Still Barry did not move. Silence ensued. Then, from some point down the hall, came a woman’s piercing scream.
Barry rose, wrapped the lead pencil in the strip of gauze, and enclosed it in the cardboard box and replaced the box in his pocket.
Then, wearing coat and trousers, he stepped into the hall and lit a gas jet there—just as the new cook, screaming with terror, emerged from her room. Hysterical with fright, she frantically flourished a scrap of wrapping paper. And when she could speak coherently:
“I just seen a spook in my room—an old man wid white whiskers. I won’t stay in this house! He writ somethin’ here—”
She broke off to examine the bit of paper by the fluttering gas flame; and when she saw the words written on her paper she uttered another terrified shriek and, heedless of her scant attire, fled toward the front staircase. She was met at the head of the stairs by Mr. and Mrs. Peyton—he in pajamas and bathrobe, she in a peignoir, and both visibly alarmed—and to them she told, or tried to tell, the reason for her mad flight.
“Now lemme get outa here!” she ended, attempting to brush past them. “He told me to leave tonight—and I’m goin’!”
Barry, following sleepily in her wake, rubbing his eyes as one newly awakened from slumber, heard Peyton saying: “This is dreadful, dreadful!” and Mrs. Peyton entreating the cook to “stay at least till morning.”
Unable to persuade the cook to remain, Mrs. Peyton turned appealingly to Barry. “Did you see anything in your room, Field?”
“No, mem,” said Barry, hiding a yawn. “I was fast asleep when she woke me up, mem.”
This, however, exerted no influence on the cook. Like Clara who went before her, she departed immediately for the railroad station, there to pass the rest of the night.