the world but Lucas himself! Yet Ethel and that Loutrelle and Bennet had found out. How? From him?
"By telepathy," Lucas murmured to himself. "By transference of thought." So he sought to explain away the incident as Bennet had tried to do. But the explanation brought neither conviction nor reassurance. Suppose he persuaded himself that it could not have been the ghost of James Quinlan who had informed upon him; suppose he was certain that they had obtained this knowledge from himself?
By God, if they drew "Galilee" and the torch from him, what else could they draw? And if they obtained it not from him, but from the dead, how much more would the dead tell?
Lucas swung from his window to the pile of books which he had purchased the day before, and he struck them with his fist, dashing them over the floor; but that blow of anger and contempt could not undo their effect upon him. For during these last days he had continued to read; and the more his study maddened him and undermined his confidence in himself, the more he had read. Men—sensible men, whom Lucas knew and whom he knew—believed, in these degenerate days, that the dead could return and disclose secrets.
That, if verifiable, was decidedly a staggerer for Lucas who had acted, at certain crises of his life, upon the simple and effective formula that dead men tell no tales. "Galilee and a flaming torch!" Lucas winced and swung back to his window. So old J. Q., though dead, had told? How could Lucas shut up a ghost?
Suddenly his shoulders hunched up, and he spun about with fists clenched and menacing. He had had an insane fancy that J. Q., holding a flaming torch, was in the room behind him. Of course, nothing was there.
