“You see! You see!” said Lord Arlington manically, pointing here and there in the room.

“Actually,” said Sir John, looking puzzled. “I don’t. It looks like a normal study to me.”

“Shh,” said Lord Arlington and Sir John fell quiet.

At first it seemed silent, but then Sir John noticed a scratching sound in a closed bureau. Lord Arlington made a noise between a giggle and a gibber. Sir John went over to the bureau. The noise was coming from the top section, the part which opened into a writing desk. Gently Sir John opened it and looked inside. There was a small pot with some pens and one was moving around, making the rattling sound. At the opening of the bureau a sheet of paper slid itself out and the pen hopped out of its holder. The pen began to write on the paper. Lord Arlington’s noises grew louder. 

“You see, you see!” Lord Arlington said. “What does it say?”

Sir John looked at the writing. The letters were spidery and uneven. It was a single word, repeated over and over.

“It says ‘Leave’,” said Sir John. “Hmm, this seems like some normal poltergeist activity. Let me just try the ectoplasmic goggles.”

Sir John put on a cumbersome pair of brass goggles and looked again at the scratching, dancing pen.

“How odd,” he said. “Nothing thaumaturgical at all. I wonder what’s moving it. This will prove an interesting puzzle. I’ll just go next door and get some more equipment.”

Sir John removed the goggles and turned towards the doorway. He stopped suddenly as there was no door, just a wall.

“Did… we came in there, didn’t we?” said Sir John.

“They move them,” said Lord Arlington, wild eyed and nodding enthusiastically. “They move the doors.”

Sir John walked back to the place where the door had been and pressed his hands on the surface, in case it was a disguised door. It was not, the wall felt solid behind the oak panelling. He heard a noise then from a desk in the corner of the room, and saw another pen jump from a pot and start scratching on paper. Sir John went over to look. Again the same word, “Leave” repeated over and over.

“Are you sure there’s not a switch or something to open that door?” said Sir John, clutching, he felt, at straws. Lord Arlington giggled by way of explanation.

Suddenly another pen on the bureau jumped up and started writing, then a third. A fourth pen flew across the room and joined the one on the desk. All of them wrote the same word over and over. The pages were turning into a spinning gyre of ink.

“We’d better, we’d better do what they say,” said Lord Arlington. “This way now, to the library.”

He grabbed Sir John and pulled him to a door opposite from where they had entered the room. Sir John looked perplexed at the study as he allowed himself to be pulled through to the next room.