At Chelsea he was admitted to a flat as cozily dim as his own, but much more frivolously crowded with knickknacks; nor had he long to wait until Miss L'Estrange, all hair and paint, dashed in. It was near one in the afternoon, but she had an early-morning look of rawness and _déshabillement_, as if she had just risen from bed. Her toilet was incomplete. Her face had the crude look of a water-color daub by a school-girl; her whirl of red hair swept like a turban about her head.
"Cut the excuses," said Miss Ermyn L'Estrange. She had a reputation for bruskness which passed for wit in her set.
"I am the occupant of the flat in Eddystone Mansions which you recently left."
"Anything ghostified?" she snapped, sitting with her chin on her palm, her face poked forward close to David's, while the sleeve fell away from her thin forearm. She had decided that he was an interesting young man.
"I have seen no ghost," he said. "I don't believe I ever shall see one."
"There are ghosts," she said; "so it's no good saying there are not, for my old Granny Price has been chased by one, and there's been a ghost in that very flat. My servant Jenny saw it with her own eyes."
"It is always some one else's eyes which see the invisible," said David.
"Jenny's eyes are not some one else's, they are her own. She saw it, I tell you, but perhaps you are one of those people who cower under the sheets all night for fright, and in the daytime swear that there are no ghosts."
"Oh, I know my man the moment I lay eyes on him, as a rule. You're from Australia--I can tell your twang--and you have come to England to look for a wife. Can't very well get along without us, after all, can you?"
"There is some truth in that. What a pity you didn't see the ghost yourself!"
"Really? What did it smell of? Brimstone?"
David started, not wholly because he thought Miss L'Estrange would be flattered by this tribute to her forcible style.
"And I'm not one of your fanciful ones either," she went on, smirking at the effect she had made.
"How often did this thing happen to you?"
"Dead of night. The first time about two in the morning, the second time about three."
"To me this is naturally fascinating," said David. "Do tell me--"
"The first time, I was asleep in that front bed-room, when I suddenly found myself awake--couldn't tell why, for I hadn't long been in bed, and was tired. I found myself listening, heard some creaks about, nothing more than you can generally hear in a house in the dead of night, and I was thinking of going to sleep again, when all at once I seemed to scent violets somewhere. I wasn't certain at first, but the notion grew, and if it had been brimstone, as you said, I couldn't have been so overcome as I was--something so solemn and deathly in that fume of violets visiting anybody in the dark in that fashion. As I knew that Gwen Barnes, who poisoned herself in that very room, was fond of violets--for I had seen her both on and off the stage several times--you can guess whether I felt rummy or not. Pop went my little head under the bed-clothes, for I'll stand up to any living girl you care to mention, and send her home all the worse for it; but the dead have an unfair advantage, anyhow. The next minute I heard a bang--it sounded to me like the lid of one of my trunks dropping down--and this was followed by a scream. The scream did for me--I was upset for weeks. It was Jenny who had screamed; but, like a fool, I thought it was the ghost--I don't know what I thought; in fact, I just heard the scream, and lay me down and d'eed. When I came to myself, there was Jenny shivering at my side, with the light turned on, saying that a tall woman had been in the flat--"