"The evidence that the apparition was seen--and seen by more than one person--seems to me fairly conclusive in this case."
"That is all very well. I will grant you the apparition if you like. But why speak of it as a warning? If such appearances take place, it still seems to me absurd and disproportionate to suppose that they do so in order to warn us, or help us, or hinder us, or anything of the kind. They appear for their own unfathomable reasons only. If they seem to forbid one thing or command another, that also is for their own purpose. I have an experience of my own which would tend to show that."
In the billiard-room of the Cabinet Club, shortly after midnight, two men had just finished a game. A third had been watching it from the lounge at the end of the room. The winner put up his cue, slipped on his coat, and with a brief "Good-night" passed out of the room. He was tall, dark, clean-shaven and foreign in appearance. It would not have been easy to guess his nationality, but he did not look English.
The loser, a fair-haired boy of twenty-five, came over to the lounge and dropped down by the side of the elderly man who had been watching the billiards.
"Silly game, ain't it, doctor?" he said cheerfully. The doctor smiled.
"Yes," he said, "Vyse is a bit too hot for you, Bill."
"A bit too hot for anything," said the boy. "He never takes any trouble; he never hesitates; he never thinks; he never takes an easy shot when there's a brilliant one to be pulled off. It's almost uncanny."
"Ah," said the doctor, reflectively, "it's a queer thing. You're the third man whom I have heard say that about Vyse within the last week."
"I believe he's quite all right--good sort of chap, you know. He's frightfully clever too--speaks a lot of beastly difficult Oriental languages--does well at any game he takes up."
"Yes," said the doctor, "he is clever; and he is also a fool."
"What do you mean? He's eccentric, of course. Fancy his buying that rotten tower--a sweet place to spend Christmas in all alone, I don't think."
"Says he hates the conventional Christmas, and wants to be out of it; says also that he wants to shoot duck."
"That won't do," said the doctor. "He may hate the conventional Christmas. He may, and he probably will, shoot duck. But that's not his reason for going there."