"Does your faith in Krag still hold?" asked Maskull. "I confess mine
is at vanishing point. If this affair isn't one big practical joke,
it has every promise of being one. Krag never lived here in his
life."

"Come upstairs first," said Nightspore.

The upstairs rooms proved to consist of a library and three bedrooms.
All the windows were tightly closed, and the air was insufferable.
The beds had been slept in, evidently a long time ago, and had never
been made since. The tumbled, discoloured bed linen actually
preserved the impressions of the sleepers. There was no doubt that
these impressions were ancient, for all sorts of floating dirt had
accumulated on the sheets and coverlets.

"Who could have slept here, do you think?" interrogated Maskull.
"The observatory staff?"

"More likely travellers like ourselves. They left suddenly."

Maskull flung the windows wide open in every room he came to, and
held his breath until he had done so. Two of the bedrooms faced the
sea; the third, the library, the upward-sloping moorland. This
library was now the only room left unvisited, and unless they
discovered signs of recent occupation here Maskull made up his mind
to regard the whole business as a gigantic hoax.

But the library, like all the other rooms, was foul with stale air
and dust-laden. Maskull, having flung the window up and down, fell