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.