Its an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve? He stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didnt flinch, though Im hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers, arent enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly up to you.
You said it was an empty sleeve? he said. Certainly, I said. At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an age. Well? said I, clearing my throat, theres nothing in it.
Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly just like that until the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that! And then
Well?
Something exactly like a finger and thumb it felt nipped my nose.
Bunting began to laugh.
There wasnt anything there! said Cuss, his voice running up into a shriek at the there. Its all very well for you to laugh, but I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned around, and cut out of the room I left him
Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic. He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the excellent vicars very inferior sherry. When I hit his cuff, said Cuss, I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there wasnt an arm! There wasnt the ghost of an arm!
Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. Its a most remarkable story, he said. He looked very wise and grave indeed. Its really, said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, a most remarkable story.
Chapter V
The burglary
at the vicarage
The facts of the burglary at the vicarage came to us chiefly through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the small hours of Whit Monday, the day devoted in Iping to the Club festivities. Mrs. Bunting, it seems, woke up suddenly in the stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage towards the staircase. As soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the Rev. Mr. Bunting as quietly as possible. He did not strike a light, but putting on his spectacles, her dressing-gown and his bath slippers, he went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk down-stairs, and then a violent sneeze.
At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as noiselessly as possible. Mrs. Bunting came out on the landing.
The hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the faint creaking of the stairs under Mr. Buntings tread, and the slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, the drawer was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an imprecation, and a match was struck and the study was flooded with yellow light. Mr. Bunting was now in the hall, and through the crack of the door he could see the desk and the open drawer and a candle burning on the desk. But the robber he could not see. He stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs. Bunting, her face white and intent, crept slowly downstairs after him. One thing kept Mr. Buntings courage; the persuasion that this burglar was a resident in the village.
They heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had found the housekeeping reserve of gold two pounds ten in half sovereigns altogether. At that sound Mr. Bunting was nerved to abrupt action. Gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room, closely followed by Mrs. Bunting. Surrender! cried Mr. Bunting, fiercely, and then stooped amazed. Apparently the room was perfectly empty.
Yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. For half a minute, perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs. Bunting went across the room and looked behind the screen, while Mr. Bunting, by a kindred impulse, 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 wastepaper basket and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the coalscuttle. Then they came to a stop and stood with eyes interrogating each other.
I could have sworn said Mr. Bunting.
The candle! said Mr. Bunting. Who lit the candle?
The drawer! said Mrs. Bunting. And the moneys gone!
She went hastily to the doorway.
Of all the strange occurrences
There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as they did so the kitchen door slammed. Bring the candle, said Mr. Bunting, and led the way. They both heard a sound of bolts being hastily shot back.
As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. He is certain that nothing 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 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.
Chapter VI
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 strangers 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 strangers 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 strangers 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 bedpost.