“My husband was furious when I told him what I had done. He declared he would never enter the house and urged me to sell it forthwith. But I was as firm as he; and finally, after a rather violent argument and by taunting him with being a coward, I contrived to get his reluctant consent to make our home in the ‘haunted house’.”
“We moved in last Thursday,” said Mrs. Peyton sitting nearer the desk and lowering her voice, “and on Thursday night, and every night since then—” She exhaled audibly, her lip quivering.
“What happened?” asked Barry.
“It’s been a nightmare!” she exclaimed with sudden vehemence. “Ever since that first night the most peculiar things have happened. I don’t know what to make of it, or what to think, or do. It’s baffling! I’m not in the least superstitious; and yet—”
“Start at the beginning,” suggested Barry, “and tell me exactly what happened.”
“Well, the first night we slept in the master’s bedroom—a large front room on the second floor—and about midnight I was awakened by my husband, who was sitting up in bed, gasping and trembling with terror. Before I could speak, he sprang from bed and switched on the light and began frantically searching the room, looking into the closets and under the bed and peering into the hall.
“‘For heaven’s sake!’ I cried. ‘What’s the matter?’
“He pointed to the corridor door. His hand was trembling and his face was as white as paper. For a moment he seemed unable to speak.
“‘It came right through that door!’ he said at last. ‘I woke up just as it came in the room—a ghastly-looking old man with white hair and a long beard. It didn’t open the door, but came right through it!’