“Very well, Morton, that will do.”

“What do you make of it?” asked Saunders when they were alone.  “I mean of the letter he said you wrote.”

“Oh, that’s simple enough,” said Eustace.  “See the paper it’s written on?  I stopped using that years ago, but there were a few odd sheets and envelopes left in the old desk.  We never fastened up the lid of the box before locking it in.  The hand got out, found a pencil, wrote this note, and shoved it through a crack on to the floor where Morton found it.  That’s plain as daylight.”

“But the hand couldn’t write?”

“Couldn’t it?  You’ve not seen it do the things I’ve seen,” and he told Saunders more of what had happened at Eastbourne.

“Well,” said Saunders, “in that case we have at least an explanation of the legacy.  It was the hand which wrote unknown to your uncle that letter to your solicitor, bequeathing itself to you.  Your uncle had no more to do with that request than I. In fact, it would seem that he had some idea of this automatic writing, and feared it.”

“Then if it’s not my uncle, what is it?”

“I suppose some people might say that a disembodied spirit had got your uncle to educate and prepare a little body for it.  Now it’s got into that little body and is off on its own.”

“Well, what are we to do?”

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” said Saunders, “and try to catch it.  If we can’t do that, we shall have to wait till the bally clockwork runs down.  After all, if it’s flesh and blood, it can’t live for ever.”

For two days nothing happened.  Then Saunders saw it sliding down the banister in the hall.  He was taken unawares, and lost a full second before he started in pursuit, only to find that the thing had escaped him.  Three days later, Eustace, writing alone in the library at night, saw it sitting on an open book at the other end of the room.  The fingers crept over the page, feeling the print as if it were reading; but before he had time to get up from his seat, it had taken the alarm and was pulling itself up the curtains.  Eustace watched it grimly as it hung on to the cornice with three fingers, flicking thumb and forefinger at him in an expression of scornful derision.

“I know what I’ll do,” he said.  “If I only get it into the open I’ll set the dogs on to it.”

He spoke to Saunders of the suggestion.

“It’s jolly good idea,” he said; “only we won’t wait till we find it out of doors.  We’ll get the dogs.  There are the two terriers and the under-keeper’s Irish mongrel that’s on to rats like a flash.  Your spaniel has not got spirit enough for this sort of game.”  They brought the dogs into the house, and the keeper’s Irish mongrel chewed up the slippers, and the terriers tripped up Morton as he waited at table; but all three were welcome.  Even false security is better than no security at all.