"Listen."

They exchanged one look of alarm... Some one was speaking in the pantry
... a very low, strange, very distant voice... Nevertheless, as they at
once made certain, there was no one in the room, no one except the dead
man, whose dark outline lay stretched upon the floor.

And the voice spake anew, by turns shrill, stifled, bleating, stammering,
yelling, fearsome. It uttered indistinct words, broken syllables.

Lupin felt the top of his head covering with perspiration. What was
this incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?

He had knelt down by the man-servant's side. The voice was silent and
then began again:

"Give us a better light," he said to Gilbert.

He was trembling a little, shaken with a nervous dread which he was
unable to master, for there was no doubt possible: when Gilbert had
removed the shade from the lamp, Lupin realized that the voice issued
from the corpse itself, without a movement of the lifeless mass,
without a quiver of the bleeding mouth.

"Governor, I've got the shivers," stammered Gilbert.

Again the same voice, the same snuffling whisper.

Suddenly, Lupin burst out laughing, seized the corpse and pulled it aside: