"Inside of the room, there was now a constant, meditative, hooning
whistling; but presently this ceased, and the silence seemed worse; for
there is such a sense of hidden mischief in a silence. "After a little, I sealed the door with crossed hairs, and then cleared
off down the great passage, and so to bed. "For a long time I lay awake; but managed eventually to get some sleep. Yet, about two o'clock I was waked by the hooning whistling of the room
coming to me, even through the closed doors. The sound was tremendous,
and seemed to beat through the whole house with a presiding sense of
terror. As if (I remember thinking) some monstrous giant had been holding
mad carnival with itself at the end of that great passage. "I got up and sat on the edge of the bed, wondering whether to go along
and have a look at the seal; and suddenly there came a thump on my door,
and Tassoc walked in, with his dressing gown over his pajamas. "'I thought it would have waked you, so I came along to have a talk,' he
said. '_I_ can't sleep. Beautiful! Isn't it!' "'Extraordinary!' I said, and tossed him my case. "He lit a cigarette, and we sat and talked for about an hour; and all the
time that noise went on, down at the end of the big corridor. "Suddenly, Tassoc stood up:--

"'Let's take our guns, and go and examine the brute,' he said, and turned
toward the door. "'No!' I said. 'By Jove--_no!_ I can't say anything definite, yet; but I
believe that room is about as dangerous as it well can be.' "'Haunted--_really_ haunted?' he asked, keenly and without any of his
frequent banter. "I told him, of course, that I could not say a definite _yes_ or _no_ to
such a question; but that I hoped to be able to make a statement, soon. Then I gave him a little lecture on the False Re-Materialization of the
Animate-Force through the Inanimate-Inert. He began then to see the
particular way in the room might be dangerous, if it were really the
subject of a manifestation. "About an hour later, the whistling ceased quite suddenly, and Tassoc
went off again to bed. I went back to mine, also, and eventually got
another spell of sleep. "In the morning, I went along to the room. I found the seals on the door
intact. Then I went in. The window seals and the hair were all right; but
the seventh hair across the great fireplace was broken. This set me
thinking. I knew that it might, very possibly, have snapped, through my
having tensioned it too highly; but then, again, it might have been
broken by something else. Yet, it was scarcely possible that a man, for
instance, could have passed between the six unbroken hairs; for no one
would ever have noticed them, entering the room that way, you see; but
just walked through them, ignorant of their very existence. "I removed the other hairs, and the seals. Then I looked up the chimney. It went up straight, and I could see blue sky at the top. It was a big,
open flue, and free from any suggestion of hiding places, or corners. Yet, of course, I did not trust to any such casual examination, and after
breakfast, I put on my overalls, and climbed to the very top, sounding
all the way; but I found nothing. "Then I came down, and went over the whole of the room--floor, ceiling,
and walls, mapping them out in six-inch squares, and sounding with both
hammer and probe. But there was nothing abnormal. "Afterward, I made a three-weeks search of the whole castle, in the same
thorough way; but found nothing. I went even further, then; for at night,
when the whistling commenced, I made a microphone test. You see, if the
whistling were mechanically produced, this test would have made evident
to me the working of the machinery, if there were any such concealed
within the walls. It certainly was an up-to-date method of examination,
as you must allow. "Of course, I did not think that any of Tassoc's rivals had fixed up any
mechanical contrivance; but I thought it just possible that there had
been some such thing for producing the whistling, made away back in the
years, perhaps with the intention of giving the room a reputation that
would ensure its being free of inquisitive folk. You see what I mean? Well, of course, it was just possible, if this were the case, that
someone knew the secret of the machinery, and was utilizing the knowledge
to play this devil of a prank on Tassoc. 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. "You will see that no material being or creature could possibly have
entered that room, without leaving many signs to tell me about it. But
nothing was ever disturbed, and I began to think that I should have to
risk an attempt to stay the night in the room, in the Electric Pentacle. Yet, mind you, I knew that it would be a crazy thing to do; but I was
getting stumped, and ready to do anything. "Once, about midnight, I did break the seal on the door, and have a quick
look in; but, I tell you, the whole Room gave one mad yell, and seemed to
come toward me in a great belly of shadows, as if the walls had bellied
in toward me. Of course, that must have been fancy. Anyway, the yell was
sufficient, and I slammed the door, and locked it, feeling a bit weak
down my spine. You know the feeling. "And then, when I had got to that state of readiness for anything, I made
something of a discovery. It was about one in the morning, and I was
walking slowly 'round the castle, keeping in the soft grass.