The second day we found our twig and straw arrangements intact, but not a single door was shut, all were thrown defiantly wide. This seemed rather promising and we went upstairs to our seat on the steps, and carefully reclosing the doors immediately in front of us, sat down to await events.
Quite half an hour must have passed when suddenly a click made us both look up. The handle of the door, but a couple of yards distant from me, leading into the small room, was turning, and the door quietly opened wide enough to admit the passing of a human being. It was a bright sunny day, and one could see the brass knob turning round quite distinctly. We saw no form of any sort, and the door remained half open. For perhaps a couple of moments we awaited developments, then our attention was suddenly switched off the door by the sound of hurrying footsteps running along the bare boards on the corridor above us. My husband rushed up and searched each empty room, but neither saw anything nor heard anything more. Before leaving the house we shut all doors, and locked all that would lock. Such was the meager extent of our second day's investigations.
On the third day the doors were all found wide flung. No door opened before our eyes as on our former visit, but a brushing sound was heard ascending the stairs, as if from some one pressing close against the wall.
For about a fortnight nothing happened beyond what I have recounted, but I was strongly conscious that we were being watched. The most unhealthful spots were the bathroom, a servants' room entered by a staircase leading from the kitchen, and the stable, a small building immediately to the right of the house. The bathroom was in great disrepair, long strips of paper hung from the walls, and an air of profound depression pervaded it. Obviously it had once been merely a large cupboard, and it had a window admitting light from a passage behind it.
We had never once failed to find every door which we had closed thrown wide on our return, and one day we locked the bathroom, and removing the key we looked about for some spot in which to secrete it. On that floor was nothing large enough to hide even so small an object as a key, so we took it downstairs to the dining-room. In a corner lay a rag of linoleum about six inches square, under this we placed the bathroom key and left the house.