 CHAPTER V. THE SEARCHER OF THE END HOUSE It was still evening, as I remember, and the four of us, Jessup, Arkwright, Taylor and I, looked disappointedly at Karnacky, where he sat silent in his great chair. We had come in response to the usual card of invitation, which, as you know, we have come to consider a sure prelude to a good story, and now, after telling us the short incident of the three straw platters, he had lapsed into a contented silence, and the night not half gone as I have hinted. However, as it chanced, some pitting fate jogged Karnacky's elbow, or his memory, and he began again in his queer-level way. The straw platter's business reminds me of the searcher's case, which I have sometimes thought might interest you. It was some time ago, in fact, a deuce of a long time ago that the thing happened, and my experience of what I might term curious things was very small at that time. I was living with my mother when it occurred, in a small house just outside of Appledorn, on the south coast. The house was the last of a row of detached cottage-villas, each house standing in its own gardens, and very dainty little places they were, very old, and most of them smothered in roses, and all with those quaint old leaded windows and doors of genuine oak. You must try to picture them for the sake of their complete niceness. Now I must remind you at the beginning that my mother and I had lived in that little house for two years, and in the whole of that time there had not been a single peculiar happening to worry us. And then something happened. It was about two o'clock one morning, as I was finishing some letters, that I heard the door of my mother's bedroom open, and she came to the top of the stairs and knocked on the banisters. All right, dear, I called, for I suppose she was merely reminding me that I should have been in bed long ago. Then I heard her go back to her room, and I hurried my work for fear she would lie awake until she heard me safe up to my room. When I was finished I lit my candle, put out the lamp, and went upstairs. As I came opposite the door of my mother's room I saw that it was open, called good night to her very softly, and asked whether I should close the door. As there was no answer I knew that she had dropped off to sleep again, and I closed the door very gently and turned into my room, just across the passage. As I did so I experienced a momentary half aware sense of a faint, peculiar, disagreeable odor in the passage, but it was not until the following night that I realized I had noticed a smell that offended me. You follow me? It is so often like that, one suddenly knows a thing that really recorded itself on one's consciousness perhaps a year before. The next morning at breakfast I mentioned casually to my mother that she had dropped off and I had shut the door for her. To my surprise she assured me she had never been out of her room. I reminded her about the two wraps she had given upon the banister, but she still was certain I must be mistaken, and in the end I teased her, saying she had grown so accustomed to my bad habit of sitting up late that she had come to call me in her sleep. Of course she denied this and I let the matter drop, but I was more than a little puzzled and did not know whether to believe my own explanation or to take the matters, which was to put the noises down to the mice and the open door to the fact that she couldn't have properly latched it when she went to bed. I suppose, away in the subconscious part of me, I had a stirring of less reasonable thoughts, but certainly I had no real uneasiness at that time. The next night there came a further development. About two thirty a.m. I heard my mother's door open, just as on the previous night, and immediately afterward she wrapped sharply on the banister as it seemed to me. I stopped my work and called up that I would not be long. As she made no reply, and I did not hear her go back to bed, I had a quick sense of wonder whether she might not be doing it in her sleep after all, just as I had said. With the thought I stood up, and taking the lamp from the table began to go toward the door, which was open into the passage. It was then I got a sudden nasty sort of thrill, for it came to me, all at once, that my mother never knocked. When I sat up late she always called. You will understand I was not really frightened in any way, only vaguely uneasy, and pretty sure she must really be doing the thing in her sleep. I went quickly up the stairs, and when I came to the top my mother was not there, but her door was open. I had a bewildered sense, though believing she must have gone quietly back to bed without my hearing her. I entered her room and found her sleeping quietly and naturally, for the vague sense of trouble in me was sufficiently strong as to make me go over to look at her. When I was sure that she was perfectly right in every way I was still a little bothered, but much more inclined to think my suspicion correct, and that she had gone quietly back to bed in her sleep without knowing what she had been doing. This was the most unreasonable thing to think as you must see. And then it came to me, suddenly, that vague, queer, mildewy smell in the room, and it was in that instant I became aware I had smelled the same strange uncertain smell the night before in the passage. I was definitely uneasy now, and began to search my mother's room, though with no aim or clear thought of anything except to assure myself that there was nothing in the room. All the time, you know, I never expected really to find anything. Only my uneasiness had to be assured. In the middle of my search my mother woke up, and of course I had to explain. I told her about her door opening and the knocks on the banister, and that I had come up and found her asleep. I said nothing about the smell, which was not very distinct, but told her that the thing happening twice had made me a bit nervous and possibly fanciful, and I thought I would take a look around just to feel satisfied. I have thought since that the reason I made no mention of the smell was not only that I did not want to frighten my mother, for I was scarcely that myself, but because I had only a vague half-knowledge that I associated the smell with fancies too indefinite and peculiar to bear talking about. You will understand that I am able now to analyze and put the thing into words, but then I did not even know my chief reason for saying nothing, let alone appreciate its possible significance. It was my mother, after all, who put part of my vague sensations into words. What a disagreeable smell, she exclaimed, and was silent a moment looking at me. Then you feel there's something wrong, still looking at me, very quietly, but with a little nervous note of questioning expectancy. I don't know, I said. I can't understand it unless you've really been walking about in your sleep. The smell, she said. Yes, I replied, that's what puzzles me too. I'll take a walk through the house, but I don't suppose it's anything. I lit her candle and taking the lamp I went through the other bedrooms, and afterward all over the house, including the three underground cellars, which was a little trying on the nerves, seeing that I was more nervous than I would admit. Then I went back to my mother and told her that there was really nothing to bother about, and, you know, in the end we talked ourselves into believing it was nothing. My mother would not agree that she might have been sleepwalking, but she was ready to put the door opening down to the fault of the latch, which certainly snicked very lightly. As for the knocks they might be the old warped woodwork of the house cracking a bit, or a mouse rattling a piece of loose plaster. The smell was more difficult to explain, but finally we agreed that it might easily be the queer night smell of the moist earth coming in through the open window of my mother's room, from the back garden, or, for that matter, from the little churchyard beyond the big wall at the bottom of the garden. And so we quietened down, and finally I went to bed and to sleep. I think this is certainly a lesson in the way we humans can delude ourselves, for there was not one of these explanations that my reason could really accept. Try to imagine yourself in the same circumstances, and you will see how absurd our attempts to explain the happenings really were. In the morning, when I came down to breakfast, we talked it all over again, and whilst we agreed that it was strange, we also agreed that we had begun to imagine funny things in the backs of our minds, which now we felt half ashamed to admit. This is very strange when you come to look into it, but very human. And then that night again my mother's door was slammed once more, just after midnight. I caught up the lamp, and when I reached her door I found it shut. I opened it quickly, and went in, to find my mother lying with her eyes opened, and rather nervous, having been waked by the bang of the door. But what upset me more than anything was the fact that there was a disgusting smell in the passage and in her room. Whilst I was asking her whether she was all right, a door slammed twice downstairs, and you can imagine how it made me feel. My mother and I looked at one another, and then I let her candle, and taking the poker from the fender, went downstairs with the lamp, beginning to feel really nervous. The cumulative effect of so many queer happenings was getting hold of me, and all the apparently reasonable explanation seemed futile. The horrible smell seemed to be very strong in the downstairs passage, also in the front room and the cellars, but chiefly in the passage. I made a very thorough search of the house, and when I had finished I knew that all the lower windows and doors were properly shut and fastened, and that there was no living thing in the house beyond our two selves. Then I went up to my mother's room again, and we talked the thing over for an hour or more, and in the end came to the conclusion that we might, after all, be reading too much into a number of little things. But you know, inside of us we did not believe this. Later, when we had talked ourselves into a more comfortable state of mind, I said good night and went off to bed, and presently managed to get to sleep. In the early hours of the morning, whilst it was still dark, I was waked by a loud noise. I sat up in bed and listened, and from downstairs I heard, Bang! Bang! Bang! One door after another being slammed, at least that is the impression the sounds gave to me. I jumped out of bed, with the tingle and shiver of sudden fright on me, and at the same moment as I lit my candle, my door was pushed slowly open. I had left it unlatched, so as not to feel that my mother was quite shut off from me. Who's there? I shouted out, and a voice twice as deep as my natural one, and with a queer breathlessness that sudden fright so often gives one, who's there? Then I heard my mother saying, it's me, Thomas! Whatever is happening downstairs! She was in the room by this, and I saw that she had her bedroom poker in one hand, and her candle in the other. I could have smiled at her had it not been for the extraordinary sounds downstairs. I got into my slippers, and reached down an old sword bayonet from the wall. Then I picked up my candle and begged my mother not to come, but I knew it would be of little use if she had made up her mind, and she had, with the result that she acted as a sort of rearguard for me during our search. I know, in some ways, I was very glad to have her with me, as you will understand. By this time the doors slamming had ceased, and there seemed, probably because of the contrast, to be an appalling silence in the house. However, I led the way, holding my candle high, and keeping the sword bayonet very handy. Downstairs we found all the doors wide open, although the outer doors and the windows were closed all right. I began to wonder whether the noises had been made by the doors after all. Of one thing only were we sure, and that was, there was no living thing in the house, besides ourselves, while everywhere throughout the house there was the taint of that disgusting odor. Of course it was absurd to try to make believe any longer. There was something strange about the house, and as soon as it was daylight I set my mother to packing, and soon after breakfast I saw her off by train. Then I set to work to try to clear up the mystery. I went first to the landlord and told him all the circumstances. From him I found that twelve or fifteen years back the house had got rather a curious name from three or four tenants, with the result that it had remained empty for a long while. In the end he had led it at a low rent to a Captain Tobias on the one condition that he should hold his tongue if he saw anything peculiar. The landlord's idea, as he told me frankly, was to free the house from these tales of something queer by keeping a tenet in it, and then to sell it for the best price he could get. However, when Captain Tobias left after a ten-year's tenancy there was no longer any talk about the house, so when I offered to take it on a five-year's lease he had jumped at the offer. This was the whole story so he gave me to understand. When I pressed him for details of the supposed peculiar happenings in the house, all those years back, he said the tenants had talked about a woman who always moved about the house at night. Some tenants never saw anything, but others would not stay out the first month's tenancy. One thing the landlord was particular to point out, that no tenet had ever complained about knockings or door slamming. As for the smell he seemed positively indignant about it, but why I don't suppose he knew himself, except that he probably had some vague feeling that it was an indirect accusation on my part that the drains were not right. In the end I suggested that he should come down and spend the night with me. He agreed at once, especially as I told him I intended to keep the whole business quiet and try to get to the bottom of the curious affair, for he was anxious to keep the rumor of the haunting from getting about. About three o'clock that afternoon he came down, and we made a thorough search of the house which, however, revealed nothing unusual. Afterward the landlord made one or two tests which showed him the drainage was in perfect order. After that we made our preparations for sitting up all night. First we borrowed two policemen's dark lanterns from the station nearby, and where the superintendent and I were friendly, and as soon as it was really dusk the landlord went up to his house for his gun. I had the sword bayonet I have told you about, and when the landlord got back we sat talking in my study until nearly midnight. Then we lit the lanterns and went upstairs. We placed the lanterns, gun, and bayonet handy on the table, then I shut and sealed the bedroom doors. Afterward we took our seats and turned off the lights. From then until two o'clock nothing happened, but a little after two as I found by holding my watch near the faint glow of the closed lanterns I had a time of extraordinary nervousness, and I bent toward the landlord and whispered to him that I had a queer feeling something was about to happen and to be ready with his lantern. At the same time I reached out toward mine. In the very instant I made this movement the darkness which filled the passage seemed to become suddenly of a dull violet color, not as if a light had been shown, but as if the natural blackness of the night had changed color. And then, coming through this violet night, through this violet colored gloom, came a little naked child running. In an extraordinary way the child seemed not to be distinct from the surrounding gloom, but almost as if it were a concentration of that extraordinary atmosphere, as if that gloomy color which had changed the night came from the child. It seems impossible to make clear to you, but try to understand it. The child went past me, running with a natural movement of the legs of a chubby human child, but in an absolute and inconceivable silence. It was a very small child and must have passed under the table, but I saw the child through the table, as if it had been only a slightly darker shadow than the colored gloom. In the same instant I saw that a fluctuating glimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun barrels and the blade of the sword bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of glimmering light, floating unsupported where the tabletop should have shown solid. Now curiously as I saw these things I was subconsciously aware that I heard the anxious breathing of the landlord, quite clear and labored, close to my elbow, where he waited nervously with his hands on the lantern. I realized in that moment that he saw nothing, but waited in the darkness for my warning to come true. Even as I took heed of these minor things I saw the child jump to one side and hide behind some half-seen object that was certainly nothing belonging to the passage. I stared intently with a most extraordinary thrill of expectant wonder, with fright making goose flesh of my back, and even as I stared I solved for myself the less important problem of what the two black clouds were that hung over a part of the table. I think it very curious and interesting the double working of the mind, often so much more apparent during times of stress. The two clouds came from two faintly shining shapes, which I knew must be the metal of the lanterns, and the things that looked black to the sight with which I was then seeing could be nothing else than to what a normal human sight is known as light. This phenomenon I have always remembered. I have twice seen a somewhat similar thing in the dark light case and in that trouble of Matheson's which you know about. Even as I understood this matter of the lights I was looking to my left to understand why the child was hiding, and suddenly I heard the landlord shout out, the woman! But I saw nothing. I had a disagreeable sense that something repugnant was near to me, and I was aware in the same moment that the landlord was gripping my arm in a hard, frightened grip. Then I was looking back to where the child had hidden. I saw the child peeping out from behind its hiding place, seeming to be looking up the passage, but whether in fear I could not tell. Then it came out and ran headlong away, through the place where should have been the wall of my mother's bedroom, but the sense with which I was seeing these things showed me the wall only as a vague, upright shadow, unsubstantial. And immediately the child was lost to me in the dull, violent gloom. At the same time I felt the landlord press back against me as if something had passed close to him, and he called out again, a horse sort of cry, the woman, the woman! and turned the shade clumsily from off his lantern. But I had seen no woman, and the passage showed empty as he shone the beam of his light jerkily to and fro, but chiefly in the direction of the doorway of my mother's room. He was still clutching my arm and had risen to his feet, and now, mechanically, and almost slowly, I picked up my lantern and turned on the light. I shone it a little daisily at the seals upon the doors, but none were broken. Then I sent the light to and fro up and down the passage, but there was nothing. And I turned to the landlord, who was saying something in a rather incoherent fashion. As my light passed over his face I noted, in a dull sort of way, that he was drenched with sweat. Then my wits became more handable, and I began to catch the drift of his words. Did you see her? Did you see her? he was saying, over and over again. And then I found myself telling him, in quite a level voice, that I had not seen any woman. He became more coherent then, and I found that he had seen a woman come from the end of the passage and go past us. But he could not describe her except that she kept stopping and looking about her, and had even peered at the wall close beside him, as if looking for something. But what seemed to trouble him most was that she had not seemed to see him at all. He repeated this so often that in the end I told him, and in a absurd sort of way, that he ought to be very glad she had not. What did it all mean was the question? Somehow I was not so frightened as utterly bewildered. I had seen less then than since, but what I had seen had made me feel a drift from my anchorage of reason. What did it mean? He had seen a woman searching for something. I had not seen this woman. I had seen a child running away and hiding from something or someone. He had not seen the child or the other things, only the woman. And I had not seen her. What did it all mean? I had said nothing to the landlord about the child. I had been too bewildered, and I realized that it would be futile to attempt an explanation. He was already stupid with the thing he had seen, and not the kind of man to understand. All this went through my mind as we stood there, shining the lanterns to and fro. All the time intermingled with a streak of practical reasoning, I was questioning myself. What did it all mean? What was the woman searching for? What was the child running from? Suddenly, as I stood there, bewildered and nervous, making random answers to the landlord, a door below was violently slammed, and directly I caught the horrible reek of which I have told you. There, I said to the landlord and caught his arm in my turn. The smell! Do you smell it? He looked at me so stupidly that in a sort of nervous anger I shook him. Yes, he said in a queer voice, trying to shine the light from his shaking lantern at the stair-head. Come on, I said, and picked up my bayonet, and he came, carrying his gun awkwardly. I think he came more because he was afraid to be left alone than because he had any pluck left, poor beggar. I never sneer at that kind of funk, at least very seldom, for when it takes you it makes rags of your courage. I led the way downstairs, shining my light into the lower passage, and afterward at the door is to see whether they were shut, for I had closed and latched them, placing a corner of a mat against each door, so I should know which had been opened. I saw it once that none of the doors had been opened. Then I threw the beam of my light down alongside the stairway in order to see the mat I had placed against the door at the top of the cellar stairs. I got a horrid thrill, for the mat was flat. I paused a couple of seconds, shining my light to infrow in the passage, and holding fast to my courage I went down the stairs. As I came to the bottom step I saw patches of wet all up and down the passage. I shone my lantern on them. It was the imprint of a wet foot on the oil cloth of the passage, not an ordinary footprint, but a queer, soft, flabby, spreading imprint that gave me a feeling of extraordinary horror. Backward and forward I flashed the light over the impossible marks, and saw them everywhere. Suddenly I noticed that they led to each of the closed doors. I felt something touch my back and glanced round swiftly to find the landlord had come close to me, almost pressing against me in his fear. It's all right, I said, but in a rather breathless whisper, meaning to put a little courage into him, for I could feel that he was shaking through all his body. Even then as I tried to get him steadied enough to be of some use, his gun went off with a tremendous bang. He jumped and yelled with sheer terror, and I swore because of the shock. Give it to me for God's sake, I said, and slipped the gun from his hand, and in the same instant there was a sound of running steps up the garden path, and immediately the flash of a bull's eye lantern upon the fan light over the front door. Then the door was tried and directly afterward they came a thunderous knocking, which told me a policeman had heard the shot. I went to the door and opened it. Fortunately the constable knew me, and when I had beckoned him in I was able to explain matters in a very short time. While doing this Inspector Johnstone came up the path, having missed the officer, and seeing lights on the open door. I told him as briefly as possible what had occurred, and did not mention the child or the woman, for it would have seemed too fantastic for him to notice. I showed him the queer wet footprints and how they went toward the closed doors. I explained quickly about the mats and how that the one against the cellar door was flat, which showed that the door had been opened. The Inspector knotted and told the constable to guard the door at the top of the cellar stairs. He then asked the hall lamp to be lit, after which he took the policeman's lantern and led the way into the front room. He paused with the door wide open and threw the light all round, then he jumped into the room and looked behind the door. There was no one there, but all over the polished oak floor between the scattered rugs went the marks of those horrible spreading footprints, and the room permeated with that horrible odor. The Inspector searched the room carefully, then went into the middle room, using the same precautions. There was nothing in the middle room, or in the kitchen, or pantry, but everywhere went the wet foot marks through all the rooms, showing plainly wherever there were woodwork or oilcloth, and always there was a smell. The Inspector ceased from his search of the rooms and spent a minute in trying whether the mats would really fall flat when the doors were open, or merely ruckle up in a way as to appear they had been untouched, but in each case the mats fell flat and remained so. Extraordinary! I heard Johnstone mutter to himself, and then he went toward the cellar door. He had inquired at first whether there were windows to the cellar, and when he learned there was no way out except by the door, he had left this part of the search to the last. As Johnstone came up to the door, the policeman made a motion of salute and said something in a low voice, and something in the tone made me flick my light across him. I saw then that the man was very white, and he looked strange and bewildered. What! said Johnstone impatiently, speak up! A woman came along here, sir, and went through this ear door, said the Constable clearly, but with a curious monotonous intonation that is sometimes heard from an unintelligent man. Speak up! shouted the Inspector. A woman came along and went through this ear door, repeated the man monotonously. The Inspector caught the man by the shoulder and deliberately sniffed his breath. No, he said, and then sarcastically. I hope you held the door open politely for the lady. The door weren't open, sir, said the man simply. Are you mad? began Johnstone. No! broke in the landlord's voice from the back, speaking steadily enough. I saw the woman upstairs. It was evident that he had got back his control again. I'm afraid, Inspector Johnstone, I said, that there is more in this than you think. I certainly saw some very extraordinary things upstairs. The Inspector seemed to be about to say something, but instead he turned again to the door and flashed his light down and round about the mat. I saw then that the strange horrible footmarks came straight up to the cellar door and the last print showed under the door, yet the policeman said the door had not been opened. And suddenly, without any intention or realization of what I was saying, I asked the landlord, what were the feet like? I received no answer, for the Inspector was ordering the Constable to open the cellar door and the man was not obeying. Johnstone repeated the order and at last, in a queer automatic way, the man obeyed and pushed the door open. The loathsome smell beat up at us in a great wave of horror and the Inspector came backward a step. My God, he said, and went forward again and shown his light down the steps, but there was nothing visible, only that on each step showed the unnatural footprints. The Inspector brought the beam of the light vividly on this top step, and there, clear in the light, there was something small moving. The Inspector bent to look and the policeman and I with him. I don't want to disgust you, but the thing we looked at was a maggot. The policeman backed suddenly out of the doorway. The churchyard, he said, at the back of the house! Silence! said Johnstone with a queer break in the word, and I knew that at last he was frightened. He put his lantern into the doorway and shown it from step to step, following the footprints down into the darkness. Then he stepped back from the open doorway and we all gave back with him. He looked round and I had a feeling that he was looking for a weapon of some kind. Your gun, I said to the landlord, and he brought it from the front hall and passed it over to the Inspector, who took it and ejected the empty shell from the right barrel. He held out his hand for a live cartridge, which the landlord brought from his pocket. He loaded the gun and snapped the breach. He turned to the constable. Come on, he said, and moved toward the cellar doorway. I ain't coming, sir, said the policeman, very white in the face. With a sudden blaze of passion the Inspector took the man by the scruff and hove him bodily down into the darkness, and he went downward, screaming. The Inspector followed him instantly with his lantern and the gun, and I, after the Inspector, with the bayonet ready. Behind me I heard the landlord. At the bottom of the stairs the Inspector was helping the policeman to his feet, where he stood swaying a moment in a bewildered fashion. Then the Inspector went into the front cellar and his man followed him in a stupid fashion, but evidently no longer with any thought of running away from the horror. We all crowded into the front cellar, flashing our lights to and fro. Inspector Johnstone was examining the floor, and I saw that the footmarks went all round the cellar into all the corners and across the floor. I thought suddenly of the child that was running away from something. Do you see the thing that I was seeing vaguely? We went out of the cellar in a body, for there was nothing to be found. In the next cellar the footprints went everywhere in that queer erratic fashion, as if someone were searching for something, or following some blind scent. In the third cellar the Prince ended at the shallow well that had been the old water supply of the house. The well was full to the brim, and the water so clear that the pebbly bottom was plainly to be seen, as we shone the lights into the water. The search came to an abrupt end and we stood about the well, looking at one another, in an absolute horrible silence. Johnstone made another examination of the footprints, then he shone his light again into the clear shallow water, searching each inch of the plainly seen bottom, but there was nothing there. The cellar was full of the dreadful smell, and everyone stood silent except for the constant turning of the lamps to and fro around the cellar. The inspector looked up from his search of the well, and nodded quietly across at me, with his sudden acknowledgement that our belief was now his belief, the smell in the cellar seemed to grow more dreadful, and to be, as it were, a menace, a material expression that some monstrous thing was there with us, invisible. I think, began the inspector, and shone his light toward the stairway, and at this the constable's restraint went utterly, and he ran for the stairs, making a queer sound in his throat. The landlord followed at a quick walk, and then the inspector and I. He waited a single instant for me, and we went up together, treading on the same steps, and with our lights held backward. At the top I slammed and locked the stair door, and wiped my forehead, and my hands were shaking. The inspector asked me to give his man a glass of whiskey, and then he sent him on his beat. He stayed a short while with the landlord and me, and it was arranged that he would join us again the following night, and watch the well with us from midnight until daylight. Then he left us, just as the dawn was coming in. The landlord and I locked up the house, and went over to his place for a sleep. In the afternoon the landlord and I returned to the house to make arrangements for the night. He was very quiet, and I felt that he was to be relied on, now that he had been salted, as it were, with his fright of the previous night. We opened all the doors and windows, and blew the house through very thoroughly, and in the meanwhile we lit the lamps in the house, and took them into the cellars, where we set them all about, so as to have light everywhere. Then we carried down three chairs and a table, and set them in the cellar where the well was sunk. After that we stretched thin piano wire across the cellar, about nine inches from the floor, at such a height that it should catch anything moving about in the dark. When this was done I went through the house with the landlord and sealed every window and door in the place, accepting only the front door and the door at the top of the cellar stairs. Meanwhile a local wire smith was making something to my order, and when the landlord and I had finished tea at his house we went down to see how the smith was getting on. We found the thing complete. It looked rather like a huge parrot's cage, without any bottom, a very heavy gauge wire, and stood about seven feet high and was four feet in diameter. Fortunately I remembered to have it made longitudinally in two halves or else we should never have got it through the doorways and down the cellar stairs. I told the wire smith to bring the cage up to the house so he could fit the two halves rigidly together. As we returned I called in at an ironmongers where I bought some thin hemp rope and an iron rack pulley, like those used in Lancashire for hauling up the ceiling clothes racks, which you will find in every cottage. I bought also a couple of pitchforks. We shan't want to touch it I said to the landlord, and he nodded, rather white all at once. As soon as the cage arrived and had been fitted together in the cellar I sent away the smith and the landlord and I suspended it over the well into which it fitted easily. After a lot of trouble we managed to hang it so perfectly central from the rope over the iron pulley that when hoisted to the ceiling and dropped it went every time plunk into the well like a candle extinguisher. When we had it finally arranged I hoisted it up once more to the ready position and made the rope fast to a heavy wooden pillar which stood in the middle of the cellar. By ten o'clock I had everything arranged with the two pitchforks and the two police lanterns, also some whiskey and sandwiches. Underneath the table I had several buckets full of disinfectant. A little after eleven o'clock there was a knock at the front door and when I went I found Inspector Johnstone had arrived and brought with him one of his plain clothesmen. You will understand how pleased I was to see there would be this addition to our watch, for he looked a tough nervous man, brainy and collected, and one I should have picked to help us with a horrible job I felt pretty sure we should have to do that night. When the inspector and detective had entered I shut and locked the front door. Then, while the inspector held the light, I sealed the door carefully with tape and wax. At the head of the cellar's stirs I shut and locked that door also and sealed it in the same way. As we entered the cellar I warned Johnstone and his man to be careful not to fall over the wires, and then as I saw his surprise at my arrangements I began to explain my ideas and intentions to all of which he listened with strong approval. I was pleased to see also that the detective was nodding his head as I talked in a way that showed he appreciated all my precautions. As he put his lantern down the inspector picked up one of the pitchforks and balanced it in his hand. He looked at me and nodded. The best thing, he said, I only wish you'd got two more. Then we all took our seats, the detective getting a washing stool from the corner of the cellar. From then until a quarter to twelve we talked quietly whilst we made a light supper of whiskey and sandwiches, after which we cleared everything off the table, accepting the lanterns and the pitchforks. One of the latter I handed to the inspector, the other I took myself, and then having set my chair so as to be handy to the rope which lowered the cage into the well, I went round the cellar and put out every lamp. I groped my way to my chair and arranged the pitchfork and the dark lantern ready to my hand, after which I suggested that everyone should keep an absolute silence throughout the watch. I asked also that no lantern should be turned on until I gave the word. I put my watch on the table where a faint glow from my lantern made me able to see the time. For an hour nothing happened and everyone kept an absolute silence except for an occasional uneasy movement. About half past one however I was conscious again of the same extraordinary and peculiar nervousness which I had felt on the previous night. I put my hand out quickly and eased the hitch rope from around the pillar. The inspector seemed aware of the movement, for I saw the faint light from his lantern move a little, as if he had suddenly taken hold of it in readiness. A minute later I noticed there was a change in the color of the night in the cellar, and it grew slowly violent tinted upon my eyes. I glanced to and fro quickly in the new darkness, and even as I looked I was conscious that the violet color deepened in the direction of the well, but seeming at a great distance. There was, as it were, a nucleus to the change, and the nucleus came swiftly toward us, appearing to come from a great space almost in a single moment. It came near and I saw again that it was a little naked child running, and seeming to be of the violet night in which it ran. The child came with a natural running movement exactly as I described it before, but in a silence so peculiarly intense that it was as if it brought the silence with it. About halfway between the well and the table the child turned swiftly and looked back at something invisible to me, and suddenly it went down into a crouching attitude and seemed to be hiding behind something that showed vaguely, but there was nothing there except the bare floor of the cellar, nothing, I mean, of our world. I could hear the breathing of the three other men with wonderful distinctness and also the tick of my watch upon the table seemed to sound as loud and as slow as the tick of an old grandfather's clock. Someway I knew that none of the others saw what I was seeing. Abruptly the landlord who was next to me let out his breath with a little hissing sound. I knew then that something was visible to him. There came a creak from the table, and I had a feeling that the inspector was leaning forward, looking at something that I could not see. The landlord reached out his hand through the darkness and fumbled a moment to catch my arm. The woman, he whispered close to my ear, over by the well. I stared hard in that direction but saw nothing except that the violet color of the cellar seemed a little duller just there. I looked back quickly to the vague place where the child was hiding. I saw it was peering back from its hiding place. Suddenly it rose and ran straight for the middle of the table, which showed only as a vague shadow halfway between my eyes and the unseen floor. As the child ran under the table the steel prongs of my pitchfork glimmered with a violet, fluctuating light. A little way off there showed high up in the gloom the vaguely shining outline of the other fork so I knew that the inspector had raised it in his hand ready. There was no doubt but that he saw something. On the table the metal of the five lanterns shown with the same strange glow and about each lantern there was a little cloud of absolute blackness with a phenomenon that is light to our natural eyes came through the fittings and in this complete darkness the metal of each lantern showed plain as might a cat's eye in a nest of black cotton wool. Just beyond the table the child paused again and stood seeming to oscillate a little upon its feet which gave the impression that it was lighter and bigger than a thistle down and yet in the same moment another part of me seemed to know that it was to me as something that might be beyond thick invisible glass and subject conditions and forces that I was unable to comprehend. The child was looking back again and my gaze went the same way. I stared across the cellar and saw the cage hanging clear in the violet light. Every wire and tie outlined with its glimmering. Above it there was a little space of gloom and then the dull shining of the iron pulley which I had screwed into the ceiling. I stared in a bewildered way around the cellar. There were thin lines of vague fire crossing the floor in all directions and suddenly I remembered the piano wire that the landlord and I had stretched but there was nothing else to be seen except that near the table there were indistinct glimmerings of light and at the far end the outline of a dull glowing revolver evidently in the detective's pocket. I remember a sort of subconscious satisfaction as I settle the point in a queer automatic fashion. On the table near to me there was a little shapeless collection of the light and this I knew after an instance consideration to be the steel portions of my watch. I had looked several times at the child and round at the cellar whilst I was decided these trifles and had found it still in that attitude of hiding from something but now suddenly it ran clear away into the distance and was nothing more than a slightly deeper colored nucleus far away in the strange colored atmosphere. The landlord gave out a queer little cry and twisted over against me as if to avoid something. From the inspector there came a sharp breathing sound as if he had been suddenly drenched with cold water. Then suddenly the violet color went out of the night and I was conscious of the nearness of something monstrous and repugnant. There was a tense silence and the blackness of the cellar seemed absolute with only the faint glow about each of the lanterns on the table. Then in the darkness and the silence there came a faint tinkle of water from the well as if something were rising noiselessly out of it and the water running back with a gentle tinkling. In the same instant there came to me a sudden waft of the awful smell. I gave a sharp cry of warning to the inspector and loosed the rope. There came instantly the sharp splash of the cage entering the water and then with a stiff frightened movement I opened the shutter of my lantern and shone the light of the cage shouting to the others to do the same. As my light struck the cage I saw that about two feet of it projected from the top of the well and there was something protruding up out of the water into the cage. I stared with a feeling that I recognized the thing and then as the other lanterns were opened I saw that it was a leg of mutton. The thing was held by a brawny fist and arm that rose out of the water. I stood utterly bewildered watching to see what was coming. In a moment there rose into view a great bearded face that I felt for one quick instant was the face of a rounded man, long dead. Then the face opened at the mouth part and spluttered and coughed. Another big hand came into view and wiped the water from the eyes which blinked rapidly and then fixed themselves into a stair at the lights. From the detective there came a sudden shout. Captain Tobias! he shouted and the inspector echoed him and instantly burst into loud roars of laughter. The inspector and the detective ran across the cellar to the cage and I followed, still bewildered. The man in the cage was holding the leg of mutton as far away from him as possible and holding his nose. Lift this trap quick! he shouted in a stifled voice but the inspector and the detective simply doubled before him and tried to hold their noses whilst they laughed and the light from their lanterns went dancing all over the place. Quig! Quig! said the man in the cage, still holding his nose and trying to speak plainly. Then Johnstone and the detective stopped laughing and lifted the cage. The man in the well threw the leg across the cellar and turned swiftly to go down into the well but the officers were too quick for him and had him out in a twinkling. Whilst they held him, dripping upon the floor, the inspector jerked his thumb in the direction of the offending leg and the landlord, having harpooned it with one of the pitchforks, ran with it upstairs and so into the open air. Meanwhile I had given the man from the well a stiff taut of whiskey for which he thanked me with the cheerful nod and having emptied the glass in a draft held his hand for the bottle which he finished as if it had been so much water. As you will remember it was a Captain Tobias who had been the previous tenant and this was the very man who had appeared from the well. In the course of the talk that followed I learned the reason for Captain Tobias leaving the house. He had been wanted by the police for smuggling. He had undergone imprisonment and had been released only a couple of weeks earlier. He had returned to find new tenants in his old home. He had entered the house through the well, the walls of which were not continued to the bottom, this I will deal with later, and gone up by a little stairway in the cellar wall which opened at the top through a panel beside my mother's bedroom. This panel was opened by revolving the left doorpost of the bedroom door with the result that the bedroom door always became unlatched in the process of opening the panel. The Captain complained, without any bitterness, that the panel had warped and that each time he opened it it made a cracking noise. This had evidently been what I must took for wraps. He would not give his reason for entering the house but it was pretty obvious that he had hidden something which he wanted to get. However, as he found it impossible to get into the house without the risk of being caught, he decided to try to drive us out, relying on the bad reputation of the house and his own artistic efforts as a ghost. I must say he succeeded. He intended then to rent the house again as before and would then, of course, have plenty of time to get whatever he had hidden. The house suited him admirably for there was a passage, as he showed me afterward, connecting the dummy well with the crypt of the church beyond the garden wall and these, in turn, were connected with certain caves in the cliffs which went down to the beach beyond the church. In the course of his talk Captain Tobias offered to take the house off my hands and as this suited me perfectly for I was about stalled with it and the plan also suited the landlord it was decided that no steps should be taken against him and that the whole business should be hushed up. I asked the captain whether there was really anything queer about the house, whether he had ever seen anything. He said yes, that he had twice seen a woman going about the house. We all looked at one another when the captain said that. He told us she never bothered him and that he had only seen her twice and on each occasion it had followed a narrow escape from the revenue people. Captain Tobias was an observant man. He had seen how I had placed the mats against the doors and after entering the rooms and walking all about them so as to leave the footmarks of an old pair of wet wool and slippers everywhere he had deliberately put the mats back as he found them. The maggot which had dropped from his disgusting leg of mutton had been an accident and beyond even his horrible planning. He was hugely delighted to learn how it had affected us. The moldy smell I had noticed was from the little closed stairway when the captain opened the panel. The door slamming was also another of his contributions. I come now to the end of the captain's ghost play and to the difficulty of trying to explain the other peculiar things. In the first place it was obvious there was something genuinely strange in the house which made itself manifest as a woman. Many different people had seen this woman under differing circumstances so it is impossible to put the thing down to fancy. At the same time it must seem extraordinary that I should have lived two years in the house and seen nothing whilst the policeman saw the woman before he had been there twenty minutes, the landlord, the detective, and the inspector all saw her. I can only surmise that fear was in every case the key, as I might say, which opened the senses to the presence of the woman. The policeman was a highly strong man and when he became frightened was able to see the woman. The same reasoning applies all round. I saw nothing until I became really frightened. Then I saw not the woman but a child running away from something or someone. However I will touch on that later. In short, until a very strong degree of fear was present no one was affected by the force which made itself evident as a woman. My theory explains why some tenants were never aware of anything strange in the house whilst others left immediately. The more sensitive they were the less would be the degree of fear necessary to make them aware of the force present in the house. The peculiar shining of all the metal objects in the cellar had been visible only to me. The cause, naturally, I do not know. Neither do I know why I, alone, was able to see the shining. The child, I ask, can you explain that part at all? Why you didn't see the woman but why they didn't see the child? Was it merely the same force appearing differently to different people? No, said Karnaki, I can't explain that. But I am quite sure that the woman and the child were not only two complete and different entities but even they were each not in quite the same planes of existence. To give you a root idea, however, it is held in the zig-sand manuscript that a child stillborn is snatched back by the hags. This is crude but yet may contain an elemental truth. Yet before I make this clear let me tell you a thought that has often been made. It may be that physical birth is but a secondary process and that prior to the possibility the mother-spirit searches for until it finds the small element, the primal ego or child's soul. It may be that a certain waywardness would cause such to strive to evade capture by the mother-spirit. It may have been such a thing as this that I saw. I have always tried to think so but it is impossible to ignore the sense of repulsion that I felt when the unseen woman went past me. This repulsion carries forward the idea suggested in the zig-sand manuscript that a stillborn child is thus because its ego or spirit has been snatched back by the hags. In other words, by certain of the monstrosities of the outer circle. The thought is inconceivably terrible and probably the more so because it is so fragmentary. It leaves us with the conception of a child's soul a drift halfway between two lives and running through eternity from something incredible and inconceivable, because not understood, to our senses. The thing is beyond further discussion for it is futile to attempt to discuss a thing, to any purpose, of which one has knowledge so fragmentary as this. There is one thought which is often mine. Perhaps there is a mother-spirit and the well, said Arkwright, how did the captain get in from the other side? As I said before, answered Karnacky, the side walls of the well did not reach to the bottom so that you had only to dip down into the water and come up again on the other side of the wall under the cellar floor and so climb into the passage. Of course the water was the same height on both sides of the walls. Don't ask me who made the well entrance or the little stairway for I don't know. The house was very old, as I told you, and that sort of thing was useful in the old days. And the child, I said, coming back to the thing which chiefly interested me, you would say that the birth must have occurred in that house and in this way one might suppose that the house to have become enrappore, if I can use the word in that way, with the forces that produced the tragedy. Yes, replied Karnaki. That is, supposing we take the suggestion of the Sigsand manuscript to account for the phenomenon. There may be other houses, I began. There are, said Karnaki, and stood up. Out you go, he said genially, using the recognized formula, and in five minutes we were on the embankment going thoughtfully to our various homes. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Karnaki, the Ghost Finder, by William Hope Hodgson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peake. Chapter 6 The Thing Invisible Karnaki had just turned to Shane Walk Chelsea. I was aware of this interesting fact by reason of the curt and quaintly worded postcard which I was rereading, and by which I was requested to present myself at his house not later than seven o'clock on that evening. Mr. Karnaki had, as I and the others of his strictly limited circle of friends knew, been away in Kent for the past three weeks, but beyond that we had no knowledge. Karnaki was genially secretive and curt and spoke only when he was ready to speak. When this stage arrived, I and his three other friends, Jessup, Arkwright, and Taylor, would receive a card or a wire asking us to call. Not one of us ever willingly missed, for after a thoroughly sensible little dinner Karnaki would snuggle down into his big armchair, light his pipe, and wait whilst we arranged ourselves comfortably in our accustomed seats and nooks. Then he would begin to talk. On this particular night I was the first to arrive and found Karnaki sitting, quietly smoking over a paper. He stood up, shook me firmly by the hand, pointed to a chair, and sat down again, never having uttered a word. For my part I said nothing either. I knew the man too well to bother him with questions or the weather, and so took a seat and a cigarette. Presently the three others turned up and after that we spent a comfortable and busy hour at dinner. Dinner over, Karnaki snugged himself down into his great chair, as I have said was his habit, filled his pipe, and puffed for a while, his gaze directed thoughtfully at the fire. The rest of us, if I may so express it, made ourselves cozy, each after his own particular manner. A minute or so later Karnaki began to speak, ignoring any preliminary remarks and going straight to the subject of the story we knew he had to tell. I have just come back from Sir Alfred Jarnak's place in Burdentree in South Kent he began, without removing his gaze from the fire. Most extraordinary things have been happening down there lately, and Mr. George Jarnak, the eldest son, wired to ask me to run over and see whether I could help to clear matters up a bit. I went. When I got there I found that they have an old chapel attached to the castle, which has had quite a distinguished reputation for being what is popularly termed haunted. They have been rather proud of this as I managed to discover, until quite lately when something very disagreeable occurred, which served to remind them that family ghosts are not always content, as I might say, to remain purely ornamental. It sounds almost laughable, I know, to hear of a long respected supernatural phenomenon growing unexpectedly dangerous, and in this case the tale of the haunting was considered as little more than an old myth, except after nightfall, when possibly it became more plausible seeming. But however this may be, there is no doubt at all that what I might term the haunting essence which lived in the place had become suddenly dangerous, deadly dangerous too, the old butler being nearly stabbed to death one night in the chapel with a peculiar old dagger. It is, in fact, this dagger, which is popularly supposed to haunt the chapel. At least there has been always a story handed down in the family that this dagger would attack any enemy who should dare to venture into the chapel after nightfall. But of course this had been taken with just about the same amount of seriousness that people take most ghost tales, and that is not usually of a worryingly real nature. I mean that most people never quite know how much or how little they believe in matters abhuman or abnormal, and generally they never have an opportunity to learn. And indeed, as you are all aware, I am as big a skeptic concerning the truth of ghost tales as any man you are likely to meet. Only I am what I might term an unprejudiced skeptic. I am not given to either believing or disbelieving things on principle as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more some of them not ashamed to boast of the insane fact. I view all reported hauntings as unproven until I have examined into them, and I am bound to admit that ninety-nine cases in a hundred turn out to be sheer, Bosch, and fancy. But the hundredth. Well, if it were not for the hundredth, I should have few stories to tell you, eh? Of course, after the attack on the butler, it became evident that there was at least something in the old story concerning the dagger, and I found everyone in a half-belief that the queer old weapon did really strike the butler, either by the aid of some inherent force, which I found them peculiarly unable to explain, or else in the hand of some invisible thing or monster of the outer world. From considerable experience I knew that it was much more likely that the butler had been knifed by some vicious and quite material human. Naturally the first thing to do was to test this probability of human agency, and I set to work to make a pretty drastic examination of the people who knew most about the tragedy. The result of this examination both pleased and surprised me, for it left me with very good reasons for belief that I had come upon one of those extraordinary, rare, true manifestations of the extrusion of a force from the outside. In more popular phraseology, a genuine case of haunting. These are the facts. On the previous Sunday evening but one, Sir Alfred Jarnick's household had attended family service, as usual, in the chapel. You see the rector goes over to officiate twice each Sunday after concluding his duties at the public church about three miles away. At the end of the service in the chapel, Sir Alfred Jarnick, his son, Mr. George Jarnick, and the rector had stood for a couple of minutes talking, whilst old Bellot, the butler, went round putting out the candles. Suddenly the rector remembered that he had left his small prayer-book on the communion table in the morning. He turned, and asked the butler to get it for him before he blew out the chancel candles. Now I have particularly called your attention to this because it is important and that it provides witnesses in a most fortunate manner at an extraordinary moment. You see the rector's turning to speak to Bellot had naturally caused both Sir Alfred Jarnick and his son to glance in the direction of the butler. And it was at this identical instant, and whilst all three were looking at him, that the old butler was stabbed. There, full in the candlelight, before their eyes. I took the opportunity to call early upon the rector, after I had questioned Mr. George Jarnick, who replied to my queries in place of Sir Alfred Jarnick, for the older man was in a nervous and shaken condition as a result of the happening, and his son wished him to avoid dwelling upon the scene as much as possible. The rector's version was clear and vivid, and he had evidently received the astonishment of his life. He pictured to me the whole affair. Bellot, up at the Chancell Gate, going for the prayer-book, and absolutely alone, and then the blow, out of the void he described it, and the force prodigious, the old man being driven headlong into the body of the chapel. Like the kick of a great horse, the rector said, and his benevolent old eyes bright and intense with the effort he had actually witnessed in defiance of all that he had hitherto believed. When I left him he went back to the writing which he had put aside when I appeared. I feel sure that he was developing the first unorthodox sermon that he had ever evolved. He was a dear old chap, and I should certainly like to have heard it. The last man I visited was the butler. He was, of course, in a frightfully weak and shaken condition, but he could tell me nothing that did not point to there being a power abroad in the chapel. He told the same tale, in every minute particle that I had learned from the others. He had been just going up to put out the altar candles and fetch the rector's book, when something struck him an enormous blow high up on the left breast, and he was driven headlong into the aisle. Examination had shown that he had been stabbed by the dagger, of which I will tell you more in a moment, that hung always above the altar. The weapon had entered, fortunately some inches above the heart, just under the collarbone, which had been broken by the stupendous force of the blow, the dagger itself being driven clean through the body and out through the scapula behind. The poor old fellow could not talk much, and I soon left him, but what he had told me was sufficient to make it unmistakable that no living person had been within yards of him when he was attacked, and as I knew this fact was verified by three capable and responsible witnesses, independent of Bellot himself. The thing now was to search the chapel, which is small and extremely old. It is very massively built and entered through only one door, which leads out of the castle itself, and the keys of which is kept by Sir Alfred Jarnock, the butler having no duplicate. The shape of the chapel is oblong, and the altar is railed off after the usual fashion. There are two tombs in the body of the place, but none in the chancel, which is bare except for the two candlesticks, and the chancel rail, beyond which is the undraped altar of solid marble, upon which stand four small candlesticks, two at each end. Above the altar hangs the waeful dagger, as I learned it was named. I fancy the term has been taken from an old vellum, which describes the dagger and its supposed abnormal properties. I took the dagger down, and examined it minutely, and with method. The blade is ten inches long, two inches broad at the base, and tapering to a rounded but sharp point. Rather peculiar, it is double-edged. The metal sheath is curious for having a cross piece, which taken with the fact that the sheath itself is continued three parts up the hilt of the dagger, in a most inconvenient fashion, gives it the appearance of a cross. That this is not unintentional is shown by an engraving of the Christ crucified upon one side, whilst upon the other, in Latin, is the inscription, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. A quaint and rather terrible conjunction of ideas. Upon the blade of the dagger is graven in old English capitals, I watch, I strike. On the butt of the hilt there is carved deeply a pentacle. This is a pretty accurate description of the peculiar old weapon that has had the curious and uncomfortable reputation of being able, either of its own accord or in the hand of something invisible, to strike murderously any enemy of the Jarnak family who may chance to enter the chapel after nightfall. I may tell you here and now that before I left I had very good reason to put certain doubts behind me, for I tested the deadliness of the thing myself. As you know, however, at this point of my investigation I was still at that stage where I considered the existence of a supernatural force unprovable. In the meanwhile I treated the chapel drastically, sounding and scrutinizing the walls and floor, dealing with them almost foot by foot, and particularly examining the two tombs. At the end of this search I had in a ladder and made a very close survey of the groined roof. I passed three days in this fashion, and by the evening of the third day I had proved to my entire satisfaction that there is no place in the whole of that chapel where any living being could have hidden, and also that the only way of ingress and egress to and from the chapel is through the doorway which leads into the castle, the door of which is always kept locked, and the key kept by Sir Alfred Jarnik himself, as I have told you. I mean, of course, that this doorway is the only entrance practical to material people. Yes, as you will see, even had I discovered some other opening, secret or otherwise, it would not have helped at all to explain the mystery of the incredible attack in a normal fashion. For the butler, as you know, was struck in full sight of the rector, Sir Jarnik, and his son, and old Bellet himself knew that no living person had touched him. Out of the void, the rector had described the inhumanly brutal attack, out of the void. A strange feeling it gives one, eh? And this is the thing that I had been called into bottom. After considerable thought I decided on a plan of action. I proposed to Sir Alfred Jarnik that I should spend a night in the chapel, and keep a constant watch upon the dagger. But to this the old knight, a little wisened and nervous man, would not listen for a moment. He, at least, I felt assured, had no doubt of the reality of some dangerous supernatural force aroma at night in the chapel. He informed me that it had been his habit, every evening, to lock the chapel door, so that no one might foolishly or heallessly run the risk of any peril that it might hold at night, and that he could not allow me to attempt such a thing after what had happened to the butler. I could see that Sir Alfred Jarnik was very much in earnest, and would evidently have held himself to blame had he allowed me to make the experiment, and any harm had come to me. So I said nothing in argument, and presently, pleading the fatigue of his years in health, he said good night, and left me, having given me the impression of being a polite but rather superstitious old gentleman. That night, however, whilst I was undressing, I saw how I might achieve the thing I wished and be able to enter the chapel after dark, without making Sir Alfred Jarnik nervous. On the morrow, when I borrowed the key, I would take an impression, and have a duplicate made. Then, with my private key, I could do just what I liked. In the morning I carried out my idea. I borrowed the key, as I wanted to take a photograph of the chancel by daylight. When I had done this, I locked up the chapel and handed the key to Sir Alfred Jarnik, having first taken an impression in soap. I had brought out the exposed plate, in its slide, with me, but the camera I had left exactly as it was, as I wanted to take a second photograph of the chancel that night, from the same position. I took the dark slide into Burton Tree, also the cake of soap with the impress. The soap I left with the local ironmonger, who was something of a locksmith, and promised to let me have my duplicate, finished, if I would call in two hours. This I did, having in the meanwhile found out a photographer, where I developed the plate and left it to dry, telling him I would call next day. At the end of the two hours I went for my key and found it ready, much to my satisfaction. Then I returned to the chancel. After dinner that evening I played billiards with young Jarnik for a couple of hours. Then I had a cup of coffee and went off to my room, telling him I was feeling awfully tired. He nodded and told me he felt the same way. I was glad, for I wanted the house to settle as soon as possible. I locked the door of my room. Then, from under the bed, where I had hidden them earlier in the evening, I drew out several fine pieces of armour plate, which I had removed from the armoury. There was also a shirt of chain mail, with a sort of quilted hood of mail to go over the head. I buckled on the plate armour and found it extraordinarily uncomfortable, and overall I drew on the chain mail. I know nothing about armour, but from what I have learned since I must have put on parts of two suits. Anyway I felt beastly, clamped and clumsy, and unable to move my arms and legs naturally, but I knew that the thing I was thinking of doing called for some sort of protection from my body. Over the armour I pulled on my dressing-gown and shoved my revolver into one of the side pockets, and my repeating flashlight into the other, my dark lantern I carried in my hand. As soon as I was ready I went out into the passage and listened. I had been some considerable time making my preparations, and I found that now the big hall and staircase were in darkness, and all the house seemed quiet. I stepped back and closed and locked my door. Then, very slowly and silently, I went downstairs to the hall and turned into the passage that led to the chapel. I reached the door and tried my key. It fitted perfectly, and a moment later I was in the chapel, with the door locked behind me, and all about me the utter dreary silence of the place, with just the faint showings of the outlines of the stained, leaded windows, making the darkness and lonesomeness almost the more apparent. Now it would be silly to say I did not feel queer. I felt very queer indeed. You just try any of you to imagine yourself standing there in the dark silence and remembering not only the legend that was attached to the place, but what had really happened to the old butler only a little while gone. I can tell you, as I stood there, I could believe that something invisible was coming toward me in the air of the chapel, yet I had got to go through with the business, and I just took hold of my little bit of courage and set to work. First of all, I switched on my light. Then I began a careful tour of the place, examining every corner and nook. I found nothing unusual. At the chancel gate I held up my lamp and flashed the light at the dagger. It hung there right enough, above the altar, but I remember thinking of the word demurr as I looked at it. However, I pushed the thought away, for what I was doing needed no addition of uncomfortable thoughts. I completed the tour of the place with a constantly growing awareness of its utter chill and unkind desolation. An atmosphere of cold dismalness seemed to be everywhere, and the quiet was abominable. At the conclusion of my search I walked across to where I had left my camera focused upon the chancel. From the satchel that I had put beneath the tripod I took out a dark slide and inserted it into the camera, drawing the shutter. After that I uncapped the lens, pulled out my flashlight apparatus, and pressed the trigger. There was an intense, brilliant flash that made the whole of the interior of the chapel jump into sight and disappear as quickly. Then, in the light from my lantern, I inserted the shutter into the slide and reversed the slide, so as to have a fresh plate ready to expose at any time. After I had done this I shut off my lantern and sat down in one of the pews near to my camera. I cannot say what I expected to happen, but I had an extraordinary feeling, almost a conviction, that something peculiar or horrible would soon occur. It was, you know, as if I knew. An hour passed of absolute silence. The time I knew by the far-off faint chime of a clock that had been erected over the stables. I was beastly cold for the whole places without any kind of heating pipes or furnace, as I had noticed during my search, so that the temperature was sufficiently uncomfortable to suit my frame of mind. I felt like a kind of human periwinkle encased in boiler plate and frozen with cold and funk, and, you know, somehow the dark about me seemed to press coldly against my face. I cannot say whether any of you have ever had the feeling, but if you have you will know just how disgustingly unnerving it is. And then, all at once I had a horrible sense that something was moving in the place. It was not that I could hear anything, but I had a kind of intuitive knowledge that something had stirred in the dark. Can you imagine how I felt? Suddenly my courage went. I put up my mailed arms over my face. I wanted to protect it. I had got a sudden sickening feeling that something was hovering over me in the dark. Talk about fright! I could have shouted if I had not been afraid of the noise. And then, abruptly, I heard something. Away up the aisle there sounded a dull clang of metal, as it might be the tread of a mailed heel upon the stone of the aisle. I sat immovable. I was fighting with all my strength to get back my courage. I could not take my arms down from over my face, but I knew that I was getting hold of the gritty part of me again, and suddenly I made a mighty effort and lowered my arms. I held my face up in the darkness, and I tell you I respect myself for the act, because I thought truly at that moment that I was going to die. But I think, just then, by the slow revulsion of feeling which had assisted my effort, I was less sick in that instant at the thought of having to die than at the knowledge of the utter weak cowardice that had so unexpectedly shaken me all to bits for a time. Do I make myself clear? You understand I feel sure that the sense of respect which I spoke of is not really unhealthy egotism, because, you see, I am not blind to the state of mind which helped me. I mean that if I had uncovered my face by a sheer effort of will, unhelped by any revulsion of feeling, I should have done a thing much more worthy of mention. But even as it was there were elements of the act worthy of respect. You follow me, don't you? And you know, nothing touched me after all, so that in a little while I had got back a bit to my normal and felt steady enough to go through with the business without any more funking. I daresay a couple of minutes passed, and then, away up near the chancel, there came that clang as though an armored foot stepped cautiously. By Jove, but it made me stiffen. And suddenly the thought came that the sound I heard might be the rattle of the dagger above the altar. It was not a particularly sensible notion, for the sound was far too heavy and resonant for such a cause. Yet, as can be easily understood, my reason was bound to submit somewhat to my fancy at such a time. I remember now that the idea of that insensate thing becoming animate and attacking me did not occur to me with any sense of possibility or reality. I thought rather in a vague way of some invisible monster of outer space, fumbling at the dagger. I remembered the old rector's description of the attack on the butler, of the void, and he had described this stupendous force of a blow as being like that kick of a great horse. You can see how uncomfortably my thoughts were running. I felt round swiftly and cautiously for my lantern. I found it close to me on the pew seat, and with a sudden jerky movement I switched on the light. I flashed it up the aisle, to and fro across the chancel, but I could see nothing to frighten me. I turned quickly and set the jet of light darting across and across the rear end of the chapel, then on each side of me, before and behind, up at the roof and down at the marble floor, but nowhere was there any visible thing to put me in fear, not a thing that need have set my flesh thrilling, just the quiet chapel, cold and eternally silent. You know the feeling. I had been standing whilst I sent the light about the chapel, but now I pulled out my revolver, and then, with a tremendous effort of will, switched off the light and sat down again in the darkness to continue my constant watch. It seemed to me that quite half an hour or even more must have passed after this, during which no sound had broken the intense stillness. I had grown less nervously tense for the flashing of the light round the place and made me feel less out of bounds of the normal. It had given me something of that unreasoned sense of safety that a nervous child obtains at night by covering its head up with the bedclothes. This just about illustrates the complete human illogicalness of the workings of my feelings, for, as you know, whatever creature, thing, or being it was that had made that extraordinary and horrible attack on the old butler, it had certainly not been visible. And so you must picture me sitting there in the dark, clumsy with armour and with my revolver in one hand and nursing my lantern ready with the other, and then it was, after this little time of partial relief from intense nervousness, that there came a fresh strain on me. For somewhere in the utter quiet of the chapel I thought I heard something. I listened, tense and rigid, my heart booming just a little in my ears for a moment, then I thought I heard it again. I felt sure that something had moved at the top of the aisle. I strained in the darkness to hark, and my eyes showed me blackness within blackness wherever I glanced, so that I took no heed of what they told me for even if I looked at the dim loom of the stained window at the top of the chapel my sight gave me the shapes of vague shadows passing noiselessly and ghostly across, constantly. There was a time of almost peculiar silence, horrible to me as I felt just then, and suddenly I seemed to hear a sound again, nearer to me and repeated, infinitely stealthy. It was as if a vast, soft tread were coming slowly down the aisle. Can you imagine how I felt? I do not think you can. I did not move any more than the stone effigies on the two tombs, but sat there, stiffened. I fancied now that I heard the tread all about the chapel, and then, you know, I was just as sure, in a moment, that I could not hear it, that I had never heard it. Some particularly long minutes passed about this time, but I think my nerves must have quieted a bit, for I remember being sufficiently aware of my feelings to realize that the muscles of my shoulders ached with the way that they must have been contracted as I sat there, hunching myself, rigid. Mind you, I was still in a disgusting funk, but what I might call the imminent sense of danger seemed to have eased from around me. At any rate I felt, in some curious fashion, that there was a respite, a temporary sensation of malignity from around me. It is impossible to word my feelings more clearly to you, for I cannot see them more clearly than this myself. Yet you must not picture me as sitting there, free from strain, for the nervous tension was so great that my heart-action was a little out of normal control, the blood-beat making a dull booming at times in my ears, with the result that I had the sensation that I could not hear accurately. This is a simply beastly feeling, especially under such circumstances. I was sitting like this, listening, as I might say, with body and soul, when suddenly I got that hideous conviction again that something was moving in the air of the place. The feelings seemed to stiffen me as I sat, and my head appeared to tighten as if all the scalp had grown tense. This was so real that I suffered an actual pain most peculiar and at the same time intense. The whole head pained. I had a fierce desire to cover my face again with my mailed arms, but I fought it off. If I had given way then to that, I should simply have bunked straight out of the place. I sat and sweated coldly, that's the bald truth, with a creep busy at my spine. And then, abruptly, once more I thought I heard the sound of that huge, soft tread on the aisle, and this time closer to me. There was an awful little silence, during which I had the feeling that something enormous was bending over toward me from the aisle. And then, through the booming of the blood in my ears, there came a slight sound from the place where my camera stood, a disagreeable sort of slithering sound, and then a sharp tap. I had the lantern ready in my left hand and now I snapped it on desperately and shown it straight above me, for I had a conviction that there was something there, but I saw nothing. Immediately I flashed the light at the camera and along the aisle, but again there was nothing visible. I wheeled round, shooting the beam of light in a great circle about the place to and fro I shown it, jerking it here and there, but it showed me nothing. I had stood up the instant that I had seen that there was nothing in sight over me, and now I determined to visit the chancel and see whether the dagger had been touched. I stepped out of the pew into the aisle, and here I came to an abrupt pause, for an almost invincible, sick repugnance was fighting me back from the upper part of the chapel. A constant queer prickling went up and down my spine, and a dull ache took me in the small of the back as I fought with myself to conquer this sudden new feeling of terror and horror. I tell you that no one who has not been through these kind of experiences has any idea of the sheer, actual physical pain attended upon, and resulting from the intense, nervous strain that ghostly fright sets up in the human system. I stood there feeling positively ill, but I got myself in hand, as it were, in about half a minute, and then I went walking, I expect, as jerky as a mechanical, tin man, and switching the light from side to side, before and behind, and over my head continually, and the hand that held my revolver sweated so much that the thing fairly slipped in my fist. Does not sound very heroic, does it? I passed through the short chancel and reached the step that led up to the small gate in the chancel rail. I threw the beam from my lantern upon the dagger. Yes, I thought, it's all right. Abruptly it seemed to me that there was something wanting, and I leaned forward over the chancel gate to peer, holding the light high. My suspicion was hideously correct. The dagger had gone. Only the cross-shaped sheath hung there above the altar. In a sudden frightened flash of imagination I pictured the thing adrift in the chapel, moving here and there as though of its own volition, for whatever force had wielded it, it was certainly beyond visibility. I turned my head stiffly over to the left, glancing frighteningly behind me, and flashing the light to help my eyes. In the same instant I was struck a tremendous blow over the left breast, and hurled backward from the chancel rail into the aisle, my armor clanging loudly in the horrible silence. I landed on my back and slithered along on the polished marble. My shoulder struck the corner of a pew front and brought me up half stunned. I scrambled to my feet, horribly sick and shaken, but the fear that was on me making little of that at the moment. I was minus both revolver and lantern, and utterly bewildered as to just where I was standing. I bowed my head and made a scrambling run into the complete darkness and dashed into a pew. I jumped back, staggering, got my bearings a little and raced down the center of the aisle, putting my mailed arms over my face. I plunged into my camera, hauling it among the pews. I crashed into the font and reeled back. Then I was at the exit. I fumbled madly in my dressing-down pocket for the key. I found it and scraped at the door feverishly for the keyhole. I found the keyhole, turned the key, burst the door open, and was into the passage. I slammed the door and lent hard against it, gasping, whilst I felt crazily again for the keyhole, this time to lock the door upon what was in the chapel. I succeeded and began to feel my way stupidly along the wall of the corridor. Presently I had come to the big hall and so in a little to my room. In my room I sat for a while until I had steadied down something to the normal. After a time I commenced to strip off the armour. I saw then that both the chain-meal and the plate armour had been pierced over the breast, and suddenly it came home to me that the thing had struck for my heart. Stripping rapidly I found that the skin of the breast over the heart had just been cut sufficiently to allow a little blood to stain my shirt, nothing more. Only the whole breast was badly bruised and intensely painful. You can imagine what would have happened had I not worn the armour. In any case it is a marvel that I was not knocked senseless. I did not go to bed at all that night, but sat upon the edge, thinking and waiting for the dawn, for I had to remove my litter before Sir Alfred Jarnak should enter, if I were to hide from him the fact that I had managed a duplicate key. So soon as the pale light of the morning had strengthened sufficiently to show me the various details of my room I made my way quietly down to the chapel. Very silently and with tense nerves I opened the door. The chill light of the dawn made distinct the whole place, everything seeming instinct with a ghostly, unearthly quiet. Can you get the feeling? I waited several minutes at the door, allowing the morning to grow, and likewise my courage I suppose. Presently the rising sun threw an odd beam right in through the big east window, making coloured sunshine all the length of the chapel. And then, with a tremendous effort, I forced myself to enter. I went up the aisle to where I had overthrown my camera in the darkness. The legs of the tripod were sticking up from the interior of a pew, and I expected to find the machine smashed to pieces. Yet, beyond that the ground glass was broken, there was no real damage done. I replaced the camera, in the position from which I had taken the previous photography, but the slide containing the plate I had exposed by flashlight I removed and put into one of my side pockets, regretting that I had not taken a second flash picture at the instant when I heard those strange sounds up in the chancel. Having tidied my photographic apparatus, I went to the chancel to recover my lantern and revolver which had both, as you know, been knocked from my hands when I was stabbed. I found the lantern lying, hopelessly bent, with smashed lens just under the pulpit. My revolver I must have held until my shoulder struck the pew, for it was lying there in the aisle just about where I believe I can and into the pew corner. It was quite undamaged. Having secured these two articles, I walked up to the chancel rail to see whether the dagger had returned or been returned to its sheath above the altar. Before, however, I reached the chancel rail, I had a slight shock. For there on the floor of the chancel, about a yard away from where I had been struck, lay the dagger, quiet and demure upon the polished marvel pavement. I wonder whether you will, any of you, understand the nervousness that took me at the sight of the thing. With a sudden, unreasoned action I jumped forward and put my foot on it to hold it there. Can you understand, do you? And you know, I could not stoop down and pick it up with my hands for quite a minute, I should think. Afterward, when I had done so, however, and handled it a little, this feeling passed away in my reason, and also I expect the daylight, made me feel that I had been a little bit of an ass. Quite natural, though, I assure you. It was a new kind of fear to me. I am taking no notice of the cheap joke about the ass. I am talking about the curiousness of learning, in that moment, a new shade or quality of fear that had hitherto been outside of my knowledge or imagination. Does it interest you? I examine the dagger, minutely, turning it over and over in my hands and never, as I suddenly discovered, holding it loosely. It was as if I were subconsciously surprised that it lay quiet in my hands. Yet even this feeling passed, largely, after a short while. The curious weapon showed no signs of the blow, except that the dull color of the blade was slightly brighter at the rounded point that had cut through the armor. Presently, when I had made an end of staring at the dagger, I went up the chancellest step and in through the little gate. Then, kneeling upon the altar, I replaced the dagger in its sheath, and came outside of the rail again, closing the gate after me and feeling awarely uncomfortable, because the horrible old weapon was back again in its accustomed place. I suppose, without analyzing my feelings very deeply, I had an unreasoned and only half-conscious belief that there was a greater probability of danger when the dagger hung in its five-century resting place than when it was out of it. Yet somehow I don't think this is a very good explanation when I remember the demure look the things seemed to have when I saw it lying on the floor of the chancell. Only I know this, that when I had replaced the dagger I had quite a touch of nerves, and I stopped only to pick up my lantern from where I had placed it while I examined the weapon, after which I went down the quiet aisle at a pretty quick walk, and so got out of the place. That the nerve tension had been considerable I realized when I had locked the door behind me. I felt no inclination now to think of old Sir Alfred as a hypochondriac because he had taken such hyper-seeming precautions regarding the chapel. I had a sudden wonder as to whether he might not have some knowledge of a long prior tragedy in which the dagger had been concerned. I returned to my room, washed, shaved, and dressed, after which I read a while. Then I went downstairs and got the acting-butler to give me some sandwiches and a cup of coffee. Half an hour later I was headed for Burton Tree as hard as I could walk, for a sudden idea had come to me, which I was anxious to test. I reached the town a little before eight-thirty and found the local photography with his shutters still up. I did not wait, but knocked until he appeared with his coat off, evidently in the act of dealing with his breakfast. In a few words I made clear that I wanted the use of his darkroom immediately, and this he had once placed at my disposal. I had brought with me the slide which contained the plate that I had used with the flashlight, and as soon as I was ready I set to work to develop. Yet it was not the plate which I had exposed that I first put into the solution, but the second plate, which had been ready in the camera during all the time of my waiting in the darkness. You see, the lens had been uncapped all that while, so that the whole chancel had been, as it were, under observation. You all know something of my experiments in lightless photography, that is, appreciating light. It was x-ray work that started me in that direction. Yet you must understand, though I was attempting to develop this unexposed plate, I had no definite idea of results, nothing more than a vague hope that it might show me something. Yet because of the possibilities it was with the most intense and absorbing interest that I watched the plate under the action of the developer. Presently I saw a faint smudge of black appear on the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small and almost entirely confined to one end of the plate, but as I have said, lacked definiteness. Yet such as they were, they were sufficient to make me very excited and I shoved the thing quickly back into the solution. For some minutes further I watched it, lifting it out once or twice to make a more exact scrutiny, but could not imagine what the markings might represent until suddenly it occurred to me that in one of two places they certainly had shapes suggestive of a cross hilted dagger. Yet the shapes were sufficiently indefinite to make me careful not to let myself be overimpressed by the uncomfortable resemblance, though I must confess the very thought was sufficient to set some odd thrills adrift in me. I carried development a little further, then put the negative into the hypo, and commenced work upon the other plate. This came up nicely and very soon I had a really decent negative that appeared similar in every respect, except for the difference of lighting, to the negative I had taken during the previous day. I fixed the plate, then having washed both it and the unexposed one for a few minutes under the tap, I put them into mentholated spirits for fifteen minutes, after which I carried them into the photographer's kitchen and dried them in the oven. Whilst the two plates were drying, the photographer and I made an enlargement from the negative I had taken by daylight. Then we did the same with the two that I had just developed, washing them as quickly as possible, for I was not troubling about the permanency of the prints and drying them with spirits. When this was done I took them to the window and made a thorough examination, commencing with the one that appeared to show shadowy daggers in several places. Yet, though it was now enlarged, I was still unable to feel convinced that the marks truly represented anything abnormal, and because of this I put it to one side, determined not to let my imagination play too large a part in constructing weapons out of the indefinite outlines. I took up the two other enlargements, both of the chancel, as you will remember, and commenced to compare them. For some minutes I examined them without being able to distinguish any difference in the scene they portrayed, and then abruptly I saw something in which they varied. In the second enlargement, the one made from the flashlight negative, the dagger was not in its sheath. Yet I had felt sure it was there but a few minutes before I took the photograph. After this discovery I began to compare the two enlargements in a very different manner from my previous scrutiny. I borrowed a pair of calipers from the photographer, and with these I carried out a most methodical and exact comparison of the details shown in the two photographs. Suddenly I came upon something that set me all tingling with excitement. I threw the calipers down, paid the photographer, and walked out through the shop into the street. The three enlargements I took with me, making them into a roll as I went. At the corner of the street I had the luck to get a cab and was soon back at the castle. I hurried up to my room and put the photographs away. Then I went down to see whether I could find Sir Alfred Jarnik, but Mr. George Jarnik, who met me, told me that his father was too unwell to rise, and would prefer that no one enter the chapel unless he were about. Young Jarnik made a half apologetic excuse for his father, remarking that Sir Alfred Jarnik was perhaps inclined to be a little over-careful, but that, considering what had happened, we must agree that the need for his carefulness had been justified. He added also that even before the horrible attack on the butler his father had been just as particular, always keeping the key and never allowing the door to be unlocked except when the place was in use for divine service and for an hour each forenoon when the cleaners were in. To all this I nodded understandingly, but when presently the young man left me I took my duplicate key and made for the door of the chapel. I went in and locked it behind me, after which I carried out some intensely interesting and rather weird experiments. These proved successful to such an extent that I came out of the place in a perfect fever of excitement. I inquired for Mr. George Jarnik and was told that he was in the morning-room. Come along, I said, when I had found him. Please give me a lift. I have something exceedingly strange to show you. He was palpably very much surprised but came quickly. As we strode along he asked me a score of questions, to all of which I just shook my head, asking him to wait a little. I led the way to the armory. Here I suggested that he should take one side of a dummy dressed in half plate armor whilst I took the other. He nodded, though obviously vastly bewildered, and together we carried the thing to the chapel door. When he saw me take out my key and open the way for us he appeared even more astonished but held himself in, evidently waiting for me to explain. We entered the chapel and I locked the door behind us, after which we carted the armored dummy up the aisle to the gate of the Chancel Rail, where we put it down upon its round wooden stand. Stand back! I shouted suddenly as young Jarnik made a movement to open the gate. My God, man, you mustn't do that! To what? he asked, half startled and half irritated by my words and manner. One minute, I said, just stand to the side a moment and watch. He stepped to the left whilst I took the dummy in my arms and turned it to face the altar so that it stood close to the gate. Then, standing well away on the right side, I pressed the back of the thing so that it lent forward a little upon the gate, which flew open. In the same instant the dummy was struck a tremendous blow that hurled it into the aisle, the armor rattling and clanging upon the polished marble floor. Good God! shouted young Jarnik, and ran back from the Chancel Rail, his face very white. Come and look at the thing, I said, and led the way to where the dummy lay, its armored upper limbs all splayed adrift in queer contortions. I stooped over it and pointed. There, driven right through the thick steel breast plate, was the wayful dagger. Good God! said young Jarnik again. Good God! It's the dagger! The thing's been stabbed, same as Bellot! Yes, I replied, and saw him glance swiftly toward the entrance of the chapel, but I will do him the justice to say that he never budged an inch. Come and see how it was done, I said, and led the way back to the Chancel Rail. From the wall to the left of the altar I took down a long, curiously ornamented iron instrument, not unlike a short spear. The sharp end of this I inserted in a hole in the left-hand gate-post of the Chancel Gateway. I lifted hard, and a section of the post, from the floor upward, bent inward toward the altar as though hinged at the bottom. Down it went, leaving the remaining part of the post standing. As I bent the movable portion lower, there came a quick click, and a section of the floor slid to one side, showing a long, shallow cavity sufficient to enclose the post. I put my weight to the lever and hoved the post down into the niche. Immediately there was a sharp clang as some catch snicked in, and held it against a powerful operating spring. I went over now to the dummy, and after a few minutes work managed to wrench the dagger loose out of the armor. I brought the old weapon and placed its hilt in a hole near the top of the post, where it fitted loosely the point upward. After that I went again to the lever and gave another strong heave, and the post descended about a foot to the bottom of the cavity, catching there with another clang. I withdrew the lever and the narrow strip of floor slid back, covering post and dagger, and looking no different from the surrounding surface. Then I shut the chancell gate, and we both stood well to one side. I took the spear-like lever and gave the gate a little push, so that it opened. Instantly there was a loud thud, and something sang through the air striking the bottom wall of the chapel. It was the dagger. I showed Jarnak then that the other half of the post had sprung back into place, making the whole post as thick as the one upon the right side of the gate. There, I said, turning to the young man and tapping the divided post, there's the invisible thing that used the dagger, but who the deuce is the person who sets the trap? I looked at him keenly as I spoke. My father is the only one who has a key, he said, so it's practically impossible for anyone to get in in metal. I looked at him again, but it was obvious that he had not yet reached out to any conclusion. See here, Mr. Jarnak, I said, perhaps rather curter than I should have done considering what I had to say. Are you quite sure that Sir Alfred is quite balanced mentally? He looked at me half frighteningly and flushing little. I realized then how badly I put it. I don't know, he replied, after a slight pause, and was then silent except for one or two half incoherent remarks. Tell the truth, I said. Haven't you suspected something now and again? You'd needn't be afraid to tell me. Well, he answered slowly. I'll admit I've thought Father a little a little strange perhaps at times, but I've always tried to think I was mistaken. I've always hoped no one else would see it. You see, I'm very fond of the old Governor. I nodded. Quite right, too, I said. There's not the least need to make any kind of scandal about this. We must do something, though, but in a quiet way. No fuss, you know. I should go and have a chat with your father and tell him we've found out about this thing. I touched the divided post. Young Jarnak seemed very grateful for my advice, and after shaking my hand pretty hard, took my key and let himself out of the chapel. He came back in about an hour, looking rather upset. He told me that my conclusions were perfectly correct. It was Sir Alfred Jarnak who had set the trap both on the night that the butler was nearly killed and on the past night. Indeed, it seemed that the old gentleman had set it every night for many years. He had learnt of its existence from an old manuscript book in the Castle Library. It had been planned and used in an earlier age as protection for the gold vessels of the ritual, which, were, it seemed, kept in a hidden recess at the back of the altar. This recess Sir Alfred Jarnak had utilized secretly to store his wife's jewelry. She had died some twelve years back, and the young man told me that his father had never seemed quite himself since. I mentioned to Young Jarnak how puzzled I was that the trap had been set before the service, on the night that the butler was struck. For, if I understood him aright, his father had been in the habit of setting the trap late every night and unsetting it each morning before anyone entered the chapel. He replied that his father, in a fit of temporary forgetfulness, natural enough in his neurotic condition, must have set it too early and hence what had so nearly proved a tragedy. That is about all there is to tell. The old man is not, so far as I could learn, really insane in the popularly accepted sense of the word. He is extremely neurotic and has developed into a hypochondriac the whole condition probably brought about by the shock and sorrow resulted on the death of his wife, leading to years of sad broodings and too over much of his own company and thoughts. Indeed, Young Jarnak told me that his father would sometimes pray for hours together alone in the chapel. Karnak made an end of speaking and lent forward for a spill. But you have never told us just how you discovered the secret of the divided post and all that, I said, speaking for the four of us. Oh, that! replied Karnaki, puffing vigorously at his pipe. I found, on comparing the photos that the one taken in the daytime showed a thicker left-hand gay post than the one taken at night by the flashlight. That put me onto the track. I saw at once that there might be some mechanical dodge at the back of the whole queer business and nothing at all of an abnormal nature. I examined the post and the rest was simple enough, you know. By the way, he continued, rising and going to the mantelpiece, you may be interested to have a look at the so-called a waeful dagger. Young Jarnak was kind enough to present it to me as a little memento of my adventure. He handed it round to us and whilst we examined it stood silent before the fire, puffing meditatively at his pipe. Jarnak and I made the trap so that it won't work, he remarked after some minutes. I've got the dagger, as you see, an old bellet's getting about again, so the whole business can be hushed up decently. All the same, I fancy the chapel will never lose its reputation as a dangerous place. Should be pretty safe now to keep valuables in. There's two things you haven't explained yet, I said. What do you think caused the two clangy sounds when you were in the chapel in the dark? And do you believe that the soft tready sounds were real or only a fancy with your being so worked up and tense? Don't know for certain about the clangs, replied Karnaki. I'm puzzled quite a bit about them. I can only think that the spring which worked the post must have given a trifle slipped you know in the catch. If it did, under such attention, it would make a bit of a ringing noise, and a little sound goes a long way in the middle of the night when you're thinking of ghostesses. You can understand that, eh? Yes, I agreed, and the other sounds? Well, the same thing. I mean, the extraordinary quietness may help to explain these a bit. They may have been some usual enough sound that would never have been noticed under ordinary conditions, or they may have been only fancy. It is just impossible to say. They were disgustingly real to me. As for the slithering noise, I am pretty sure that one of the tripod legs of my camera must have slipped a few inches. If it did so, it may easily have jolted the lens cap off the baseboard, which would account for that queer little tap which I heard directly after. How do you account for the dagger being in its place above the altar when you first examined it that night, I ask? How could it be there when at that very moment it was set in the trap? That was my mistake, replied Karnaki. The dagger could not possibly have been in its sheath at the time, though I thought it was. You see, the curious cross-hilted sheath gave the appearance of the complete weapon, as you can understand. The hilt of the dagger protrudes very little above the continued portion of the sheath, a most inconvenient arrangement for drawing quickly. He nodded sagely at the lot of us and yawned, then glanced at the clock. Out you go, he said in a friendly fashion, using the recognized formula. I want a sleep. We rose, shook him by the hand, and went out presently into the night in the quiet of the embankment, and so to our homes. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Peake End of Karnaki, the Ghost Finder, by William Hope Hodgson