t branch of the business.
We all lament the cause of this, but I should like to say that I
myself have the strongest confidence in your capacity for carrying
on the work. What do you think we should do next?"

Wilson seemed to rouse himself from his depression and acknowledged
the speaker's words with a warmer civility than he had hitherto
shown to anybody. He called in a few of the police to assist in
routing out the interior, leaving the rest to spread themselves in a
search party outside.

"I think," he said, "the first thing is to make quite sure about the
inside of this place, as it was hardly physically possible for him
to have got outside. I suppose poor Nolan would have brought in his
banshee and said it was supernaturally possible. But I've got no use
for disembodied spirits when I'm dealing with facts. And the facts
before me are an empty tower with a ladder, a chair, and a table."

"The spiritualists," said Sir Walter, with a smile, "would say that
spirits could find a great deal of use for a table."

"I dare say they could if the spirits were on the table--in a
bottle," replied Wilson, with a curl of his pale lip. "The people
round here, when they're all sodden up with Irish whisky, may
believe in such things. I think they want a little education in this
country."

Horne Fisher's heavy eyelids fluttered in a faint attempt to rise,
as if he were tempted to a lazy protest against the contemptuous
tone of the investigator.

"The Irish believe far too much in spirits to believe in
spiritualism," he murmured. "They know too much about 'em. If you
want a simple and childlike faith in any spirit that comes along you
can get it in your favorite London."

"I don't want to get it anywhere," said Wilson, shortly. "I say I'm
dealing with much simpler things than your simple faith, with a
table and a chair and a ladder. Now what I want to say about them at
the start is this. They are all three made roughly enough of plain
wood. But the table and the chair are fairly new and comparatively
clean. The ladder is covered with dust and there is a cobweb under
the top rung of it. That means that he borrowed the first two quite
recently from some cottage, as we supposed, but the ladder has been
a long time in this rotten old dustbin. Probably it was part of the
original furniture, an heirloom in this magnificent palace of the
Irish kings."

Again Fisher looked at him under his eyelids, but seemed too sleepy
to speak,