Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/114

90 of your overcoat, and as Armitage brushed past you on the other side he slipped five cards into the other. I am a bit of a conjurer, and Armitage is a dab at all that kind of thing; so between us we manipulated the cards so that you were forced to win. And you won!—sixty pounds!—until the exposure came off in style. I say, old man, how did the ghost go off?"

The venerable Mr. Burchell turned to Mr. Bateman. For my part, not for the first time on that occasion, I felt too bewildered to speak. The modest Mr. Bateman smoothed his chin.

"I am afraid that for details of the ghost I must refer you to Mr. Ranken. But I may mention that I discovered that this was the actual carriage in which the tragedy took place, and that there was a memorial of the victim's fate on the back of one of the cards. I also alighted on the identical bullet which almost did the deed. What the railway company will say about the damage to their cushion is more than I can guess. It may turn out to be a couple of pounds."

"Mr. Burchell," I spluttered—I was reduced to such a condition that spluttering was all I was fit for—"I have only one thing to say to you, since your idea of what constitutes a joke seems to be so radically different to mine, and that is to remind you that you have been guilty of this extraordinary behaviour towards an entire stranger."

"Not an entire stranger!"

"Yes, sir, an entire stranger!"

"But henceforth one whom I hope to be allowed to call a friend."

He had the assurance to offer me, with an in-