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.”
As they came up the cellar steps they both, it was afterwards ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about it at the time. Mrs. Hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on first 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. “Of all the curious!” she said.
She heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, 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 under the clothes.
“Cold,” she said. “He’s been up this hour or more.”
As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened. The bedclothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if a hand