After fixing and devouring with relish a hastily thrown together meal of bacon and eggs, I settled down for an early night in my Uncle Lindsay’s room ….

Only to awaken a short time later to the sound of a loud electric crackling.   At first I thought it was lightning outside my bedroom window.   But as I looked up, to my astonishment, I saw a flashing streak of silver-white, like static electricity, but as thick as my index finger, three or four metres long, flashing only a dozen centimetres above my head, like an electric eel swimming through the air.

I watched the “static snake” for what seemed like ten minutes or more when I was startled by the sound of a loud crash upon the corrugated-iron roof, followed by the sound of something large scuttling about across the creaking roof.

“So much for there being no animal life on the mount!” I thought, assuming that it was some kind of possum that had leapt onto the roof from an overhanging tree.

It was only at that instant that I noticed the static snake had vanished.

*      *      *

The next morning I had hardly finished breakfast, when I heard a loud rapping on the front door.   Going downstairs to investigate, I saw two men: one with a high widow’s peak on his jet black hair, piercing brown eyes, and an exaggerated goatee, whom I recognised from my uncle’s diary description as Morton Matthews; the other tall, lean, with short, reddish-brown hair, and horn-rimmed glasses, who I realised could only be leLande Strange.

“Peter Richmond,” I introduced myself to the two men, who indeed announced themselves as Matthews and Strange.

“Won’t you come inside?” I invited.

The two men hesitated for an instant, exchanging a wry look, then stepped forward.   And both ended up walking through the doorway on their hands, their legs thrust up rigidly, pointing toward the ceiling.

“Oh gentlemen, I’m terribly sorry,” I apologised, having temporarily forgotten the weird phenomenon connected with entering the mansion.   “I should have warned you ….”

“That’s quite all right,” assured Matthews after the two men had returned right side up — considerably more gracefully than I had done, both managing to land on their feet again, rather than tumbling to a heap as I had, making me aware that they had both experienced the phenomenon more often than I had as they soon confirmed: