 CHAPTER III The Whistling Room Karnaki shook a friendly fist at me as I entered, late. Then he opened the door into the dining room and ushered the four of us, Jessup, Arkwright, Taylor, and myself, into dinner. We dined well as usual, and equally as usual, Karnaki was pretty silent during the kneel. At the end we took our wine and cigars to our usual positions, and Karnaki, having got himself comfortable in his big chair, began without any preliminary. I have just got back from Ireland again, he said, and I thought you chaps would be interested to hear my news. Besides, I fancy I shall see the thing clearer after I have told it all out straight. I must tell you this, though, at the beginning. Up to the present moment I have been utterly and completely stumped. I have tumbled upon one of the most peculiar cases of haunting, or devilment of some sort, that I have come against. Now, listen. I have been spending the last few weeks at Israe Castle, about twenty miles northeast of Galway. I got a letter about a month ago from a Mr. Sid K. Tussak, who, it seemed, had bought the place lately and moved in, only to find that he had bought a very peculiar piece of property. When I got there he met me at the station, driving a jaunting car, and drove me up to the castle, which, by the way, he called a house shanty. I found out that he was pinging it there with his boy-brother and another American, who seemed to be half-servant and half-companion. It seems that all the servants had left the place in a body, as you might say, and now they were managing among themselves, assisted by some day-help. The three of them got together a scratch-feed, and Tussak told me all about the trouble whilst we were at the table. It was most extraordinary and different from anything that I have had to do with, though that buzzing-case was very queer, too. Tussak began right in the middle of his story. We've got a room in this shanty, he said, which has got a most infernal whistling in it, sort of haunting it. The thing starts any time. You never know when, and it goes on until it frightens you. All the servants have gone, as you know. It's not ordinary whistling, and it isn't the wind. Wait till you hear it." We're all carrying guns, said the boy, and slapped his coat-pocket. As bad as that, I said. And the older boy nodded. It may be soft, he replied, but wait till you've heard it. Sometimes I think it's some infernal thing, and the next moment I'm just assure that someone's playing a trick on me. Why, I ask, what is to be gained? You mean, you said, that people usually have some good reason for playing tricks as elaborate as this. Well, I'll tell you, there's a lady in this province by the name of Miss Donahue, who's going to be my wife, this day two months. She's more beautiful than they make them. And so far as I can see, I've just stuck my head into an Irish hornet's nest. There's about a score of hot young Irishmen been courting her these two years gone, and now that I've come along and cut them out, they feel raw against me. Do you begin to understand the possibilities? Yes, I said. Perhaps I do in a vague sort of way, but I don't see how all this affects the room. Like this, he said, when I had fixed up with Miss Donahue, I looked out for a place, and bought this little house shanty. Afterward, I told her, one evening during dinner, that I had decided to tie up here. And then she asked me whether I wasn't afraid of the whistling room. I told her that it must have been thrown in gratis, as I had heard nothing about it. There were some of her men friends present, and I saw a smile go round. I found out, after a bit of questioning, that several people have bought this place during the last twenty odd years, and it was always on the market again after a trial. Well, the chap started to bait me a bit, and offered to take bets after dinner, that I'd not stay six months in the place. I looked once or twice to Miss Donahue, so as to be sure I was getting the note of the talky-talky, but I could see that she didn't take it as a joke at all. Partly, I think, because there was a bit of a sneer in the way the men were tackling me, and partly because she really believes that there is something in this yarn of the whistling room. However, after dinner, I did what I could to even things up with the others. I nailed all their bets and screwed them down hard and safe. I guess some of them are going to be a hard hit, unless I lose, which I don't mean to. Well, there you have practically the whole yarn. Not quite, I told him. All I know is that you have bought a castle with a room in it that is in some way queer and that you've been doing some betting. Also, I know that your servants have got frightened and run away. Tell me something about the whistling. Oh, that's a tassak. That started the second night we were in. I'd had a good look round the room in the daytime, as you can understand, for the talk up at Arlstrae, Miss Donahue's place, had made me wonder a bit. But it seems just as usual some of the other rooms in the Old Wing, only perhaps a bit more lonesome. But that may be only because of the talk about it, you know. The whistling started about ten o'clock on the second night, as I said. Tom and I were in the library when we heard an awfully queer whistling coming along the east corridor. The room is in the east wing, you know. That's that blessed ghost, I said to Tom, and we called her the lamps off the table and went up to have a look. I tell you, even as we dug along the corridor it took me a bit in the throat. It was so beastly queer. It was a sort of tune, in a way, but more as if a devil or some rotten thing were laughing at you and going to get around at your back. That's how it makes you feel. When we got to the door we didn't wait but rushed it open, and then I tell you the sound of the thing fairly hit me in the face. Tom said he got it the same way, sort of felt stunned and bewildered. We looked all round and soon got so nervous we just cleared out and I locked the door. We come down here and had a stiff peg each. Then we got fit again and began to think we'd been nicely had. So we took sticks and went out into the grounds, thinking, after all, that it must be some of those confounded Irishmen working the ghost-trick on us. But there was not a leg stirring. We went back into the house and walked over it and then paid another visit to the room, but we simply couldn't stand it. We fairly ran out and locked the door again. I don't know how to put it into words, but I had a feeling of being up against something that was rottenly dangerous. You know, we've carried our guns ever since. Of course we had a real turn out the room next day and the whole house-place. We even hunted round the grounds. But there was nothing queer. And now I don't know what to think except that the sensible part of me tells me that it's some plan of these wild Irishmen to try to take a rise out of me. Done anything since, I asked him. Yes, he said. Watched outside the door of the room at night and chased round the grounds and sounded the walls and floor of the room. We've done everything we could think of and has begun to get in our nerves, so we sent for you. By this time we had finished eating. As we rose from the table Tassak suddenly called out, SHH! Hark! We were instantly silent listening. Then I heard it, an extraordinary, hooning whistle, monstrous and inhuman, coming from far away through the corridors to my right. By God, said Tassak, and it's scarcely dark yet. Call all of those candles, both of you, and come along. In a few moments we were all out of the door and racing up the stairs. Tassak turned into a long corridor and we followed, shielding our candles as we ran. The sound seemed to fill all the passages we drew near until I had the feeling that the whole air throbbed into the power of some wanton, immense force, a sense of an actual taint, as you might say, of monstrosity all about us. Tassak unlocked the door, then giving it a push with his foot, jumped back and drew his revolver. As the door flew open the sound beat out at us, with an effect impossible to explain to one who has not heard it, with a certain horrible personal note in it, as if in there in the darkness you could picture the room rocking and creaking in a mad, vile glee to its own filthy piping and whistling and hooning. To stand there and listen was to be stunned by realization. It was as if someone showed you the mouth of a vast pit suddenly and said, That's Hell, and you knew that they had spoken the truth. Do you get it, even a little bit? I stepped back a paced into the room and held the candle over my head and looked quickly round. Tassak and his brother joined me and the man came up at the back and we all held our candles high. I was deafened by the thrill piping hoon of the whistling, and then clear in my ear something seemed to be saying to me, Get out of here quick, quick, quick! As you chaps know I never neglect that sort of thing. Sometimes it may be nothing but nerves, but as you will remember it was just such a warning that saved me in the gray dog case and in the yellow finger experiments, as well as other times. Well, I turned sharp round to the others out, I said, for God's sake, out quick! And in an instant I had them in the passage. There came an extraordinary yelling screen into the hideous whistling, and then, like a clap of thunder, an utter silence. I slammed the door and locked it. Then, taking the key, I looked round at the others. They were pretty white, and I imagine I must have looked that way too. And there we stood a moment, silent. Come down out of this and have some whiskey, said Tassak at last, in a voice he tried to make ordinary, and he led the way. I was the backman, and I know we all kept looking over our shoulders. When we got downstairs, Tassak passed the bottle round. He took a drink himself and slapped his glass down on the table, then sat down with a thud. That's a lovely thing to have in a house with you, isn't it? he said, and directly afterwards. What on earth made you hustle us all out like that, karnaki? Something seemed to be telling me to get out quick, I said. Sounds a bit silly, superstitious, I know, but when you are meddling with this sort of thing, you've got to take notice of queer fancies and risk being laughed at. I told them then about the gray dog business, and he nodded a lot to that. Of course, I said, this may be nothing more than those would-be rivals of yours playing some funny game, but personally, though I'm going to keep an open mind, I feel that there is something beastly and dangerous about this thing. We talked for a while longer, and then Tassak suggested billiards, which we played in a pretty half-hearted fashion, and all the time caulking an ear to the door, as you might say, for sounds. But none came, and later after coffee he suggested early bed, and a thorough overhaul of the room on the morrow. My bedroom was in the newer part of the castle, and the door opened into the picture gallery. At the east end of the gallery was the entrance to the corridor of the east wing. This was shut off from the gallery by two old and heavy oak doors, which looked rather odd and quaint beside the more modern doors of the various rooms. When I reached my room I did not go to bed, but began to unpack my instrument trunk, of which I had retained the key. I intended to take one or two preliminary steps at once in my investigation of the extraordinary whistling. Presently, when the castle had settled into quietness, I slipped out of my room and across to the entrance of the great corridor. I opened one of the low squat doors and threw the beam of my pocket searchlight down the passage. It was empty, and I went through the doorway and pushed to the oak behind me. Then along the great passageway, throwing my light before and behind, and keeping my revolver handy. I had hung a protection belt of garlic round my neck, and the smell of it seemed to fill the corridor and give me assurance, for, as you all know, it is a wonderful protection against the more usual airy forms of semi-materialization, by which I suppose the whistling might be produced. Though at that period of my investigation I was quite prepared to find it due to some perfectly natural cause, for it is astonishing the enormous number of cases that proved nothing abnormal in them. In addition to wearing the necklace I had plugged my ears loosely with garlic, and, as I did not intend to stay more than a few minutes in the room, I hoped to be safe. When I reached the door and put my hand into my pocket for the key I had a sudden feeling of sickening funk, but I was not going to back out if I could help it. I unlocked the door and turned the handle. Then I gave the door a sharp push with my foot, as Tassak had done, and drew my revolver, though I did not expect to have any use for it, really. I shown the searchlight all round the room and then stepped inside, with a disgustingly horrible feeling of walking slap into a waiting danger. I stood a few seconds waiting, and nothing happened, and the empty room showed bear from corner to corner. And then, you know, I realized that the room was full of an abominable silence. Can you understand that? A sort of purposeful silence, just as sickening as any of the filthy noises the things have power to make. Do you remember what I told you about that silent garden business? Well, this room had just that same malevolent silence, the beastly quietness of a thing that is looking at you and not seeable itself, and thinks that it has got you. Oh, I recognized it instantly, and I whipped the top off my lantern, so as to have light over the whole room. Then I set to, working like fury and keeping my glance all about me, I sealed the two windows with lengths of human hair, right across, and sealed them at every frame. As I worked, a queer, scarcely perceptible tenseness stole into the air of the place, and the silence seemed, if you can understand me, to grow more solid. I knew then that I had no business there without full protection, for I was practically certain that this was no mere airy development, but one of the worst forms, as the saati, like that grunting mancase, you know. I finished the window and hurried over to the great fireplace. This is a huge affair, and has a queer gallows-iron, I think they are called, projecting from the back of the arch. I sealed the opening with seven human hairs, the seven crossing the six others. Then, just as I was making an end, a low, mocking whistle grew in the room. A cold, nervous pricking went up my spine and round my forehead from the back. The hideous sound filled all the room with an extraordinary grotesque parody of human whistling, too gigantic to be human, as if something gargantuan and monstrous had made the sounds softly. As I stood there a last moment, pressing down the final seal, I had no doubt but that I had come across one of those rare and horrible cases of the inanimate, reproducing the functions of the animate. I made a grab for my lamp and went quickly to the door, looking over my shoulder and listening for the thing that I expected. It came, just as I got my hand upon the handle, a squeal of incredible malevolent anger piercing through the low hooning of the whistling. I dashed out, slamming the door and locking it. I lent a little against the opposite wall of the corridor, feeling rather funny, for it had been a narrow squeak. There will be no safety to be gained by guards of holiness when the monster hath power to speak through wood and stone. So runs the passage in the sig sand manuscript, and I proved it in that nodding door business. There is no protection against this particular form of monster, except possibly for a fractional period of time, for it can reproduce itself in, or take to its purpose, the very protective material which you may use, and has the power to form within the pentacle, though not immediately. There is, of course, the possibility of the unknown last line of the Sama ritual being uttered, but it is too uncertain to count upon, and the danger is too hideous, and even then there is no power to protect for more than maybe five beats of the heart, as the sig sand has it. Inside of the room there was now a constant meditative hooning whistling, but presently this ceased, and the silence seemed worse, for there was such a sense of a hidden mischief in a silence. After a little I sealed the door with crossed hairs, and then cleared off down the great passage, and so to bed. For a long time I lay awake, but managed eventually to get some sleep. Yet about two o'clock I was awaked by the hooning whistling of the room coming to me, even through the closed doors. The sound was tremendous, and seemed to beat through the whole house with a presiding sense of terror, as if, I remember thinking, some monstrous giant had been holding mad carnival with itself at the end of that great passage. I got up and sat on the edge of the bed, wondering whether to go along and have a look at the seal, and suddenly there came a thump on my door and Tassak walked in, with his dressing-gown over his pajamas. I thought it would have waked you, so I came along to have a talk, he said. I can't sleep. Beautiful, isn't it? Extraordinary, I said, and tossed to my case. He lit a cigarette, and we sat and talked for about an hour, and all the time that noise went on down at the end of the big corridor. Suddenly Tassak stood up. Let's take our guns and go and examine the brute, he said, and turned toward the door. No, I said, by Jove, no! I can't say anything definite yet, but I believe that room is about as dangerous as it well can be. Haunted? Really haunted? he asked, keenly, and without any of his frequent banter. I told him, of course, that I could not say a definite yes or no to such a question, but that I hoped to be able to make a statement soon. Then I gave him a little lecture on the false rematerialization of the animate force through the animate inert. He began, then, to see the particular way in the room might be dangerous, if it were really the subject of a manifestation. About an hour later the whistling ceased quite suddenly, and Tassak went off again to bed. I went back to mine also, and eventually got another spell of sleep. In the morning I went along to the room. I found the seals on the door intact. Then I went in. The window seals and the hair were all right, but the seventh hair across the great fireplace was broken. This set me thinking. I knew that it might very possibly have snapped through my having tensioned it too highly, but then again it might have been broken by something else. Yet it was scarcely possible that a man, for instance, could have passed between the six unbroken hairs, for no one would ever have noticed them entering the room that way, you see, but just walk through them, ignorant of their very existence. I removed the other hairs and the seals, then I looked up the chimney. It went up straight and I could see blue sky at the top. It was a big open flu and free of any suggestion of hiding places or corners. Yet, of course, I did not trust any such casual examination, and after breakfast I put on my overalls and climbed to the very top, sounding all the way. But I found nothing. Then I came down and went over the whole of the room, floors, ceilings, and walls, mapping them out in six inch squares and sounding with both hammer and probe, but there was nothing of normal. Afterward I made a three week search of the whole castle in the same thorough way, but I found nothing. I went even further then, for at night, when the whistling commenced, I made a microphone test. You see, if the whistling were mechanically produced, this test would have made evident to me the working of the machinery. If there were any such concealed within the walls, it certainly was an up-to-date method of examination, as you must allow. Of course, I did not think that any of Tassak's rivals had fixed up any mechanical contrivance, but I thought it just possible that there had been some such thing for producing the whistling made away back in the years, perhaps with the intention of giving the room a reputation that would insurance being free of inquisitive folk. You see what I mean? Well, of course it was just possible, if this were the case, that someone knew the secret of the machinery and was utilizing the knowledge to play this devil of a prank on Tassak. The microphone test of the walls would certainly have made this known to me, as I have said, but there was nothing of the sort in the castle, so that I had practically no doubt at all now, but that it was a genuine case of what is popularly termed haunting. All this time, every night, and sometimes most of each night, the hooning whistling of the room was intolerable. It was as if an intelligence there knew that steps were being taken against it, and piped and hooned in a sort of mad mocking contempt. I tell you, it was as extraordinary as it was horrible. Time after time I went along, tiptoeing noiselessly on stocking feet to the sealed door, for I always kept the room sealed. I went at all hours of the night, and often the whistling inside would seem to change to a brutally malignant note, as though the half animate monster saw me plainly through the shut door. And all the time the shrieking, hooning whistling would fill the whole corridor, so that I used to feel a precious, lonely chap messing about there with one of Hell's Mysteries. And every morning I would enter the room and examine the different hairs and seals. You see, after the first week I had stretched parallel hairs all along the walls of the room and along the ceiling, but over the floor, which was of polished stone, I had set out little colorless wafers, tacky side, up most. Each wafer was numbered, and they were arranged in a definite plan, so that I should be able to trace the exact movements of any living thing that went across the floor. You will see that no material being or creature could possibly have entered that room without leaving many signs to tell me about it. But nothing was ever disturbed, and I began to think that I should have to risk an attempt to stay the night in the room, in the electric pentacle. Yet, mind you, I knew that it would be a crazy thing to do, but I was getting stumped and ready to do anything. Once about midnight I did break the seal on the door and have a quick look in, but I tell you the whole room gave one mad yell and seemed to come toward me in a great belly of shadows, as if the walls had bellied in toward me. Of course, that must have been fancy. Anyway, the yell was sufficient, and I slammed the door and locked it, feeling a bit weak down my spine. You know the feeling. And then, when I had got to that state of readiness for anything, I made something of a discovery. It was about one in the morning, and I was walking slowly round the castle, keeping in the soft grass. I had come under the shadow of the east front, and far above me I could hear the vile, hooning whistle of the room, up in the darkness of the unlit wing. Then, suddenly a little in front of me, I heard a man's voice, speaking low, but evidently with glee. By George, you chaps, I wouldn't care to bring a wife home in that, it said, in the tone of the cultured Irish. Someone started to reply, but there came a short exclamation, and then a rush, and I heard footsteps running in all directions. Evidently, the men had spotted me. For a few seconds I stood there, feeling an awful ass. After all, they were at the bottom of the haunting. Do you see what a big fool it made me seem? I had no doubt that they were some of Tusk's rivals, and here I had been feeling in every bone that I had hit a real bad, genuine case. And then, you know, there came the memory of hundreds of details that made me just as much in doubt again. Anyway, whether it was natural or abnatural, there was a great deal yet to be cleared up. I told Tusk the next morning what I had discovered, and threw the hole of every night, for five nights we kept a close watch round the east wing. But there was never a sign of anyone prowling about, and all the time, almost from evening to dawn, that grotesque whistling would hoon incredibly far above us in the darkness. On the morning after the fifth night I received a wire from here, which brought me home by the next boat. I explained to Tusk that I was simply bound to come away for a few days, but told him to keep up the watch round the castle. One thing I was very careful to do, and that was to make him absolutely promise never to go into the room between sunset and sunrise. I made it clear to him that we knew nothing definite yet, one way or the other, and if the room or what I had first thought it to be, it might be a lot better for him to die first than enter it after dark. When I got here and had finished my business I thought you chaps would be interested, and also I wanted to get it all spread out clear in my mind, so I rung you up. I'm going over again tomorrow, and when I get back I ought to have something extraordinary to tell you. By the way there is a curious thing I forgot to tell you. I tried to get a phonograph recording of the whistling, but it simply produced no impression on the wax at all. That is one of the things that has made me feel queer, I can tell you. Another extraordinary thing is that the microphone will not magnify the sound, will not even transmit it, seems to take no account of it, and acts as if it were non-existent. I am absolutely and utterly stumped up to the present. I am a wee bit curious to see whether any of your dear clever heads can make daylight of it. I cannot, not yet. He rose to his feet. Good night all, he said, and began to usher us out abruptly, but without a fence into the night. A fortnight later he dropped each of us a card, and you can imagine that I was not late this time. When we arrived Karnaki took us straight into dinner, and when we had finished and all made ourselves comfortable, he began again where he had left off. Now just listen quietly, for I have got something pretty queer to tell you. I got back late at night and I had to walk up to the castle, as I had not warned them that I was coming. It was bright moonlight so that the walk was rather a pleasure than otherwise. When I got there the whole place was in darkness and I thought I would take a walk around outside to see whether Tassak or his brother was keeping watch. But I could not find them anywhere and concluded that they had got tired of it and gone off to bed. As I returned across the front of the east wing I caught the honing whistling of the room, coming down strangely through the stillness of the night. It had a queer note in it, I remember, low and constant, queerly meditative. I looked up at the window bright in the moonlight and got a sudden thought to bring a ladder from the stable yard and try to get a look into the room through the window. With this notion I hunted round at the back of the castle, among the straggle of offices, and presently found a long, fairly light ladder, though it was heavy enough for one, goodness knows, and I thought at first that I should never get it reared. I managed at last and let the ends rest very quietly against the wall, a little below the sill of the larger window. Then, going silently, I went up the ladder. Presently I had my face above the sill and was looking in along with the moonlight. Of course the queer whistling sounded louder up there, but it still conveyed that peculiar sense of something whistling quietly to itself. Can you understand? Though for all the meditative lowness of the note, the horrible gargantuan quality was distinct. A mighty parody of the human, as if I stood there and listened to the whistling from the lips of a monster with a man's soul. And then, you know, I saw something. The floor in the middle of the huge empty room was puckered upward in the center, into a strange, soft-looking mound, parted at the top into an ever-changing hole that pulsated in that gentle, gentle hooning. At times, as I watched, I saw the heaving of the indented mound gap across with a queer, inward suction, as if with the drawing of an enormous breath. Then the thing would dilate and pout once more to the incredible melody. And suddenly, as I stared dumb, it came to me that the thing was living. I was looking at two enormous blackened lips, blistered and brutal, there in the pale moonlight. Abruptly they bulged out to a vast pouting mound of force and sound, stiffened and swollen and mutually massive and clean cut in the moonbeams, and a great sweat lay heavy on the vast upper lip. In the same moment of time the whistling had burst into a mad screaming note that seemed to stun me even where I stood outside of the window. And then the following moment I was staring blankly at the solid, undisturbed floor of the room, a smooth polished stone flooring from wall to wall and there was absolute silence. You can picture me staring into the quiet room and knowing what I knew. I felt like a sick, frightened kid, and wanted to slide quietly down the ladder and run away. But in that very instant I heard Tasig's voice calling to me from within the room, for help! Help! My God! But I got such an awful, dazed feeling, and I had a vague, bewildered notion that, after all, it was the Irishmen who had got him in there and were taking it out of him. And then the call came again and I burst the window and jumped in to help him. I had a confused idea that the call had come from within the shadow of the great fireplace and I raced across to it. But there was no one there. Tasig, I shouted, and my voice went empty-sounding round the great apartment. Then, in a flash, I knew that Tasig had never called, our world round sick with fear toward the window and, as I did so, a frightful, exultant whistling scream burst through the room. On my left the end wall had bellied in toward me in a pair of gargantuan lips, black and utterly monstrous to within a yard of my face. I fumbled for a mad instant at my revolver, not for it, but for myself, for the danger was a thousand times worse than death. And then suddenly the unknown last line of the Sama ritual was whispered quite audibly in the room. Instantly the thing happened that I have known once before. There came a sense as of dust following continually and monotonously, and I knew that my life hung uncertain and suspended for a flash in a brief, reeling vertical of unseeable things. Then that ended, and I knew that I might live. My soul and body blended again, and life and power came to me. I dashed furiously at the window and hurled myself out, head foremost, for I can tell you that I had stopped being afraid of death. I crashed down onto the ladder and slithered, grabbing and grabbing, and so came someway or other alive to the bottom. And there I sat in the soft wet grass with the moonlight all about me, and far above, through the broken window of the room, there was a low whistling. That is the chief of it. I was not hurt, and I went round to the front and knocked Tassak up. When they let me in we had a long yarn over some good whiskey, for I was shaken to pieces, and I explained things as much as I could. I told Tassak that the room would have to come down, and every fragment of it burned in a blast furnace erected within a pentacle. He nodded. There was nothing to say. Then I went to bed. We turned a small army onto the work, and within ten days that lovely thing had gone up in smoke, and what was left was calcined and clean. It was when the workman was stripping the paneling that I got hold of a sound notion of the beginnings of that beastly development. Over the great fireplace, after the great oak panels had been torn down, I found that there was let into the masonry a scrollwork of stone, with on it an old inscription in ancient Celtic, that here in this room was burned Dion Tiance, gesture of King Alzof, who made the song of foolishness upon King Urnor of the Seventh Castle. When I got the translation clear I gave it to Tassak. He was tremendously excited, for he knew the old tale, and took me down to the library to look at an old parchment that gave the story in detail. Afterward I found that the incident was well known about the countryside, but always regarded more as a legend than his history, and no one seemed ever to have dreamt that the old east wing of Iastry Castle was the remains of the ancient Seventh Castle. From the old parchment I gathered that there had been a pretty dirty job done away back in the years. It seemed that King Alzof and King Urnor had been enemies by birthright, as you might say truly, but that nothing more than a little raiding had occurred on either side for years, until Dion Tiance made the song of foolishness upon King Urnor, and sang it before King Alzof, and so greatly was it appreciated that King Alzof gave the gesture one of his ladies to wife. Presently all the people of the land had come to know the song, and so it came at last to King Urnor, who was so angered that he made war upon his old enemy, and took and burned him and his castle. But Dion Tiance, the jester, he brought with him to his own place, and having torn his tongue out because of the song which he had made and sung, he imprisoned him in the room in the east wing, which was evidently used for unpleasant purposes, and the jester's wife he kept for himself having a fancy for her prettiness. But one night Dion Tiance's wife was not found, and in the morning they discovered her lying dead in her husband's arms, and he, sitting, whistling the song of foolishness, for he had no longer the power to sing it. Then they roasted Dion Tiance in a great fireplace, probably from that self-same galley iron which I have already mentioned, and until he died Dion Tiance ceased not to whistle the song of foolishness which he could no longer sing. But afterward in that room there was often heard at night the sound of something whistling, and there grew a power in that room so that none dared to sleep in it, and presently it would seem the king went to another castle for the whistling troubled him. There you have it all. Of course that is only a rough rendering of the translation of the parchment, but it sounds extraordinarily quaint, don't you think so? Yes, I said, answering for the lot, but how did the thing grow to such tremendous manifestation? One of those cases of continuity of thought producing a positive action upon the immediate surrounding material replied Karnaki, the development must have been going forward through the centuries to have produced such a monstrosity. It was a true instance of sati manifestation, which I can best explain by likening it to a living spiritual fungus which involves a very structure of the ether fiber itself, and of course in so doing acquires an essential control over the material substance involved in it. It is impossible to make a planer in a few words. What broke the seventh hair? asked Taylor, but Karnaki did not know. He thought it was probably nothing but being too severely tensioned. He also explained that they found out that the men who had run away had not been up to the mischief, but had come over secretly merely to hear the whistling, which indeed had suddenly become the talk of the whole countryside. One other thing, said Arkwright. Have you any idea what governs the use of the unknown last line of the Sama Ritual? I know, of course, that it was used by the Abhuman priests in the incantations of Ra'i, but what used it on your behalf and what made it? You had better read Harzan's monograph and my addenda to it on astral and astral coordination and interference, said Karnaki. It is an extraordinary subject, and I can only say here that the human vibrations may not be insulated from the astral, as is always believed to be the case in interferences of the Abhuman, without any immediate action being taken by those forces which govern the spinning of the outer circle. In other words, it is being proved time after time that there is some inscrutable protective force constantly intervening between the human soul, not the body, mind you, and the outer monstrosities. Am I clear? Yes, I think so, I replied, and you believe that the room had become the material expression of the ancient jester that his soul rotten with hatred had bred into a monster, eh? I asked. Yes, said Karnaki, nodding, I think you've put my thought rather neatly. It is a queer coincidence that Miss Donahue was supposed to be descended, so I've heard since, from the same king, Irnor. It makes one think some curious thoughts, doesn't it? The marriage coming on and the room waking to fresh life? If she had gone into that room ever, eh? It had waited a long time, sins of the fathers. Yes, I've thought of that. There to be married next week, and I am to be the best man, which is a thing I hate. And he won his bets, rather, just think, if ever she had gone into that room. Pretty horrible, eh? He nodded his head grimly, and we four nodded back. Then he rose and took us collectively to the door, and presently thrust us forth in a friendly fashion on the embankment and into the fresh night air. Good night, we all called back, and went to our various homes. If she had a, if she had, that is what I kept thinking. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 OF CARNACKY THE GHOSTFINDER by William Hope Hydeson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peake Chapter 4 THE HORSE OF THE INVISIBLE I had that afternoon received an invitation from Karnacky. When I reached his place I found him sitting alone. As I came into the room he rose with a perceptibly stiff movement and extended his left hand. His face seemed to be badly scarred and bruised and his right hand was bandaged. He shook hands and offered me his paper which I refused. Then he passed me a handful of photographs and returned to his reading. Now that is just Karnacky. Not a word had come from him and not a question from me. He would tell us all about it later. I spent about half an hour looking at the photographs which were chiefly snaps some by flashlight of an extraordinarily pretty girl. Though in some of the photographs it was wonderful that her prettiness was so evident for so frightened and startled was her expression that it was difficult not to believe that she had been photographed in the presence of some imminent and overwhelming danger. The bulk of the photographs were interiors of different rooms and passages and in every one the girl might be seen either full-length in the distance or closer with perhaps little more than a hand or arm or a portion of the head or dress included in the photograph. All of these had evidently been taken with some definite aim that did not have for its first purpose the picturing of the girl but obviously of her surroundings and they made me very curious as you can imagine. Near the bottom of the pile however I came upon something definitely extraordinary. It was a photograph of the girl standing upright and clear in the great blaze of a flashlight as was planned to be seen. Her face was turned a little upward as if she had been frightened suddenly by some noise. Directly above her as though half-formed and coming down out of the shadows was the shape of a single enormous hoof. I examined this photograph for a long time without understanding it more than that it had probably to do with some queer case in which Karnaki was interested. When Jessup Arkwright and Taylor came in Karnaki quietly held at his hand for the photographs which I returned in the same spirit and afterward we all went into dinner. When we had spent a quiet hour at the table we pulled our chairs round and made ourselves snug and Karnaki began. I've been north, he said, speaking slowly and painfully between puffs at his pipe up to Higgins in East Lancashire. It has been a pretty strange business all round as I fancy you chaps will thank when I have finished. I knew before I went something about the horse story as I have heard it called, but I never thought of it coming my way somehow. Also I know now that I never considered it seriously in spite of my rule always to keep an open mind. Funny creatures we humans. Well, I got a wire asking for an appointment which of course told me that there was some trouble. On the date I fixed old Captain Higgins himself came to see me. He told me a great many new details about the horse story though naturally I had always known the main points and understood that if the first child were a girl that girl would be haunted by the horse during her courtship. It is as you can see already an extraordinary story and though I have always known about it I have never thought it to be anything more than an old time legend as I've already hinted. You see for seven generations the Higgins family have had men children for their first born and even the Higgins' themselves have long considered the tale to be little more than a myth. To come to the present the eldest child of the reigning family is a girl and she has often been teased and warned in jest by her friends and relations that she is the first girl to be the eldest for seven generations and that she would have to keep her men friends at arm's length or go into a nunnery if she hoped to escape the haunting. And this I think shows us how thoroughly the tale had grown to be considered as nothing worthy of the least serious thought. Don't you think so? Two months ago Miss Higgins became engaged to Beaumont a young naval officer and on the evening of the very day of the engagement before it was even formally announced a most extraordinary thing happened which resulted in Captain Higgins making the appointment and my ultimately going down to their place to look into the thing. From the old family records and papers that were entrusted to me I found that there could be no possible doubt that prior to something like 150 years ago there were some very extraordinary and disagreeable coincidences to put the thing in the least emotional way. In the whole of the two centuries prior to that date there were five first-born girls out of a total of seven generations of the family. Each of these girls grew up to Maidenhood and each became engaged and each one died during the period of engagement two by suicide one by falling from a window one from a broken heart presumably heart failure owing to a sudden shock through fright. The fifth girl was killed one evening in the park around the house but just how there seemed to be no exact knowledge only that there was an impression that she had been kicked by a horse she was dead when found. Now you see all of these deaths might be attributed in a way even the suicides to natural causes I mean as distinct from supernatural you see yet in every case the Maidens had undoubtedly suffered some extraordinary and terrifying experiences during their various courtships for in all the records there was mention either of the naing of an unseen horse or of the sounds of an invisible horse galloping as well as many other peculiar and quite inexplicable manifestations. You begin to understand to now I think just how extraordinary business it was that I was asked to look into. I gathered from one account that the haunting of the girls was so constant and horrible that two of the girls lovers fairly ran away from their lady loves and I think it was this more than anything else that made me feel that there had been something more in it than a mere succession of uncomfortable coincidences. I got hold of these facts before I had been many hours in the house and after this I went pretty carefully into the details of the thing that happened on the night of Miss Hisgen's engagement to Beaumont. It seems that as the two of them were going through the big lower corridor just after dusk and before the lamps had been lighted there had been a sudden horrible naing in the corridor close to them. Immediately afterward Beaumont received a tremendous blow or kick which broke his right forearm. Then the rest of the family and the servants came running to know what was wrong. Lights were brought in the corridor and afterward the whole house searched but nothing unusual was found. You can imagine the excitement in the house and the half incredulous half believing talk about the old legend. Then later in the middle of the night the old captain was waked by the sound of a great horse galloping round and round the house. Several times after this both Beaumont and the girls said that they had heard the sounds of hooves near them after dusk in several of the rooms and corridors. Three nights later Beaumont was waked by a strange naing in the night time seeming to come from the direction of the sweetheart's bedroom. He ran hurriedly for her father and the two of them raced to her room. They found her awake and ill with sheer terror having been awakened by the naing seemingly close to her bed. The night before I arrived there had been a fresh happening and they were all in a frightfully nervy state as you can imagine. I spent most of the first day as I have hinted in getting hold of the details, but after dinner I slacked off and played billiards all the evening with Beaumont and Miss Hisgins. We stopped about ten o'clock and had coffee and I got Beaumont to give me full particulars about the thing that had happened the evening before. He and Miss Hisgins had been sitting quietly in her aunt's poudoir whilst the old lady chaperoned them behind a book. It was growing dusk and the lamp was at her end of the table. The rest of the house was not yet lit as the evening had come earlier than usual. Well, it seems that the door into the hall was open and suddenly the girl said, shh, what's that? They both listened and then Beaumont heard it, the sound of a horse outside of the front door. Your father, he suggested, but she reminded him that her father was not writing. Well, of course, they were both ready to feel queer, as you can suppose, but Beaumont made an effort to shake this off and went into the hall to see whether anyone was at the entrance. It was pretty dark in the hall and he could see the glass panels of the inner draft door, clear cut in the darkness of the hall. He walked over to the glass and looked through into the drive beyond, but there was nothing in sight. He felt nervous and puzzled and opened the inner door and went out onto the carriage circle. Almost directly afterward the great hall door swung too with a crash behind him. He told me that he had a sudden awful feeling of having been trapped in some way, that is how he put it. He whirled round and gripped the door handle, but something seemed to be holding it with a vast grip on the other side. Then before he could be fixed in his mind that this was so he was able to turn the handle and open the door. He paused a moment in the doorway and peered into the hall, for he had hardly steadied his mind sufficiently to know whether he was really frightened or not. Then he heard his sweetheart blow him a kiss out of the grayness of the big, unlit hall, and he knew that she had followed him from the boudoir. He blew her a kiss back and stepped inside the doorway, meaning to go to her. And then, suddenly in a flash of sickening knowledge, he knew that it was not his sweetheart who had blown him that kiss. He knew that something was trying to tempt him alone into the darkness and that the girl had never left the boudoir. He jumped back and in the same instant of time he heard the kiss again nearer to him. He called out at the top of his voice, Mary, stay in the boudoir, don't move out of the boudoir until I come to you. He heard her call, something in reply from the boudoir, and then he struck a clump of a dozen or so matches and was holding them above his head and looking round the hall. There was no one in it, but even as the matches burned out there came the sounds of a great horse galloping down the empty drive. Now you see, both he and the girl had heard the sounds of the horse galloping, but when I questioned more closely I found that the nurse had heard nothing, though it is true she is a bit deaf and she was further back in the room. Of course, both he and Miss Hisgins had been in an extremely nervous state and ready to hear anything. The door might have been slammed by a sudden puff of wind owing to some inner door being opened, and as for the grip on the handle, that may have been nothing more than the snick catching. With regard to the kisses and the sounds of the horse galloping, I pointed out that these might have seemed ordinary enough sounds if they had only been cool enough to reason. As I told him, and as he knew, the sounds of a horse galloping carry a long way on the wind, so that what he had heard might have been nothing more than a horse being ridden some distance away. As for the kiss, plenty of quiet noises, the rustle of a paper or a leaf, have a somewhat similar sound, especially if one is in an over strong condition I finished preaching this little sermon on common sense versus hysteria as we put out the lights and left the billiard room. But neither Beaumont nor Ms. Hisgens would agree that there had been any fancy on their parts. We had come out of the billiard room by this time and were going along the passage, and I was still doing my best to make both of them see the ordinary commonplace possibilities of the happening, when wet killed my pig as the saying goes, was the sound of a hoof in the dark billiard room we had just left. I felt the creep come on me in a flash, up my spine and over the back of my head. Ms. Hisgens whooped like a child with a whooping cough and ran up the passage, giving little gasping screams. Beaumont, however, ripped around on his heels and jumped back a couple of yards. I gave back too a bit, as you can understand. There it is, he said in a low breathless voice. Perhaps you'll believe me now. There's certainly something, I whispered, never taking my gaze off the closed door of the billiard room. She muttered. There it is again. There was a sound like a great horse pacing round and round the billiard room with slow deliberate steps. A horrible cold fright took me so that it seemed impossible to take a full breath, you know the feeling, and then I saw we must have been walking backward for we found ourselves suddenly at the opening of the long passage. We stopped there and listened. The sound went on steadily with a horrible sort of deliberateness, as if the brute were taking a sort of malicious gusto when walking about all over the room which we had just occupied. Do you understand just what I mean? Then there was a pause and a long time of absolute quiet, except for an excited whispering from some of the people down in the big hall. The sound came plainly up the wide stairway. I fancy they were gathered around Missisgans with some notion of protecting her. I should think Beaumont and I stood there at the end of the passage for about five minutes, listening for any noise in the billiard room. Then I realized what a horrible funk I was in and I said to him I'm going to see what's there. Saw my, he answered. He was pretty white, but he had heaps of pluck. I told him to wait one instant and I made a dash into my bedroom and got my camera and flashlight. I slipped my revolver into my right hand pocket and a knuckle duster over my left fist where it was ready and yet would not stop me from being able to work my flashlight. Then I ran back to Beaumont. He held out his hand to show me that he had his pistol and I nodded but whispered to him not to be too quick to shoot as there might be some silly practical joking at work after all. He had got a lamp from a bracket in the upper hall which he was holding in the crook of his damaged arm so that we had a good light. Then we went down the passage toward the billiard room and you can imagine that we were a pretty nervous couple. All this time there had not been a sound. But abruptly when we were within perhaps a couple of yards of the door we heard the sudden clumping of a hoof on the solid parquet floor of the billiard room. In the instant afterward it seemed to me that the whole place shook beneath the ponderous hoof falls of some huge thing coming toward the door. Both Beaumont and I gave back a pace or two and then realized and hung onto our courage as you might say and waited. The great tread came right up to the door and then stopped and there was an instant of absolute silence except that so far as I was concerned the pulsing in my throat and temples almost deafened me. I dare say we waited quite half a minute and then came the further restless clumping of a great hoof. Immediately afterward the sounds came right on as if some invisible thing passed through the closed door and the ponderous tread was upon us. We jumped each of us to our side of the passage and I know that I spread myself stiff against the wall. The clunk clunk clunk clunk of the great hooves passed right between us and slowly and with deadly deliberateness down the passage. I heard them through a haze of blood beats in my ears and temples and my body was extraordinarily rigid and pringling and I was horribly breathless. I stood for a little time like this my head turned so that I could see up the passage. I was conscious only that there was a hideous danger abroad. Do you understand? And then suddenly my pluck came back to me. I was aware that the noise of the hoof beats sounded near the other end of the passage. I twisted quickly and got my camera to bear and snapped off the flashlight. Immediately afterward Beaumont let out a storm of shots down the passage and began to run shouting, It's after Mary! Run! Run! He rushed down the passage and I after him. We came out on the main landing and heard the sound of a hoof on the stairs and after that nothing. And from thence onward nothing. Down below us in the big hall I could see a number of the household round Miss Hisgins who seemed to have fainted and there were several of the servants clumped together a little way off staring up at the main landing and no one was saying a single word. And about twenty steps up the stairs was old Captain Higgins with a drawn sword in his hand where he had halted just below the last hoof sound. I think I never saw anything finer than that old man standing there between his daughter and that infernal thing. I dare say you can understand the queer feeling of horror I had at passing that place on the stairs where the sounds had ceased. It was as if the monster were still standing there invisible and the peculiar thing was that we never heard another sound of the hoof either up or down the stairs. After they had taken Miss Hisgins to a room I sent word that I should follow so soon as they were ready for me. And presently when a message came to tell me that I could come any time I asked her father to give me a hand with my instrument box and between us we carried it into the girl's bedroom. I had the bed pulled well out into the middle of the room after which I erected the electric pentacle round the bed. Then I directed that lamps should be placed round the room but that on no account must any light be made within the pentacle neither must anyone pass in nor out. The girl's mother I had placed within the pentacle and directed that her maid should sit without ready to carry any message so as to make sure that Miss Hisgins did not have to leave the pentacle. I suggested also that the girl's father should stay the night in the room and that he had better be armed. When I left the bedroom I found Beaumont waiting outside the door in a miserable state of anxiety. I told him what I had done and explained to him that Miss Hisgins was probably perfectly safe within the protection but that in addition to her father remaining the night in the room I intended to stand guard at the door. I told him that I should like him to keep me company for I knew that he could never sleep feeling as he did and I should not be sorry to have a companion. Also I wanted to have him under my own observation for there was no doubt that he was actually in greater danger in some ways than the girl. At least that was my opinion and is still as I think you will agree later. I asked him whether he would object to my drawing a pentacle round him for the night and got him to agree but I saw that he did not know whether to be superstitious about it or to regard it as more of a piece of foolish mumming but he took it seriously enough when I gave him some particulars about the black veil case when young Astor died. You remember he said it was a piece of silly superstition and stayed outside. Poor devil. The night passed quietly enough until a little while before dawn when we both heard the sounds of a great horse galloping round and round the house just as old Captain Hiskins had described it. You can imagine how queer it made me feel and directly afterward I heard someone stir within the bedroom. I knocked at the door for I was uneasy and the captain came. I asked whether everything was right to which he replied yes and immediately asked me whether I had heard the galloping so that I knew he had heard them also. I suggested that it might be well to leave the bedroom door open a little until the dawn came in as there was certainly something abroad. This was done and he went back into the room to be near his wife and daughter. I had better say here that I was doubtful whether there was any value in the defense about Miss Hiskins for what I term the personal sounds of the manifestation were so extraordinarily material that I was inclined to parallel the case with that one of Harfords where the hand of the child kept materializing within the pentacle and patting the floor. As you will remember that was a hideous business. Yet as a chance nothing further happened and so soon as daylight had fully come we all went off to bed. Beaumont knocked me up about midday and I went down and made breakfast into lunch. Miss Hiskins was there and seemed in very fair spirits considering. She told me that I had made her feel almost safe for the first time for days. She told me also that her cousin Harry Parscott was coming down from London and she knew that he would do anything to help fight the ghost. And after that she and Beaumont went out into the grounds to have a little time together. I had a walk in the grounds myself and went round the house but saw no traces of hoof marks and after that I spent the rest of the day making an examination of the house but found nothing. I made an end of my search before dark and went to my room to dress for dinner. When I got down the cousin had just arrived I have met for a long time. A chap with a tremendous amount of pluck and the particular kind of man I like to have about me in a bad case like the one I was on. I could see that what puzzled him most was our belief in the genuineness of the haunting and I found myself almost wanting something to happen just to show him how true it was. As at chance something did happen with a vengeance. Beaumont and Miss Hisgins had gone out for a stroll just before the dusk and Captain Hisgins asked me to come into his study for a short chat whilst Parscott went upstairs with his traps for he had no man with him. I had a long conversation with the old Captain in which I pointed out that the haunting had evidently no particular connection with the house but only with the girl herself and the sooner she was married the better as it would give Beaumont a right to be with her at all times and further than this it might be that the manifestations would cease if the marriage were actually performed. The old man nodded agreement to this especially to the first part and reminded me that three of the girls who were said to have been haunted had been sent away from home and met their deaths whilst away. And then in the midst of our talk there came a pretty frightening interruption for all at once the old butler rushed into the room most extraordinarily pale. Miss Mary, sir! Miss Mary, sir! he gasped she's screaming out in the park, sir and they say they can hear the horse. The captain made one dive for a rack of arms and snatched down his old sword and ran out drawing it as he ran. I dashed out and up the stairs snatched my camera flashlight and heavy revolver gave one yell at Parscott's door the horse and was down and into the grounds. Away in the darkness there was a confused shouting and I caught the sounds of shooting out among the scattered trees and then from a patch of blackness to my left there burst suddenly an infernal gobbling sort of neighing. Instantly I whipped round and snapped off the flashlight. The great light blazed out momentarily showing me the leaves of a big tree close at hand quivering in the night breeze but I saw nothing else and then the tenfold blackness came down upon me and I heard Parscott shouting a little way back to know whether I had seen anything. The next instant he was beside me and I felt safer for his company for there was some incredible thing near to us and I was momentarily blind because of the brightness of the flashlight. What was it? What was it? He kept repeating in an excited voice and all the time I was staring into the darkness and answering mechanically I don't know I don't know. There was a burst of shouting somewhere ahead and then a shot. We ran toward the sounds yelling to the people not to shoot for in the darkness and panic there was this danger also. Then there came two of the gamekeepers racing hard up the drive with their lanterns and guns and immediately afterward a row of lights dancing toward us from the house carried by some of the men's servants. As the lights came up I saw we had come close to Beaumont. He was standing over Miss Hisgins and he had his revolver in his hand. Then I saw his face and there was a great wound across his forehead. By him was the captain turning his naked sword this way and that and peering into the darkness. A little behind him stood the old butler a battle axe from one of the armstands in the hall in his hands. Yet there was nothing strange to be seen anywhere. We got the girl into the house and left her with her mother in Beaumont whilst a groom rode for a doctor and then the rest of us with four other keepers all armed with guns and carrying lanterns searched round the home park but we found nothing. When we got back we found that the doctor had been. He had bound up Beaumont's wound which luckily was not deep and ordered Miss Hisgins straight to bed. I went upstairs with the captain and found Beaumont on guard outside of the girl's door. I asked him how he felt and then, so soon as the girl and her mother were ready for us, Captain Hisgins and I went into the bedroom and fixed the pentacle again round the bed. They had already got the lamps about the room and after I had set the same order of watching as on the previous night I joined Beaumont outside of the door. Parscott had come up while had been in the bedroom and between us we got some idea from Beaumont as to what had happened out in the park. It seems that they were coming home after their stroll from the direction of the West Lodge. It had got quite dark and suddenly Miss Hisgins said Hush! and came to a standstill. He stopped and listened but heard nothing for little. Then he caught it, the sound of a horse seemingly a long way off galloping toward them over the grass. He told the girl that it was nothing and started to hurry her toward the house but she was not deceived, of course. In less than a minute they heard it quite close to them in the darkness and they started running. Then Miss Hisgins caught her foot and fell. She began to scream and that is what the butler heard. As Beaumont lifted the girl he heard their hooves come thudding right at him. He stood over her and fired all five chambers of his revolver right at the sounds. He told us that he was sure he saw something that looked like an enormous horse's head right upon him in the light of the last flash of his pistol. Immediately afterward he was struck a tremendous blow which knocked him down and then the captain and the butler came running up shouting. The rest, of course, we knew. About ten o'clock the butler brought us up a tray for which I was very glad as the night before I had got rather hungry. I warned Beaumont, however, to be very particular not to drink any spirits and I also made him give me his pipe and matches. At midnight I drew a pentacle round him and Parshkott and I sat one on each side of him outside the pentacle for I had no fear that there would be any manifestation made against anyone except Beaumont and Ms. Siskins. After that we kept pretty quiet. The passage was lit by a big lamp at each end so that we had plenty of light and we were all armed. Beaumont and I with revolvers and Parshkott with a shotgun. In addition to my weapon I had my camera and flashlight. Now and again we talked and whispers and twice the captain came out of the bedroom to have a word with us. About half past one we had all grown very silent and suddenly about twenty minutes later I held up my hand silently for there seemed to be a sound of galloping out in the night. I knocked on the bedroom door for the captain to open it and when he came I whispered to him that we thought we heard the horse. For some time we stayed listening and both Parshkott and the captain thought they heard it but now I was not so sure neither was Beaumont. Yet afterward I thought I heard it again. I told Captain Hiskins I thought he had better go into the bedroom and leave the door a little open and this he did but from that time onward we heard nothing and presently the dawn came in and we all went very thankfully to bed. When I was called at lunchtime I had a little surprise for Captain Hiskins told me that they had held a family council and had decided to take my advice and have the marriage without a day's more delay than possible. Beaumont was already on his way to London to get a special license and they hoped to have the wedding next day. This pleased me for it seemed the sanest thing to be done in the extraordinary circumstances and meanwhile I should continue my investigations but until the marriage was accomplished my chief thought was to keep Miss Hiskins near to me. After lunch I thought I would take a few experimental photographs of Miss Hiskins and her surroundings sometimes the camera sees things that would seem very strange to normal human eyesight. With this intention and partly to make an excuse to keep her in my company as much as possible I asked Miss Hiskins to join me in my experiments. She seemed glad to do this and I spent several hours with her wandering all over the house from room to room and whenever the impulse came I took a flashlight of her and the room or corridor in which we chanced to be at the moment. After we had gone right through the house in this fashion I asked her whether she felt sufficiently brave to repeat the experiments in the cellars. She said yes and so I rooted out Captain Hiskins and Parscott for I was not going to take her even into what you might call artificial darkness without help and companionship at hand. When we were ready we went down into the wine cellar Captain Hiskins carrying a shotgun and Parscott especially prepared background and a lantern. I got the girl to stand in the middle of the cellar whilst Parscott and the captain held out the background behind her. Then I fired off the flashlight and we went into the next cellar where we repeated the experiment. Then in the third cellar a tremendous pitch dark place something extraordinary and horrible manifested itself. I had stationed Miss Hiskins in the center of the place with her father and Parscott holding the background as before. When all was ready and just as I pressed the trigger of the flash there came in the cellar that dreadful gobbling neighing that I had heard out in the park. It seemed to come from somewhere above the girl and in the glare of the sudden light I saw that she was staring tensely upward but at no visible thing. And then in the succeeding comparative darkness I was shouting to the captain and Parscott to run Miss Hiskins out into the daylight. This was done instantly and I shut and locked the door afterward making the first and eighth signs of the Sa'ama ritual opposite to each post and connecting them across the threshold with a triple line. In the meanwhile Parscott and Captain Hiskins carried the girl to her mother and left her there in a half fainting condition while Steyr stayed on guard outside of the cellar door feeling pretty horrible for I knew that there was some disgusting thing inside and along with this feeling there was a sense of half-ashamedness rather miserable, you know because I had exposed Miss Hiskins to the danger. I had got the captain's shotgun and when he and Parscott came down again they were each carrying guns and lanterns. I could not possibly tell you the utter relief of spirit and body that came to me when I heard them coming but just try to imagine what it was like standing outside that cellar can you? I remember noticing just before I went to unlock the door how white and ghastly Parscott looked and the old captain was gray looking and I wondered whether my face was like theirs and this, you know, had its own distinct effect upon my nerves for it seemed to bring the beastliness of the thing crashed down onto me in a fresh way. I know it was only sheer willpower that carried me up to the door and made me turn the key. I paused one little moment and then with a nerdy jerk set the door wide open and held my lantern over my head. Parscott and the captain came one on each side of me and held up their lanterns but the place was absolutely empty. Of course I did not trust to a casual look of this kind but spent several hours with the help of the two others and sounding every square foot of the floor, ceiling and walls. Yet in the end I had to admit that the place itself was absolutely normal and so we came away. But I sealed the door and outside opposite each doorpost I made the first and last signs of the Sa'ama ritual joining them as before with a triple line. Can you imagine what it was like searching that cellar? When we got upstairs I inquired very anxiously how Miss Hisgins was and the girl came out herself to tell me that she was all right and that I was not to trouble about her or blame myself as I told her I had been doing. I felt happier then and went off to dress for dinner and after that was done Parscott and I took one of the bathrooms to develop the negatives that I had been taking. Yet none of the plates had anything to tell us until we came to the one that was taken in the cellar. Parscott was developing and I had taken a batch of the fixed plates out into the lamp light to examine them. I had just gone carefully through the lot when I heard a shout from Parscott and when I ran to him he was looking at a partially developed negative that he was holding up to the red light. It showed the girl plainly looking upward as I had seen her but the thing that astonished me was the shadow of an enormous hoof right above her as if it were coming down upon her out of the shadows and you know I had run her bang into that danger that was the thought that was chief in my mind. As soon as the developing was complete I fixed the plate and examined it carefully in a good light. There was no doubt about it at all. The thing above Ms. Hiskins was an enormous shadowy hoof. Yet I was no nearer to coming to any definite knowledge and the only thing I could do was to warn Parscott to say nothing about it to the girl for it would only increase her fright but I showed the thing to her father for I considered it right that he should know. That night we took the same precaution for Ms. Hiskins safety as on the two previous nights and Parscott kept me company yet the dawn came in without anything unusual having happened and I went off to bed. When I got down to lunch I learnt that Beaumont had wired to say that he would be in soon after four also that a message had been sent to the rector and it was generally plain that the ladies of the house were in a tremendous fluster. Beaumont's train was late and he did not get home until five but even then the rector had not put in an appearance and the butler came in to say that the coachman had returned without him as he had been called away unexpectedly. Twice more during the evening the carriage was sent down but the clergyman had not returned and we had to delay the marriage until the next day. That night I arranged the defense round the girls bed and the captain and his wife sat up with her as before. Beaumont as I expected insisted on keeping watch with me and he seemed in a curiously frightened mood not for himself you know but for Ms. Hisgins. He had a horrible feeling he told me that there would be a final dreadful attempt on his sweetheart that night. This of course I told him was nothing but nerves yet really it made me feel very anxious for I had seen too much not to know that under such circumstances a premonitory conviction of impending danger is not necessarily to be put down entirely to nerves. In fact Beaumont was so simply and earnestly convinced that the night would bring some extraordinary manifestation that I got Parscott to rig up a long cord from the wire of the butler's bell to come along the passage handy. To the butler himself I gave directions not to undress and to give the same order to two of the footmen. If I rang he was to come instantly with the footmen carrying lanterns and the lanterns were to be kept ready lit all night. If for any reason the bell did not ring and I blew my whistle he was to take that as a signal in the place of the bell. After I had arranged all these minor details I drew a pentacle about Beaumont and warned him very particularly to stay within it whatever happened. And when this was done there was nothing to do but wait and pray that the night would go as quietly as the night before. We scarcely talked at all and about one a.m. we were all very tense and nervous so that at last Parscott got up and began to walk up and down the corridor to study himself a bit. Presently I slipped off my pumps and joined him and we walked up and down whispering occasionally for something over an hour until in turning I caught my foot in the bell cord and went down on my face but without hurting myself or making a noise. When I got up Parscott nudged me. Did you notice that the bell never rang? he whispered. Jove, I said. You're right. Wait a minute, he answered. I'll bet it's only a kink somewhere in the cord. He left his gun and slipped along the passage and, taking the top lamp, tiptoed away into the house carrying Beaumont's revolve already in his right hand. He was a plucky chap. I remember thinking then and again later. Just then Beaumont motioned to me for absolute quiet. Directly afterward I heard the thing for which he listened. The sound of a horse galloping out in the night. I think I may say I fairly shivered. The sound died away and left a horrible desolate, eerie feeling in the air, you know. I put my hand out to the bell cord, hoping Parscott had got it clear. Then I waited, glancing before and behind. Perhaps two minutes passed full of what seemed like an almost unearthly quiet and then suddenly down the corridor at the lighted end there sounded the clumping of a great hoof and instantly the lamp was thrown with a tremendous crash and we were in the dark. I tugged hard on the cord and blew the whistle. Then I raised my snapshot and fired the flashlight. The corridor blazed into brilliant light but there was nothing and then the darkness fell like thunder. I heard the captain at the bedroom door and shouted to him to bring out a lamp quick but instead something started to kick the door and I heard the captain shouting within the bedroom and then the screaming of the women. I had a sudden horrible fear that the monster had got into the bedroom but in the same instant from up the corridor there came abruptly the vile gobbling name that we had heard in the park in the cellar. I blew the whistle again and groped blindly for the bell cord shouting to Beaumont to stay in the pentacle whatever happened. I yelled again to the captain to bring out a lamp and there came a smashing sound against the bedroom door. Then I had my matches in my hand to get some light before that incredible unseen monster was upon us. The match scraped on the box and flared up duly and in the same instant I heard a faint sound behind me. I whipped around in a kind of mad terror and saw something in the light of the match. A monstrous horse head close to Beaumont Look out Beaumont! I shouted in a sort of scream It's behind you! The match went out abruptly and instantly there came the huge bang of Parsket's double barrel both barrels at once fired evidently single-handed by Beaumont close to my ear as it seemed. I caught a momentary glimpse of the great head in the flash and of an enormous hoof amid the belch of fire and smoke seeming to be descending upon Beaumont. In the same instant I fired three chambers of my revolver. There was a sound of a dull blow and then that horrible gobbling nay broke out close to me. I fired twice at the sound. Immediately afterward something struck me and I was knocked backward. I got under my knees and shouted for help at the top of my voice. I heard the women screaming behind the closed door of the bedroom and was dully aware that the door was being smashed from the inside and directly afterward I knew that Beaumont was struggling with some hideous thing near to me. For an instant I held back stupidly paralyzed with funk and then blindly and in a sort of rigid chill of goose flesh I went to help him shouting his name. I can tell you I was nearly sick with the naked fear I had on me. There came a little choking scream out of the darkness and at that I jumped forward into the dark. I gripped a vast furry ear. Then something struck me another great blow knocking me sick. I hit back weak and blind and gripped with my other hand at the incredible thing. Abruptly I was dimly aware of a tremendous crash behind me and a great burst of light. There were other lights in the passage and a noise of feet and shouting. My hand grips were torn from the thing they held. I shut my eyes stupidly and heard a loud yell above me and then a heavy blow like a butcher chopping meat. And then something fell upon me. I was helped to my knees by the captain and the butler. On the floor lay an enormous horse head out of which protruded a man's trunk and legs. On the wrists were fixed great hooves. It was the monster. The captain cut something with the sword that he held in his hand and stooped and lifted off the mask for that is what it was. I saw the face then of the man who had worn it. It was Parsket. He had a bad wound across his forehead where the captain's sword had bit through the mask. I looked bewilderly from him to Beaumont who was sitting up leaning against the wall of the corridor. Then I stared at Parsket again. By Jove, I said at last. And then I was quiet for I was so ashamed for the man. You can understand, can't you? And he was opening his eyes and you know I had grown so to like him. And then, you know, just as Parsket was getting back his wits and looking from one to the other of us and beginning to remember there happened a strange and incredible thing. For from the end of the corridor there sounded suddenly the clumping of a great hoof. I looked that way and then instantly at Parsket and saw a horrible fear in his face and eyes. He wrenched himself round weakly and stared in mad terror up the corridor to where the sound had been and the rest of us stared in a frozen group. I remember vaguely half-sobs and whispers from Miss Hisgen's bedroom all the while that I stared frighteningly up the corridor. The silence lasted several seconds and then abruptly there came again the clumping of the great hoof away at the end of the corridor and immediately afterward the clunk clunk clunk clunk of mighty hoofs coming down the passage toward us. Even then, you know, most of us thought it was some mechanism of Parsket still at work and we were in the queerest mixture of fright and doubt. I think everyone looked at Parsket and suddenly the captain shouted out Stop this damn fooling at once! Haven't you done enough? For my part I was now frightened for I had a sense that there was something horrible and wrong and then Parsket managed to gasp out It's not me! My God! It's not me! My God! It's not me! And then, you know, it seemed to come home to everyone in an instant that there really was some dreadful thing coming down the passage. There was a mad rush to get away and even old Captain Hisgans gave back with a butler in the footmen. Beaumont fainted outright as I found afterward for he had been badly mauled. I just flattened back against the wall, kneeling as I was, too stupid and dazed even to run. And almost in the same instant the ponderers have fallen sounded close to me and seemed to shake the solid floor as they passed. Abruptly the great sound ceased and I knew in a sort of sick fashion that the thing had halted opposite to the door of the girl's bedroom and then I was aware that Parscott was standing rocking in the doorway with his arms spread across so as to fill the doorway with his body. Parscott was extraordinarily pale and the blood was running down his face from the wound in his forehead and then I noticed that he seemed to be looking at something in the passage with a peculiar desperate fixed incredibly masterful gaze but there was really nothing to be seen and suddenly the clunk clunk clunk clunk recommenced and passed onward down the passage in the same moment Parscott pitched forward out of the doorway onto his face there were shouts from the huddle of men down the passage and the two footmen and the butlers simply ran carrying their lanterns but the captain went against the sidewall with his back and put the lamp he was carrying over his head the dull tread of the horse went past him and left him unharmed and I heard the monstrous hoof falls going away and away through the quiet house and after that a dead silence then the captain moved and came toward me very slow and shaky and with an extraordinarily gray face I crept toward Parscott and the captain came to help me we turned him over and you know I knew in a moment that he was dead but you can imagine what a feeling it sent through me I looked at the captain and suddenly he said that and I know that he was trying to tell me that Parscott had stood between his daughter and whatever it was that had gone down the passage I stood up and steadied him though I was not very steady myself and suddenly his face began to work and he went down on his knees by Parscott and cried like some shaken child then the women came out of the doorway of the bedroom and I turned away and left him to them whilst I over to Beaumont that is practically the whole story and the only thing that is left to me is to try to explain some of the puzzling parts here and there perhaps you have seen that Parscott was in love with Ms. Hisgins and this fact is the key to a good deal that was extraordinary he was doubtless responsible for some portions of the haunting in fact I think for nearly everything but you know I can prove nothing and what I have to tell you is chiefly the result of deduction in the first place it is obvious that Parscott's intention was to frighten Beaumont away and when he found that he could not do this I think he grew so desperate that he really intended to kill him I hate to say this but the facts forced me to think so I am quite certain that it was Parscott who broke Beaumont's arm he knew all the details of the so-called horse legend and got the idea to work upon the old story for his own end he evidently had some method of slipping in and out of the house probably through one of the many French windows or possibly he had a key to one or two of the garden doors and when he was supposed to be away he was really coming down on the quiet and hiding somewhere in the neighborhood the incident of the kiss in the dark hall I put down to sheer nervous imaginings on the part of Beaumont and Ms. Hisgins yet I must say that the sound of the horse outside of the front door is a little difficult to explain away but I am still inclined to keep to my first idea on this point that there was nothing really unnatural about it the hoof sounds in the billiard room and down the passage were done by Parscott from the floor below by bumping up against the paneled ceiling with the block of wood tied to one of the window hooks I proved this by an examination which showed the dents and the woodwork the sounds of the horse galloping around the house were possibly made also by Parscott who must have had a horse tied up in the plantation nearby unless indeed he made the sounds himself but I do not see how he could have gone fast enough to produce the illusion in any case I don't feel perfect certainty on this point I failed to find any hoof marks as you remember the gobbling neighing in the park was a ventrillical achievement on the part of Parscott and the attack out there on Beaumont was also by him so that when I thought he was in his bedroom he must have been outside all the time and joined me after I ran out of the front door this is almost probable I mean that Parscott was the cause for if it had been something more serious he would certainly have given up his foolishness knowing that there was no longer any need for it I cannot imagine how he escaped being shot both then and in the last mad action of which I have just told you he was enormously without fear of any kind for himself as you can see the time when Parscott was with us when we thought we heard the horse galloping around the house we must have been deceived no one was very sure except of course Parscott who would naturally encourage the belief the nang in the cellar is where I consider there came the first suspicion into Parscott's mind that there was something more at work than his sham haunting the nang was done by him in the same way that he did it in the park but when I remember how ghastly he looked I feel sure that the sounds must have had some infernal quality added to them which frightened the man himself yet later he would persuade himself that he had been getting fanciful of course I must not forget that the effect upon Miss Hisgans must have made him feel pretty miserable then about the clergyman being called away we found afterward that it was a bogus errand or rather call and it is apparent that Parscott was at the bottom of this so as to get a few more hours in which to achieve his end and what that was at very little imagination will show you for he had found that Beaumont would not be frightened away I hate to think this but I'm bound to anyway it is obvious that the man was temporarily a bit off his normal balance loves a queer disease then there is no doubt at all that Parscott left the cord to the butler's bell hitched somewhere so as to give him an excuse to slip away naturally to clear it this also gave him the opportunity to remove one of the passage lamps then he had only to smash the other and the passage was in utter darkness for him to make the attempt on Beaumont in the same way it was he who locked the door of the bedroom and took the key it was in his pocket this prevented the captain from bringing a light and coming to the rescue but Captain Hisgins broke down the door with a heavy fender curb and it was his mashing the door that sounded so confusing and frightening in the darkness of the passage the photograph of the monstrous hoof above Miss Hisgins in the cellar is one of the things that I am less sure about it might have been faked by Parsket whilst I was out of the room and this would have been easy enough to anyone who knew how but you know it does not look like a fake yet there is as much evidence of probability that it was faked as against and the thing is too vague for an examination to help to a definite decision so that I will express new opinion one way or the other it is certainly a horrible photograph and now I come to that last dreadful thing there has been no further manifestation of anything abnormal so that there is an extraordinary uncertainty in my conclusions if we had not heard those last sounds and if Parsket had not shown that enormous sense of fear the whole of this case could be explained in the way in which I have shown and in fact as you have seen I am of the opinion that almost all of it can be cleared up but I see no way of going past the thing we heard at the last and the fear that Parsket showed his death no that proves nothing at the inquest it was described somewhat untechnically is due to heart spousen that is normal enough and leaves us quite in the dark as to whether he died because he stood between the girl and some incredible thing of monstrosity the look on Parsket's face and the thing he called out when he heard the great hoof sounds coming down the passage seemed to show that he had the sudden realization of what before then must have been nothing more than a horrible suspicion and his fear and appreciation of some tremendous danger approaching was probably more keenly real even than mine and then he did the one fine great thing and the cause I said what caused it? Karnaki shook his head God knows he answered with a peculiar sincere reverence if that thing was what it seemed to be one might suggest an explanation which would not offend one's reason but which may be utterly wrong yet I have thought though it would take a long lecture on thought induction to get you to appreciate my reasons that Parsket had produced what I might term a kind of induced haunting a kind of induced simulation of his mental conceptions to his desperate thoughts and broodings it is impossible to make it clearer in a few words but the old story I said why may not there have been something in that there may have been something in it said Karnaki but I do not think it had anything to do with this I have not clearly thought out my reasons yet but later I may be able to tell you why I think so and the marriage and the seller was there anything found there? asked Taylor yes the marriage was performed that day in spite of the tragedy Karnaki told us it was the wisest thing to do considering the things that I cannot explain yes I had the floor of that big seller up for I had a feeling I might find something there to give me some light but there was nothing you know the whole thing is tremendous and extraordinary I shall never forget the look on Parsket's face and afterward the disgusting sounds of those great hooves going away through the quiet house Karnaki stood up out your go he said in a friendly fashion using the recognized formula and we went presently out into the quiet of the embankment and so to our homes End of Chapter 4