could
the curse that lay upon the old estate extend its baleful influence into
the house itself? Anything could happen at Kastle Krags, Nopp had said,
and it became increasingly difficult to disbelieve him.

Since the intrusion of two nights before I had slept with a chair
blocked firmly against my door, knowing that no one could enter from
the corridor, at least without waking me. My own pistol lay just under
my mattress where the hand could reach it in an instant. Both these
things were an immense consolation now. I would not be so helpless in
case of another midnight visitor.

Yet I had no after-image of terror in thinking upon the intruder of two
nights before. Strangely, that hand reaching in the flashlight was the
one redeeming feature of this affair of Kastle Krags. That hand was
flesh and blood, and thus the whole mystery seemed of flesh and blood
too. If this incident did not confine the mystery to the realm of human
affairs, at least it showed that there were human motives and human
agents playing their parts in it.

Was that intruder Pescini? The hand could easily have been his--firm,
strong, aristocratic, sensitive and white. After all, there was quite a
case to be made against Pescini. "Find George Florey and you'll find the
murderer," William Noyes had written. And the whole business of proving
that Pescini was George Florey was simply that of proving his
handwriting and that of the "George" notes we had found in the butler's
room were the same.

"They have been bitter enemies since youth." Rich, proud, distinguished,
had this bearded man carried a life-long hatred for the humble servitor
of Kastle Krags? What boyhood rivalry, what malice, what blinding,
bitter jealousy had wakened such a hatred as this? Yet who can trace the
slightest action from its origin to its consummation; much less such a
complex human drama as this. No man can see truly into the human heart.
It seemed fairly credible that this gray servant might hate, with that
bitter hatred born of jealousy, his richer, more distinguished
brother--yet human relations, in their fullness, are beyond the ken of
the wisest men. It would be easy to prove or disprove whether or not
Pescini and Florey were brothers: the "George" letters were secure in
the hands of the State, and a copy of Pescini's handwriting could be
procured with ease. Besides their lives and origins would likely be easy
to trace.

Florey's letter to his sister was further proo