The séance was almost ludicrously successful. Scarcely had the circle settled down—in the most informal manner, incidentally, grouped as the sitters pleased about the room, everyone talking, reading, smoking or, in the case of Mr. Pratt's friend Mr. Carris, playing Patience—when everyone was electrified by the sudden ringing of bells.
Mrs. Bradley had had the bell wires repaired, and every separate member of the party had either tested the bells or watched and listened whilst other people tested them.
The reaction, after the first shock, was disciplined and intelligent. Those who had agreed to do so—Ferdinand, Mrs. Bradley, Mr. Carris, and Father Conlan—went out of the room and made a concerted tour of the house. They went first to the servants' quarters, where the indicator was still vibrating. Each investigator had been provided with a small notebook in which he or she was to record the phenomena, if any, and his or her own reactions to them.
A written entry was duly made by everyone, and by the side of it everyone unhesitatingly wrote Faked. Two of the company, Caroline and the priest, also wrote, "But I don't see how," and "Inexplicable, however," respectively. Ferdinand added to his verdict the rider: "I would have said Genuine if all the bells had been rung, but the poltergeist seems to have avoided coming too near to where we were, in case we heard him moving about. The bells in the hall and in the room where we had been sitting and in the bedroom over this séance room did not ring."
The party returned to the room, and nothing more happened for about an hour. Then came a crash, followed by smaller tumbling noises, and the party, all this time, running out into the hall, beheld parts of a bedstead, three chairs, a candlestick and five metal trays lying on the floor at the foot of the staircase.
The company, not as well-controlled this time, went bounding upstairs. Nothing could be seen, heard, or in any way discovered, although every bedroom and every attic was searched. Two earnest seekers after truth even discovered the attic cupboard which had the airholes, but, so far as they could tell, it was empty and, as Caroline expressed it, innocent.
Opinions in the various notebooks varied on the subject of this second phenomenon. The majority wrote to the effect that they supposed the furniture had been thrown downstairs by human and not by super-human agency, but two of these confessed that they could not see how it had been done. Ferdinand wrote that he thought he had the glimmering of an idea of the method, and Mr. Pratt wrote: "I think I know where they hid, but I cannot see why we did not get them on the back stairs." The priest wrote: "This is trickery, but it is cleverly done and I cannot determine the method. There must be a cellar."
Caroline and Mr. Carris wrote that, failing any feasible explanation, they considered the phenomenon genuine, and Caroline added with her usual naïveté: "I don't think I should like to sleep here alone."
None of the party slept there except the young instructor and his charges, but where they slept remained as secret as did the fact of their existence. The rest of the party spent the night at the inn, in accordance with a previous arrangement, although Mr. Carris demurred.
All day Tuesday the phenomena continued at irregular intervals, and in the evening, when it was dusk, and Ferdinand, Caroline, and Father Conlan were about to take their departure, Mrs. Bradley summoned everyone else to the dining-room and requested them to accompany the three to the gate.
"I will wave to you all from the window of the spare bedroom, the one from which Cousin Tom is supposed to have fallen," she said. Ferdinand, suspecting that some more trickery was toward, glanced at her and raised his eyebrows.
"It's all right," said his mother. "I shall not fall out of the window."
When the party was out on the gravel drive they turned to look up at the first floor. There was Mrs. Bradley waving from one of the windows, and behind her could be seen distinctly the outline of a shadowy man.
The priest began to run back, but Ferdinand caught his arm and reassured him. When the other three returned to the house, Mrs. Bradley was in the hall to meet them.
The two journalists made for the stairs, but, carefully though they searched, there was no one to be found in the house except the people for whom they could account.
"Illusion?" asked Mr. Pratt.
"Oh, no, there was someone with me," said Mrs. Bradley. "What's more, he and his confederates are still in the house."
At these words the journalists, assisted by the Warden, who had been an interested but uncommunicative observer of the phenomena so far witnessed in the house, made a still more thorough search. The journalists came to the conclusion, after some trouble and a considerable expenditure of electricity, that the ventilated cupboard at the top of the attic stairs had nothing to conceal, and the Warden found that there was a communicating door between the chief bedroom and the room adjoining. Mrs. Bradley sat downstairs in the dining-room placidly knitting a shapeless length of mauve wool, adding (apparently as the fancy took her, for she seemed to be following no particular pattern) touches of grey and shrimp-pink, and blandly received reports as they came in. Occasionally she went to the window and stared out. There was never anything to be seen except the weedy drive and the gloomy trees. It was a disconcerting house, in more senses than one.
The searchers did not give up until a quarter to ten, when they, with their hostess, went along to the village for their nightcaps and to their beds. Next day they resumed their labours, and Mrs. Bradley thought at One point that the mystery was about to be solved by Mr. Carris, who stood for nearly a quarter of an hour in the grass-grown courtyard, inspecting it from every angle and sometimes gazing down into the well. Although he had thus the first clue in his hands, he did not follow it up, but merely remarked that wells should be covered in, and that this one, so near the scullery door, was particularly dangerous.
Mr. Pratt found the second clue, but, lacking the first, made nothing of his discovery. He merely remarked to Mrs. Bradley that it seemed as though the foundations of the house might be older than its superstructure, an intelligent conclusion with which she gravely agreed. Not to be outdone by his companions, yet equally unable to apply his information, since neither of the others had thought it worth while to follow up their own discoveries, the Warden observed that it was odd to find no door at the top and bottom of the servants' staircase in a house of that period, especially as close inspection of the walls convinced him that such doors had originally been in position. He supposed they had been taken away for convenience by later owners, but he thought this made the house draughty.
During that afternoon, when the three, tired out by their exertions and slightly bored by the apparent fruitlessness of them, had given up exploring the house, the phenomena began again. Besides the usual destructiveness and noise, the watchers were greatly interested to discover some fresh markings on the walls. Some of these were mere random strokes and loops, but the word 'blimey' and two unprintable epithets were also among the exhibits.