“But long before the impulse could translate itself into an act, or even before it had been properly weighed and considered by the mind, I heard a voice close beside me in the air, a sort of hushed whisper which I am certain was Smith speaking, though the sound did not seem to have come to me through the door.  It was close in my very ear, as though he stood beside me, and it gave me such a start, that I clutched the banisters to save myself from stepping backwards and making a clatter on the stairs.

“‘There is nothing you can do to help me,’” it said distinctly, ’and you will be much safer in your own room.’

“I am ashamed to this day of the pace at which I covered the flight of stairs in the darkness to the top floor, and of the shaking hand with which I lit my candles and bolted the door.  But, there it is, just as it happened.

“This midnight episode, so odd and yet so trivial in itself, fired me with more curiosity than ever about my fellow-lodger.  It also made me connect him in my mind with a sense of fear and distrust.  I never saw him, yet I was often, and uncomfortably, aware of his presence in the upper regions of that gloomy lodging-house.  Smith and his secret mode of life and mysterious pursuits, somehow contrived to awaken in my being a line of reflection that disturbed my comfortable condition of ignorance.  I never saw him, as I have said, and exchanged no sort of communication with him, yet it seemed to me that his mind was in contact with mine, and some of the strange forces of his atmosphere filtered through into my being and disturbed my equilibrium.  Those upper floors became haunted for me after dark, and, though outwardly our lives never came into contact, I became unwillingly involved in certain pursuits on which his mind was centred.  I felt that he was somehow making use of me against my will, and by methods which passed my comprehension.

“I was at that time, moreover, in the heavy, unquestioning state of materialism which is common to medical students when they begin to understand something of the human anatomy and nervous system, and jump at once to the conclusion that they control the universe and hold in their forceps the last word of life and death.  I ‘knew it all,’ and regarded a belief in anything beyond matter as the wanderings of weak, or at best, untrained minds.  And this condition of mind, of course, added to the strength of this upsetting fear which emanated from the floor below and began slowly to take possession of me.

“Though I kept no notes of the subsequent events in this matter, they made too deep an impression for me ever to forget the sequence in which they occurred.  Without difficulty I can recall the next step in the adventure with Smith, for adventure it rapidly grew to be.”

The doctor stopped a moment and laid his pipe on the table behind him before continuing.  The fire had burned low, and no one stirred to poke it.  The silence in the great hall was so deep that when the speaker’s pipe touched the table the sound woke audible echoes at the far end among the shadows.