eau, not Furneaux. A little oven. Hot stuff. Got me?"

"My _dear_ Hart, you flatter me," retorted the detective instantly.

"How long am I to pose here?" snapped Grant.

"Sorry," said Furneaux. "These interruptions are banal. Is that where
you were?"

"Yes. I had my hand outstretched for a book. It's dark in this
corner. When I want to find a book I light a candle, which is always
placed on the ledge of the window for the purpose. The blind was not
drawn that night. It seldom is. I had the book in my hand, and had
found the required passage when I chanced to look at the window and
saw _her_ face."

"Do you mind reconstructing the scene. This lamp was on the table,
I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Well, pull up the blind, light your candle, and find the book. Act the
whole incident, in fact."

Grant obeyed. He held the candlestick until he had picked out the
particular volume; then he placed it in the recess of the window, and
searched through the pages of the book.

Furneaux bent forward so as to watch the rehearsal and catch the effect
of the light externally. The hour was not so late as when Adelaide
Melhuish, or her ghost, gazed in through one of those narrow panes, but
the night was dark enough to lend the necessary _vraisemblance_. Hart,
deeply interested, looked on with rapt, eager eyes. For a full minute
the tableau remained thus. Then, with a rapidity born of many a close
'scape in wild lands, Hart drew a revolver from a hip pocket, and fired
at the window.

He alone was in a position to see through all parts of it. Grant was
still thumbing a small brown volume in the manner of one who knew that a
certain passage would be found therein but was ignorant of its exact
place in the text. Furneaux, intent on his every movement, had only a
side-long view of the window, which, it will be remembered, formed a tiny
rectangle in a thick wall.

The revolver was a heavy-caliber weapon, and the explosion blew out the
lamp. The flame of the candle flickered, owing either to the passage of
the bullet or the disturbance of the air. But it burnt steadily again
within the fifth part of a second, and they all saw a starred hole in the
center pane of glass of the second tier from the bottom.

"What fool's game are you playing?" shrilled Furneaux, nevertheless
active as a wildcat in his spring to the French window, there to snatch
at the blind and turn the knob which controlled a lever bolt.

"Laying another ghost--one with wh