well I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I

had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table to form a kind of

barricade before me. On this lay my revolver, ready to hand. My precise

examination had done me a little good, but J still found the remoter

darkness of the place and its perfect stillness too stimulating for the

imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was * no

sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end of the

room began to display that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd

suggestion of a lurking living thing that comes so easily in silence

and solitude. And to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it

and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that

candle upon the floor of the alcove and left it in that position.

By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although

to my reason there was no adequate cause for my condition. My mind,

however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that

nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began

stringing some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, concerning the

original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were

not pleasant* For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a

conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting.

My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I

tried to keep it upon that topic.

The sombre reds and grays of the room troubled me; even with its seven

candles the place was merely dim. The light in the alcove flaring in

The Red Room