to rise invisibly
about the occupant of the chair. The effect upon the excitable patient
was rapid, admirable, and harmless. The green study was further provided
with a secret spy-hole; for John Silence liked when possible to observe
his patient's face before it had assumed that mask the features of the
human countenance invariably wear in the presence of another person. A
man sitting alone wears a psychic expression; and this expression is the
man himself. It disappears the moment another person joins him. And Dr.
Silence often learned more from a few moments' secret observation of a
face than from hours of conversation with its owner afterwards.

A very light, almost a dancing, step followed Barker's heavy tread
towards the green room, and a moment afterwards the man came in and
announced that the gentleman was waiting. He was still pale and his
manner nervous.

"Never mind, Barker" the doctor said kindly; "if you were not psychic
the man would have had no effect upon you at all. You only need training
and development. And when you have learned to interpret these feelings
and sensations better, you will feel no fear, but only a great
sympathy."

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!" And Barker bowed and made his escape, while
Dr. Silence, an amused smile lurking about the corners of his mouth,
made his way noiselessly down the passage and put his eye to the
spy-hole in the door of the green study.

This spy-hole was so placed that it commanded a view of almost the
entire room, and, looking through it, the doctor saw a hat, gloves, and
umbrella lying on a chair by the table, but searched at first in vain
for their owner.

The windows were both closed and a brisk fire burned in the grate. There
were various signs--signs intelligible at least to a keenly intuitive
soul--that the room was occupied, yet so far as human beings were
concerned, it was empty, utterly empty. No one sat in the chairs; no one
stood on the mat before the fire; there was no sign even that a patient
was anywhere close against the wall, examining the Bocklin
reproductions--as patients so often did when they thought they were
alone--and therefore rather difficult to see from the spy-hole.
Ordinarily speaking, there was no one in the room. It was undeniable.

Yet Dr. Silence was quite well aware that a human being _was_ in the
room. His psychic apparatus never failed in letting him know the
proximity of an incarnate or discarnate being. Even in the dark