“We had come out of the billiard room by this time and were going along the passage and I was still doing my best to make both of them see the ordinary, commonplace possibilities of the happening, when what killed my pig, as the saying goes, was the sound of a hoof in the dark billiard room we had just left.

“I felt the ‘creep’ come on me in a flash, up my spine and over the back of my head.  Miss Hisgins whooped like a child with the whooping cough and ran up the passage, giving little gasping screams.  Beaumont, however, ripped ’round on his heels and jumped back a couple of yards.  I gave back too, a bit, as you can understand.

“‘There it is,’ he said in a low, breathless voice.  ’Perhaps you’ll believe now.’

“‘There’s certainly something,’ I whispered, never taking my gaze off the closed door of the billiard room.

“‘H’sh!’ he muttered.  ‘There it is again.’

“There was a sound like a great horse pacing ’round and ’round the billiard room with slow, deliberate steps.  A horrible cold fright took me so that it seemed impossible to take a full breath, you know the feeling, and then I saw we must have been walking backward for we found ourselves suddenly at the opening of the long passage.

“We stopped there and listened.  The sounds went on steadily with a horrible sort of deliberateness, as if the brute were taking a sort of malicious gusto in walking about all over the room which we had just occupied.  Do you understand just what I mean?

“Then there was a pause and a long time of absolute quiet except for an excited whispering from some of the people down in the big hall.  The sound came plainly up the wide stairway.  I fancy they were gathered ’round Miss Hisgins, with some notion of protecting her.

“I should think Beaumont and I stood there, at the end of the passage for about five minutes, listening for any noise in the billiard room.  Then I realized what a horrible funk I was in and I said to him:  ’I’m going to see what’s there.’

“‘So’m I,’ he answered.  He was pretty white, but he had heaps of pluck.  I told him to wait one instant and I made a dash into my bedroom and got my camera and flashlight.  I slipped my revolver into my right-hand pocket and a knuckle-duster over my left fist, where it was ready and yet would not stop me from being able to work my flashlight.

“Then I ran back to Beaumont.  He held out his hand to show me that he had his pistol and I nodded, but whispered to him not to be too quick to shoot, as there might be some silly practical joking at work, after all.  He had got a lamp from a bracket in the upper hall which he was holding in the crook of his damaged arm, so that we had a good light.  Then we went down the passage toward the billiard room and you can imagine that we were a pretty nervous couple.