"Just in time, but not before he had clambered on to a beam. He was very
violent."

I had so much to say and ask that I could get nothing out in time, and
Shorthouse went on again.

"I've had a sort of watching brief for this case," he said with a smile,
whose real significance, however, completely escaped me at the time,
"and one of the most disagreeable features about it is the deliberate
way the servants have invented excuses to go out to the place, and
always after dark; some of them who have no right to go there, and no
real occasion at all--have never been there in their lives before
probably--and now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and
determination to go out there about dusk, or soon after, and with the
most paltry and foolish excuses in the world. Of course," he added,
"they have been prevented, but the desire, stronger than their
superstitious dread, and which they cannot explain, is very curious."

"Very," I admitted, feeling that my hair was beginning to stand up
again.

"You see," he went on presently, "it all points to volition--in fact to
deliberate arrangement. It is no mere family ghost that goes with every
ivied house in England of a certain age; it is something real, and
something very malignant."

He raised his face from the gun barrel, and for the first time his eye
caught mine in the full. Yes, he was very much in earnest. Also, he knew
a great deal more than he meant to tell.