He was interrupted. Startlingly upon their ears rang shriek on
shriek. Mrs. Schofield, recognizing Margaret's voice, likewise
shrieked, and Mr. Schofield uttered various sounds; but Penrod
and Sam were incapable of doing anything vocally. All rushed from
the table.

Margaret continued to shriek, and it is not to be denied that
there was some cause for her agitation. When she opened the
closet door, her light-blue military cape, instead of hanging on
the hook where she had left it, came out into the room in a
manner that she afterward described as "a kind of horrible creep,
but faster than a creep." Nothing was to be seen except the
creeping cape, she said, but, of course, she could tell there was
some awful thing inside of it. It was too large to be a cat, and
too small to be a boy; it was too large to be Duke, Penrod's
little old dog, and, besides, Duke wouldn't act like that. It
crept rapidly out into the upper hall, and then, as she recovered
the use of her voice and began to scream, the animated cape
abandoned its creeping for a quicker gait--"a weird, heaving
flop," she defined it.

The Thing then decided upon a third style of locomotion,
evidently, for when Sam and Penrod reached the front hall, a few
steps in advance of Mr. and Mrs. Schofield, it was rolling
grandly down the stairs.

Mr. Schofield had only a hurried glimpse of it as it reached the
bottom, close by the front door.