ors, reading, until twelve o'clock--or later. He was a bachelor,
and his household consisted of a cook, a housemaid, and a man who had
been with him for thirty years, I believe. At the time of Mr. Maddison's
death, his household had recently been deprived of two of its members.
The cook and housemaid both resigned one morning, giving as their reason
the fact that the place was haunted."

"In what way?"

"I interviewed the precious pair at the time, and they told me absurd
and various tales about dark figures wandering along the corridors and
bending over them in bed at night, whispering; but their chief trouble
was a continuous ringing of bells about the house."

"Bells?"

"They said that it became unbearable. Night and day there were bells
ringing all over the house. At any rate, they went, and for three or
four days the Gables was occupied only by Mr. Maddison and his man,
whose name was Stevens. I interviewed the latter also, and he was an
altogether more reliable witness; a decent, steady sort of man whose
story impressed me very much at the time."

"Did he confirm the ringing?"

"He swore to it--a sort of jangle, sometimes up in the air, near the
ceilings, and sometimes under the floor, like the shaking of silver
bells."

Nayland Smith stood up abruptly and began to pace the room, leaving
great trails of blue-gray smoke behind him.

"Your story is sufficiently interesting, Inspector," he declared,
"even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu-Manchu
problem. This would appear to be distinctly a case of an 'astral bell'
such as we sometimes hear of in India."

"It was Stevens," continued Weymouth, "who found Mr. Maddison. He
(Stevens) had been out on business connected with the household
arrangements, and at about eleven o'clock he returned, letting himself
in with a key. There was a light in the library, and getting no response
to his knocking, Stevens entered. He found his master sitting bolt
upright in a chair, clutching the arms with rigid fingers and staring
straight before him with a look of such frightful horror on his face,
that Stevens positively ran from the room and out of the house. Mr.
Maddison was stone dead. When a doctor, who lives at no great distance
away, came and examined him, he could find no trace of violence
whatever; he had apparently died of fright, to judge from the expression
on his face."

"Anything else?"

"Only this: I learnt, indirectly, that the last