Only to find himself back in the kitchen again. The large bald man, however, is no longer sitting at the table. His chair has fallen behind him as though kicked away, and he stands now, pissing sullenly into his soup bowl. Charlie picks himself up and, trembling, hunched over his bruised shoulder, backs away. He bumps up against a counter, puts his hand back to brace himself, plants it in a custard pie. The fat man buttons up and shuffles over to the door. He kneels, scowling darkly, and peers intently through the keyhole. His broad suspenders are stretched taut over his heavy body, the napkin dangling under his chin like a signal flag. Charlie, licking the pie from his hand, edges over toward the man. He tries to peek through the same keyhole, but the hole is too small and the fat man is immobile before it, utterly spellbound. Charlie pushes and shoves from all angles and finally, his ear pressed to the fat man's ear, gains a glimpse. What he sees throws him into a state of whey-faced alarm. He tries frantically to drag the door open, but the fat man is a dead weight before it. He kicks him, punches him, pulls him by the ears, smashes a chair over his head, but he cannot be budged. Charlie pounds his own head in despair, then pauses. A light seems to have dawned. He searches under his coat and shirttails, finds the large safety pin holding up his pants: he unfastens it, rams the point deep into the fat man's behind. Slowly, as though receiving a distant but utterly dismaying message, the fat man rears up, his mouth commencing gradually to gape, his face to twist and darken, his heavy moustaches to bristle, his eyes to gather focus. Charlie, holding up his unpinned pants, dashes past him out the door.
In the hallway on the stair landing, the lady in the white gown has fashioned a noose out of the pullcord Charlie dragged down from the drapes. She has tied the loose end around the broad railing of the balustrade and is fitting the noose itself around her neck. Her face is still smeared, her dress blotched, with custard cream pie. Charlie bounds toward her, holding up his baggy trousers with one hand, waving the other frantically, but the noose is already necklacing her pale throat. He pleads with her, he blusters, he cajoles, but the woman, leaning dangerously against the polished balustrade, gazes past him, down into the empty hallway. Charlie reaches toward her, but something in her dark clotted earnestness holds him back. He hops and dances around her, biting his nails, whimpering, his eyes filling with tears. He presses his palms together beseechingly, his pants fall down. He yanks them up, but sees that the woman has turned to look at him at last. Taking heart, he twirls his cane for her with one hand, then tries in vain to tip his hat and hold up his pants at the same time with the other. As he grabs for his pants, hat, pants, hat, her melancholy expression seems to soften. He prances around her in a frenzied teary-eyed imitation of glee, taking pratfalls, bumping his head, dropping his pants, losing his hat, attempting all the while to lure her away from the balustrade. She remains, leashed by the pullcord, but seems more and more caught up in his act. He juggles his hat and cane, plays peekaboo with her through a leafy potted plant, eats one of the leaves as though distracted by her beauty, executes a cartwheel without losing either hat or trousers, fiddles a tune on a barometer snatched from the wall. The woman wipes a blob of custard pie from her cheek as though brushing away a tear, seems to have forgotten the rope around her neck. Charlie, eyes darting about as though running out of ideas, removes his hat to mop his brow, discovers an old cigarette butt tucked inside the band. His face lights up. He puts the bent butt in his mouth, pats his pockets for a match, holding his pants up first with one hand, then the other. He shrugs, snaps his fingers, plucks an imaginary match out of the air, which he proceeds to strike on his backside. He jumps up in the air as though having set the seat of his pants on fire, then hops about fanning out the flames. The woman clasps her hands together in front of her face, peering at him over her fingertips. He struts up and down the landing, puffing on the bent cigarette, blowing imaginary smoke rings. He uses his vest pocket for an ashtray, stubs the butt out on the sole of his shoe, loses it momentarily in the hole there, pretending to have given himself a hotfoot. He finds the butt again, winks, flicks it over his shoulder, kicks it high with his heel, catches it in his hat. The lady seems fascinated now and, though she has still not smiled, watches him intently. Encouraged, Charlie plucks the butt out of the hat, holds it up before her, breaks it in two pieces, hitches his pants high, pinching them in place with his elbows, and flicks both bits of cigarette over his shoulders: he leaps up with both feet and kicks the two halves in the air at the same time, simultaneously dropping his pants. He catches one piece in his hat, lurches, shackled by fallen trousers, for the other, crashes into the young woman and knocks her over the balustrade. At first he cannot even grasp what has happened, spinning about frantically in search of the woman as though she might have vanished into thin air. He peers fearfully over the railing and discovers her there below, twisting and jerking at the end of the pullcord, struggling in vain to free herself. Charlie, aghast, tries to reach her, cannot, tries to pull her back up, lacks the strength. He fumbles with the knot around the balustrade, but his hands are shaking. He races down the stairs, tries to reach her from below, but she is hanging several feet above him, her feet twitching, kicking. He drags a chair over, leaps up on it, tries to hold her up by pushing on her feet, but her knees keep buckling. She kicks him in the ear, and knocks him off the chair. He scrambles to his feet, clutching his curly hair in anguish, spies the suit of armor. He tries to wrench away its halberd, but it seems permanently locked into the gauntlet. He cannot stop to consider alternatives: he hauls the whole apparatus, clashing and bouncing, up the stairs with him. He props the armor against the balustrade, takes a furious backswing with the halberd, and the suit of armor follows, crawling up his face and bowling him over. He struggles out from under, his face striped by cuts and scratches. He is no longer even trying to keep his trousers up, but neither does he have time to kick them off. He lifts the armor on his shoulders as though carrying a wounded warrior, takes another mighty backswing over the knotted pullcord, and the blade of the halberd flies off, disappearing through an open doorway. He dumps the armor off his back, grabs up his pants, and chases after it.
In the next room, however — the bedroom, as it turns out — the halberd blade is nowhere to be seen. He fumbles through perfume bottles, hatboxes, scattered clothing, finally turns to race out again without it, draws up short: the maid stands before the closed door, writhing provocatively, wearing nothing now but her bright white apron. She reaches beneath it and, pursing her lips, draws out the halberd blade, dripping with blood. Charlie gasps, whirls, and dashes pell-mell out another door.
He collides with a large leafy potted plant and goes sprawling across the brightly polished floor with its alternating black and white squares, slams into the stairway, and for a moment just lies there, holding his head. Then suddenly it all comes back to him — he starts up, looks one way, the other, straight ahead, up: the young woman in the white gown is directly above him, kicking feebly against her long skirts, her hands digging at the pullcord noose around her neck. Charlie jumps up and down, trying to run in all directions at once. He clambers up the balustrade, cannot reach her, jumps down, pushes a chair under the mounted deer's head, hops up and grabs the deer's nose, his pants falling around his ankles. He holds on with one hand while pulling his pants back up with the other, finally succeeds in throwing one leg over an antler and hauling himself up on the head. He stretches out toward the struggling woman, gives her a little push. She swings away from him, then back: he leans out and gives another push, harder than before. She swings further away, her skirts fluttering, her feet kicking, then back: he reaches out for her and at the same moment disappears from sight as the deer and antlers rip away from the wall and crash to the marble floor below. He disentangles himself from the wreckage. Soft shadows flicker back and forth across his terrified face, thrown by the swinging lady above him. He kicks the deer's head in bitter frustration, discovers the door behind it, gives it a try.