I had come
under the shadow of the East Front, and far above me, I could hear the
vile, hooning whistle of the Room, up in the darkness of the unlit wing. Then, suddenly, a little in front of me, I heard a man's voice, speaking
low, but evidently in glee:--

"'By George! You Chaps; but I wouldn't care to bring a wife home in
that!' it said, in the tone of the cultured Irish. "Someone started to reply; but there came a sharp exclamation, and then a
rush, and I heard footsteps running in all directions. Evidently, the men
had spotted me. "For a few seconds, I stood there, feeling an awful ass. After all,
_they_ were at the bottom of the haunting! Do you see what a big fool it
made me seem? I had no doubt but that they were some of Tassoc's rivals;
and here I had been feeling in every bone that I had hit a real, bad,
genuine Case! And then, you know, there came the memory of hundreds of
details, that made me just as much in doubt again. Anyway, whether it was
natural, or ab-natural, there was a great deal yet to be cleared up. "I told Tassoc, next morning, what I had discovered, and through the
whole of every night, for five nights, we kept a close watch 'round the
East Wing; but there was never a sign of anyone prowling about; and all
the time, almost from evening to dawn, that grotesque whistling would
hoon incredibly, far above us in the darkness. "On the morning after the fifth night, I received a wire from here,
which brought me home by the next boat. I explained to Tassoc that I was
simply bound to come away for a few days; but told him to keep up the
watch 'round the castle. One thing I was very careful to do, and that
was to make him absolutely promise never to go into the Room, between
sunset and sunrise. I made it clear to him that we knew nothing definite
yet, one way or the other; and if the room were what I had first thought
it to be, it might be a lot better for him to die first, than enter it
after dark. "When I got here, and had finished my business, I thought you chaps would
be interested; and also I wanted to get it all spread out clear in my
mind; so I rung you up. I am going over again to-morrow, and when I get
back, I ought to have something pretty extraordinary to tell you. By the
way, there is a curious thing I forgot to tell you. I tried to get a
phonographic record of the whistling; but it simply produced no
impression on the wax at all. That is one of the things that has made me
feel queer, I can tell you. Another extraordinary thing is that the
microphone will not magnify the sound--will not even transmit it; seems
to take no account of it, and acts as if it were nonexistent. I am
absolutely and utterly stumped, up to the present. I am a wee bit curious
to see whether any of your dear clever heads can make daylight of it. _I_
cannot--not yet." He rose to his feet. "Good night, all," he said, and began to usher us out abruptly, but
without offence, into the night. A fortnight later, he dropped each of us a card, and you can imagine that
I was not late this time. When we arrived, Carnacki took us straight into
dinner, and when we had finished, and all made ourselves comfortable, he
began again, where he had left off:--

"Now just listen quietly; for I have got something pretty queer to tell
you. I got back late at night, and I had to walk up to the castle, as I
had not warned them that I was coming. It was bright moonlight; so that
the walk was rather a pleasure, than otherwise. When I got there, the
whole place was in darkness, and I thought I would take a walk 'round
outside, to see whether Tassoc or his brother was keeping watch. But I
could not find them anywhere, and concluded that they had got tired of
it, and gone off to bed. "As I returned across the front of the East Wing, I caught the hooning
whistling of the Room, coming down strangely through the stillness of the
night. It had a queer note in it, I remember--low and constant, queerly
meditative. I looked up at the window, bright in the moonlight, and got a
sudden thought to bring a ladder from the stable yard, and try to get a
look into the Room, through the window. "With this notion, I hunted 'round at the back of the castle, among the
straggle of offices, and presently found a long, fairly light ladder;
though it was heavy enough for one, goodness knows! And I thought at
first that I should never get it reared. I managed at last, and let the
ends rest very quietly against the wall, a little below the sill of the
larger window. Then, going silently, I went up the ladder. Presently, I
had my face above the sill and was looking in alone with the moonlight. "Of course, the queer whistling sounded louder up there; but it still
conveyed that peculiar sense of something whistling quietly to
itself--can you understand? Though, for all the meditative lowness of the
note, the horrible, gargantuan quality was distinct--a mighty parody of
the human, as if I stood there and listened to the whistling from the
lips of a monster with a man's soul. "And then, you know, I saw something. The floor in the middle of the
huge, empty room, was puckered upward in the center into a strange
soft-looking mound, parted at the top into an ever changing hole, that
pulsated to that great, gentle hooning. At times, as I watched, I saw the
heaving of the indented mound, gap across with a queer, inward suction,
as with the drawing of an enormous breath; then the thing would dilate
and pout once more to the incredible melody. And suddenly, as I stared,
dumb, it came to me that the thing was living. I was looking at two
enormous, blackened lips, blistered and brutal, there in the pale
moonlight....

"Abruptly, they bulged out to a vast, pouting mound of force and sound,
stiffened and swollen, and hugely massive and clean-cut in the
moon-beams. And a great sweat lay heavy on the vast upper-lip. In the
same moment of time, the whistling had burst into a mad screaming note,
that seemed to stun me, even where I stood, outside of the window. And
then, the following moment, I was staring blankly at the solid,
undisturbed floor of the room--smooth, polished stone flooring, from wall
to wall; and there was an absolute silence. "You can picture me staring into the quiet Room, and knowing what I knew. I felt like a sick, frightened kid, and wanted to slide _quietly_ down
the ladder, and run away. But in that very instant, I heard Tassoc's
voice calling to me from within the Room, for help, _help_. My God! but I
got such an awful dazed feeling; and I had a vague, bewildered notion
that, after all, it was the Irishmen who had got him in there, and were
taking it out of him. And then the call came again, and I burst the
window, and jumped in to help him. I had a confused idea that the call
had come from within the shadow of the great fireplace, and I raced
across to it; but there was no one there. "'Tassoc!'