Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sat on a striped divan in the front room of his hotel suite, listening to the slow clop of hooves outside as ice wagons and milk delivery vans made their early morning rounds. Night’s dark winding sheet shrouded the still-sleeping city in shadows. Faint as the promise of an afterlife, electric streetlamps cast a dim glow on the uncurtained windows. Up well before his usual time, a practice the author initiated following his first Carnegie Hall lecture, Sir Arthur waited, patient as a hunter in his blind, his keen eyes fixed on the writing table in the corner alcove. Although ordinarily he withheld nothing from his wife, he had not spoken a word to Jean of these nocturnal vigils. He didn’t want to cause undue concern. Not that he doubted his reason or his sanity or anything so melodramatic. First and foremost, he needed to determine if the apparition was merely the by-product of an overactive imagination. His faith in a spirit life remained unshaken in spite of the fact that he had conjured up a ghost costumed like a West End stage illusion.
