Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

Paredes sprang from his bed and looked around. He could hear footsteps as of some one walking about the room beside him. Doors, apparently, were being opened and closed all over the house. That horrible grating laugh again came from behind his bed. But as far as he could see—

“There was nothing in my room, neither a hidden animal, nor anything revolutionary. Nothing but myself, shivering in the cold moonlight.

“I did not take the trouble to warn you. I did not take time to think. I just bolted into the garden like a lunatic and ran straight before me, without even shutting a door. It did not take many minutes to get to my father’s house, for I went like the wind.”

The next morning Paredes told his father what had happened.

“That is singular,” his father said. “Another tenant, who occupied that house before your friend, left because of the strange noises in the place. And the woman who now takes care of the meteorological observatory opposite the house spent a night there once. She vows she will never enter it again, and declares the house is bewitched. Tell your friend to watch some night and try and find out what it is.”

As he thought over the occurrences of the night before, the thing which struck Paredes as most unusual was that nothing had happened as long as there was a light burning in his room.

He returned to Homem Christo’s house to explain the cause of his disappearance. As his friend heard the story he laughed. Christo writes:

“When my comrade had finished I was silent for a moment. I had vaguely heard our professors tell about ‘collective hallucinations,’ but I couldn’t explain to him so many things at the same time. And I was also struck by the circumstances that the actions or strange noises happened in relative darkness, light destroying the phantasmagoria.

“I drew his attention to that.

“ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I had in fact used up my matches smoking last night. But I saw with my own eyes in the moonlight my shutters slowly opening, as if pulled by two hands. And when I wanted to pull them in I felt the queer resistance.’

“ ‘Whoever held them was stronger than I am, I assure you. I should swear to that, even though that guillotine window of yours should cut off my head again.

“It Was, in Fact, War”

“ ‘And the noises I heard were the same noises as those described by your wife. She told you that several walked in the room, pulling burdens along and shaking all the furniture as if there was a moving going on; and yet you heard nothing, which is another mystery.’

“As for me, it seemed clear to me that after the row of my scandal at the university some practical jokers wanted to exasperate me. Another ‘rag’ among the jolly students of Coimbra! One had to forgive them even though their pleasantry was in rather bad taste, considering that there was a young wife and a seven weeks’ old baby in the case.”

Christo decided to sit up the next night and try to catch the students he believed responsible for everything.

“I installed myself in the suspected room after inspecting the house from cellar to attic and locking in the servants. Considering the artfulness of servants, it was always possible that they could be in league with the mischief-makers up to a certain point.

“I provided myself with matches. And, thinking that a candle was easier to light than a lamp, I took one with a high candlestick, saying to myself that this would not be blown out under my very nose.

“My wife, trembling in all her limbs — though my friend’s adventure was unknown to her — put the baby’s cradle at the foot of her bed upstairs, taking every precaution for the watching of the cradle and of her bolted door. She knew that she could expect no concession from me to the ‘supernatural,’ and that the trickster or tricksters, if caught, would be brutally done to death. It was, in fact, war.

An Unknown Force

“I had begun to forget completely why I was reading a law book, sitting in an easy chair instead of lying in bed, when, about 1 a. m., my candle began to wane. The wick fell in a little pool of wax and went out.

“I need hardly say that I had closed the shutters, pushed the bolt well in, and let my guillotine of a window slide exactly down into its grooves.

“As I put out my arm to seize the matches I saw — this happened automatically as soon as the light went out — I saw the shutters opening slowly, and the moon introducing into the opening the white cold blade of its sword of light.

“With one bound I was at the guillotine and raised it. I hooked it up and stretched my arms forward without bending my head, warned by the first inexplicable accident.

“I pushed the shutters with all my force. But they resisted.

“Those shutters seemed to be held by a crowd of people. They were both resistant and elastic to the touch, as if held by muscles working against my own.