Haunting had lost its savor. He traveled far and wide from the Hall, ranging over the country at night. At last, he decided to settle down in the secret room and write his memoirs. For once, he was relatively content, and the only thing that occasionally marred his nights was a longing to see the light of day again. But try as he could, he could not materialize after the first cock crowed and the sky paled in the east.

And then one night when he was raiding the kitchen after all the servants were abed, he saw a newspaper lying on the table in the butler’s pantry.

Idly he picked it up and popped it on the tray next to his evening meal. He drifted over to the wall and, as he did so, he noticed that the paper was open at the social column. The next minute the black type seemed to leap out of the page and scream at him that Alice, Comtesse de la Valle-Chenevix, was engaged to Lord Harold Webb. He lost his concentration and walked slap bang into the wall, and the contents of the tray spun out over the kitchen and fell with a horrendous crash.

He rubbed his forehead in a dazed way, picked up the newspaper as he heard the sound of approaching feet, and melted through the wall—this time successfully—and drifted upward through the floors to the secret room.

The Duke lit the candles and sat down at the table, spreading the newspaper carefully out in front of him. There was no doubt about it. Alice was engaged.

He looked at the date at the top. The paper was two weeks old.

Well, this is what he had wanted for the girl. She was only a scullery maid and now she was marrying a Lord. She had done very well for herself.

He turned his concentration wholly on his memoirs, becoming so absorbed that he even forgot to eat. He put aside his manuscript with a sigh and looked at the clock on the mantle. Nearly dawn. He had not much of a life in summer, he reflected wryly.

And then, quite clearly, like a bell in his brain, he heard her calling him, heard Alice calling for help.

He started to his feet—and groaned. A glimmer of livid gray was spreading along the horizon. He could do nothing until night came again.

When he awoke the next evening, or came to, or materialized—he was never quite sure how to describe the phenomenon of his rebirth to himself—he did not at first remember Alice, but was instantly plagued with a nagging feeling of unease. Then his eye fell on the newspaper, still lying on the table, and he remembered. Alice. Engagement. Her cry for help.

The Duke quickly dressed in evening clothes, missing for the first time Jamieson, his valet of the old days who could surely have dealt with all these difficult, modern styles of hairdressing. “It was easier in my day,” he mused. “I could simply wear a wig. Of course, many still do, but I was never démodé in my time, and I do not intend to be in this.”