“Trying to write?” I echoed.

“Yes, trying—­as though some force were holding him back.”

She went over to the desk, unlocked a little drawer, and took out several sheets of paper.

“Here is what I found that morning,” she said, and handed me a sheet from an ordinary writing pad.

I saw scrawled across it an indecipherable jumble of words.  She had expressed it exactly—­it seemed as though some one had been trying to write with a weight clogging his hand.  And there was something about this scrap of paper—­something convincing and authentic—­which struck heavily at my skepticism.  Here was what a lawyer would call evidence.

“It kept on from day to day,” continued Mrs. Magnus, sitting down again.  “Every morning the little heap of ashes and fragment of cigar, and a scrawl like that—­until finally, one morning, I understood what was happening in this room, for three words were legible.”

She handed me another sheet of paper.  At the top were the words, “My dear wife,” and under them again an indecipherable scrawl.

“Did you tell any one of all this?” I asked.

“Not a word to any one.  But I decided to investigate.”

“How?”

“By staying in this room at night.”

I could guess from her tone what the resolution had cost her.

“And you did?”

“Yes.  I came up right after dinner, leaving word that I was not to be disturbed.  I went first to the desk to assure myself that the tray was empty and that there was no writing on the top sheet of paper.  Then I switched off the light and sat down here by the fire and waited.”

“That was brave,” I said.  “What happened?”

“For an hour, nothing.  Then I was suddenly conscious of an odor of tobacco, as though some one smoking a cigar had entered the room, and an instant later I heard that chair before the desk creak as though it had been swung around.  I switched on the light at once.  The chair had turned.  It had been facing away from the desk, and it was now faced toward it.”

She stopped a moment, and I saw that her excitement of the morning was returning.  Indeed, my own heart was beating with a quickened rhythm as I glanced around at the desk.  I saw that the chair was facing away from it.

“The odor of tobacco grew stronger,” went on Mrs. Magnus, “and, even as I watched, a little mass of ashes fell into the tray.”

“From nowhere?”

“Apparently from nowhere, but of course it was from the cigar that he was smoking.”

“Did you see the smoke?”

“No; how could I?”

Really, I didn’t know.  I wished that I had given more study to the details of spirit manifestation.  I didn’t remember that I had ever heard of a ghost smoking a cigar, but doubtless such cases existed.  The point was this:  Why, if the ashes from the ghost’s cigar became visible when knocked off, shouldn’t the smoke become visible when expired?  Or did the fact that it had been inside an invisible object render it permanently invisible?  I fancied this was what Mrs. Magnus had meant by her question.  Perhaps she had studied the subject.  At any rate, it was too deep for me.