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Yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody moving in the room had been certain. For half a minute, perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs. Bunting went across the room and looked behind the screen, while Mr. Bunting peered under the desk. Then Mrs. Bunting turned back the window-curtains, and Mr. Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it with the poker. Then Mrs. Bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the coal-scuttle. Then they stopped and stood with eyes interrogating each other.
“I could have sworn-” said Mr. Bunting. “The candle! Who lit the candle?”
“The drawer!” said Mrs. Bunting. “And the money’s gone!”
She went hastily to the doorway.
There was a sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as they did so the kitchen door slammed.
“Bring the candle,” said Mr. Bunting.
As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the faint light displayed the garden beyond. He is certain that nobody went out of the door. It opened, stood open for a moment, and then closed with a slam. As it did so, the candle Mrs. Bunting was carrying from the study flickered and flared. 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!” said Mrs. Hall.
“In my pocket-”
“You told me three days ago that you hadn’t anything but a sovereign.”
“Well, I’ve found some more-”
“Ul-lo!” from the bar.
“I wonder where you found it,” said Mrs. Hall.
That seemed to annoy the stranger very much. He stamped his foot.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“That I wonder where you found it,” said Mrs. Hall. “And before I take any bills or get any breakfasts, or do any such things whatsoever, you got to tell me one or two things I don’t understand, and what nobody doesn’t understand, and what everybody is very anxious to understand. What have you been doing with my chair? How was your room empty, and how did you get in again? The people in this house usually come in by the doors-that’s the rule of the house, and you didn’t. How do you come in? And I want to know-”
Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands, stamped his foot, and said, “Stop!” with such extraordinary violence that he silenced her instantly.
“You don’t understand,” he said, “who I am or what I am. I’ll show you. By Heaven! I’ll show you.”
Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity.
“Here,” he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose-it was the stranger’s nose! pink and shining-rolled on the floor.
Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages.
“Oh, my God!” said someone.
It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then-nothingness, no visible thing at all!
People down the village heard shouts and shrieks. They saw Mrs. Hall fall down, and then they heard the frightful screams of Millie, who, going from the kitchen at the noise of the tumult, had come upon the headless stranger from behind.
After that everybody began to run towards the inn, and in a minute a crowd of perhaps forty people, swayed and hooted and inquired and exclaimed and suggested. Everyone seemed eager to talk at once. A small group supported Mrs. Hall, who was in a state of collapse. There was a conference:
“O Bogey!”
“What has he been doing, then?”
“Hasn’t he hurt the girl?”
“He has run at her with a knife, I believe.”
“A man without a head!”
“Nonsense! It’s just a trick.”
Trying to see in through the open door, the crowd formed itself into a straggling wedge.
“He stood for a moment, I heard the girl scream, and he turned. I saw her skirts, and he went after her. It didn’t take ten seconds. He came back with a knife in his hand. Not a moment ago. He went through that door. I tell you, he has no head! At all.”
The speaker stopped to step aside for a little procession that was marching very resolutely towards the house; first Mr. Hall, very red and determined, then Mr. Bobby Jaffers, the village constable, and then Mr. Wadgers. They had come to arrest the stranger.
People shouted.
“With the head or without any head, it doesn’t matter,” said Jaffers, “I will arrest him, in any case.”
Mr. Hall marched straight to the door of the parlour and flung it open.
“Constable,” he said, “do your duty.”
Jaffers marched in. Hall next, Wadgers last. They saw in the dim light the headless figure facing them, with a crust of bread in one gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other.
“That’s him!” said Hall.
“What the devil is this?” came an angry question from above the collar of the figure.
“You’re a rare man, indeed, mister,” said Mr. Jaffers. “But with the head or without any head, duty is duty!”
“Keep off!” said the figure, starting back.
Abruptly he whipped down the bread and cheese. Off came the stranger’s left glove and was slapped in Jaffers’ face. In another moment Jaffers had gripped him by the handless wrist and caught his invisible throat. They came down together.
“Get the feet,” said Jaffers.
Mr. Hall, endeavouring to act on instructions, received a kick in the ribs. Mr. Wadgers retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the carter coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the chiffonnier.
“I’ll surrender!” cried the stranger, and in another moment he stood up, a strange figure, headless and handless-for he had pulled off his gloves. “It’s no good,” he said.
It was a very strange thing to hear that voice coming as if out of empty space. Jaffers got up also and produced a pair of handcuffs. Then he stared.
“Darn it!” said Jaffers, “I can’t use them as I can see.”
