Ghosts I have Met and Some Others

"I've come," he said, as he entered my den. "The scheme is perfected
at last, and possibly you can use it. You need help of some kind. I
can see that, just by reading your telegram. You're nervous as a
cat. How do you heat your house?"

"What's that got to do with it?" I demanded, irritably. "You can't
evaporate the little cuss."

"Don't want to," Peters replied. "That's been tried before, and it
doesn't work. My scheme is a better one than that. Did you ever
notice, while smoking in a house that is heated by a hot-air
furnace, how, when a cloud of smoke gets caught in the current of
air from the register, it is mauled and twisted until it gets free,
or else is torn entirely apart?"

"Yes, I have," said I. "What of it?"

"Well, what's the matter with being genial with your old cockney
until he gets in the habit of coming here every night, and bide your
time until, without his knowing it, you can turn a blast from the
furnace on him that will simply rend him to pieces?"

"By Jove!" I cried, delightedly. "You are a genius, old chap."

I rose and shook his hand until he remonstrated.

"Save your energy for him," said he. "You'll need it. It won't be a
pleasant spectacle to witness when, in his struggles to get away, he
is gradually dismembered. It will be something like the drawing and
quartering punishment of olden times."

I shuddered as I thought of it, and for a moment was disposed to
reject the plan, but my weakness left me as I thought of the ruin
that stared me in the face.