Fearful lest she should forget the bulbs if she postponed their removal to another time, and accustomed, on principle, to do at once whatever occurred to her mind as a thing that had to be done, she gently opened her door and lightly descended the staircase.
The steps were carpeted, so that her foot was noiseless. She had no need of a candle, for the gas, though reduced, still burnt in the hall.
She reached the bottom quickly; she was unwilling to disturb and alarm her mother, and so trod noiselessly through the hall to the closet door, beneath the steps. Her garden-gloves, some tools in a little box that had been given her by Janet, and the bulbs were there, the latter, in a row, showing stout horns. She gathered these bulbs into a chip-basket, and took the rest of her possessions in the other hand. Thus encumbered, she closed the Pummy closet door with her foot, put down the basket, turned the key, took up the basket and stepped out into the hall with the intention of reascending the stairs as noiselessly as she had come down.
But before she had reached the foot and had turned the balustrade, she was startled to see a figure on the first landing. At first shock she thought it was Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick dressed to go out, as she had seen him on the night that he disappeared. If the hour was not now midnight, it was near it.
Salome could not see whence the figure had come, whether from Philip's room or from the spare bedroom. Only from the drawing-room he could not have issued, as that door was in view, and was shut.
Who was it?
The figure descended slowly, and with inaudible tread. The light from the gas was sufficient to show that the figure was that of a man, but not to let her see his face.
With a sickening feeling at the heart, and a chill that ran through every artery and frosted her blood, and deprived her both of motion and the will to move, she stood looking at the apparition that glided down the staircase, leisurely, noiselessly. She recognised the great-coat and hat—they were those of Mr. Pennycomequick. The great coat was that in which the corpse had been discovered invested.
Who was this coming—coming probably from the room recently tenanted by that strange, awful, dead man?
That was the first thought of horror that shot through her brain, followed by another still more horrible. 'What is it?'