left the house, and whether there had been other tenants in the
meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the
Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it,
and since then the house had been empty.'

Mr. Villiers paused for a moment.

'I have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a
sort of fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails
sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills. But I
didn't enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street. I had hardly put my foot
inside the passage before I noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air
of the house. Of course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth, but
this was something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it
seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front room and the back room,
and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as
you would expect, but there was something strange about them all. I
couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the
rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish
room, and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but
when I saw it, paint, paper, and everything were most doleful. But the
room was full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on
the door, and when I went in, I thought I should have fallen fainting to
the floor. However, I pulled myself together, and stood against the end
wall, wondering what on earth there could be about the room to make my
limbs tremble, and my heart beat as if I were at the hour of death. In
one corner there was a pile of newspapers littered about on the floor,
and I began looking at them; they were papers of three or four years
ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had been used
for packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found a
curious drawing; I will show it you presently. But I couldn't stay in
the room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to come out,
safe and sound, into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along
the street, and one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about from
one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much as I could do
to take the key back to the agent and get home. I was in bed for a week,
suffering from what my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion. One
of those days I was reading the evening paper, and hap