“It must have been Bridget,” I proceeded, authoritatively, “or Tip.”

“Bridget is out walking with Tip and the baby.  Jane is in the kitchen making pies.”

“At any rate these are not the clothes which you locked into the closet, however they came here.”

“The very same, Fred. See, I noticed the numbers 6 upon the stockings, 2 on the night-caps, and—­”

“Give me the key,” I interrupted.

She gave me the key.  I went to the cedar closet and tried the door.  It was locked.  I unlocked it, and opened the drawer in which my wife assured me that the clothes had lain.  Nothing was to be seen in it but the linen towel which neatly covered the bottom.  I lifted it and shook it.  The drawer was empty.

“Give me those clothes, if you please.”

She brought them to me.  I made in my diary a careful memorandum of their naming and numbering; placed the articles myself in the drawer,—­an upper drawer, so that there could be no mistake in identifying it; locked the drawer, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the closet, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the room in which the closet was, and put that key in my pocket.

We sat down then in the hall, all of us; Allis and Gertrude to fill the mending-basket, I to smoke and consider.  I saw Tip coming home with his nurse presently, and started to go down and let him in, when a faint scream from my wife arrested me.  I ran past Miss Fellows, who was sitting on the stairs, and into my room.  Allis, going in to put away Tip’s little plaid aprons, had stopped, rather pale, upon the threshold.  Upon the bed lay some clothing, folded, as before, in rude, hideous imitation of the dead.

I took each article in turn, and compared the name and number with the names and numbers in my diary.  They were identical throughout.  I took the clothes, took the three keys from my pocket, unlocked the “cedar-room” door, unlocked the closet door, unlocked the upper drawer, and looked in.  The drawer was empty.

To say that from this time I failed to own—­to myself, if not to other people—­that some mysterious influence, inexplicable by common or scientific causes, was at work in my house, would be to accuse myself of more obstinacy than even I am capable of.  I propounded theory after theory, and gave it up.  I arrived at conclusion upon conclusion, and threw them aside.  Finally, I held my peace, ceased to talk of “rats,” kept my mind in a state of passive vacancy, and narrowly and quietly watched the progress of affairs.

From the date of that escapade with the underclothes confusion reigned in our corner of Nemo’s Avenue.  That night neither my wife nor myself closed an eye, the house so resounded and re-echoed with the blows of unseen hammers, fists, logs, and knuckles.

Miss Fellows, too, was pale with her vigils, looked troubled, and proposed going home.  This I peremptorily vetoed, determined if the woman had any connection, honest or otherwise, with the mystery, to ferret it out.