“How can he possibly do that?” asked his uncle.

“Time will show; but I’m going to back him.”  At eleven o’clock on the following morning the visitor appeared.  He walked with a gold-headed, ebony cane and dressed in a fashion of earlier days.  He was alert and keen; his mind had no difficulty in concentrating on his subject.  It appeared that he had all particulars at his fingers’ ends, and he went back into the history of the Grey Room as far as Sir Walter was able to take him.

“We are dealing with five victims to our certain knowledge,” he said, “for there is very little doubt that all must have suffered the same death and under the same circumstances.”

“Four victims, signor.”

“You forget your aged relative—­the lady who came to spend Christmas with your father, when you were a boy, and was found dead on the floor.  Colonel Vane, however, recollected her, because you had mentioned her when telling the story of Mrs. Forrester—­ Nurse Forrester.”

“I never associated my aged aunt with subsequent tragedies—­nobody did.”

“Nevertheless, it was not old age and a good dinner that ended her life.  She, too, perished by an assassin.”

“You still speak of crime.”

“If I am not mistaken, then ‘crime’ is the only word.”

“But, forgive me, is it imaginable that the same criminal could destroy three men last year and kill an old woman more than sixty years ago?”

“Quite possible.  You do not see?  Then I hope to have the privilege of showing you presently.”

“It would seem, then, that the malignant thing is really undying—­ as poor May believed—­a conscious being hidden there, but beyond our sight and knowledge?”

“No, no, my friend.  Let me be frank.  I have no theory that embraces either a good or evil spirit.  Believe me, there are fewer things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.  Man has burdened his brain with an infinite deal of rubbish of his own manufacture.  Much of his principle and practice is built on myths and dreams.  He is a credulous creature, and insanely tenacious to tradition; but I say to you, suspect tradition at every turn, and the more ancient the tradition, the more mistrust it.  We harbor a great deal too much of the savage still in us—­we still carry about far more of his mental lumber and nonsense than we imagine.  Intellect should simplify rather than complicate, and those to come will look back with pity to see this generation, like flies, entangled in the webs of thought their rude forefathers spun.  But the eternal verities are few; a child could count them.  We are, however, a great deal too fond of believing what our ancestors believed.  Alas, nobody sins more in this respect than I. Let us, then, throw overboard the supernatural, once and for all, so far as the Grey Room is concerned.  No ghost haunts it; no succubus or succuba is hidden there, to harry the life out of good men and women.”