Mrs. Bosanquet groped her way back to consciousness to find the room full of lamplight, and the rest of the family gathered solicitously about her. Someone had laid her upon the sofa, someone else was bathing her forehead with water, while a third held a bottle of smelling-salts to her nose. She opened her eyes, and looked up, blankly at first, into Celia's concerned face. She heard a voice saying: "It's all right: she's coming round," and by degrees her recollection came back to her. She opened her eyes again, and struggled up into a sitting posture, unceremoniously thrusting aside the smelling bottle and the brandy that Margaret was trying to give her. "Where is it?" she demanded, looking round her suspiciously.
"Where is what, Aunt Lilian?" Celia said soothingly. "Are you feeling better now?"
"I am perfectly well. No, my dear child, I never touch spirits. Where did it go? Did you see it?"
Celia patted her hand. "No, dear, we didn't see anything. I woke up, hearing you scream, and when we got downstairs we found you had fainted. Did you feel ill in the night, Aunt, or what?"
"I came to get a book and a biscuit," Mrs. Bosanquet replied. "Was there no one but myself in the room?"
"Why no, darling, how should there be? Did you think you saw someone?"
"Think!" said Mrs. Bosanquet indignantly. "Do you suppose I should scream for help merely because I thought I saw someone? I did see it, as plainly as I can see you."
Charles came forward, ousting his wife from her place by the invalid's side. "What did you see, Aunt Lilian?" he asked. "Do you feel well enough to tell us about it?"
"Certainly I am well enough to tell you," she said. "My dears, it is all perfectly true, and I am not ashamed to own that I have been wrong. The house is haunted, and the first thing to be done in the morning is to summon the Vicar."
Celia gave a gasp of horror, and clasped her brother's arm nervously. "Oh, what have you seen?" she cried.
Mrs. Bosanquet took the glass of water from Margaret, and drank some. "I have seen the Monk!" she said dramatically.
"Good Lord!" Peter exclaimed. "You haven't really, have you? Are you sure you didn't imagine it?"
A withering glance was cast at him. "It is true that I so far forgot myself as to scream, and faint, but I can assure you, my dear Peter, that I am not such a fool that I would imagine such a thing. It was standing almost exactly where you are now, and it began to move towards me, with its arm stretched out as though it were pointing at me."
Celia shuddered, and looked round fearfully. Just what did it look like?" Charles asked quietly.
"Like a monk," said Mrs. Bosanquet. "It had a cowl over its face, and I trust I am not a fanciful woman, but there was something indescribably menacing and horrible about it. I can see its eyes now."
"Where?" shrieked Celia, clutching Peter again.
"In my mind's eye. Don't be foolish, my dear, it is not here now. Its robe was black, and so were its hands - at least the one that pointed at me was. I daresay I am stupid, but that seemed to me to make it even more unnerving."
Charles turned quickly towards Peter. "That settles it! Gloves! Now how did he make his get-away?"
"Almost any way," Peter said. "He'd have had plenty of time to get across the hall before any of us reached the stairs."
"It is no use being obstinate about it," Mrs. Bosanquet said. "It was no man,, but an apparition. I am now convinced of the existence of such things. Perhaps it was sent to open my eyes."
"All dressed up in a Dominican habit and black gloves," said Charles. "I hardly think so. Take a look at the front door, Peter."
"Bolted, and the chain in position. I happened to notice. What about this window?"
Charles strode across to it, and flung back the curtains. "It's bolted - no, by Jove, it's not!" He turned to Bowers, who up till now had been a scared auditor. "Bowers, do you remember if you bolted this to-night?"
Bowers shook his head. "No, sir. At least, I don't think so. Begging your pardon, sir, but the mistress always likes it left open till you go up to bed. I thought you bolted it."
"That's right," Peter said. "And to-night we sat in the drawing-room. That's how it got forgotten. Cheer up, Aunt Lilian! What you saw was someone dressed up to give you a fright, and that's how he got in."
"No, my dear, you are wrong," Mrs. Bosanquet said firmly. "It had no need of doors or windows. For all we know it is still present, though now invisible."
Celia gave one moan of horror, and implored Charles to take her back to town at once.
"I think we'd all better go back to bed for the rest of the night, and discuss it in the morning," Charles said. "I don't see that we shall do much good trying to search the garden now. We'll bolt this window, though. And what about having Margaret to sleep in your room, Aunt? Would you prefer it?"
"Not at all," she replied. "If it re-appeared, Margaret would be of no assistance to me, or any of you. I shall go quietly up, and to sleep, for I feel I shall not see it again to-night."
On account of the night's disturbance breakfast was put back next morning for an hour, but contrary to everyone's expectations Mrs. Bosanquet was the first down. When Celia, Margaret, and Peter appeared they found her looking as placid as ever, and reading the morning paper. "Good morning, my dears," she said, laying the paper down. "I see there has been fresh trouble in China. I feel one has so much to be thankful for in not being Chinese."
"Darling Aunt Lilian!" said Margaret, twinkling. "You really are a marvellous person!"
"On the contrary I fear I am a very ordinary one. And why you should think so merely because I remarked…'
"Oh, I didn't! But after what you went through last night I wonder you can be so calm."
"I lay awake and thought about that for some time after you had left me," said Mrs. Bosanquet. "Do you know, I have come to the conclusion that I behaved very foolishly?"
Celia looked up hopefully. "Do you mean you may have imagined it after all?"
"No, my dear, certainly not. I am not at all imaginative. In fact, your uncle used very often to say I was too mundane. But then he was extremely imaginative himself, and could tell the most entertaining stories, as I daresay you remember."
"Then how did you behave foolishly?" asked Peter, helping himself from one of the dishes on the sideboard.
"In screaming in that uncontrolled manner. I realise now that my proper course would have been to have challenged the apparition, and commanded it to tell me what it wanted. For, on thinking it over, I am convinced it manifested itself for some good purpose. Thank you, Peter, yes, I will have an egg." She began to tap the shell briskly. "It is obviously an unquiet spirit, and when you consider that it no doubt belongs to the remains you discovered in that very nasty, airless little cupboard, one can hardly wonder at it."
"I do wish you wouldn't, Aunt!" begged Celia. "Even in broad daylight you give me the creeps."
"Then you are being very silly, dear child. Good morning, Charles. I hope you slept well to make up for your loss of sleep earlier in the night."
Charles took his seat at the head of the table. "I am grateful for the inquiry, Aunt, but no, I didn't. I might have, but for the fact that I was constrained to get up three times; once to look under the bed, once to open the wardrobe, once to demonstrate to your niece that the noise she persistently heard was the wind rustling the creeper outside the window."
"Well, I'm sorry, darling," Celia said, "but after what happened you can't be surprised that I was nervous."
"Surprise, my love," responded her husband, "was not the emotion I found myself a prey to."
"Perhaps it'll convince you that the only thing to do is to go back to town this very day," Celia said pleadingly.
"I confess that a prospect of any more such nights doesn't attract me," said Charles. "But what's the opinion of Aunt Lilian?"
"I was about to say, when you came in," answered Mrs. Bosanquet, "that I have considered the matter very carefully, and come to the conclusion that we should be doing wrong to leave the Priory."
Charles paused in the act of conveying a piece of toast from his plate to his mouth, and stared at her. "Well, I'm damned!" he said inelegantly. "Give me some coffee, Celia: I must drink Aunt Lilian's health."
"Very wrong indeed," nodded Mrs. Bosanquet. "Perhaps we have it in our power to set the ghost free. It probably wants us to do something, and to that end it has been endeavouring to attract our notice."
"I see," said Charles gravely. "And probably it can't make out why we all seem so shy of it. I wonder how it'll try to - er - attract our notice next? It's already knocked a picture down, and thrown a skull at our feet, and made you faint. It must be getting quite disheartened at our failure to appreciate the true meaning of these little attentions."
"It is all very well for you to make a mock of such things, Charles," Mrs. Bosanquet said with dignity, "but I am perfectly serious. So much so that I am determined to do my best to get into communication with it. And since Margaret is going to town on Thursday to see her dentist I shall ask her to call at my flat, and request Parker to give her my planchette board, which is in the old brown trunk in the lobby."
Celia was regarding her in fascinated horror. "Are you really proposing to sit with a planchette in this house?" she asked faintly.
"Not only I, my dear, but all of us. We sit round in a circle, laying the tips of our fingers on the board, and wait for some message to be transcribed."
"Nothing," said Celia vehemently, "would induce me to take part in any such proceeding! The whole thing's bad enough as it is without us trying to invoke the Monk."
"Very well," said Mrs. Bosanquet, not in the least ruffled, "if that is how you feel about it it would be no good your attempting to sit with us. But I for one shall certainly make the attempt."
"This means you won't go back to town!" Celia said unhappily. "I knew what it would be! No, don't tell me I can go without you, Charles. I may be a bad wife, and wake you up to look in the wardrobe in the small hours, but I am not such a bad wife that I'd go away and leave you with a ghost and a planchette."
"I wish you would go back to town, old lady," Charles said. "I don't mean that I don't appreciate this selfimmolating heroism, but it's no use scaring yourself, and nothing dire is at all likely to happen to me. If I thought there was any danger," he added handsomely, "you should stay and share it with me."
"Thanks," said Celia. "I might have known you'd joke about it. I don't know whether there's what you call danger, but if you're going to ask for trouble by putting your hands on Aunt's horrible planchette I shan't leave your side for one moment."
"Cheer up!" Charles said. "I don't mind giving the board a shove to please Aunt Lilian, but last night has completely convinced me that the Monk is as real as you are. In fact, if Margaret is going to town on Thursday she can rout out my service revolver, and the cartridges she'll find with it, and bring them back with her."
"If you think that I should be pleased by you deliberately pushing the board, you are sadly mistaken," said Mrs. Bosanquet severely. "Moreover, I have the greatest objection to fire-arms, and if you propose to let off guns at all hours of the day I shall be obliged to go back to London."
She was with difficulty appeased, and only a promise extracted from Charles not to fire any lethal weapon without due warning soothed her indignation. Breakfast came to an end, and after Celia had had a heart-to-heart talk with her husband, and Margaret hadd begged Peter not to do anything rash, such as shooting at vague figures seen in the dark, the two men left the house, ostensibly to fish.
"What we are going to do now," said Charles, "is to carry on some investigations on our own."
"Then we'd better drift along to the Bell," said Peter. "We may as well put in some fishing till opening time, though. If you want to pump old Wilkes you won't find him up yet."
Charles consulted his watch. "I make it half-past ten."
"I daresay you do, but friend Wilkes takes life easy. He's never visible at this hour. Not one of our early risers.
"All right then," Charles said. "We might fish the near stream for a bit."
Sport, however, proved poor that morning, and shortly before twelve they decided to give up, and stroll on towards the inn. They were already within a few minutes' walk of it, and they arrived before the bar was open.
"Have you been into the courtyard yet?" Peter asked. "You ought to see that. Real Elizabethan work; you can almost imagine miracles and moralities being played there. Come on." He led the way through an arch in the middle of the building, and they found themselves in a cobbled yard, enclosed by the house. A balcony ran all round the first storey, and various bedroom windows opened on to this. A modern garage occupied the end of the building opposite the archway into the street, but Mr. Wilkes had had this built in keeping with the rest of the inn, and had placed his petrol pump as inconspicuously as possible. Some clipped yews in wooden tubs stood in the yard, and the whole effect was most picturesque. Having inspected the older part of the house, and ascertained that the original structure did indeed date from the fourteenth century, they wandered into the garage, which they found stood where the old stables had once been. Michael Strange's two-seater was standing just inside the entrance and one of the garage hands was washing it down. Charles, under pretext of examining the car, soon fell into easy conversation with the man, and leaving him to extract what information he could, Peter strolled off to where he could hear the throb of an engine at work. He had some knowledge of such machines, and a great deal of interest. He easily located the engine-room, went in, leaving the door open behind him, and found, as he had thought, that the engine drove the electric light plant. No one was there, and the first thing that struck him was the size of the plant. Puzzled, he stood looking at it, wondering why such a powerful machine and such a large plant had been installed for the mere purpose of supplying light for the inn. He was just about to inspect it more closely when someone came hurriedly into the room behind him.
"Oo's in 'ere?" demanded a sharp voice.
Peter turned to find Spindle, the barman, at his elbow. The man looked annoyed, but when he saw whom he was addressing he curbed his testiness, and said more mildly: "Beg pardon, sir, but no one's allowed inside this 'ere engine-room."
"That's all right," said Peter. "I shan't meddle with it. I was just wondering why…'
"I'm sorry, sir, but orders is orders, and I shall 'ave to ask you to come out. If the boss was to 'ear about me leaving the door unlocked I should get into trouble." He had edged himself round Peter, obscuring his view of the plant, and now tried to crowd him out. Somewhat surprised Peter gave way, and backed into the yard again.
"You seem to be afraid I shall upset it. What's the matter?" he said.
Spindle was locking the door of the place, and until he had pocketed the key he did not answer. Then he said: "It's not that, sir, but we 'ave to be careful. You wouldn't believe the number of young fellers we've 'ad go in and start messin' about with the plant, to see 'ow it worked. Cost Mr. Wilkes I wouldn't like to say 'ow much money to 'ave it put right once, sir. Not that I mean you'd go for to 'urt it, but I've 'ad me orders, and it's as much as my place is worth to let anyone in."
"Oh, all right," said Peter, still surprised at the man's evident perturbation. "But why has Wilkes installed such a large plant? Surely it's generating far more electricity than you can possibly use?"
"I couldn't say, sir, I'm sure. And begging your pardon, sir, it's opening time, and I've got to get back to me work." He touched his forehead as he spoke and scuttled off into the inn again, leaving Peter to stare after him in still greater bewilderment.
Charles came across the yard from the garage. "Did I hear certain magic words? I move that we repair to the bar forthwith. What have you been up to?"
"I went to look at the electric-light plant, only that ass, Spindle, hustled me out before I'd had time to see much. I must ask Wilkes about it."
Charles groaned. "Must you? I mean, we didn't come to talk about amps and dynamos, and I know from bitter experience that once you get going on that soul-killing topic…'
"I want to know why Wilkes has got such a powerful plant. I hadn't time to look closely, but from what I could see of it it was generating enough electricity to light the whole village."
"Well, perhaps it does," Charles suggested. "Can we get into the bar without going back into the street?"
"Yes, through the coffee-room." Peter opened a door which led into a dark little passage, with kitchens giving on to it. At the end of the passage was the coffee-room, and they walked through this to the frosted glass door that opened into the taproom itself.
There was no one but Spindle in the taproom when they entered, but they had hardly given their orders when Wilkes came in from his private sanctum, and bade them a cheery good morning.
"Hullo, Wilkes! Just up?" Peter twitted him.
The landlord smiled good humouredly. "Now, sir, now! You will have your joke. Two half-cans was it? Come on, Spindle, look alive! There you are, sir!" He seized the tankards from his henchman, and planked them down in front of his guests.
"Very quiet this morning, aren't you?" Charles said.
"Well, we're only just open, sir. They'll start coming in presently. I see you've been fishing. Bad weather for it today."
"Rotten. No luck at all." Charles took a draught of beer. "How's business with you?"
"So-so, sir, so-so. We get a fair sprinkling of car people in to lunch, but there's not many as stays the night."
"I see Mr. Strange is still here."
"Yes, sir, he's here. And there's Miss Crowslay and Miss Williams, down for their usual fortnight, and Mr. Ffolliot. Artists, sir, great place for artists and such-like, this is."
"Still got your commercial?"
"In a manner of speaking I suppose I have, but he's one of them as is here today and gone tomorrow, if you know what I mean. Well, it's the nature of his business, I daresay, but I'd rather have someone more regular, so to speak. That Mr. Fripp, well, you never know where you are with himm because some days he has to go off and spend the night away, and others he's back to supper when you wasn't expecting him. However, as my missus was saying only this morning, it's all in the way of business, and I'm sure times are that bad I'm glad to get anyone staying in the house."
Peter put down his tankard. "I say, Wilkes, what's the meaning of that monstrous electric plant you've got outside? You can't need a thing that size, surely?"
The landlord coughed, and looked rather sheepish. "I'm sorry you've seen that, Mr. Fortescue, sir."
"Yes, but why? Spindle pushed me out before I'd time to do more than glance at the thing. He seemed in a great way about it."
Spindle looked deprecatingly at the landlord, and withdrew to the other end of the bar.
"Spindle's a fool, sir," said Mr. Wilkes, not mincing matters. "Though mind you, you wouldn't hardly believe the number of people there are that ain't to be trusted anywhere near a delicate bit of machinery. I do have to be strict, and that's a fact. Of course, I know you're different, sir, and that's why I'm sorry you saw it." He went through the form of wiping down the bar, which seemed to be a habit with him. "You see, sir, in a manner of speaking I was a bit had over that plant."
"I should think you were," Peter said. "You could supply the whole village with it."
"Well, I don't know about that, sir," Mr. Wilkes said cautiously. "It ain't such a powerful machine as what it looks. Still, I don't deny it's bigger nor what I want. Not but what we use a lot of power here. Because, mind you, I had the whole place wired for heating as well, there not being any gas laid on, and then there's the refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners and what not."
"Rot!" Peter said, "you don't need a plant that size for the amount of electricity you use in heating."
Mr. Wilkes once more wiped down the bar. "True enough, sir, I don't. But when I took over this house I don't mind telling you I hadn't ever had anything to do with electric plants, me having always lived in a town. I didn't know no more about it than what half the young gentlemen do, who try and meddle with it. And I did have a notion to run a laundry off it, just by way of a sidebusiness, as you might call it. So what with one thing and another I let myself be talked into putting up a plant that cost me a mint of money, and ain't, between ourselves, as cheap to run as what the smooth-tongued fellow that sold it me said it would be. Excuse me, sir, half a moment!" He hurried away to attend to a farmer who had come in, and Charles and Peter went to sit down at a table in the window.
The taproom began to fill up, and soon there were quite a number of people in it. They were mostly villagers, and there was no sign of Strange, or his odd associate. But a few minutes before one o'clock a man came in who was obviously no farm-hand. He attracted Peter's attention at once, but this was not surprising, since his appearance and conduct were alike out of the ordinary. Artist was stamped unmistakably upon him. His black hair was worn exceedingly long; he had a carelessly tied, very flowing piece of silk round his neck; his fingers were stained with paint; he had a broadbrimmed hat crammed on to his head; and was the owner of a pointed beard.
"Good Lord, I thought that type went out with the 'Nineties!" murmured Peter.
The artist walked rather unsteadily up to the bar, and leaning sideways across it, said with a distinct foreign accent: "Whisky. Double."
Wilkes had watched his approach frowningly, and he now hesitated, and said something in a low voice. The artist smote his open hand down on the bar, and said loudly: 'My friend, you give me what I say. You think I am drunk, hein? Well, I am not drunk. You see? You give me…'
"All right, Mr. Dooval," Wilkes said hastily. "No offence I hope."
"You give me what I say," insisted M. Duval. "I paint a great picture. So great a picture the world will say, why do we not hear of this Louis Duval?" He took the glass Wilkes handed him, and drained it at one gulp. "Another. And when I have painted this picture, then I tell you I have finished with everything but my art." He stretched out a hand that shook slightly towards his glass. His eye wandered round the room: his voice sank to the grumbling tone of the partially intoxicated. "I will be at no man's call. No, no: that is over when I have paint my picture. You hear?"
Mr. Wilkes seemed to be trying to quieten him by asking some questions about the picture he was painting.
"It is not for such as you," M. Duval said. "What have the English to do with art? Bah, you do not know what feelings I have in me, here…' He struck his chest. "To think I must be with you, and those others - canaille!"
"Gentleman seems a little peevish," remarked Charles, sotto voce.
His voice, though not his words, seemed to reach Mr. Duval's ears, for he turned, and stared hazily across the room. A smile that closely resembled a leer curled his mouth, and picking up his glass he made his way between the tables to the window, and stood leaning his hand on the back of a chair, and looking down at Charles. "So! The gentleman who dares to live in the haunted house, not?" He shook with laughter, and raising his glass unsteadily, said: "Voyons! a toast! Le Moine!"
Charles was watching him under frowning brows. He went on chuckling to himself, and his eyes travelled from Charles' face to Peter's. "You do not drink? You do not love him, our Monk?" He pulled the chair he held out from the table, and collapsed into it. "Eh bien! You do not speak then? You do not wish to talk of Le Moine? Perhaps you have seen him, no?" He paused; he was sprawling half-way across the table, and the foolish look in his eyes was replaced by a keener more searching gleam. "But you have not seen his face," he said with a strange air of quite sudden seriousness. "There is no one has ever seen his face, not even I, Louis Duval!"
"Quite so," said Charles. "I haven't. Do you want to?"
A look of cunning crept into the artist's face. He smiled again, a slow, evil smile that showed his discoloured teeth. "I do not tell you that. Oh, no! I do not tell you that, my friend. But this I tell you: you will never see his face, but you will go away from that house which is his, that house where he goes, glissant, up and down the stairs, though you do not see, where he watches you, though you do not know. Yes, you will go. You will go." He fell to chuckling again.
"Why should we go?" Peter asked calmly. "We're not afraid of ghosts, you know!"
The artist swayed with his insane giggling. "But Le Moine is not like other ghosts, my friend. Ah non, he is not - like - other ghosts!"
The landlord had crossed the room, and now threw an apologetic glance at Peter. But he spoke to the artist. "You'd like your usual table, moossoo, wouldn't you? You'll take your lunch in the coffee-room, I daresay, and there's as nice a leg of lamb waiting as ever I saw."
The artist turned on him with something of a snarl. "Away, cattle! You think you can tell me what I shall do and what I shall not do, but it is not so!"
"I'm sure, sir, I never had no such idea, but your lunch'll be spoiled if you don't come to eat it, and I've got some of the green peas cooked the French way you like."
"I do not eat in this plaice, where you cook food fit for pigs. Yes, you wish that I go, but I do not go till I choose, and you dare not speak, my gross one, for me. I am Louis Duval, and there is not another in the world can do what I do! Is it not so? Hein? Is it not so?"
The landlord had an ugly look in his eye, but to Charles' and Peter's surprise he said soothingly: "That's right, sir. Wonderful your pictures are."
M. Duval looked at him through half-shut eyes; his voice sank; he said almost in a whisper: "Sometimes I have thoughts in my head, gross pig, which you do not dream. Sometimes I think to myself, has no one seen the face of Le Moine? Has not Wilkes seen it? Eh? You do not like that, perhaps. Perhaps, too, you are afraid, just a little afraid of poor Louis Duval."
"Me seen it?" echoed the landlord. "Lor', Mr. Dooval, I'm thankful I haven't, and that's a fact. Now you give over talking of spooks, sir, do. You've got half the room listening to you, like silly fools, and these gentlemen don't want to hear them sort of stories."
Contrary to Peter's expectations the drunken artist allowed himself to be helped out of his chair, and gently propelled across the bar to the coffee-room door. Those villagers who still remained in the bar watched his exit with grins and nudges. When he had disappeared, and Wilkes with him, Peter addressed a solid-looking farmer who was seated near to him. "Who's that chap?" he asked.
"He's a furriner, sir," the farmer answered. "An artist. I daresay you've seen his cottage, for it ain't far from the Priory."
"Oh, he lives here, does he? Which is his cottage?"
"Why, sir, it's that white cottage with the garden in front that's a sin and shame to look at, it's that covered in weeds." He began to sketch with a stubby finger on the table before him. "Supposing the Priory's here, sir, where I've put my thumb. Well, you go on down the road, like as if you was coming to the village, and there's a bit of a lane leading off a matter of a quarter of a mile from this inn. You go up there not more'n a hundred yards, and you come right on the cottage. That's where he lives."
"I see. Yes, I know the place. Has he lived there long?"
The farmer rubbed his ear. "I don't know as I could rightly say how long he's been here. Not more'n five years, I reckon. We've kind of got used to him and his ways, and I never heard he did anyone any harm, bar walking over fields while the hay is standing. Mind you, it ain't so often you see him like he is to-day. He gets fits of it, so to speak. Now I come to think on it, it hasn't had a bout on him for a matter of three months. But whenever he gets like this he goes round maundering that silly stuff you heard. Enough to get on your nerves it is, but he's fair got the Priory ghost on the brain." He got up as he spoke, and wishing them a polite good-day, made his way out.
"Quite interesting," Charles said. "I think it's time we made a move."
On their way home down the right-of-way they talked long and earnestly over all that the drunken artist had said.
"It is well known," Charles said at last, "that you can't set much store by what a drunken man may say, but on the other hand it's always on the cards that he'll let out something he didn't mean to. I feel that M. Louis Duval may be worth a little close investigation."
"What surprised me," Peter remarked, "was the way Wilkes bore with him. I expected to, see Duval kicked out."
"If he's in the habit of eating his meals at the Bell you can understand Wilkes humouring him. And apparently he's not always tight by any means. The most intriguing thing about him was his interest in the Monk. I don't know what you feel about it, but I should say he knew a bit about monks."
"I'm all for getting on his tracks," Peter answered. "At the same time, he was so dam' fishy and mysterious that I'm inclined to think it was a bit too sinister to mean anything. Think he is the Monk?"
"Can't say. If I knew what the Monk was after I should find this problem easier to solve."
They walked on for some time in silence. Peter broke it by saying suddenly: "I don't know. It was typical drunken rot when you come to think of it. All that stuff about the Monk walking up and downstairs though we don't see him, and watching us though we don't know it. You can't get much sense out of that. Ghost-twaddle."
"I was thinking of something else he said," Charles said slowly. "I'd rather like to know what he meant by no one ever having seen the Monk's face, not even himself. That wasn't quite the usual ghost-talk we hear in this place."
"N-no. But I'm not sure that it's likely to lead anywhere. Still, I agree he wants looking into."
They had reached the Priory by this time, and agreeing to say nothing of the morning's encounter to the others they went in, and found the three women already seated at the lunch-table.
"Did you have any luck?" Margaret asked.
"No, there's too much sun," Peter answered. He paused in the act of helping himself to salad, and lifted his head. "What's the strange noise?"
There was a distinct and rather unpleasant sound of humming that seemed to proceed from somewhere above. Margaret laughed. "Ask Celia. She let us in for it."
They looked inquiringly at her. "Sounds like a vacuum cleaner or something," said Charles.
"It is," Celia confessed. "I couldn't help it, though. Really, he was so persistent I hadn't the heart to go on saying no."
"I think it's a very good plan," said Mrs. Bosanquet. "I'm sure there must be a great deal of dust in all the carpets, and this will save having them taken up, which I was going to suggest."
"But what do you mean?" Peter demanded. "We've no electricity here, so how can you…'
"Oh, it isn't an electric one! It's some new sort of patent affair, but I really didn't pay much attention, because I've no intention of buying it. Only the man was so anxious to show me the amount of dust it would draw out of the carpets and chairs that I let him demonstrate. After all, it's costing us nothing, and it seems to please him."
"A man, with a vacuum-cleaner for sale," Charles repeated. "A man…' He looked at Peter, and as though by common consent they both got up.
"Well, what on earth's the matter?" Celia asked. "You don't mind, do you?"
"I'm not at all sure," said Charles. "I'll tell you when I've seen this clever salesman." He threw down his tablenapkin, and went quickly out of the room, and up the stairs. The droning noise came from Mrs. Bosanquet's room, and he went in. Busily engaged in running a cleaner over the floor was the shifty-eyed commercial staying at the Bell Inn.