I hunted up Miss Bosworth's
address and called on her. She had retired from business and was
living in St. Michael's Road, Bournemouth. I came to the point
straight.
"Can you give me any information," I asked, "about a lady whose
Christian name was Jane?"
"That sounds vague!" Miss Bosworth said. "I've met a good many Janes
in my time."
"But not Janes with pale yellow hair, and white eyebrows and
eyelashes!" And I described her in detail.
"How do you come to know about her?" Miss Bosworth said, after a long
pause.
"Because," I replied with a certain slowness and deliberation
characteristic of me, "because I've seen her ghost!"
Of course I knew Miss Bosworth was no sceptic--the moment my eyes
rested on her I saw she was psychic, and that the superphysical was
often at her elbow. Accordingly, I was not in the least surprised at
her look of horror.
"What!" she exclaimed, "is she still there? I thought she would surely
be at rest now!"
"Who was she?" I inquired. "Come--you need not be afraid of me. I have
come here solely because the occult has always interested me. Who was
Jane, and why should her ghost haunt George Street?"
"It happened a good many years ago," Miss Bosworth replied, "in 1892.
In answer to an advertisement I saw in one of the daily papers, I
called on a Miss Jane Vernelt--Mademoiselle Vernelt she called
herself--who ran a costumier's business in George Street, in the very
building, in fact now occupied by the chemist you have mentioned.
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