“Shut up!” thundered Stark, clapping a hand over West’s mouth, and he subsided as the doorbell rang again, and Borkins ushered in Fordyce and Lefroy, two slim-hipped, dapper young gentlemen with the stamp of the army all over them.  The party thus complete, Borkins gravely withdrew, and some fifteen minutes later the great gong in the hallway clanged out its summons.  They streamed into the dining room, Doctor Bartholomew upon Tony West’s fat little arm; Fordyce and Lefroy, side by side, hands in pockets and closely cropped heads nodding vigorously; Merriton and Lester Stark sauntering one slightly behind the other, and exchanging pleasantries as they went; and just in front of them, Dacre Wynne, solitary, huge, sinister, and overbearing.

Wynne sat in the seat of honour on Merriton’s right.  The rest sorted themselves out as they wished, and made a good deal of noise and fun about it, too.  Down the length of the long, exquisitely decorated table Merriton looked at his guests and thought it wasn’t going to be so dismal after all.

Champagne ran like water and spirits ran high.  They joyfully toasted Wynne, and later on the news that Merriton imparted to them.  In vain Dacre Wynne’s low spirits were apparent.  He must get over his grouch, that was all.  Then once again the spirit of evil descended upon the gathering and it was Stark who precipitated its flight.  “By the way, Nigel,” he asked suddenly, “isn’t there some ghost story or other pertaining to your district?  Give us a recital of it, old boy.  Walnuts and wine and ghost stories, you know, are just the right sort of thing after a dinner like this.  Tony, switch off the lights.  This old house of yours is the very place for ghosts.  Now let us have it.”

“Hold on,” Nigel remonstrated.  “Give me a chance to digest my dinner, and—­dash it all, the thing’s so deuced uncanny that it doesn’t bear too much laughing at either!”

“Come along!” Six voices echoed the cry.  “We’re waiting, Nigel.”

So Merriton had forthwith to oblige them.  He, too, had had enough to drink—­though drinking too heavily was not one of his vices—­and his flushed face showed the excitement that burned within him.

“Come over here by the window and see the thing for yourselves, and then you shall hear the story,” he began enigmatically.

Nigel pushed back the heavy curtain and there, in the darkness without—­it was getting on toward ten o’clock—­gleamed and danced and flickered the little flames that had so often puzzled him, and filled his soul with a strange sort of supernatural fear.  Against the blackness beyond they hung like a chain of diamonds irregularly strung, flickering incessantly.

Every man there, save one, and that one stood apart from the others like some giant bull who deigns not to run with the herd—­gave an involuntary exclamation.

“What a deuced pretty sight!” remarked Fordyce, in his pleasant drawl.  “What is it?  Some sort of fair or other?  Didn’t know you had such things in these parts.”