Sabbath of the Jews, and
that there was not the faintest chance of Isaacs' arrival at his place of
business. In the same moment the embarrassment and confusion of the
young Israelite flashed vividly across his mind, and he saw that he was
in a very awkward position. If that fair Hebrew boy had been robbing, or
trying to rob, the till, then Allen's position was serious indeed, as
here he was, alone, at an untimely hour, in the office. So he blew the
candle out, and went down the dingy stairs as quietly as possible, took
the first cab he met, drove to Paddington, and went up to Oxford.

It is probable that the young child of Israel, if he had been attempting
any mischief, did not succeed in it. Had there been any trouble, it is
likely enough that he would have involved Allen in the grief. Then Allen
would have been in a, perhaps, unprecedented position. He could have
established an alibi, as far as the Jew's affairs went, by proving that
he had been at Blocksby's at the hour when the boy would truthfully have
sworn that he had let him into Isaacs' chambers. And, as far as the
charge against him at Blocksby's went, the evidence of the young Jew
would have gone to prove that he was at Isaacs', where he had no business
to be, when we saw him at Blocksby's. But, unhappily, each alibi would
have been almost equally compromising. The difficulty never arose, but
the reason why Allen refused to give any account of what he had been
doing, and where he had been, at four o'clock on that Saturday
afternoon--a refusal that told so heavily against him--is now
sufficiently clear. His statement would, we may believe, never have been
corroborated by the youthful Hebrew, who certainly had his own excellent
reasons for silence, and who probably had carefully established an
_alibi_ of his own elsewhere.

The true account of Allen's appearance, or apparition, at Blocksby's,
when I and Tarras, Wentworth and the attendant recognised him, and Miss
Breton did _not_, is thus part of the History of the Unexplained. Allen
might have appealed to precedents in the annals of the Psychical Society,
where they exist in scores, and are technically styled "collective
hallucinations." But neither a jury, nor a judge, perhaps, would accept
the testimony of experts in Psychical Research if offered in a criminal
trial, nor acquit a wraith.

Possibly this scepticism has never yet injured the cause of an innocent
man. Yet I know, in my own persona