, and this was a dark, almost a black, SMITH. I came back to
Ryde in a passion and a third-class carriage. I find from Mademoiselle
that Miss SMITH has not yet returned.

[Illustration: ]

JAMES seemed pleased to see me, but he noticed that in my anxiety and
preoccupation I had forgotten to have my hat ironed. The hotel is quite
full, and I am to sleep in the Haunted Room to-night.

* * *

I am not a hysterical man, and this is not a neurotic story. It is, as a
matter of fact, the same old rot to which the shilling shockers have
made us accustomed. I cannot account in any way for my experiences last
night in the Haunted Room, but they certainly were not due to
nervousness. I had not been asleep long before I had a most curious and
vivid dream. I felt that I was not in the hotel, and that at the same
time I was not out of it. I had a curious sense of being everywhere in
general, and nowhere in particular.

I saw before me a gorgeously furnished room. On the tiger-skin rug
before the fire was a basket with a crewel-worked chair-back spread over
it. _What was in the basket?_ Again and again I asked myself that
question. I felt like a long-division sum, and a cold shiver went down
my quotient.

In one corner of the room stood a man of about thirty, with a handsome,
wicked face. One hand rested on the drawer of a writing-table. Slowly he
drew from it a folded paper, and read, in a harsh, raucous voice:--

"'To cleaning and repairing one----' No, that's not it."

He selected another paper. Ah, it was the right one this time!

"'Memorandum of Aunt JANE'S Will.' 'All property to go to ALICE SMITH,
unless Aunt JANE'S poodle, _Tommy Atkins_, dies before ALICE SMITH comes
of age. In which case, it all goes to me.' I remember making that note
when the will was read. And now"--he glanced at the covered
basket--"_Tommy_'s kicked the bucket. Well, he stood in my way. Who's to
know? But there must be no _post-mortem_, no 'vet' fetched in. Happy
thought--I'll have the brute stuffed." He knelt down by the side of the
basket, and slowly drew back the covering. "Ah!" he said--"it's cruel
work."

Did he refer to the chair-back? or did he refer to the way in which, for
the sake of gain, an honest dog had been MURDERED? For there before my
eyes lay the dead poodle, _Tommy Atkins_!

"ALICE loses all her money," he continued, "but that doesn't matter. She
tells me that she's picked up no end of a swell down at Ryde, and he m