“Can I take it that you do believe the dead return?” asked the doctor abruptly.

“I think,” said Sir Lyon deliberately, “that certain of the dead desire ardently to return—­not always from the best motives.  As to whether they themselves are permitted to come back, or whether they are able to use other entities to carry out that purpose, I am still in doubt.”

As he spoke he saw a curious change come over Lionel Varick’s face.  The rather set smile with which he had been listening to the discussion gave way to an odd expression of acute unease.  But at this particular moment it was not Varick with whom Sir Lyon was concerned, but with the frank, eager, pleasant-faced, young doctor, in whose estimation, as he realized, he was falling further and further down with every word he uttered.

“To tell you the honest truth,” he went on, “even in the days when I did little else than attend seances and have sittings with noted mediums, not only in this country but also on the Continent, I could never quite make up my mind whether the spirit with whom I was in communication was really the being he or she purported to be!  There was a time,” he spoke with some emotion, “when I would have given anything—­certainly most willingly twenty years of my life—­to be so absolutely convinced.  But there it is,” he sighed, and was himself surprised at the feeling of depression which came over him.  “Even the most earnest investigation of the kind resolves itself always, after a while, into a kind of will-o’-the-wisp that leads no-whither.”

“Not always,” exclaimed Panton sharply.  “Last year I had a patient who’d become insane owing to what I suppose you would call an investigation into psychic phenomena.”

“And yet,” said Sir Lyon rather sternly, “to your mind, Dr. Panton, a pursuit which you admit was capable of leading one unfortunate human being into insanity, is ’all bosh’!”

“Of course I could only go by what the poor lady’s friends told me,” Panton said uncomfortably.  “She was not under my care long.  But I need hardly tell you, Sir Lyon, that any obsession that takes hold of a human being may in time lead to insanity.”

“I suppose that, according to your theory”—­it was now Varick who was speaking, speaking rather lightly, twirling his stick about as he spoke—­“I suppose,” he repeated, “that, according to your theory, if Bubbles Dunster left Wyndfell Hall to-morrow, the spirits would cease from troubling, and we should be at rest?”

“No, that doesn’t exactly follow.  I once heard of a case which interested me very much.  A house which had never been haunted before—­as far as anyone knew—­became so, following on the sojourn there of a professional medium, and it remained haunted for four years.  Then, suddenly, all the psychic phenomena stopped.”

“What a strange thing,” said Panton, with an under-current of irony in his voice; “but doubtless the owner had had the house exorcised, as you call it?”