fully appreciated the calculated
remorselessness which had decided upon the animal's death, and the cold
determination with which it had been afterward executed so neatly. I
guessed that a man who might get into the 'light' of those particular
men, would be likely to come to quite as uncomfortable an ending.

"A minute later, one of the men called out to the rest that they should
'shift the wires.' One of the men came toward the doorway of the corridor
in which I stood, and I ran quickly back into the darkness of the upper
end. I saw the man reach up, and take something from the top of the door,
and I heard the slight, ringing jangle of steel wire.

"When he had gone, I ran back again, and saw the men passing, one after
another, through an opening in the stairs, formed by one of the marble
steps being raised. When the last man had vanished, the slab that made
the step was shut down, and there was not a sign of the secret door. It
was the seventh step from the bottom, as I took care to count: and a
splendid idea; for it was so solid that it did not ring hollow, even to a
fairly heavy hammer, as I found later.

"There is little more to tell. I got out of the house as quickly and
quietly as possible, and back to the inn. The police came without any
coaxing, when they knew the 'ghosts' were normal flesh and blood. We
entered the park and the Manor in the same way that I had done. Yet, when
we tried to open the step, we failed, and had finally to smash it. This
must have warned the haunters; for when we descended to a secret room
which we found at the end of a long and narrow passage in the thickness
of the walls, we found no one.

"The police were horribly disgusted, as you can imagine; but for my
part, I did not care either way. I had 'laid the ghost,' as you might
say, and that was what I set out to do. I was not particularly afraid of
being laughed at by the others; for they had all been thoroughly 'taken
in'; and in the end, I had scored, without their help.

"We searched right through the secret ways, and found that there was an
exit, at the end of a long tunnel, which opened in the side of a well,
out in the grounds. The ceiling of the hall was hollow, and reached by a
little secret stairway inside of the big staircase. The 'blood-drip' was
merely colored water, dropped through the minute crevices of the
ornamented ceiling. How the candles and the fire were put out, I do not
know; for the haunters certainly did n