He tried to shout to Sir George to put him on his guard, but his voice refused to act and he could do nothing.
Up and up it went, until at last it reached the gallery and crept onward into the east wing.
He then heard Sir George cry out, “Hullo, Morgan! Is that you? Anything——” There was then a moment of the most intense silence, and then a shriek. Morgan says it was like a woman’s shriek—it was so shrill, so uncontrolled, so full of the most abject terror. For a moment it completely paralysed Morgan, but he seems then to have partially recovered. Anyhow, he pulled himself sufficiently together to run up the stairs and arrive outside Sir George’s door in time to hear sounds of a most violent struggle. Tables, chairs, washstand, crockery, were all hurled to the ground, as Sir George raced round and round the room in his desperate efforts to escape. Once he caught hold of the handle of the door and turned it furiously. “Let me out!” he shrieked. “For mercy’s sake let me out!” and again Morgan heard him rush to the window and pound madly on the glass.
Then there came another spell of silence—short and emphatic—then a shriek that far eclipsed anything Morgan had hitherto heard, and then a voice—a man’s voice, but certainly not Sir George’s—which, speaking in sharp, jerky sentences that conveyed with them a sense of strange far-offness, said: “You’ll believe now, Sir George. You’ll believe now. Damn you, you’ll believe now!” Then there were sounds as if someone was being shaken very violently to and fro, and Morgan, utterly unable to stand it any longer, turned tail and—fled.
.......
When Morgan returned some half an hour later, accompanied by the lodge-keeper and one of the under-gardeners, they found Sir George lying in a heap on the floor—unconscious. He did not die, however, neither did he go mad; but his heart was badly affected, and he subsequently developed fits.
Nothing would induce him to describe what had actually taken place, and this, added to the fact that he never again set foot within “The Mayfields,” caused his friends to draw their own conclusions. Morgan told me all about it, and I at once wrote to Dr. Sickertorft. I was too late, however; Dr. Sickertorft had been dead some weeks—he had died of cerebral tuberculosis exactly three months after Morgan’s visit to “The Mayfields.” I was informed that he attributed the fatal malady to supernormal concentration.
CHAPTER IV
THE EMPTY LEASH
A CASE OF HAUNTING IN ST. JOHN’S WOOD
I have so often been accused of writing too exclusively about the horrid types of spirit, such as earth-bound murderers, suicides, and elements, that I am more than pleased to be able to present to my readers a case of a different kind. Until quite recently Barcombe House, St. John’s Wood, was haunted by the ghost of a very lovely little girl, who, it is believed, died of a broken heart because a dog to which she was very much attached had to be destroyed. I obtained particulars as to the hauntings from a Mr. John Tyley, whose verbatim account I will endeavour, as nearly as possible, to reproduce.