a cough. "So it looked like, ma'am. The sort of coat that gentlefolks wears in an evening." "And you mean to say you never see him after; never but that there one time?" tartly interposed the Widow Jinks. "Never at all. The rooms was all open to daylight while I was there, but he wasn't in never a one of 'em." "Then I tell you what, Betsey Chaffen; it was a ghost, and you need not hesitate to stand to it." "Well, you see he didn't look like a ghost, but like an ordinary gentleman," confessed Mrs. Chaffen. "What came over me, and what I can't make out, was Ann Hopley's standing it out that neither ghost nor gentleman was there: she said she'd take her oath to it." "Thank you, you've done my hand up beautifully, Mrs. Chaffen," said the patient. "I should give my credence to the spirit theory. Did Mr. Moore see the appearance of this ghostly gentleman?" "Yes he did, sir. I'm sure he did. For he lifted his head like at the gentleman, and stood still when he got to the top of the stairs, staring at the room he had vanished into. I told him a day or two afterwards that Mrs. Hopley denied that any one had been there, and the doctor quietly said, 'Then we must have been mistaken.' I did not like to ask whether he thought it was a ghost." "Oh I think you may depend upon the ghost," returned Mr. Strange, biting his lips to prevent a laugh. "Well, sir, queer stories was told of that Maze house in the late tenant's time. My cousin Jinks here knows that well enough." "It was haunted by more than one ghost then, if all folks told true," assented Mrs. Jinks. "Mr. Throckton's son--a wild young blade he was--hung hisself there. I was but a girl at the time." "Ah, one of the old ghosts come back again; not been laid yet," solemnly remarked the detective, staring at Mrs. Chaffen. "Did the lady herself seem alarmed?" "Well, sir, I can't say she did then, because she couldn't have seen it, and was too ill besides. But she had got a curious manner with her." "Curious?" questioned Mr. Strange.