en Martin Brasher was shown in.

Brasher is an old friend of mine. We have a common ground--ghosts. Only we
approach them from different points of view. He takes the
scientific--psychological--inquiry side. He is always anxious to hear of a
ghost, so that he may have an opportunity of "showing it up."

"I've something in your line here," I observed, as he came in.

"In my line? How so? _I'm_ not pipe mad."

"No; but you're ghost mad. And this is a haunted pipe."

"A haunted pipe! I think you're rather more mad about ghosts, my dear
Pugh, than I am."

Then I told him all about it. He was deeply interested, especially when I
told him that the pipe was drugged. But when I repeated Tress's words
about its being haunted, and mentioned my own delusion about the creature
moving, he took a more serious view of the case than I had expected he
would do.

"I propose that we act on Tress's suggestion, and go and make inquiries of
him."

"But you don't really think that there is anything in it?"

"On these subjects I never allow myself to think at all. There are Tress's
words, and there is your story. It is agreed on all hands that the pipe
has peculiar properties. It seems to me that there is a sufficient case
here to merit inquiry."

He persuaded me. I went with him. The pipe, in the sandalwood box, went
too. Tress received us with a grin--a grin which was accentuated when I
placed the sandalwood box on the table.

"You understand," he said, "that a gift is a gift. On no terms will I
consent to receive that pipe back in my possession."

I was rather nettled by his tone.

"You need be under no alarm. I have no intention of suggesting anything of
the kind."

"Our business here," began Brasher--I must own that his manner is a little
ponderous--"is of a scientific, I may say also, and at the same time, of a
judicial nature. Our object is the Pursuit of Truth and the Advancement of
Inquiry."

"Have you been trying another smoke?" inquired Tress, nodding his head
toward me.

Before I had time to answer, Brasher went droning on:

"Our friend here tells me that you say this pipe is haunted."

"I say it is haunted because it _is_ haunted."

I looked at Tress. I half suspected that he was poking fun at us. But he
appeared to be serious enough.

"In these matters," remarked Brasher, as though he were giving utterance
to a new and important truth, "there is a scientific and nonscientific
method of inquiry. The scient