It was that day, I think, that I put fresh candles in all the
holders downstairs. I had made a resolution like this,--to renew
the candles, and to lock myself in my room and throw the key over
the transom to Maggie. If, in the mornings that followed, the
candles had been used, it would prove that Martin Sprague was wrong,
that even foot-prints could lie, and that some one was investigating
the lower floor at night. For while my reason told me that I had
been the intruder, my intuition continued to insist that my
sleepwalking was a result, not a cause. In a word, I had gone
downstairs, because I knew that there had been and might be again,
a night visitor.

Yet, there was something of comedy in that night's precautions,
after all.

At ten-thirty I was undressed, and Maggie had, with rebellion in
every line of her, locked me in. I could hear her, afterwards
running along the hall to her own room and slamming the door.
Then, a moment later, the telephone rang.

It was too early, I reasoned, for the night calls. It might be
anything, a telegram at the station, Willie's boy run over by an
automobile, Gertrude's children ill. A dozen possibilities ran
through my mind.

And Maggie would not let me out!

"You're not going downstairs," she called, from a safe distance.

"Maggie!" I cried, sharply. And banged at the door. The