coming here is a mistake," I said, in a tone of friendly superiority. I feigned to see if I had my matches, and then looked up at him frankly. "If I were you I wouldn't wait for cock-crow—I'd vanish right away."
'He looked embarrassed. "The fact is, sir" he began.
'"I'd vanish," I said, driving it home.
'"The fact is, sir, that—somehow—I can't."
'"You can't?"
'"No, sir. There's something I've forgotten. I've been hanging about here since midnight last night, hiding in the cupboards of the empty bedrooms and things like that. I'm flurried. I've never come haunting before, and it seems to put me out."
'"Put you out? "
'"Yes, sir. I've tried to do it several times, and it doesn't come off. There's some little thing has slipped me, and I can't get back."
'That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked at me in such an abject way that for the life of me I couldn't keep up quite the high, hectoring vein I had adopted. "That's queer," I said, and as I spoke I fancied I heard some one moving about down below. "Come into my room and tell me more about it," I said. "I didn't, of course, understand this," and I tried to take him by the arm. But, of course, you might as well have tried to take hold of a puff of smoke! I had forgotten my number, I think; anyhow, I remember going into several bedrooms—it was lucky I was the only soul in that wing—until I saw my traps. "Here we are," I said, and sat down in the arm-chair; "sit down and tell me all about it. It seems to me you have got yourself into a jolly awkward position, old chap."
'Well, he said he wouldn't sit down; he'd prefer to flit up and down the room if it was all the same to me. and so he did, and in a little while we were deep in a
