This room with the blazing fire may
have seemed uncomfortably warm after the long drive through the night
air; yet it seemed to me that the hall itself, and the whole atmosphere
of the house, breathed a warmth that hardly belonged to well-filled
grates or the pipes of hot air and water. It was not the heat of the
greenhouse; it was an oppressive heat that somehow got into the head
and mind. It stirred a curious sense of uneasiness in me, and I caught
myself thinking of the sensation of warmth that had emanated from the
letter in the train. I heard him thanking Dr. Silence for having come; there was no
preamble, and the exchange of civilities was of the briefest
description. Evidently here was a man who, like my companion, loved
action rather than talk. His manner was straightforward and direct. I
saw him in a flash: puzzled, worried, harassed into a state of alarm by
something he could not comprehend; forced to deal with things he would
have preferred to despise, yet facing it all with dogged seriousness
and making no attempt to conceal that he felt secretly ashamed of his
incompetence. “So I cannot offer you much entertainment beyond that of my own
company, and the queer business that has been going on here, and is
still going on,” he said, with a slight inclination of the head towards
me by way of including me in his confidence. “I think, Colonel Wragge,” replied John Silence impressively, “that we
shall none of us find the time hangs heavy. I gather we shall have our
hands full.”

The two men looked at one another for the space of some seconds, and
there was an indefinable quality in their silence which for the first
time made me admit a swift question into my mind; and I wondered a
little at my rashness in coming with so little reflection into a big
case of this incalculable doctor. But no answer suggested itself, and
to withdraw was, of course, inconceivable. The gates had closed behind
me now, and the spirit of the adventure was already besieging my mind
with its advance guard of a thousand little hopes and fears. Explaining that he would wait till after dinner to discuss anything
serious, as no reference was ever made before his sister, he led the
way upstairs and showed us personally to our rooms; and it was just as
I was finishing dressing that a knock came at my door and Dr. Silence
entered. He was always what is called a serious man, so that even in moments of
comedy you felt he never lost sight of the profound gravity of life,
but as he came across the room to me I caught the expression of his
face and understood in a flash that he was now in his most grave and
earnest mood. He looked almost troubled. I stopped fumbling with my
black tie and stared. “It is serious,” he said, speaking in a low voice, “more so even than I
imagined. Colonel Wragge’s control over his thoughts concealed a great
deal in my psychometrising of the letter. I looked in to warn you to
keep yourself well in hand—generally speaking.”

“Haunted house?” I asked, conscious of a distinct shiver down my back. But he smiled gravely at the question. “Haunted House of Life more likely,” he replied, and a look came into
his eyes which I had only seen there when a human soul was in the toils
and he was thick in the fight of rescue. He was stirred in the deeps. “Colonel Wragge—or the sister?” I asked hurriedly, for the gong was
sounding. “Neither directly,” he said from the door. “Something far older,
something very, very remote indeed. This thing has to do with the ages,
unless I am mistaken greatly, the ages on which the mists of memory
have long lain undisturbed.”

He came across the floor very quickly with a finger on his lips,
looking at me with a peculiar searchingness of gaze. “Are you aware yet of anything—odd here?” he asked in a whisper. “Anything you cannot quite define, for instance. Tell me, Hubbard, for
I want to know all your impressions. They may help me.”

I shook my head, avoiding his gaze, for there was something in the eyes
that scared me a little. But he was so in earnest that I set my mind
keenly searching. “Nothing yet,” I replied truthfully, wishing I could confess to a real
emotion; “nothing but the strange heat of the place.”

He gave a little jump forward in my direction. “The heat again, that’s it!” he exclaimed, as though glad of my
corroboration. “And how would you describe it, perhaps?” he asked
quickly, with a hand on the door knob. “It doesn’t seem like ordinary physical heat,” I said, casting about in
my thoughts for a definition. “More a mental heat,” he interrupted, “a glowing of thought and desire,
a sort of feverish warmth of the spirit. Isn’t that it?”

I admitted that he had exactly described my sensations. “Good!” he said, as he opened the door, and with an indescribable
gesture that combined a warning to be ready with a sign of praise for
my correct intuition, he was gone. I hurried after him, and found the two men waiting for me in front of
the fire. “I ought to warn you,” our host was saying as I came in, “that my
sister, whom you will meet at dinner, is not aware of the real object
of your visit. She is under the impression that we are interested in
the same line of study—folklore—and that your researches have led to my
seeking acquaintance. She comes to dinner in her chair, you know. It
will be a great pleasure to her to meet you both. We have few
visitors.”

So that on entering the dining-room we were prepared to find Miss
Wragge already at her place, seated in a sort of bath-chair. She was a
vivacious and charming old lady, with smiling expression and bright
eyes, and she chatted all through dinner with unfailing spontaneity. She had that face, unlined and fresh, that some people carry through
life from the cradle to the grave; her smooth plump cheeks were all
pink and white, and her hair, still dark, was divided into two glossy
and sleek halves on either side of a careful parting. She wore
gold-rimmed glasses, and at her throat was a large scarab of green
jasper that made a very handsome brooch. Her brother and Dr. Silence talked little, so that most of the
conversation was carried on between herself and me, and she told me a
great deal about the history of the old house, most of which I fear I
listened to with but half an ear. “And when Cromwell stayed here,” she babbled on, “he occupied the very
rooms upstairs that used to be mine. But my brother thinks it safer for
me to sleep on the ground floor now in case of fire.”

And this sentence has stayed in my memory only because of the sudden
way her brother interrupted her and instantly led the conversation on
to another topic. The passing reference to fire seemed to have
disturbed him, and thenceforward he directed the talk himself.