‘H’m!’ said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.  ’There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, some one is occupying ’em!’

‘Snakes?’ I said from below.

’No.  It’s a buffalo.  Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and I’ll prod it.  It’s lying on the main roof-beam.’

I handed up the rod.

‘What a nest for owls and serpents!  No wonder the snakes live here,’ said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof.  I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod.  ’Come out of that, whoever you are!  Heads below there!  It’s falling.’

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on the table.  I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back.  Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.

‘It strikes me,’ said he, putting down the lamp, ’our friend Imray has come back.  Oh! you would, would you?’

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod.  I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks.  The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life.

‘Is it Imray?’ I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.

‘It is Imray,’ he said; ‘and his throat is cut from ear to ear.’

Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves:  ’That’s why he whispered about the house.’

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously.  A little later her great nose heaved open the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still.  The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.

Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her forepaws planted.  She looked at Strickland.

‘It’s a bad business, old lady,’ said he.  ’Men don’t climb up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling cloth behind ’em.  Let’s think it out.’

‘Let’s think it out somewhere else,’ I said.

‘Excellent idea!  Turn the lamps out.  We’ll get into my room.’

I did not turn the lamps out.  I went into Strickland’s room first, and allowed him to make the darkness.  Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco and thought.  Strickland thought.  I smoked furiously, because I was afraid.

‘Imray is back,’ said Strickland.  ’The question is—–­who killed Imray?  Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own.  When I took this bungalow I took over most of Imray’s servants.  Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn’t he?’