In the silence that followed the ghostly disturbance we sat around the table listening. Sir James was the first to speak. “A demonstration, Mr. Klaw!” he said. “This sort of thing happens every night!” “Ah!” rumbled Moris Klaw, “every night, eh? That laughing? You have investigated--yes--no?” “I tried to investigate,” explained the baronet, “but quite frankly I didn’t know where to begin.” We were all recovering our composure somewhat, I think. “You hear that laughter nowhere but in this room?” asked Klaw. “I have always heard it when we have been seated at this table,” was the reply; “at no other time, but it can be heard clearly beyond the room. The servants have heard it. Excepting the housekeeper and the butler, they are leaving almost immediately.” “Ah! _canaille!_” grunted Moris Klaw; “fear-pigs! It is always so, these servants. So you have not located the one that laughs, no?” “No,” answered Sir James; “and he doesn’t stop at laughing--does he, Clem?” Clement Leyland shook his head. He looked even paler than usual, I thought, and the uncanny incident seemed to have disturbed him greatly. “What else?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “The gray monk is forgetting his manners. He becomes rude, eh--that gray monk?” “The house has practically become uninhabitable,” said the baronet, bitterly. “None of the usual phenomena are missing. We have slamming doors, phantom footsteps, and, if the servants are to be believed, half the forces of hell loose here at night!” “But your _own_ experiences?” interrupted Klaw. “My own experiences in brief amount to this: I rarely sit at this table at night without hearing that beastly laughter, at least once. I never go into the billiard room, which opens out under the gallery yonder, without feeling a cold wind blowing upon my face or head, even in perfectly still weather, or with all the windows closed. To the left of the billiard room, and opening out of it, is a third centre of these disturbances. It’s the gun room, and guns have been fired there in the night, with the door locked, on no fewer than five occasions!” Moris Klaw, from a tail pocket of his coat, produced a cylindrical scent spray and squirted verbena upon his high yellow forehead. “It grows exciting, this,” he said. “I require the cool brain.” “Finally,” added Sir James, “the only other point worth mentioning is the ghostly voice which regularly wakes me from my sleep at night.” “A voice,” rumbled Klaw; “what voice, and what does it say, that voice?” “I won’t repeat what it says!” replied the baronet, glancing at Isis; “but it offers obscene suggestions or that is the impression I have of it--a low, filthy mumbling; if you can follow me, the voice of something dead and infinitely evil.” Moris Klaw stood up.