Wanhope commented as the stranger paused for
breath.

In the intensity of our interest, we had crowded close upon him, except
Minver, who sat with his head thrown back, and that cynical cast in his
eye which always exasperated Rulledge; and Halson, who stood smiling
proudly, as if the stranger's story did him as his sponsor credit
personally.

"Yes," the stranger owned, "but I don't know that there wasn't something
more extraordinary still. From time to time the girl in the stateroom
kept piping up, with a shriek for help. She had got past the burglar
stage, but she wanted to be saved, anyhow, from some danger which she
didn't specify. It went through me that it was very strange nobody
called the porter, and I set up a shout of 'Porter!' on my own account.
I decided that if there were burglars the porter was the man to put them
out, and that if there were no burglars the porter could relieve our
groundless fears. Sure enough, he came rushing in, as soon as I called
for him, from the little corner by the smoking-room where he was
blacking boots between dozes. He was wide enough awake, if having his
eyes open meant that, and he had a shoe on one hand and a shoe-brush in
the other. But he merely joined in the general up-roar and shouted for
the police."

"Excuse me," Wanhope interposed. "I wish to be clear as to the facts.
You had reasoned it out that the porter could quiet the tumult?"

"Never reasoned anything out so clearly in my life."

"But what was your theory of the situation? That your friend, Mr.
Melford, had a nightmare in which he was dreaming of burglars?"

"I hadn't a doubt of it."

"And that by a species of dream-transference the nightmare was
communicated to the young lady in the stateroom?"

"Well--yes."

"And that her call for help and her cry of burglars acted as a sort of
hypnotic suggestion with the other sleepers, and they began to be
afflicted with the same nightmare?"

"I don't know that I ever put it to myself so distinctly, but it appears
to me now that I must have reached some such conclusion."

"That is very interesting, very interesting indeed. I beg your pardon.
Please go on," Wanhope courteously entreated.

"I don't remember just where I was," the stranger faltered.

Rulledge returned with an accuracy which obliged us all: "'The porter
merely joined in the general uproar and shouted for the police.'"

"Oh yes," the stranger assented. "Then I didn't know what to do, for a
minu