It was a minute or more before they entered the kitchen.
The place was empty. They examined the kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down into the cellar. There was not a soul to be found in the house.
Chapter VI
The Furniture That Went Mad
On Whit Monday Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Suddenly Mrs. Hall remembered that she had forgotten a bottle of medicine from their sleeping-room. Mr. Hall went upstairs for it.
On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger’s door was ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed.
But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front door had not been shot, that the door was in fact simply on the latch. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs. Hall shot these bolts overnight. He stopped, gaping, then, with the bottle still in his hands, went upstairs again. He rapped at the stranger’s door. There was no answer. He rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered.
It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. On the bedroom chair and along the bed were scattered the garments and the bandages of their guest. As Hall stood there he heard his wife’s voice coming out of the depth of the cellar.
“George! Have you got the bottle?”
At that he turned and hurried down to her.
“Janny,” he said, “Henfrey told the truth. He is not in the room. And the front door is open.”
At first Mrs. Hall did not understand. Hall, still holding the bottle said, “He is not here, but his clothes are. And what is he doing without them? This is very strange.”
As they came up the cellar steps they both heard the front door open and shut, but seeing it closed, they did not say a word to each other. Mrs. Hall ran upstairs. Someone sneezed on the staircase. Hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. She, going on first, was under the impression that Hall was sneezing. She flung open the door and stood regarding the room.
She heard a sniff close behind her head, and turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair. But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put her hand on the pillow and then on the clothes.
“Cold,” she said. “He’s out for an hour or more.”
As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened. The bed-clothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly and then jumped over the bed. Immediately after, the stranger’s hat hopped off its place, and then dashed straight at Mrs. Hall’s face. Then swiftly came the sponge from the washstand; and then the chair, flinging the stranger’s coat and trousers carelessly aside, and laughing drily in a voice singularly like the stranger’s, turned itself up at Mrs. Hall. She screamed, and then the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her and Hall out of the room. The door slammed violently and was locked. The chair and bed seemed to be executing a dance of triumph, and then abruptly everything was still.
Mrs. Hall was in a dead faint. Mr. Hall got her downstairs.
“These are spirits,” said Mrs. Hall. “I know these are spirits. I’ve read in papers about them. Tables and chairs are leaping and dancing…”
“Take some medicine, Janny,” said Hall.
“Lock the door,” said Mrs. Hall. “Don’t let him come in again. I guessed-I might have known. With such big eyes and bandaged head… He has never gone to church on Sunday. And all those bottles. He’s put the spirits into the furniture… My good old furniture! In that chair my poor dear mother used to sit when I was a little girl. And it rose up against me now!”
“Just a drop more, Janny,” said Hall. “Your nerves are all upset.”
They sent Millie, the servant, across the street to rouse up Mr. Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Would Mr. Wadgers come round? He was a very clever man, Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful.
“This is witchcraft,” was the view of Mr. Sandy Wadgers.
They wanted him to lead the way upstairs to the room, but he preferred to talk in the passage. There was a great deal of talk and no decisive action.
“Let’s have the facts first,” insisted Mr. Sandy Wadgers. “Let’s be sure we’d be acting perfectly right.”
And suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs opened of its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement, they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger staring with those unreasonably large blue glass eyes of his. He came down slowly, staring all the time; he walked across the passage, then stopped.
“Look there!” he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his gloved finger and saw a bottle by the cellar door. Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly, viciously, slammed the door.
Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died away. They stared at one another.
“Well, I’d go in and ask him about it,” said Wadgers to Mr. Hall. “I’d demand an explanation.”
The landlady’s husband rapped, opened the door, and began, “Excuse me-”
“Go to the devil!” said the stranger in a tremendous voice, “Shut that door after you.”
So that brief interview terminated.
Chapter VII
The Unveiling of the Stranger
The stranger went into the little parlour of the “Coach and Horses” about half-past five in the morning, and there he remained until near midday, the curtains down, the door shut.
Thrice he rang his bell, the third time furiously and continuously, but no one answered him.
“I’ll teach him a lesson, ‘go to the devil’ indeed!” said Mrs. Hall. Presently came a rumour of the burglary at the vicarage. No one dared to go upstairs. How the stranger occupied himself is unknown.
He would stride violently up and down, and twice came an outburst of curses, a tearing of paper, and a violent smashing of bottles. The group of scared but curious people increased.
It was the finest of all possible Mondays. And inside, in the darkness of the parlour, the stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of smashed bottles, and a pungent twang of chlorine tainted the air.
About noon he suddenly opened his door and stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the bar. “Mrs. Hall,” he said. Somebody went and called for Mrs. Hall.
Mrs. Hall appeared after an interval. Mr. Hall was out. She came holding a little tray with a bill upon it.
“Is it your bill you’re wanting, sir?” she said.
“Why wasn’t my breakfast laid? Why haven’t you prepared my meals and answered my bell? Do you think I live without eating?”
“Why isn’t my bill paid?” said Mrs. Hall. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I told you three days ago I was awaiting a remittance”.
“I told you two days ago I wasn’t going to await any remittances.”
The stranger swore briefly but vividly.
“And I’d thank you kindly, sir, if you’d keep your swearing to yourself, sir,” said Mrs. Hall.
The stranger stood looking like an angry diving-helmet.
“Look here, my good woman-” he began.
“Don’t call me ‘good woman’,” said Mrs. Hall.
“I’ve told you my remittance hasn’t come.”
“Remittance indeed!”