The Old Akeley Place

The Whisperer in Darkness

Illustrated by Michel Meslet

The final picture was of the Akeley place itself: a trim white house of two stories and attic, about a century and a quarter old, and with a well-kept lawn and stone-bordered path leading up to a tastefully carved Georgian doorway. There were several huge police dogs on the lawn, squatting near a pleasant-faced man with a close-cropped grey beard whom I took to be Akeley himself - his own photographer, one might infer from the tube-connected bulb in his right hand.