e turned into a
regular little museum. The curios and things I have cleared away--they
collected dust and were always getting broken--but the laundry-house you
shall see tomorrow."

Colonel Wragge spoke with such deliberation and with so many pauses that
this beginning took him a long time. But at this point he came to a full
stop altogether. Evidently there was something he wished to say that
cost him considerable effort. At length he looked up steadily into my
companion's face.

"May I ask you--that is, if you won't think it strange," he said, and a
sort of hush came over his voice and manner, "whether you have noticed
anything at all unusual--anything queer, since you came into the house?"

Dr. Silence answered without a moment's hesitation.

"I have," he said. "There is a curious sensation of heat in the place."

"Ah!" exclaimed the other, with a slight start. "You _have_ noticed it.
This unaccountable heat--"

"But its cause, I gather, is not in the house itself--but outside," I
was astonished to hear the doctor add.

Colonel Wragge rose from his chair and turned to unhook a framed map
that hung upon the wall. I got the impression that the movement was made
with the deliberate purpose of concealing his face.

"Your diagnosis, I believe, is amazingly accurate," he said after a
moment, turning round with the map in his hands. "Though, of course, I
can have no idea how you should guess--"

John Silence shrugged his shoulders expressively. "Merely my
impression," he said. "If you pay attention to impressions, and do not
allow them to be confused by deductions of the intellect, you will often
find them surprisingly, uncannily, accurate."

Colonel Wragge resumed his seat and laid the map upon his knees. His
face was very thoughtful as he plunged abruptly again into his story.

"On coming into possession," he said, looking us alternately in the
face, "I found a crop of stories of the most extraordinary and
impossible kind I had ever heard--stories which at first I treated with
amused indifference, but later was forced to regard seriously, if only
to keep my servants. These stories I thought I traced to the fact of my
brother's death--and, in a way, I think so still."

He leant forward and handed the map to Dr. Silence.

"It's an old plan of the estate," he explained, "but accurate enough for
our purpose, and I wish you would note the position of the plantations
marked upon it, especially those near the hous