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.