"Mrs. Parminter screamed, Parminter tightened his hold of the Professor, and the next thing they knew was that they were all three rolling on the floor with something huge and scaly crawling over them. It conveyed the impression that it was some gigantic, venomous, and indescribably hideous insect, furnished with many long and dreadful legs, and they shrank from its touch just as they would have shrunk from the touch of an enormous spider, black-beetle, or other creature to which they had a special aversion. The Professor had brought with him a very powerful electric torch. In the first panic it had slipped from his grasp and rolled away into the darkness, but his fingers eventually coming into contact with it, he pressed the button. In an instant the landing was flooded with light, and the thing of horror had gone. Parminter then lit the incandescent gas, and they all three went downstairs into the dining-room and had brandies and soda. "'Well, how do you account for it?' Parminter said to the Professor. 'What do you think it was?' "'Nothing that I can explain by any known physical law,' the Professor replied. 'I never believed in the possibility of the superphysical before, but I am convinced of it now. What struck me most about that thing, even more than its extraordinary property of completely vanishing under the influence of light, was its malignancy. Didn't you feel how intensely antagonistic it was to us?' "'Yes,' Parminter said. 'I did.' "'Well,' the Professor went on, 'such antagonism, such concentrated spleen and venom and bloodthirstiness--I felt the thing wanted to crush, tear, mangle, lacerate, poison me--could only originate in Hell--in a world altogether distinct from ours, where cruelty and maliciousness attain dimensions entirely beyond the scope of the physical. My advice to you is to quit the house with all haste, lest something really evil befall you.' "Having only just moved in, and spent a lot of money on the place, the Parminters naturally did not feel inclined to carry out this advice. "'If the place is haunted,' they argued, 'we can surely get rid of the ghost by exorcism or some other device.' "They consulted several of their friends, and were finally persuaded to call in a priest--an Anglican, from a parish in the East End, that Mrs. Parminter used to visit when they lived in town. "The Parminters did not tell me exactly what Father S---- did (I believe there is a special form of exorcism practised in the Church), but anyhow he could not proceed; his nerves, so he himself admitted, went all to bits, and directly the long streak of light began to crawl towards him he turned tail and fled.