u mind who for!" I says, says I. "You up and quick. But you can
tell the doctor it's missis as is took." And in ten minutes he was here,
miss. But it's only across the garden, like. "Yes," he said, "she's been
dead an hour or more. Failure of the heart's action," he said. "She died
in her sleep," he said. "Thank God she died in her sleep if she was to
die, the pure angel!" I says. I told the doctor as you were away for the
night, miss. And I laid her out, miss, and your poor auntie wasn't my
first, either. I've seen trouble--I've--'

And Rebecca's tears overcame her voice.

'I'll go upstairs with you, miss,' she struggled out.

One thought that flew across my mind was that Doctor Roycroft was very
intimate with the Ryleys, and had doubtless somehow informed them of my
aunt's death. This explained Fred Ryley's strange words and attitude to
me on the way from the station. The young man had been too timid to stop
me. The matter was a trifle, but another idea that struck me was not a
trifle, though I strove to make it so. My aunt had died about midnight,
and it was at midnight that Diaz and I had heard the mysterious knock on
his sitting-room door. At the time I had remarked how it resembled my
aunt's knock. Occasionally, when the servants overslept themselves, Aunt
Constance would go to their rooms in her pale-blue dressing-gown and
knock on their door exactly like that. Could it be that this was one of
those psychical manifestations of which I had read? Had my aunt, in
passing from this existence to the next, paused a moment to warn me of
my terrible danger? My intellect replied that a disembodied soul could
not knock, and that the phenomenon had been due simply to some guest or
servant of the hotel who had mistaken the room, and discovered his error
in time. Nevertheless, the instinctive part of me--that part of us which
refuses to fraternize with reason, and which we call the superstitious
because we cannot explain it--would not let go the spiritualistic
theory, and during all my life has never quite surrendered it to the
attacks of my brain.

There was a long pause.

'No,' I said; 'I will go upstairs alone;' and I went, leaving my cloak
and hat with Rebecca.

Already, to my hypersensitive nostrils, there was a slight odour in the
darkened bedroom. What lay on the bed, straight and long and thin,
resembled almost exactly my aunt as she lived. I forced myself to look on
it. Except that the face was paler than usual