"'I'm afraid, Inspector Johnstone,' I said, 'that there's more in this
than you think. I certainly saw some very extraordinary things upstairs.' "The inspector seemed about to say something; but instead, he turned
again to the door, and flashed his light down and 'round about the mat. I
saw then that the strange, horrible footmarks came straight up to the
cellar door; and the last print showed _under_ the door; yet the
policeman said the door had not been opened. "And suddenly, without any intention, or realization of what I was
saying, I asked the landlord:--

"'What were the feet like?' "I received no answer; for the inspector was ordering the constable to
open the cellar door, and the man was not obeying. Johnstone repeated the
order, and at last, in a queer automatic way, the man obeyed, and pushed
the door open. The loathsome smell beat up at us, in a great wave of
horror, and the inspector came backward a step. "'My God!' he said, and went forward again, and shone his light down the
steps; but there was nothing visible, only that on each step showed the
unnatural footprints. "The inspector brought the beam of the light vividly on the top step; and
there, clear in the light, there was something small, moving. The
inspector bent to look, and the policeman and I with him. I don't want to
disgust you; but the thing we looked at was a maggot. The policeman
backed suddenly out of the doorway:

"'The churchyard,' he said, '... at the back of the 'ouse.' "'Silence!' said Johnstone, with a queer break in the word, and I knew
that at last he was frightened. He put his lantern into the doorway, and
shone it from step to step, following the footprints down into the
darkness; then he stepped back from the open doorway, and we all gave
back with him. He looked 'round, and I had a feeling that he was looking
for a weapon of some kind. "'Your gun,' I said to the landlord, and he brought it from the front
hall, and passed it over to the inspector, who took it and ejected the
empty shell from the right barrel. He held out his hand for a live
cartridge, which the landlord brought from his pocket. He loaded the gun
and snapped the breech. He turned to the constable:--

"'Come on,' he said, and moved toward the cellar doorway. "'I ain't comin', sir,' said the policeman, very white in the face. "With a sudden blaze of passion, the inspector took the man by the scruff
and hove him bodily down into the darkness, and he went downward,
screaming. The inspector followed him instantly, with his lantern and the
gun; and I after the inspector, with the bayonet ready. Behind me, I
heard the landlord. "At the bottom of the stairs, the inspector was helping the policeman to
his feet, where he stood swaying a moment, in a bewildered fashion; then
the inspector went into the front cellar, and his man followed him in
stupid fashion; but evidently no longer with any thought of running away
from the horror. "We all crowded into the front cellar, flashing our lights to and fro. Inspector Johnstone was examining the floor, and I saw that the footmarks
went all 'round the cellar, into all the corners, and across the floor. I
thought suddenly of the Child that was running away from Something. Do
you see the thing that I was seeing vaguely? "We went out of the cellar in a body, for there was nothing to be
found. In the next cellar, the footprints went everywhere in that queer
erratic fashion, as of someone searching for something, or following
some blind scent. "In the third cellar the prints ended at the shallow well that had been
the old water supply of the house. The well was full to the brim, and the
water so clear that the pebbly bottom was plainly to be seen, as we shone
the lights into the water. The search came to an abrupt end, and we stood
about the well, looking at one another, in an absolute, horrible silence. "Johnstone made another examination of the footprints; then he shone his
light again into the clear shallow water, searching each inch of the
plainly seen bottom; but there was nothing there. The cellar was full of
the dreadful smell; and everyone stood silent, except for the constant
turning of the lamps to and fro around the cellar. "The inspector looked up from his search of the well, and nodded quietly
across at me, with his sudden acknowledgment that our belief was now his
belief, the smell in the cellar seemed to grow more dreadful, and to be,
as it were, a menace--the material expression that some monstrous thing
was there with us, invisible. "'I think--' began the inspector, and shone his light toward the
stairway; and at this the constable's restraint went utterly, and he ran
for the stairs, making a queer sound in his throat. "The landlord followed, at a quick walk, and then the inspector and I. He
waited a single instant for me, and we went up together, treading on the
same steps, and with our lights held backward. At the top, I slammed and
locked the stair door, and wiped my forehead, and my hands were shaking. "The inspector asked me to give his man a glass of whisky, and then he
sent him on his beat. He stayed a short while with the landlord and me,
and it was arranged that he would join us again the following night and
watch the Well with us from midnight until daylight. Then he left us,
just as the dawn was coming in. The landlord and I locked up the house,
and went over to his place for a sleep. "In the afternoon, the landlord and I returned to the house, to make
arrangements for the night. He was very quiet, and I felt he was to be
relied on, now that he had been 'salted,' as it were, with his fright of
the previous night. "We opened all the doors and windows, and blew the house through very
thoroughly; and in the meanwhile, we lit the lamps in the house, and took
them into the cellars, where we set them all about, so as to have light
everywhere. Then we carried down three chairs and a table, and set them
in the cellar where the well was sunk. After that, we stretched thin
piano wire across the cellar, about nine inches from the floor, at such a
height that it should catch anything moving about in the dark. "When this was done, I went through the house with the landlord, and
sealed every window and door in the place, excepting only the front door
and the door at the top of the cellar stairs. "Meanwhile, a local wire-smith was making something to my order; and
when the landlord and I had finished tea at his house, we went down to
see how the smith was getting on. We found the thing complete. It looked
rather like a huge parrot's cage, without any bottom, of very heavy gage
wire, and stood about seven feet high and was four feet in diameter. Fortunately, I remembered to have it made longitudinally in two halves,
or else we should never have got it through the doorways and down the
cellar stairs. "I told the wire-smith to bring the cage up to the house so he could fit
the two halves rigidly together.