Page:Phillpotts - The Grey Room (Macmillan, 1921).djvu/44

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AN EXPERIMENT
31

ass he's making of himself. The governor was right about that. When Fayre-Michell asked if he believed in them loafing about a place where they'd been murdered or otherwise maltreated, he rejected the idea."

"Yet a woman certainly died there, and without a shadow of reason."

"She probably died for a very good reason, only we don't happen to know it."

Henry tried a different argument.

"You're married, and you matter; I'm not married, and don't matter to anybody."

"Humbug!"

"Mary wouldn't like it, anyway; you know that."

"True—she'd hate it. But she won't know anything about it till to-morrow. She always sleeps in her old nursery when she comes here, and I'm down the corridor at the far end. She'd have a fit if she knew I'd turned in next door to her and was snoozing in the Grey Room; but she won't know till I tell her of my rash act to-morrow. Don't think I'm a fool. Nobody loves life better than I do, and nobody has better reason to. But I'm positive that this is all rank nonsense, and so are you really. We know there's nothing in the room with a shadow of supernatural danger about it. Besides, you wouldn't want to sleep there so badly if you believed anything wicked was waiting for you. You're tons cleverer than I am—so you must agree about that."

Lennox was bound to confess that he enter-