“‘Then we’ll explore it,’ I said. ‘For my part I can’t go to sleep until I’ve got to the bottom of this. Get the man to bring a lantern along.’
“The butler looked as though he didn’t half like the enterprise, and, to tell the truth, no more did I. It was the uncanniest job I ever undertook. However, we started, the three of us. First of all we searched the rooms on the floor above, where George and I slept. Everything was just as we had left it. Then I pushed open the door at the end of the corridor. A crazy-looking staircase led up into darkness. We went cautiously up, I first with a candle, then George, and last of all the butler with a lantern. At the top we stepped into a big, rather low room, with beams across the ceiling, and a rough, uneven floor. Our lights threw strange shadows into the corners, and more than once I started at what looked like a crouching human figure. We searched every corner. There was nothing to be seen but a few old boxes, a roll or two of matting, and some broken chairs. But in the far corner George pointed out to me a rickety ladder which ended at a closed trap-door. Just then I distinctly heard the curious, half groaning, half sighing sound which had already puzzled me in the corridor below. We stood still and looked at one another. We all heard the sound.
“‘Whatever it is, it’s up there,’ I said. ‘The question is, who is going up?’
“George put his candle down upon the floor and stepped upon the ladder. It cracked beneath his weight. He stopped.
“‘Come down; it won’t bear you,’ I said. ‘I shall have to go.’
“I don’t know that I was ever in such a queer funk as I was while I slowly mounted that ladder, and pushed open the trap-door. I had formed no clear idea of what I expected to find there. Certainly I was not prepared for what happened. For no sooner was the trap-door fully open than there fell—literally fell—upon me from the darkness above a thing in human shape, which kicked and spat and tore at me as I stood clinging to the ladder. It lasted but a moment or so, but in that moment I lived a lifetime of terror. The ladder swayed and cracked beneath me, and I fell to the floor with the thing gripping my throat like a vise. The next instant George had stunned it with a blow from the poker and dragged it off me. It lay upon its back on the floor—a ragged, hideous, loathsome shape. And the mystery was solved.”
“But you haven’t told us what it really was,” said one of the listeners.
The doctor smiled.
“It was the owner of the house,” he replied. “He had not gone abroad. He had gone to a private lunatic asylum with homicidal mania upon him. About a fortnight before this he had managed to escape; and, having made his way to his former home, had concealed himself, with a cunning often shown by lunatics, in the loft. I suppose he had found enough to eat in his nightly rambles about the house. The only wonder is that he didn’t kill someone before he was caught.”