There was no reply, but when she stretched out her hand to feel for the door, she encountered something very cold and spongy, and the horror of it was so unexpected that she fainted.
In falling she struck the door violently. It flew open, and she was found some seconds later in a state of semi-insensibility, lying half in the cupboard and half across the corridor.
When Lady Cookham heard of what had happened, she was furious. “The cupboard can’t be haunted,” she declared, “it’s ridiculous. Someone is playing us a trick. I’ll call in the police.”
The local inspector being summoned, examined the cupboard and cross-questioned the servants. But he discovered nothing. Lady Cookham now determined to unravel the mystery—if mystery there were—herself. She gave all the servants save one—the new maid Hemmings, whom she had engaged in the place of Lucy—a fortnight’s holiday, and got in a supply cook from Coventry. The governess was allowed to remain, but she was strictly forbidden to go anywhere near the cupboard after midday.
When evening arrived, Lady Cookham, arming herself with a revolver and horsewhip, commenced to watch. Her first vigil passed uneventfully; but the next night, just as she had arrived at the cupboard and was taking up her stand facing it, the door slowly began to open. Lady Cookham is about as good a specimen of the thoroughly practical, strong-minded English sportswoman as one could meet anywhere. Up to the commencement of the present war she rode regularly with the Pytchley hounds, had a cold douche bath every morning, and spent a month at least every summer yachting in the English Channel.
She had never known fear—never, at least, until now. “Who’s there?” she demanded. “You had better speak sharp, or I’ll fire!”
There was no reply, however, and the door continued opening.
Had she seen anything, she doesn’t think she would have been so frightened, but there was nothing—absolutely nothing visible. Her impressions were, however, that something was coming out, and that that something was nothing human.
It moved stealthily towards her—and she could define a soft clinging tread, just as if it had tentacles that kept adhering to the boards. She tried to press the trigger of the revolver, but her muscles refused to act, and when she opened her mouth to shout she could not articulate a sound. It was now close to her. One of its large, clammy feet touched her, and she could feel its clammy, pungent breath fanning the top of her head.
Then something icy cold and indescribably repulsive sought her throat and slowly began to throttle her. She tried to beat it off and to make some kind of noise to attract help, but it was all to no purpose. She was powerless. The grip tightened. All the blood in her veins congealed—her lungs expanded to the verge of bursting; and then, when the pain and horror reached its climax, and the identity of the hellish creature seemed about to reveal itself, there was a loud crack, and with it the acme of her sufferings, the final conscious stage of excruciating asphyxiation passed, and she relapsed into apparent death. She supposes that, for the first time in her life, she must have fainted. The crack was the report of her revolver. In her acute agony, her fingers had closed convulsively over the trigger, and the weapon had exploded.