tone of the investigator.

"The Irish believe far too much in spirits to believe in
spiritualism," he murmured. "They know too much about 'em. If you
want a simple and childlike faith in any spirit that comes along you
can get it in your favorite London."

"I don't want to get it anywhere," said Wilson, shortly. "I say I'm
dealing with much simpler things than your simple faith, with a
table and a chair and a ladder. Now what I want to say about them at
the start is this. They are all three made roughly enough of plain
wood. But the table and the chair are fairly new and comparatively
clean. The ladder is covered with dust and there is a cobweb under
the top rung of it. That means that he borrowed the first two quite
recently from some cottage, as we supposed, but the ladder has been
a long time in this rotten old dustbin. Probably it was part of the
original furniture, an heirloom in this magnificent palace of the
Irish kings."

Again Fisher looked at him under his eyelids, but seemed too sleepy
to speak, and Wilson went on with his argument.

"Now it's quite clear that something very odd has just happened in
this place. The chances are ten to one, it seems to me, that it had
something specially to do with this place. Probably he came here
because he could do it only here; it doesn't seem very inviting
otherwise. But the man knew it of old; they say it belonged to his
family, so that altogether, I think, everything points to something
in the construction of the tower itself."