The Return Of Bulldog Drummond by Sapper

moaned. “I was just getting into bed when a hand touched me on the shoulder. A woman was standing there – a woman in black with grey hair. Her arm was stretched out pointing at me – and her eyes–”
    She began to shudder violently.
    “They seemed to shine like balls of fire. And then, while I was looking at her in amazement, she just vanished. She was standing just where you are, Captain Drummond, and she disappeared.”
    Hardcastle looked significantly at the other men; then he turned soothingly to his daughter.
    “Perhaps you imagined it, honey: maybe it was a trick of the light.”
    “But it wasn’t,” she cried wildly. “And Mr Jerningham said this room was haunted, didn’t you?”
    She appealed to him, and he nodded.
    “That’s right, Comtessa,” he agreed.
    “It was a ghost,” she went on. “It must have been a ghost. It must have been her the convict saw. Oh, let me get out of this room! I can’t stop here another moment. And never again after tomorrow will I set foot inside this house.”
    “Honey, don’t take on so,” implored her father. “Even if it was a ghost, the poor thing didn’t do you any harm. Come into your Dad’s room, and he’ll stop with you till you’re all right again.”
    He put his arm round her waist, and led her gently out, whilst the others, after a brief pause, trooped down into the hall again.
    Well, if that don’t beat cock-fighting, gentlemen,” said the Inspector, scratching his head. “I take it we all saw the woman or the ghost or whatever it was.”
    “Very clearly,” agreed Drummond.
    “And, gentlemen, the lady’s door was locked. Locked on the inside. It must have gone clean through the wood.”
    Slingsby lit a cigarette with a puzzled frown.
    “I guess,” he said, “that I’m a converted man. Up till now I’ve regarded any guy who got chatting about ghosts as dippy. And now, damn it, I’ve seen one with my own eyes. Gosh! it gave me the creeps.”
    “She is quieter now,” said Hardcastle, coming down the stairs. “I’ve given her a dose of sleep dope. And the first thing that I guess I owe is an apology to you, Captain Drummond, for my sneering remark about ghosts earlier in the evening.”
    “Don’t mention it, Mr Hardcastle,” answered Drummond. “We are all of us wiser and more tolerant men, I trust, after the amazing escapade of psychic phenomena we have just witnessed.”
    Darrell glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but his face was expressionless.
    “Moreover, as my daughter says, it does seem to bear out part of Morris’ story,” went on Hardcastle. “If we saw it, so may he have done.”
    “That’s so, sir,” said the Inspector. “But there’s one point we mustn’t forget. A ghost can go through a closed door: we’ve seen it happen. But a ghost can’t carry a suit of clothes through a closed door: a ghost can’t carry anything at all.”
    He glared round the group as if challenging anyone to contradict him.
    “That being so,” he continued, “we still have not accounted for Morris having on the murdered man’s clothes.”
    “That’s very true,” agreed Hardcastle. “Don’t you think so, Penton?”
    The third man rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other before replying.
    “I guess I don’t know what to think,” he remarked at length. “I’m with Jake in what he said. The whole thing is a new one on me.”
    “Anyway, gentlemen,” said the Inspector, “clothes or no clothes, one thing is certain: no ghost can murder a man, certainly not by bashing his head in.”
    “I suppose that’s a fair assumption,” said Penton.
    “Very well, then: let’s disregard the ghost for a moment, and I think we can reconstruct what happened. Morris broke in, and in all probability thought the place was empty. All you gentlemen were out: only Mr Marton was in the house. Maybe he came downstairs, thinking it was one of you returning, and Morris attacked him. Marton fled and Morris pursued him,