How his companion so quickly overcame her terror, Shorthouse never

properly understood; but his admiration for her self-control increased

tenfold, and at the same time served to feed his own dying flame—for

which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him was the

evidence of physical force they had just witnessed. He at once

suppressed the memory of stories he had heard of “physical mediums”

and their dangerous phenomena; for if these were true, and either his

aunt or himself was unwittingly a physical medium, it meant that they

were simply aiding to focus the forces of a haunted house already

charged to the brim. It was like walking with unprotected lamps among

uncovered stores of gunpowder.

So, with as little reflection as possible, he simply relit the

candle and went tip to the next floor. The arm in his trembled, it is

true, and his own tread was often uncertain, but they went on with

thoroughness, and after a search revealing nothing they climbed the

last flight of stairs to the top floor of all.

Here they found a perfect nest of small servants’ rooms, with

broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane-bottomed chairs, chests of

drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms had low

sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs, small

windows, and badly plastered walls—a depressing and dismal region

which they were glad to leave behind.

It was on the stroke of midnight when they entered a small room on

the third floor, close to the top of the stairs, and arranged to make

themselves comfortable for the remainder of their adventure. It was

absolutely bare, and was said to be the room—then used as a clothes

closet— into which the infuriated groom had chased his victim and

finally caught her. Outside, across the narrow landing, began the

stairs leading up to the floor above, and the servants’ quarters where

they had just searched.

In spite of the chilliness of the night there was something in the

air of this room that cried for an open window. But there was more

than this. Shorthouse could only describe it by saying that he felt

less master of himself here than in any other part of the house. There

was something that acted directly on the nerves, tiring the

resolution, enfeebling the will. He was conscious of this result

before he had been in the room five minutes, and it was in the short

time they stayed there that he suffered the wholesale depletion of his

vital forces, which was, for himself, the chief horror of the whole

experience.

They put the candle on the floor of the cupboard, leaving the door

a few inches ajar, so that there was no glare to confuse the eyes, and

no shadow to shift about on walls and ceiling. Then they spread the

cloak on the floor and sat down to wait, with their backs against the

wall.

Shorthouse was within two feet of the door on to the landing; his

position commanded a good view of the main staircase leading down into

the darkness, and also of the beginning of the servants’ stairs going

to the floor above; the heavy stick lay beside him within easy reach.

The moon was now high above the house. Through the open window they

could see the comforting stars like friendly eyes watching in the sky.

One by one the clocks of the town struck midnight, and when the sounds

died away the deep silence of a windless night fell again over

everything. Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled

the air with hollow murmurs.

Inside the house the silence became awful; awful, he thought,

because any minute now it might be broken by sounds portending terror.

The strain of waiting told more and more severely on the nerves; they

talked in whispers when they talked at all, for their voices sounded

queer and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the night

air, invaded the room, and made them cold. The influences against

them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them of

self-confidence, and the power of decisive action; their forces were

on the wane, and the possibility of real fear took on a new and

terrible meaning. He began to tremble for the elderly woman by his

side, whose pluck could hardly save her beyond a certain extent.

He heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed so

loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly certain other

sounds that were beginning very faintly to make themselves audible in

the depths of the house. Every time he fastened his attention on these

sounds, they instantly ceased.