I
had, I may as well confess it, run out of ghosts, and had come down
to the writing of tales full of the horror of suggestion, leaving my
readers unsatisfied through my failure to describe in detail just
what kind of looking thing it was that had so aroused their
apprehension; and one editor had gone so far as to reject my last
ghost-story because I had worked him up to a fearful pitch of
excitement, and left him there without any reasonable way out. I was
face to face with a condition--which, briefly, was that hereafter
that desirable market was closed to the products of my pen unless my
contributions were accompanied by a diagram which should make my
mysteries so plain that a little child could understand how it all
came to pass. Hence it was that, instead of following my own
convenience and taking refuge in my spectre-proof couch, I stayed
where I was. I had not long to wait. The dial in my fuel-meter
below-stairs had hardly had time to register the consumption of
three thousand feet of gas before the faint sound of a bell reached
my straining ears--which, by-the-way, is an expression I profoundly
hate, but must introduce because the public demands it, and a ghost
-story without straining ears having therefore no chance of
acceptance by a discriminating editor.
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