will curse him. The heat of my jealousy shall blast his very soul. He, too, shall die. Rosa was mine in life, and she shall be mine in death. My spirit will watch over her, for no man ever loved a woman as I loved Rosa.’ Those were his very words, Carl. Soon afterwards he died.”

She recited Clarenceux’s last phrases with such genuine emotion that I could almost hear Clarenceux himself saying them. I felt sure that she had remembered them precisely, and that Clarenceux would, indeed, have employed just such terms.

“And you believe,” I murmured, after a long pause, during which I fitted the remarkable narration in with my experiences, and found that it tallied — ”you believe that Lord Clarenceux could keep his word after death?”