undo the work of yesterday, or obliterate events embalmed in vanished time, yet there is always the future; and if we could but read the past aright, which we never can, then the future would prove less of a painful riddle than mankind generally finds it.

“If, then, I can help you to read the past, I may at least modify your anxieties in the future; and should I, by a remote chance, be right in my suspicions, it is quite imperative that I place myself at your service for the sake of mankind.  In a word, a great crime has been committed, and the situation is possibly such that further capital crimes will follow it.  I affirm nothing, but I conceive the agency responsible for these murders to be still active, since the police have been so completely foiled.  At Chadlands there may still remain an unsleeping danger to those who follow you—­a danger, indeed, to all human life, so long as it is permitted to persist.  I write, of course, assuming you to be desirous of clearing this abominable mystery, both for your own satisfaction and the credit of your house.  “There is but little to hope from me, and I would beg you not to feel sanguine in any way.  Yet this I do believe:  that if there is one man in the world to-day who holds the key of your tribulation, I am that man.  One lives in hope that one may empty the world of so great a horror; and to do so would give one the most active satisfaction.  But I promise nothing.

“If I should be on the right track, however, let me explain the direction in which my mind is moving.  Human knowledge may not be equal to any solution, and I may fail accordingly.  It may even be possible that the Rev. Septimus May did not err, and that at the cost of his life he exorcised some spirit whose operations were permitted for reasons hid in the mind of its Creator; but, so far as I am concerned, I believe otherwise.  And if I should prove correct, it will be possible to show that all has fallen out in a manner consonant with human reason and explicable by human understanding.  I therefore came to England, glad of the excuse to do so, and waited upon you at your manor, only to hear, much to my chagrin, that you were not in residence, but had gone to Florence, a bird’s journey from my own home!

“Now I write to the post-office at Milan, where your servant directed me that letters should for the moment be sent.  If you are returning soon, I wait for you.  If not, it may be possible to meet in Italy.  But I should prefer to think you return ere long, for I cannot be of practical service until I have myself, with your permission, visited your house and seen the Grey Room with my own eyes.

“I beg you will accept my assurances of kindly regard and
sympathy in the great sufferings you and Madame May have
been called upon to endure.

“Until I hear from you, I remain at Claridge’s Hotel in
London.