That night she shared her sister's bedroom, but neither she nor her
sister slept.
From this time till the return of Mrs. Gordon, nothing happened. It
was one evening after she came back, when she was preparing to get
into bed, that the door of her own room unexpectedly opened, and she
saw standing, on the threshold, the unmistakable figure of a man,
short and broad, with a great width of shoulders, and very long arms.
He was clad in a peajacket, blue serge trousers, and jack-boots. He
had a big, round, brutal head, covered with a tangled mass of yellow
hair, but where his face ought to have been there was only a blotch,
underlying which Mrs. Gordon detected the semblance to something
fiendishly vindictive and immeasurably nasty. But, in spite of the
horror his appearance produced, her curiosity was aroused with regard
to the two objects he carried in his hands, one of which looked like
a very bizarre bundle of red and white rags, and the other a small
bladder of lard. Whilst she was staring at them in dumb awe, he swung
round, and, hitching them savagely under his armpits, rushed across
the landing, and, with a series of apish bounds, sprang up the
staircase and disappeared in the gloom.
This was the climax; Mrs. Gordon felt another such encounter would
kill her. So, in spite of the fact that she had taken the flat for a
year, and had only just commenced her tenancy, she packed up her goods
and left the very next day. The report that the building was haunted
spread rapidly, and Mrs.
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