Edward Stevens, an editor at Herald and Son's publishing house, is on the train home, recounting the story of the death of the rich uncle of his neighbor, Mark Despard. Uncle Miles had succumbed to gastroenteritis, which had left him bedridden for days. Although this was considered death from natural causes, two strange things were reported surrounding it. A housemaid had spied into Miles's room, around the shade of one of the glass doors leading in, and reported that a woman had been visiting him, who left through a door that had been bricked up for years. And after he died, under his pillow was found a strange piece of string, tied in nine knots, a witch's ladder.