PROLOGUE.
Has it been all a dream?
If you want an account of a wonderful unbelievable experience, just listen.
People don't believe in ghosts—will they believe in this? For this has truly happened:
I was lonely—God alone knows how lonely—for we had broken up our home only three months before. I had to earn my own living for the money that was left to me when my father died was not enough to pay for more than my rent. So I lived as so many single women do now—I "batched."
It all began with the "Woman in the Mask."
She was fascinating in a way, with the fascination one finds in a Sorceress. There was something in the way she let her eyelids droop over her eyes while she looked at you that suggested "spells"—I don't know why. She gave me that impression anyway.
She was rather beautiful to look at. Her eyes were deep blue and curiously shaped, rather like a Jap's. She wore her hair drawn back from a forehead that was singularly beautiful, few women can wear their hair like that and look beautiful, Her voice was low and sweet. Yet there was something—I don't know what—just something—that puzzled. You felt that she never showed her real self; that she wore a mask and dared not let it fall.
The night I found Chester House I was tired and miserable.
The trip across the Harbour comforted me somewhat. It was already growing dark and the harbour lights twinkled through a misty gleam. It was like a dream of fairyland and I made up my mind that I would find rooms on that side of the harbour even if those in question did not suit just for the sake of the boat trip.
A light drizzle of rain began to fall. I was hungry and tired and longed for a home of some sort, dreading to return to the Metropole where I had been living for the last week.
The narrow street was dark. There were only one or two houses and these were back from the road.
At last, with relief, I found myself outside the queer little building known as Chester House.
"Does Miss Perkins live here?" I asked a wierd-looking creature who opened the door.
"No, two doors down!"
