The microphone test of the walls
would certainly have made this known to me, as I have said; but there was
nothing of the sort in the castle; so that I had practically no doubt at
all now, but that it was a genuine case of what is popularly termed
'haunting.'
"All this time, every night, and sometimes most of each night, the
hooning whistling of the Room was intolerable. It was as if an
intelligence there knew that steps were being taken against it, and piped
and hooned in a sort of mad, mocking contempt. I tell you, it was as
extraordinary as it was horrible. Time after time, I went
along--tiptoeing noiselessly on stockinged feet--to the sealed door (for
I always kept the Room sealed). I went at all hours of the night, and
often the whistling, inside, would seem to change to a brutally malignant
note, as though the half-animate monster saw me plainly through the shut
door. And all the time the shrieking, hooning whistling would fill the
whole corridor, so that I used to feel a precious lonely chap, messing
about there with one of Hell's mysteries.
"And every morning, I would enter the room, and examine the different
hairs and seals. You see, after the first week, I had stretched parallel
hairs all along the walls of the room, and along the ceiling; but over
the floor, which was of polished stone, I had set out little, colorless
wafers, tacky-side uppermost. Each wafer was numbered, and they were
arranged after a definite plan, so that I should be able to trace the
exact movements of any living thing that went across the floor.
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