ghastly he looked I feel sure
that the sounds must have had some infernal quality added to them which
frightened the man himself. Yet, later, he would persuade himself that he
had been getting fanciful. Of course, I must not forget that the effect
upon Miss Hisgins must have made him feel pretty miserable.

"Then, about the clergyman being called away, we found afterward that it
was a bogus errand, or, rather, call and it is apparent that Parsket was
at the bottom of this, so as to get a few more hours in which to achieve
his end and what that was, a very little imagination will show you; for
he had found that Beaumont would not be frightened away. I hate to think
this, but I'm bound to. Anyway, it is obvious that the man was
temporarily a bit off his normal balance. Love's a queer disease!

"Then, there is no doubt at all but that Parsket left the cord to the
butler's bell hitched somewhere so as to give him an excuse to slip away
naturally to clear it. This also gave him the opportunity to remove one
of the passage lamps. Then he had only to smash the other and the passage
was in utter darkness for him to make the attempt on Beaumont.

"In the same way, it was he who locked the door of the bedroom and took
the key (it was in his pocket). This prevented the Captain from bringing
a light and coming to the rescue. But Captain Hisgins broke down the door
with the heavy fender curb and it was his smashing the door that sounded
so confusing and frightening in the darkness of the passage.

"The photograph of the monstrous hoof above Miss Hisgins in the cellar is
one of the things that I am less sure about. It might have been faked by
Parsket, whilst I was out of the room, and this would have been easy
enough, to anyone who knew how. But, you know, it does not look like a
fake. Yet, there is as much evidence of probability that it was faked, as
against; and the thing is too vague for an examination to help to a
definite decision so that I will express no opinion, one way or the
other. It is certainly a horrible photograph.

"And now I come to that last, dreadful thing. There has been no further
manifestation of anything abnormal so that there is an extraordinary
uncertainty in my conclusions. If we had not heard those last sounds and
if Parsket had not shown that enormous sense of fear the whole of this
case could be explained in the way in which I have shown. And, in fact,
as you have seen, I am of the opinion that almost