I slammed the door behind me. Into the thick, stinking, damp darkness I sank. Above me there was rustling. I mustn’t wake them, I must be very quiet. I shifted onwards as carefully as I might, sliding once and feeling a thick dampness and muddiness along my arm, but on I went, in desperation through the dung field to try and find myself some sort of hiding place.

There was a great mound, slightly luminescent, which was especially tall and funnel-shaped, and there I crouched and waited. I could not hear Robert Burrington yet. The attic door remained closed and dark. Perhaps the holder of Robert Burrington shan’t come, I thought, perhaps he knew all about the attics and was thinking twice about it, and was sensible and wanted no part of it, yes, perhaps he was not so foolish as to try the unstable upper storeys. Only then, as I considered this, there was a certain small creaking and with that creaking came a sound, and whoever he was that carried Robert Burrington stood in the doorway. I could just make out a shape, of a man, a long tall man with a black topper, taller and thinner than any man I had ever seen before, eight foot tall perhaps, and so little width about him. I waited behind the mound. What shall he do?

‘Robert Burrington?’

From deep in my pocket I could just make out the muffled response. As if my plug longed to reply.

‘James Henry Hayward.’

I shoved my plug deeper down.

‘Robert Burrington?’ came again.

‘Al … Al … Al …’ was all the poor door handle could manage.

‘Robert Burrington?’ once more.

Now as the stretched man waited, something very curious began to happen. I began slowly to hear other names coming from him, to hear that other names existed beneath the loudest and certainly dominant Robert Burrington. I heard Edith Bradshaw talking and Ronald Reginald Fleming and Alasdair Fletcher, there was an Edwin Brackley and a Miss Agatha Sharpley, there was Cyril Pennington. Cyril Pennington was the fire bucket from my landing, for some reason this man had taken it. I had never heard so many names before on a single person, and still, listening carefully, there was another wave of names behind the first. I caught a Matron Sedley and a Tom Packett and a Jenny Rose Finlay and a Stoker Barnabus and then ever so faintly a Nobby. Yes, something was very quietly saying, ‘Nobby.’ And there were other names yet, I could make them out bit by bit as if they were coming in and out of hearing, as if they were breathing in and out. Amongst them I caught another familiar name. I heard, rumbling slightly, ‘Florence Balcombe.’

Florence Balcombe, why should she be calling with the objects? It made no sense, and yet, under the waves of names, I heard it once more, ‘Florence Balcombe.’