I CAME to my senses. I looked up slowly.

The thing was gone. I put out the light and fled like a hunted creature to my room. There I locked myself in and dropped down on my knees beside my bed.

At first it was entirely a battle with fear that kept me, rigid and silent, on my knees. I knew that unless I overcame the extremity of my nervous terror, I should lose my mind. If I went out of my room at all, it would be to go raving and shrieking down the hall and to alarm the house. Self-control was possible only if I should stay here and conquer the evil spirit of “The Pines”—conquer its effect upon my own steadiness and self-respect. I would not repeat the grotesque tragi-comedy of Jane and Delia and Annie, and present myself, gasping and wild-eyed, to Mrs. Brane demanding my dismissal on the spot. Neither would I be like the other three housekeepers. Even in that moment of prostration I am glad to say that I was not utterly a victim; the demon that had possessed the house had to a certain extent already met its match in me.

Of course, during those first hours, I did entertain the belief that I was possessed by a denizen from another world who had come to this house to terrify and to kill and had borrowed my astral body for its clothing—a horrid idea enough and not unnatural under the circumstances. If I remember rightly I decided that if the awful figure came again or if any other tragedy should happen at “The Pines” I should kill myself. Fortunately my reason, though badly shaken, did at least reassert itself. After all, I am not a natural believer in ghosts. The supernatural has never greatly interested or impressed me. It is not so much-that I am skeptical as that I am pragmatic—that is, I have to discern some use or meaning in spiritual experiences. It is this turn of mind, inherited, I think, from my French father, that saved me now. Very gradually, as I knelt there in that God-given attitude of prayer, an attitude whose subjective benefit to the human race no one will ever be able to measure, an attitude which, in its humility, in its resignation, in its shutting out of this world's light, so opens the inner eyes of the soul—as I knelt there, my mood began to change from one of insane superstition and fear to one of quiet and most determined thought.

In fact, my reason reasserted itself and powerfully. One by one, all the alarming incidents began to link themselves together, to suggest a plan, a logical whole. It was as though, with my eyes shut and hidden in my hands, I saw for the first time.

Three housekeepers, one after the other, had been frightened away from “The Pines.” The old servants of the house had been forced, also by supernatural fears, to leave. A most determined attempt had been made against Robbie's nerves and Mary's courage. And now, at the climax of the crescendo—for then it seemed to me, God forgive me! that my experience had been worse than Robbie's death—I, the fourth housekeeper, was being terrified almost out of my wits. All these things pointed to one conclusion. It was somebody's interest to isolate little Mrs. Brane. It was especially somebody's interest to frighten every one away from the northern wing. Somewhere in this house, and presumably in this part of the house, there was something enormously valuable, something to tempt evil spirits clad in substantial flesh and blood, as substantial, for instance, as that of the bolster-like figure of the Baron. And the leader of this enterprise, the master-spirit, was a hell-cat with red-gold hair and a face like my own.

This was a horrid thought in itself and almost an incredible one, but it was, at least, not supernatural. The creature that had seemed to rise up on the threshold of the bookroom was a living being, a woman of flesh and blood. I repeated this over and over to myself. I felt that I must possess my mind perfectly of this fact and lay hold of it so that no future manifestations might so nearly drive me to distraction as the manifestation of to-night. She was a real woman, a female criminal, wily and brave and very cunning. She had deliberately made use of this extraordinary chance resemblance, had artfully heightened it, had copied my habitual costume, for excellent reasons of her own. It was probably entirely by her agency that I had been brought to “The Pines.” With a blinding realization of my own stupidity I remembered the suspicious fashion in which I had learned of the position—a slip of paper handed to me on the street! I had been chosen deliberately, for my resemblance, by this thief for a double purpose of mystification and of diverting suspicion. What more convenient for a night-prowler than to possess a double in some authorized inmate of the house? Night-prowler?—why, she might walk up and down the house in broad daylight, and, providing only that she was careful not to be seen simultaneously with me, nor at too close intervals of time at an unreasonable distance from my known whereabouts, she might stand at Mrs. Brane's elbow or flit past Mary down the stairs or go through the kitchen under Sara Lorrence's very nose.

More light here broke upon me so brilliantly that it brought me to my feet. I began walking up and down the room in a fever of excited thought. I knew now why Henry Lorrence and the woman who called herself his wife, cringed when they met my eye, whitened at my lightest reproof, and, at the same time, could barely repress that leer of evil understanding. They, too, had been brought to “The Pines.” They were members of the gang of which my double was the leader. Only—and this cleared up a whole fog of mystery—they did not know the secret of the dual personality. They thought that the criminal and the housekeeper were one and the same person under a different make-up. They were evidently under strict orders not to betray, even by a word or look, even when there was no one by, their knowledge of collusion with Mrs. Brane's reputed housekeeper; but Sara had made a bad slip. She had spoken of “instruction” and she had said that she had not expected to see me come out of the kitchen closet in the daytime.

My God! What danger we were all in! While we shivered and shook over ghosts and nightmares, light footsteps in the wall and draughts of cold air going by, a dangerous gang of thieves had actually taken up its abode with us; one of them was hiding somewhere in the old house, the others served us, walked about amongst us, took our orders, spoke to us discreetly with soft voices and hypocritical, lowered eyes. We were entirely at their mercy and the only suspecting person in the house, Paul Dabney, suspected me. Undoubtedly he, too, had explained to his own satisfaction the mystery of “The Pines,” and his explanation was—Janice Gale. He knew nothing about me, but he did—he must—know something about Mrs. Brane's mysterious fortune. Bobbie's nightmares, the strand of hair about his little fingers, were evidence enough against my innocence. I might be a sleep-walker,—he could not prove that I was not,—but in his heart he believed me to be a sleep-walker with a purpose. He was watching me, playing amateur detective in the house. He had constituted himself a guardian of Mrs. Brane. Perhaps he was in love with her.

You see, this is not only the history of the Pine Cone mystery. It is the history of my love for Paul Dabney. This must be understood, for it explains my actions. The part I managed to play, which it astounds me even now to think that I was able to play, would barely have been possible without the goad of my bitterness and pain and anger. I would have gone at once to Paul Dabney and have told him everything I knew and let him call in outside help. But, ever since he had held me by the wrist and, in spite of his very apparent mental abhorrence for me, had taken me into his arms, my pride was up. I would fight this thing through alone. I would make no appeal to him, rather I would save the household myself, and when I had exposed the real criminal and shamed Paul Dabney's cruelty to a lonely girl and humbled him in his conceit, I would go away and begin life again as far as possible from him.

This resolution utterly possessed me. Under its spur I began to think with great lucidity. I suppose it was then, at about four o'clock on that November morning, with the quiet house sleeping around me and the quiet world outside just faintly turning gray with dawn, that I began to see the weapon which lay within my grasp. It was a matter of turning the situation upside down. In fact, if we did that more often with our mental tangles, if suddenly in the midst of a train of thought we made a volte-face, and from looking at things from our own obvious viewpoint, we suddenly chose a right angle for contemplation, I am sure there would be many illuminations similar to mine that night. But I did not make any volte-face deliberately. It was a sort of accident. Quite suddenly I saw the situation as though I were a criminal myself, a criminal or a sleuth, the mental attitude must be in some respects the same. What advantage did this fantastic resemblance give the woman downstairs that it did not also give me?

Now you have it, the whole astounding situation. You see what decision I was coming to. I would deliberately play out the dangerous game. For the woman's benefit I would pretend that I believed the apparition to be ghostlike, dreamlike, the fabrication of my own feverish mind, but to Sara and Henry and any other Barons that might visit us, I would play my vixen as skilfully, as informingly as Heaven and my own wits and courage would let me. I would discover the whereabouts of Mrs. Brane's fortune, I would save it for her, and I would trap the thieves. That was my resolve, the fruit of my night's vigil. Having made it, I undressed myself and went to bed. I fell asleep at once like an overwearied child.