And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness of comedy to tragedy, two small details rose out of the scene and impressed me so vividly that I remember them to this very day.  For in the tent where I had just left Joan, all aquiver with her new happiness, there rose plainly to my ears the grotesque sounds of the Bo’sun’s Mate heavily snoring, oblivious of all things in heaven or hell; and from Maloney’s tent, so still was the night, where I looked across and saw the lantern’s glow, there came to me, through the trees, the monotonous rising and falling of a human voice that was beyond question the sound of a man praying to his God.

CASE III:  A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE

“There’s a hextraordinary gentleman to see you, sir,” said the new man.

“Why ’extraordinary’?” asked Dr. Silence, drawing the tips of his thin fingers through his brown beard.  His eyes twinkled pleasantly.  “Why ‘extraordinary,’ Barker?” he repeated encouragingly, noticing the perplexed expression in the man’s eyes.

“He’s so—­so thin, sir.  I could hardly see ’im at all—­at first.  He was inside the house before I could ask the name,” he added, remembering strict orders.

“And who brought him here?”

“He come alone, sir, in a closed cab.  He pushed by me before I could say a word—­making no noise not what I could hear.  He seemed to move so soft like—­”

The man stopped short with obvious embarrassment, as though he had already said enough to jeopardise his new situation, but trying hard to show that he remembered the instructions and warnings he had received with regard to the admission of strangers not properly accredited.

“And where is the gentleman now?” asked Dr. Silence, turning away to conceal his amusement.

“I really couldn’t exactly say, sir.  I left him standing in the ’all—­”

The doctor looked up sharply.  “But why in the hall, Barker?  Why not in the waiting-room?” He fixed his piercing though kindly eyes on the man’s face.  “Did he frighten you?” he asked quickly.

“I think he did, sir, if I may say so.  I seemed to lose sight of him, as it were—­” The man stammered, evidently convinced by now that he had earned his dismissal.  “He come in so funny, just like a cold wind,” he added boldly, setting his heels at attention and looking his master full in the face.

The doctor made an internal note of the man’s halting description; he was pleased that the slight signs of psychic intuition which had induced him to engage Barker had not entirely failed at the first trial.  Dr. Silence sought for this qualification in all his assistants, from secretary to serving man, and if it surrounded him with a somewhat singular crew, the drawbacks were more than compensated for on the whole by their occasional flashes of insight.

“So the gentleman made you feel queer, did he?”

“That was it, I think, sir,” repeated the man stolidly.