The night being cold, he closed the door carefully, and crossing the room to where I sat by the fire, threw himself in an easy chair, and gazed meditatively at me.

My rooms in Bloomsbury were not lonely.  They had more than their share of “brawling brats” on either side; there were no gloomy recesses or ghost-suggestive cupboards, and I never once experienced in them the slightest apprehension of sudden superphysical manifestations, yet I cannot help saying that as I met that glance from the pseudo-Tristram’s eyes I felt my flesh begin to creep.

He sat for so long in silence that I began to wonder if he ever meant to speak.

“The secret of success in seeing certain classes of apparitions,” he said at length, “to a very great extent lies in sympathy.  Sympathy!  And now for my story.  I will tell it to you in the ‘third person.’”

I looked at Tristram’s face in dismay.  “The third person!”

“Yes, the third person,” he gravely rejoined, “and under the circumstances the only person.  You see it is now close on midnight.”

I looked at the clock.  Great heavens!  What he said was correct.  A whole evening had slipped by without my knowledge.  He would, of course, have to stay the night.  I suggested it to him.

“My dear fellow,” he replied, with an odd smile, “don’t worry about me.  I am not dependent on any trains.  I shall be home by two o’clock.”

I shivered—­a draught of cold air had in all probability stolen through the cracks of the ill-fitting window-frames.

“You have on one of your queer moods, Martin,” I expostulated.  “To be home by two o’clock you must fly!  But proceed—­at all costs, the story.”

Tristram raised an eyebrow, a true sign that something of special interest would follow.

“You know Bruges?” he began.

I nodded.

“Very well, then,” he went on.  “Exactly a week ago Martin Tristram arrived there from Antwerp.  The hour was late, the weather boisterous, Tristram was tired, and any lodging was better than none.

“Hailing a four-wheeler, he asked the Jehu to drive him to some decent hostel where the sheets were clean and the tariff moderate; and the fellow, gathering up the reins, took him at a snail’s pace to a mediaeval-looking tavern in La Rue Croissante.  You remember that street?  Perhaps not!  It is quite a back street, extremely narrow, very tortuous, and miserably lighted with a few gas-lamps of the usual antique Belgian order.

“Tristram was too tired, however, to be fastidious; he felt he could lie down and go to sleep anywhere, and what scruples he might have had were entirely dissipated by the appearance of the charming girl who answered the door.

“It is not expedient to dwell upon her—­she plays a very minor part, if, indeed, any, in the story.  Martin Tristram merely thought her pretty, and that, as I have said, fully reconciled him to taking up his quarters in the house.