Page:Daskam Bacon--Whom the gods destroy.djvu/203



HE only objection I have to ghost stories," said young Sanford, "is from a literary point of view. They're so badly done, you know."

"In what way?" said the clerk of the hotel, settling back in his office chair, and smiling at young Sanford and the circle of men who had come down for their keys from the billiard-room.

"Well, in this way. I'm not considering the little harmless stories where the heroes are only frightened, or even those where their heads are grey in the morning. I'm thinking of those where they never live to tell the awful tale, you know; the ones in which they tell their friends to come if they call, and then they never call; the ones in which, although they scream and scream, nobody hears them.

"And yet the old trembling man who points them to the haunted room knows perfectly well that five men have entered that room on five nineteenths of