y with blood-sucking I heard the
regular--"Let-us-take-and-heave-him-over" grunt of doolie-bearers in the
compound. First one doolie came in, then a second, and then a third. I
heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and the shutter in front of my
door shook. "That's some one trying to come in," I said. But no one spoke,
and I persuaded myself that it was the gusty wind. The shutter of the room
next to mine was attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened. "That's
some Sub-Deputy Assistant," I said, "and he has brought his friends with
him. Now they'll talk and spit and smoke for an hour."

But there were no voices and no footsteps. No one was putting his luggage
into the next room. The door shut, and I thanked Providence that I was to
be left in peace. But I was curious to know where the doolies had gone. I
got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a
doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room,
the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake--the whir of a
billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing
for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterwards there was
another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened--indeed I was not.
I was very curious to know what had become of the doolies. I jumped into
bed for that reason.

Next minute I heard the double click of a cannon and my hair sat up. It is
a mistake to say that hair stands up. The skin of the head tightens and
you can feel a faint, prickly, bristling all over the scalp. That is the
hair sitting up.

There was a whir and a click, and both sounds could only have been made by
one thing--a billiard ball. I argued the matter out at great length with
myself; and the more I argued the less probable it seemed that one bed,
one table, and two chairs--all the furniture of the room next to
mine--could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a game of billiards. After
another cannon, a three-cushion one to judge by the whir, I argued no
more. I had found my ghost and would have given worlds to have escaped
from that dak-bungalow. I listened, and with each listen the game grew
clearer. There was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes there was a
double click and a whir and another click. Beyond any sort of doubt,
people were playing billiards in the next room. And the next room was not
big enough to hold a billiard table!

Between the pauses of the wind I heard the g