In the room in which we were now standing there were two bell-pulls; one was broken, the other appeared to be in workable condition. It was not to prove this, but out of an idle humor as I thought at the time--though I was afterward inclined to change my opinion, and to ascribe the action to a spiritual impulse--that I stepped to the unbroken bell-pull, and gave it a jerk. It is not easy to describe what followed. Bells jangled and tolled and clanged as though I had set in motion a host in of infernal and discordant tongues of metal, and had raised the dead from their graves to take part in the harsh concert, for indeed there seemed to be something horribly fiendish, in the discord, which was at once hoarse, strident, shrill, and sepulchral, and finally resolved itself into a low, muffled wail which ran through the house like a funereal peal. With the exception of our own voices and footsteps and the slamming of the doors we had opened and shut, these were the only sounds we had heard, and they brought a chill to our hearts.
I nodded, and held up my hand. The last echo of the bells had died away, and now there came another sound, so startling and appalling that my wife clutched me in terror.
"My God!" she cried; "someone is coming upstairs!"
As I have said, we were on the second floor, and the sound which now filled us with apprehension proceeded from the lower part of the house. It was very faint, and I judged--though in such circumstances but small reliance could be placed upon any judgment I may have formed--that if human feet produced it they must have been encased in soft shoes or slippers. It has ever since been to me a matter for wonder how a sound so fine could have reached our ears from that distance. It must have been that our senses, refined instead of dulled by the despair which held us spellbound, were preternaturally sharpened to catch the note of warning which at any other time would have been inaudible.
At the moment, therefore, of my wife's frenzied exclamation I inferred that the feet had left the kitchen and were on the stairs leading from the basement to the hall. If my surmise was correct there were still two flights of stairs to ascend before the full horror of the incident would be revealed to us.