She put the letter resolutely into an envelope, and addressed and stamped it. Nobody, having put on a two-penny-half-penny stamp, was ever known to open the envelope again. That was done. For a couple of hours now she would devote herself to the affairs of Sheridan Le Fanu.
She worked away happily till half-past ten; the racket in the passage calmed down; words flowed smoothly. From time to time, she looked up from her paper, hesitating for a word, and saw through the window the lights of Burleigh and Queen Elizabeth burning back across the quad, counterparts of her own. Many of them, no doubt, illumined cheerful parties, like the one in the Annexe; others lent their aid to people who, like herself, were engaged in the elusive pursuit of knowledge, covering paper with ink and hesitating now and again over a word. She felt herself to be a living part of a community engaged in a common purpose. “Wilkie Collins,” wrote Harriet, “was always handicapped in his treatment of the supernatural by the fatal itch” (could one be handicapped by an itch? Yes, why not? Let it go, anyway, for the moment)-“the fatal itch to explain everything. His legal training-” Bother! Too long. “… was handicapped by the lawyer’s fatal habit of explaining everything. His ghaisties and ghoulies”-no; worn-out humour-“His dream-phantasies and apparitions are too careful to tuck their shrouds neatly about them and leave no loose ends to trouble us. It is in Le Fanu that we find the natural maker of-natural master of-the master of the uncanny whose mastery comes by nature. If we compare-”
Before the comparison could be instituted, the lamp went suddenly out. “Curse!” said Harriet. She rose and pressed down the wall-switch. Nothing happened. “Fused!” said Harriet, opening the door to investigate. The corridor was in darkness, and a lamentable outcry on either side proclaimed that the lights were out in the whole of Tudor.
Harriet snatched her torch from the table and turned right towards the main block of the building. She was soon swept into a crowd of students, some with torches and some clinging to those that had them, all clamouring and wanting to know what was wrong with the lights.
“Shut up!” said Harriet, peering behind the barrier of the torch-lights to find anybody she recognized. “The main fuse must have gone. Where’s the fuse-box?”
“I think it’s under the stairs,” said somebody.
“Stay where you are,” said Harriet. “I’ll go and see.”
Nobody, naturally, stayed where she was. Everybody came helpfully and angrily downstairs.
“It’s the Poltergeist,” said somebody.
“Let’s catch her this time,” said somebody else.
“Perhaps it’s only blown,” suggested a timid voice out of the darkness.
“Blown be blowed!” exclaimed a louder voice, scornfully. “How often does a main fuse blow?” Then, in an agitated whisper, “Hellup, it’s the Chilperic. Sorry I spoke.”
“Is that you, Miss Chilperic?” said Harriet, glad to round up one member of the Senior Common Room. “Have you met Miss Barton anywhere?”
“No, I’ve only just got out of bed.”
“Miss Barton isn’t there,” said a voice from the hall below, and then another voice chimed in:
“Somebody’s pulled out the main fuse and taken it away!”
An then, in a shrill cry from someone at the end of the lower corridor: “There she goes! Look! running across the quad!”
Harriet was carried down the stairs with a rush of twenty or thirty students into the midst of those already milling in the hall. There was a cram in the doorway; she lost Miss Chilperic and was left behind in the struggle. Then, as she thrust her way through on to the terrace, she saw under the dim sky a string of runners stretched across the quad. Voices were calling shrilly. Then, as the first half-dozen or so of the pursuers were outlined against the blazing lower windows of Burleigh, those lights too were blacked out.
She ran, desperately-not to Burleigh, where the uproar was repeating itself, but to Queen Elizabeth, which, she judged, would be the next point of attack. The side-doors would, she knew, be locked. She dashed past the hall stair and through to the portico, where she flung herself upon the main door. That was locked also. She stepped back and shouted through the nearest window: “Look out! There’s somebody in here playing tricks. I’m coming in.” A student put out a tousled head. Other heads appeared.
“Let me get past,” said Harriet, flinging the sash up, and hauling herself up over the sill. They’re putting out all the lights in College. Where’s your fuse-box?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the student, as Harriet plunged across the room.
“Of course you wouldn’t!” said Harriet, unreasonably. She flung the door open and burst out-into Stygian blackness. By this time the hue-and-cry outside had reached Queen Elizabeth. Somebody found the front door and unlocked it, and the tumult increased, those within surging out and those outside surging in. A voice said: “Somebody came through my room and went out of the window, just after the lights went out.” Torches appeared. Here and there a face-mostly unfamiliar-was momentarily lit up. Then the lights in the New Quad began to go out also, beginning on the South side. Everybody was running aimlessly. Harriet, dashing along the plinth, cannoned full tilt into somebody and flashed the torch in her face. It was the Dean.
“Thank God!” said Harriet. “Here’s somebody in the right place.” She held on to her.
“What’s happening?” said the Dean.
“Stand still,” said Harriet: “I’ll have an alibi for you if I die for it.” As she spoke, the lights on the North-East angle went out. “You’re all right,” said Harriet. “Now then! make for the West Staircase and we’ll catch her.”
The same idea seemed to have occurred to a number of other people, for the entrance to the West Staircase was blocked with a crowd of students, while a crowd of scouts, released by Carrie from their own Wing, added to the congestion. Harriet and the Dean forced a pathway through them, and found Miss Lydgate standing bewildered, and clasping her proof-sheets to her bosom, being determined that this time nothing should happen to them. They scooped her up with them-“like playing ‘Staggie,’” thought Harriet-and made their way to the fuse-boxes under the stair. There they found Padgett, grimly on guard, with his trousers hastily pulled on over his pyjamas and a rolling-pin in his hand.
“They don’t get this,” said Padgett. “You leave it to me, madam Dean, miss. Just turning into my bed I was, all the late-leave ladies being in. My wife’s telephoning across to Jackson to fetch over some new fuses. Have you seen the boxes, miss? Wrenched open with a chisel, they was, or summat of that. A nice thing to happen. But they won’t get this.”
Nor did “they.” In the West side of the New Quad, the Warden’s House, the Infirmary, and the Scouts’ Wing entrenched behind its relocked grille, the lights burned on steadily. But when Jackson arrived with the new fuses, every darkened building showed its trail of damage. While Padgett had sat by the mouse-hole, waiting for the mouse that did not come, the Poltergeist had passed through the college, breaking ink-bottles, flinging papers into the fire, smashing lamps and crockery and throwing books through the windowpanes. In the Hall, where the main fuse had also been taken, the silver cups on the High Table had been hurled at the portraits, breaking the glass, and the plaster bust of a Victorian benefactor pitched down the stone stair, to end in a fragmentary trail of detached side-whiskers and disintegrated features.
“Well!” said the Dean, surveying the wreckage. “That’s one thing to be grateful for. We’ve seen the last of the Reverend Melchisedek Entwistle. But, oh, lord!”