"It had stood empty for years and was in a sad state of dilapidation; but the owner, being on the verge of bankruptcy, had no money to lay out on it. "'I will let you have it for a very low figure,' he had said to them, 'provided you take it as it stands.' "The sum named was £120, and this the Parminters considered, in spite of there being a pretty stiff ground rent, a bargain price. Consequently, they closed with the offer, had the house renovated, and eventually moved in. On the day after their arrival Mrs. Parminter made a discovery. Stowed away in the loft was a long, weather-worn, bolster-shaped, brown wooden trunk, bearing on it two steamship company's labels, one marked Suez and the other London. "There was no address on it--no name. The Parminters made inquiries of the builder who had done the repairs and of the late owner of the house, and neither could give them any clue as to the person to whom it belonged. The landlord declared that he had gone through all the rooms, including the loft, immediately before giving up the keys to Mrs. Parminter, and that he could swear that when he did so there was nothing in the house at all, no trunk of any description; whilst the builder declared that both he and his men, when doing the repairs, had seen the trunk in the loft and had concluded that it belonged to the Parminters. "'Well, as nobody seems to want it, we had better keep it,' Mrs. Parminter remarked. 'I wonder what it contains! It would be a pity to force the lock, we must get a key to fit it.' "As no one happened to be going out just then, the trunk was pushed on one side, and the Parminters, having many other things to occupy their minds, did not give it another thought. Tired out with all the worry and work of 'moving in,' they went to bed early that night, in the room immediately beneath the loft, and fell asleep almost as soon as they had lain down. Parminter had the digestion of an ox and, never over-taxing his brain, slept, as a rule, right through the night. On this occasion, however, he awoke with a violent start to hear a strange, scraping sound on the floor overhead. "It was just as if someone was drawing the rough edge of a stone backwards and forwards on the floor.