You'd better let me go down alone and deal with him." There had come again that extraordinary, sudden stillness.
"I think I'd rather come down with you," she said coolly.
All three started going down the narrow, steep wooden staircase which connected that portion of the upper floor with the many rambling offices of the old house.
Tapster and Blanche Farrow each held a candle, but Dr.Panton led the way; and soon they were treading the whitewashed passages, even their slippered feet making, in the now absolute stillness, what sounded like loud thuds on the stone floor.
"Listen!" said Blanche suddenly.
They all stood still, and there came a strange fluttering sound.

It was as if a bird had got in through a window, and was trying to find a way out.
"D'you know the way to the kitchen?
I think that the man must be in the kitchen, or probably the pantry," whispered the doctor to his hostess.
"I think it's this way." Miss Farrow led them down a short passage to the right, and cautiously opened a door which led into the kitchen.
And then they all three uttered exclamations of amazement and of horror.
Holding her candle high in her hand, their hostess was now lighting up a scene of extraordinary and of widespread disorder.
It was as if a tornado had whirled through the vast, low-ceilinged kitchen.

Heavy tables lay on their sides and upside down, their legs in the air.

Most of the crockery--fortunately, so Blanche said to herself, kitchen crockery--off the big dresser lay smashed in large and small pieces here, there, and everywhere.

A large copper preserving-pan lay grotesquely sprawling on the well-scrubbed centre table, which was the one thing which had not been moved--probably because of its great weight.