Mr. West drew a brocade chair up to his desk. He must make notes; the Captain would be expecting a report. He held his Waterman to the inkwell, gently pulled the engraved gold fill-lever, and wrote:

Reality of entity; Affirmative.
Nature of entity; Percy Tor, A Major of the British Expeditionary Force. Resembles Lord Tor. Wound below right eye.

Now it was time for the next step in the campaign; ascertain action. How exactly does one rid a house of such an annoyance? Induce it to go away. Or, if necessary, make it go away. Inducing was easiest; and safest, too.

He glanced back at the paper and saw; Ypres

The word was still shiny. Well, so Percy had said. Yet Mr. West felt a deep unease. Had he written that? He set the nib after it to add a question mark. He wasn’t questioning whether Percy had said it; nor whether he’d written it. Of course he had. He was questioning whether—due to some flaw in the pen’s reservoir, a little jet of ink spattered out:

!

Tonight looked to be unpleasant.