We stayed at the smartest hotel in Naples, but we had not been there
two days before Jimmie's valises were broken open, and all his studs
and forty pounds in money were stolen. That frightened us almost to
death, but something worse happened. One day at three o'clock in the
afternoon my companion was sitting in her room writing a letter, and
she happened to look up just in time to see the handle of the door
turn slowly and softly.
Then the door opened a crack, still without a sound, and a man with a
black beard put in his head. As he met her eyes fixed squarely upon
him he closed the door as silently as a shadow. She hurried after him
and looked out, and ran up the corridor peering into every possible
corner, but no man could she see. He had disappeared as completely as
if he had been a ghost. She reported it to the proprietor, but he
shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Madam must have imagined it!"
By this time we were all feeling rather creepy. However, as Jimmie
says when we are all tired out and hungry and cross, "Cheer up. The
worst is yet to come."
One day my companion and Mrs.
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