But he was philosophical, too.
“A lot of people get the bug once in a while,” he said. “They come in here for a dose of sudden death, and it takes watching. You’d be surprised the number of things that will do the trick if you take enough. I don’t know. If things get to breaking wrong—”
His voice trailed off, and he kicked at the old table cover on the floor.
“It’s a matter of the point of view,” he said more cheerfully. “And my point of view just now is that this place is darned cold, and so’s the street. You’d better have a little something to warm you up before you go out, Mr. Johnson.”
I was chilled through, to tell the truth, and although I rarely drink anything I went back with him and took an ounce or two of villainous whiskey, poured out of a jug into a graduated glass. It is with deep humiliation of spirit I record that a housemaid coming into my library at seven o’clock the next morning, found me, in top hat and overcoat, asleep on the library couch.
I had, however, removed my collar and tie, and my watch, carefully wound, was on the smoking-stand beside me.
The death of Arthur Wells had taken place on Monday evening. Tuesday brought nothing new. The coroner was apparently satisfied, and on Wednesday the dead man’s body was cremated.
“Thus obliterating all evidence,” Sperry said, with what I felt was a note of relief.
But I think the situation was bothering him, and that he hoped to discount in advance the second sitting by Miss Jeremy, which Mrs. Dane had already arranged for the following Monday, for on Wednesday afternoon, following a conversation over the telephone, Sperry and I had a private sitting with Miss Jeremy in Sperry’s private office. I took my wife into our confidence and invited her to be present, but the unfortunate coldness following the housemaid’s discovery of me asleep in the library on the morning after the murder, was still noticeable and she refused.
The sitting, however, was totally without value. There was difficulty on the medium’s part in securing the trance condition, and she broke out once rather petulantly, with the remark that
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