however,--she was quite sure she would find something uncanny.
In fact, when she did not, having now the courage of daylight,
she was actually disappointed.

Well, we did not go back to town that day.

The discovery of a small picture fallen from the wall of the
drawing-room was quite sufficient to satisfy Liddy that the alarm
had been a false one, but I was anything but convinced. Allowing
for my nerves and the fact that small noises magnify themselves
at night, there was still no possibility that the picture had
made the series of sounds I heard. To prove it, however, I
dropped it again. It fell with a single muffled crash of its
wooden frame, and incidentally ruined itself beyond repair. I
justified myself by reflecting that if the Armstrongs chose to
leave pictures in unsafe positions, and to rent a house with a
family ghost, the destruction of property was their
responsibility, not mine.

I warned Liddy not to mention what had happened to anybody, and
telephoned to town for servants. Then after a breakfast which
did more credit to Thomas' heart than his head, I went on a short
tour of investigation. The sounds had come from the east
wing, and not without some qualms I began there. At first I
found nothing. Since then I have developed my powers of
observation, but at that time I was a novice. The small card-
room seemed undisturbed. I looked for footprints, which is, I
believe, the conventional thing to do, although my experience has
been that as clues both footprints and thumb-marks are more
useful in fiction than in fact. But the stairs in that wing