“Suddenly, Tassoc stood up:—­

“‘Let’s take our guns, and go and examine the brute,’ he said, and turned toward the door.

“‘No!’ I said.  ’By Jove—­no! I can’t say anything definite, yet; but I believe that room is about as dangerous as it well can be.’

“‘Haunted—­really haunted?’ he asked, keenly and without any of his frequent banter.

“I told him, of course, that I could not say a definite yes or no to such a question; but that I hoped to be able to make a statement, soon.  Then I gave him a little lecture on the False Re-Materialization of the Animate-Force through the Inanimate-Inert.  He began then to see the particular way in the room might be dangerous, if it were really the subject of a manifestation.

“About an hour later, the whistling ceased quite suddenly, and Tassoc went off again to bed.  I went back to mine, also, and eventually got another spell of sleep.

“In the morning, I went along to the room.  I found the seals on the door intact.  Then I went in.  The window seals and the hair were all right; but the seventh hair across the great fireplace was broken.  This set me thinking.  I knew that it might, very possibly, have snapped, through my having tensioned it too highly; but then, again, it might have been broken by something else.  Yet, it was scarcely possible that a man, for instance, could have passed between the six unbroken hairs; for no one would ever have noticed them, entering the room that way, you see; but just walked through them, ignorant of their very existence.

“I removed the other hairs, and the seals.  Then I looked up the chimney.  It went up straight, and I could see blue sky at the top.  It was a big, open flue, and free from any suggestion of hiding places, or corners.  Yet, of course, I did not trust to any such casual examination, and after breakfast, I put on my overalls, and climbed to the very top, sounding all the way; but I found nothing.

“Then I came down, and went over the whole of the room—­floor, ceiling, and walls, mapping them out in six-inch squares, and sounding with both hammer and probe.  But there was nothing abnormal.

“Afterward, I made a three-weeks search of the whole castle, in the same thorough way; but found nothing.  I went even further, then; for at night, when the whistling commenced, I made a microphone test.  You see, if the whistling were mechanically produced, this test would have made evident to me the working of the machinery, if there were any such concealed within the walls.  It certainly was an up-to-date method of examination, as you must allow.