"Indeed. Will you tell me how I may be of service to you?"
She looked at me, and I developed a most unnecessary feeling. I rose once more, this time firmly resolved to take my leave, but again the doctor detained me.
"Miss Van Loan," he said, "allow me to present Mr. Evans, my friend and colleague. Like me, he is an investigator of the supernormal in psychic phenomena."
Her acknowledgement of the introduction was accompanied by a charming smile that immediately put me at my ease.
"I have heard of your work in connection with that of Dr. Dorp," she said. "How fortunate that I find you two together—especially as my reason for coming to see the doctor has a direct bearing on the very subject that seems to be of interest to both of you. Won't you stay?"
I relapsed once more into my chair.
The doctor, I observed, had pricked up his ears like a hound on a hot trail. He leaned forward in his chair and pressed the tips of his fingers together—an attitude he always assumed when absorbed in a problem that was of intense interest to him.
"Miss Van Loan," he began, "you are not by any chance a relative of my old friend and fellow worker, Gordon Van Loan?"
"I am his niece."
"Indeed. I begin to understand your interest in spiritistic phenomena. Dense of me not to have thought of it before."
"But, doctor, I am not interested in spiritistic phenomena."
"Eh? Not interested? I'm afraid I don't—"
"I have always feared and detested the very thought of meeting or communicating with the disembodied spirits."
"Really, Miss Van Loan, you surprise me," said the doctor. "Your uncle, up to the very time of his death, was an ardent supporter of the spiritistic hypothesis. I have had many a private debate with him on the subject."
"I am aware of that. I, too, have argued the subject with him when it was forced on me. Until three days ago I was as firm an unbeliever as you. But now—I don't know what to think. It seems that my uncle, even in death, has resolved to force his belief upon me."
"You mean that he has appeared to you?"
"I'm not sure, but strange things—terrible, enervating things have happened since I began to carry out the provisions of my uncle's will."
"He left his entire fortune to you, did he not?"
"Yes, but with a provision which I am afraid I won't be able to carry out. He stipulated that I must live in his old home in Highland Park continuously for one year, and that if I should fail to do so everything would revert to my cousin, Ernest Hegel, or in the event of his failure to carry out the provision, to the Society for Psychical Research."
"Your uncle was reputed to be quite wealthy."
"He left something over half a million, most of which was in first mortgage real estate bonds, in addition to the home and estate, which is estimated to be worth at least a hundred thousand."
"Quite a sizeable bequest, and, it seems to me, an ample recompense for the condition imposed with it."
"So I thought too, until I spent a night in that awful house. It was then that I began to realize the full import of his explanation of the reasons for his unusual provision."
"Just what was his explanation?"
"I can give you his exact words. In the last three days they have burned themselves into my very soul. He said: "—for when I return to prove the reality of life after death it is not unreasonable to ask the person who benefits so materially by this will to be on hand to greet me, and to receive and transmit my message of hope and good cheer to the misguided scoffers, who, by their very attitude, prevent their departed loved ones from communicating with them."
"Hem. And have you received the message, or something purporting to be the message?"
"Not exactly, but there have been indications of a strange and terrible presence in that house—an elusive, disembodied entity that, while not a creature of flesh and blood, exercises an uncanny power over material objects as well as living creatures."
"I see. And the manifestations?"
"Ghostly raps, shuffling footsteps in rooms that are untenanted, overturned furniture and broken china, strange sickening odors suggestive of the dank mustiness of the tomb, lights darkened and suddenly lighted again with no evidence of switches or of fuses having been tampered with, the touch of cold hands in the dark, doors opening and closing in the dead of night, the icy breath—"
"The icy breath? What is that?"
"It is the most convincing evidence of my uncle's presence in the house. Although the last three days and nights have been exceptionally warm, even for August, I have felt it, and the servants have felt it—a moving current of air with a dank, charnel odor, as cold as a wind from the ice-bound Arctic circle. As you are no doubt aware, my uncle was an ardent admirer of the famous Italian medium, Eusapia Palladino. One of the most baffling manifestations which she is said to have produced time and again in the presence of investigating scientists, was the icy breath—a cold breeze that appeared to come from her forehead when she was in a trance. Many scoffed, but none could explain this remarkable phenomenon. My uncle often referred to it in his lectures. He has written several papers regarding it for spiritistic publications."
"And living creatures, you say, have been affected?"
"Yes, Sandy, my Airedale terrier, has not been himself since he entered the house. He has bristled and growled repeatedly, for no apparent reason. Although he has always been a most friendly and playful pet, he now slinks about the house like some vicious creature of the jungle, or mopes in corners, avoiding all human companionship and barely tasting
