The place was empty. They refastened the back
door, 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, search as
they would.
Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed
little couple, still marvelling about on their own
ground floor by the unnecessary light of a guttering
candle.
THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD
Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit Monday,
before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall
and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down
into the cellar. Their business there was of
a private nature, and had something to do with the
specific gravity of their beer. They had hardly
entered the cellar when Mrs. Hall found she had forgotten
to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla from their
joint-room. As she was the expert and principal
operator in this affair, Hall very properly 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 been shot back, that the
door was in fact simply on the latch. And with
a flash of inspiration he connected this with the
stranger’s room upstairs and the suggestions
of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. He distinctly remembered
holding the candle while Mrs. Hall shot these bolts
overnight. At the sight he stopped, gaping, then
with the bottle still in his hand 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. And what was stranger, even to his
heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair and along
the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the
only garments so far as he knew, and the bandages
of their guest. His big slouch hat even was cocked
jauntily over the bed-post.
As Hall stood there he heard his wife’s voice
coming out of the depth of the cellar, with that rapid
telescoping of the syllables and interrogative cocking
up of the final words to a high note, by which the
West Sussex villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience.
“George! You gart whad a wand?”
At that he turned and hurried down to her. “Janny,”
he said, over the rail of the cellar steps, “’tas
the truth what Henfrey sez. ’E’s
not in uz room, ’e en’t. And the front
door’s onbolted.”
At first Mrs. Hall did not understand, and as soon
as she did she resolved to see the empty room for
herself. Hall, still holding the bottle, went
first. “If ’e en’t there,”
he said, “’is close are. And what’s
‘e doin’ ’ithout ’is close,
then? ’Tas a most curious business.”
