Sir Lyon, after a glance at Varick’s pale, set face, was sorry that he had mentioned the curious, painful occurrence; and, though he was a truthful man, he now told a deliberate lie.  “I don’t know what the apparition purported to be,” he observed.  And he saw, even as he was uttering the lying words, a look of intense relief come over Varick’s face.  “But to my mind Miss Brabazon evidently saw the rare phenomenon known as a materialization.  Miss Bubbles was lying asleep in the confessional which is almost exactly opposite the door through which one enters the hall from the house side, thus the necessary conditions were present.”

“I wish I had been present!” exclaimed the doctor.  “Either I should have seen nothing, or, if I had seen anything, I should have managed to convince myself that what I saw was flesh and blood.”

As neither of his two companions said anything in answer to that observation, Panton went on, speaking with more hesitation, but also with more seriousness than he had yet shown:  “Do I understand you to mean, Sir Lyon, that you credit our young fellow-guest with supernatural gifts denied to the common run of mortals?”

“I should not put it quite that way,” answered Sir Lyon.  “But yes, I suppose I must admit that I do credit Miss Bubbles with powers which no one as yet has been able to analyze or explain—­though a great many more intelligent people than has ever been the case before, are trying to find a natural explanation.”

“If that is so,” asked the doctor, “why have you yourself given up such an extraordinarily important and valuable investigation?”

“Because,” said Sir Lyon, “I consider my own personal investigations yielded a definite result.”

“And that result—?”

“—­was that what I prefer to call by the old term of occultism makes for evil rather than for good.  Also, I became convinced that the practice of these arts has been, so to speak, put ’out of bounds’—­I can think of no better expression—­by whatever Power it be that rules our strange world.”

He spoke earnestly and slowly, choosing his words with care.

“If your theory contains a true answer to the investigations which are now taking place,” exclaimed the doctor, “there was a great deal to be said for those mediaeval folk who burnt sorcerers and witches!  I suppose you would admit that they were right in their belief that by so doing they were getting rid of very dangerous, as well as unpleasant, elements from out of their midst?”

The speaker looked hard at Sir Lyon.  Nothing, as he told himself, with some excitement, had ever astonished him, or taken him so aback, as was now doing this conversation with an intelligent, cultivated man who seemed to have broad and sane views on most things, but who was evidently as mad as a hatter on this one subject.

And then, before Sir Lyon had perchance made up his mind what to answer exactly, Varick’s voice broke in:  “Yes,” he observed, smiling a little grimly, “that’s the logical conclusion of your view, Dilsford.  You can’t get out of it!  If a human being really possesses such dangerous powers, the sooner that human being is put out of the way the better.”