For a while Salome was bereft of power of speech and motion. There was a sensation in her brain as though a handle were being turned that had attached to it every nerve in her body, and that they were being spun off her and on to a reel, like silk from a cocoon. Her hands contracted on what she held; she could not have let them fall had she willed to relax her grasp. They stiffened as do the hands of a corpse. She could not cry out, her tongue was paralyzed. She could not stir a step forward or backward; all control over her knees was gone from her.
When the figure had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs, it stopped and turned its head towards her, and looked at her.
The light of the lowered gas-jet was on her and off the face of the apparition; all she saw was black shadow, as all she had seen of the face of the corpse on the bed had been—a black handkerchief cast over it. But she distinguished the hair, somewhat long behind the ears, and frowzy whiskers about the jaws. That was all she could make out in that moment of acute, agonizing horror. The figure stood looking at her, and she heard the clock in the hall, tick, tick, tick, tick, and then begin the premonitory growl that preceded striking. The figure moved down the final steps, and stole in the same stealthy, noiseless manner to the garden door, and disappeared through it.
The look of the back, the set of the well-known overcoat, the way in which the hat was worn, all recalled to her the dear, lost friend, and yet she knew it could not be he. He would never have inspired her with shuddering dread. He would not have passed her without a word.
In another moment the spell of rigidity was taken off her. The blood rushed tingling through every vein, her hands, her feet, recovered activity, her heart bounded and shook off its fear, and her mind recovered its proper energy.
She ran after the apparition, and found that the garden door was actually open. Instantly, without further consideration, she shut and locked it, and then flew upstairs and knocked vehemently, loudly, at Philip Pennycomequick's door.
He opened it, and was surprised to see Salome on the landing, breathless.
'Is your mother worse?' he asked, for he saw that she was shaking and white.
'Oh, Mr. Pennycomequick, do tell me. Have you had a man here with you?'
'I do not understand.'