Obviously they didn’t know yet, about him. The Home Office was taking its time. Here they were, all having lunch together, and any minute a telegram would come through from the Home Office....

“I say, there’s a damned silly story going round the club,” said George. “Ponsonby swears he had a ghost in his room last night.”

“At the club?” Their mother looked up from her letter-writing with a skeptical smile.

“Yes, at the club!” George affirmed, and grinned.

“It was me,” said Hilary tentatively, half expecting, half hoping they would hear, and turn on him with incredulous hoots of rude family laughter. But—

“Nonsense, he’d been drinking,” she cried, her incredulity all for Ponsonby.

“Ponsonby’s a teetotaler,” said George.

“Then no wonder he sees things!” she concluded logically. “What happened, to make him think it was a ghost?”

“Well, Ponsonby says he was in bed reading, when the door suddenly swung open as though someone had turned the knob from the passage.”

“Yes—and hadn’t someone?”

“Not a soul. There was nobody there. That is, nobody he could see. He was frightfully upset!”

“I said I was sorry,” said Hilary in his own defense.

“Men’s clubs are full of practical jokers,” asserted their mother.

“Ah, but Ponsonby swears he pulled himself together at once and jumped out of bed to close the door. The passage was empty. But he’s positive that Something had opened that door and was surprised to see him there, and went away, leaving it open.”

“He’d have felt worse if I’d closed it again,” insisted Hilary.

“I never heard of anything so absurd!” she cried. “The latch gave in a draught, of course.”

“I know. We all said that. But there’s another thing.”

“Well, what?”

“Last night somebody slept in a room that was supposed to be empty.”

“Oh, George, really!”

“I’m only telling you what they said! A room that hadn’t been booked for several nights had its bed slept in last night. But there’s no trace of the occupant.— Hinton, if you’ll bring up the makings,” added George, “I’ll shake up a White Lady before lunch.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hinton, and withdrew again.

“And that’s not all,” George continued impressively, and produced the ultimate manifestation. “The fellow in the next room heard the bath water being run by the fellow in the empty room.”

“Now, George, you’re not trying to tell me their ghost took a bath!”

“That’s the story! Ponsonby is going to write to the Society for Psychical Research, so you see how well it’s gone with him!”

“Men are so silly! He was probably scaring himself to death with a detective story when it happened. I can always believe the house is full of burglars or things that knock on tables if I read Dorothy Sayers in bed. George, I’ve had another letter from those people down at Nuns Farthing.”