THE ROOM WITH THE TASSLES (1918, a Pennington Wise mystery)

With love and homage this book is
dedicated to Hattie Belle Johnston

CHAPTER I

Wanted: A Haunted House

“But I know it’s so—for Mrs. Fairbanks saw it herself—and heard it, too!”

The air of finality in the gaze leveled at Braye defied contradiction, so he merely smiled at the girl who was doing the talking. But, talking or silent, Eve Carnforth was well worth smiling at. Her red hair was of that thin, silky, flat-lying sort that spells temper but looks lovely, and her white, delicate skin—perhaps the least bit hand-painted— showed temperament while her eyes, of the colour called beryl—whatever that is—showed all sorts of things.

Then from her canna-hued lips fell more wisdom. “And Professor Hardwick believes it, too, and he’s—”

“A college professor,” broke in Landon, “don’t try to gild his refinement! But really, Eve, you mustn’t believe in spooks—it isn’t done—”

“Oh, but it is! You’ve no idea how many people—scientific and talented people—are leaning toward spiritualism just now. Why, Sir Oliver Lodge says that after the war great and powerful assistance will be given by spirit helpers in matters of reconstruction and great problems of science.”

Milly Landon’s laugh rang out, and she politely clapped a little, fat hand over her mouth to stifle it.

Milly Landon was an inveterate giggler, but don’t let that prejudice you against her. She was the nicest, dearest dumpling of a little woman who ever giggled her way through life. And as hostess on this present Sunday afternoon occasion, she sat, one foot tucked under her, on the davenport in her long, narrow parlour, on one of New York’s East Seventieth streets.

It was a parlour like thousands of others in the city, and the quartet of people talking there were much like the people talking in those other parlours, that Sunday afternoon. Their only superiority lay in the fact that they constitute part of the personnel of this absorbing tale, and the other people do not.

Milly and her very satisfactory husband, Wynne Landon, were affably entertaining Rudolph Braye and the herein-before described Eve Carnforth, two pleasing callers, and the talk had turned on psychological matters and then, by inevitable stages, to the supernatural and spiritualism.

“It is all coming in again,” Eve declared, earnestly. “You know it was taken very seriously about thirty or forty years ago, and then because of fake mediums and fraudulent séances, it fell into disrepute. But now, it’s being taken up in earnest and I, for one, am terribly interested.”

“But it’s so old-fashioned, Eve,” and Milly looked at her guest in disdain.

“It’s gammon and spinach, that’s what it is,” declared Landon, “very rubbishy gammon and a poor quality of spinach!”

“Queen Victoria didn’t think so,” Eve informed them. “She may have been old-fashioned, but she believed thoroughly in the spiritual reappearance of her friends who died, and especially took comfort in the communion and visitation of her dead husband.”

“It’s this way, I think,” offered Braye; “it seems to me it’s like that old ‘Lady or the Tiger’ story, you believe or not, according to your character or disposition. You know, it depended on your own nature, whether you think the Lady came out of the door, or the Tiger. And so with spooks, if you want to believe in them, you do.”

“Don’t say spooks, please,” begged Eve; “say phantasms, or even ghosts.”

“Is that the usage in the best mediumistic circles?” and Braye smiled. “Well, I think I could more easily believe in a spook than a phantasm. The latter sounds so unreal, but a good honest Injun spook seems sort of plausible.”

“They’re all unreal,” began Landon, but Eve interrupted. “They’re not unreal, Wynne; they’re immaterial, of course, but that isn’t being unreal. You have a real soul, haven’t you, although it is immaterial? And I suppose you don’t call your mind material, even if your brain is.”

“Now you’re quibbling, Eve,” and Landon grew a bit more serious. “When I say unreal, I mean imperceptible to the senses. I hold that a departed spirit cannot return to earth and be seen, heard, or felt by mortal human beings, all the stories of such things to the contrary notwithstanding. If you or anyone else has power to show me a visible spook—I beg pardon, phantasm—I’ll be glad to see it, but I’m from Missouri. I wouldn’t be a bit afraid of it, but I’d have to be jolly well convinced of its integrity. No faked-up spectres would go down with me!”

“But how can you know?” asked Milly. “I’d be scared to death of one, I’m sure, but if Wynne wants to see one, I do. Let’s all go to a séance, or whatever they call the things. Shall we?”

“No, indeed!” cried Eve. “Professional séances are always fakes. And I don’t aspire to see one. If we could get some messages from the beyond, that would satisfy me.”

“Get messages how?” asked Braye.

“Oh, by a Ouija board, or some such way.”

“Ouija!” derided Landon; “that’s the biggest fraud of all!”

“Only in the hands of frauds. If we tried it here by ourselves and if we all trusted each other not to stoop to deception of any sort that would be a fair test.”

“I’d like that,” and Milly giggled in pleased anticipation. “That wouldn’t frighten me, and I’d promise to play fair.”

“There’d be no reason for not playing fair,” said Eve, seriously. “We’re not a pack of silly children who want to trick one another. If we could get together some evening and have an earnest, serious test, I’d agree. But not if there’s to be the least suspicion of anybody trying trickery.”

At this point two more callers arrived, and Milly jumped up to greet them.

“Mr. Bruce!” she exclaimed, “how nice to see you! And Vernie—my goodness, how you’ve grown!”

“Indeed, yes,” and Vernie Reid, a most lively and energetic sub-deb of sixteen, darted from one to another, greeting all with interest.

“Hello, Cousin Rudolph, what are you doing here? Mooning after Miss Carnforth, I s’pose. Dear Mrs. Landon, let me sit here by you. I want to show you my graduating gifts.”

“Oh, yes, you’ve just had commencement, haven’t you?”

“Yes, and Uncle Gifford gave me this heavenly wristwatch, and my respected Cousin Rudolph, over there, sent me this pendant. Isn’t it stunning? Oh, I had beautiful presents. I’d like to graduate every year!”

“Aren’t you going to school any more at all?”

“Dunno yet. Uncle Gifford says I am, I say I’m not. It remains to be seen. Though I don’t mind confiding to you that I usually get my own way. And, too, out in Chicago, you know, we’re not such terrible highbrows. Something tells me my schooldays are over. I think Uncle Gif needs the pleasure of my society at home. And, too, I want to get acquainted with Cousin Rudolph. Until this week I haven’t seen him for years.”

“He isn’t your cousin, Vernie.”

“Same as. He’s a son of Uncle Gif’s half-brother, and I’m a daughter of Uncle’s own sister, so it sort of evens up. Anyway, I like Cousin Rudolph, because he’s such a good-looking young man, and he’s promised to take me round New York some. That’s why I’m so jealous of Miss Carnforth or any other girl.”

Vernie was so pretty that her chatter amused the whole crowd. She was brown-haired and brown-eyed, and somewhat of a browned complexion, by reason of much tennis and outdoor life at the school from which she had just been graduated. And after a summer spent among the Eastern resorts, she and her Uncle were to return to their Chicago home, where they had lived all of Vernie’s orphaned life. Gifford Bruce idolized the girl and though often short and crabbed in his manner to others, he was never cross or stern to his dead sister’s child.

“What were you talking about when we came in?” Vernie asked, smiling at Milly. “You were all so in earnest, it must have been something important.”

“Of ghosts,” answered Braye, looking at the pretty child. “Do you enjoy them?”

“Oh, don’t I!” cried Vernie. “Why, at school we just ate ’em up! Table tippings and all such things, as soon as lights were out!”

“We don’t mean that sort,” said Eve. “We were talking seriously.”

“Count me out, then,” laughed Vernie. “Our ghosts weren’t a bit real. I did most of ’em myself, jogging the table, when the others didn’t know it!”

Eve’s scarlet lips came together in a narrow line, but the others laughed at the Vernie as she babbled on.

“Yes, and we tried the Ouija board. I can make it say anything I want to.”

“Good for you, Kiddie,” cried Braye, “I believe I like your notion of these things better than the ideas of the psychologists. It sounds a lot more fun!”

“And comes nearer the truth,” declared Mr. Bruce. “I’ve looked up these matters and I’ve read all the best and most authoritative books on the subjects. There are many writers more diffuse and circumstantial, but Andrew Lang sums up the whole situation in his able way. He says there are no ghosts, but there are hallucinations. And that explains all.”

“It doesn’t to me,” and Eve’s beryl eyes took on a mystic, faraway look. “I, too, have read a lot of books—”

“Scientific or psychic?” interrupted Mr. Bruce, acidly.

“Psychical and Theosophic—”

“Rubbish! The Theosophic bunch have been in the discard for years.”

“That’s what I say,” put in Milly, “the whole business is old-fashioned.”

“It isn’t a question of fashion,” and Gifford Bruce spoke assuredly; “the subject is one that recurs in waves, as many such things do. Why, there have been ghosts and haunted houses in people’s imagination ever since there has been man and a house for him to live in. Some are spoken of in the Bible, the primitive Australians had legions of ghosts, the awful Dyaks record them, and there is scarce a castle or palace of the middle ages that hasn’t its Woman in White, or a Little Gray Lady or the Man in Black. And in an old Egyptian papyrus, there’s an account of a defunct lady who insisted on haunting her husband to his great distaste.”

“My goodness, Uncle Gif, you do know a lot about it!” and Vernie went over and sat on the arm of his chair. “Tell us more. I like this sort of ghost stories better than the fool stunts we did at school.”

“I’m not telling ghost stories, child, I’m only declaring that ghost stories are merely stories, and in no case a true relation of happenings. Lang investigated thousands of cases, and in ten out of every eleven, he states, fraud was proved.”

“Quite so,” said Eve, “and it is that eleventh case that interests the real thinker, the true inquirer.”

“But the eleventh case was simply not proven, it never has been shown that it was really a ghostly visitation.”

“But they do say, Uncle Gifford,” observed Braye, “that the very fact of the frauds being perpetrated proves that there was something to imitate. If no spirit had ever returned to earth and made itself manifest, no one would have thought of pretending that one did.”

“Nonsense and super-nonsense! Why, Rudolph, perpetual motion is not a real thing, but how many times has it been pretended! You don’t remember the Keeley Motor, but that deceived thousands into believing that perpetual motion was at last discovered, but it wasn’t; and that fraud doesn’t prove that perpetual motion, without adequate cause, exists.”

“Here comes Professor Hardwick,” exclaimed Milly, “splendid to have him come just now! Sit down, Professor, and get right into the game. You know all these people, except this angel child, Miss Vernie Reid.”

“I am an angel,” declared Vernie, “but I’m no child! I’ve just graduated with honours and diplomas and lots of presents. Now, I’m out in the great world, and glory, but I love it! But don’t mind me, Professor, go right on and tell us all you know about ghosts and ghostesses.”

“Bless my soul! I don’t know anything about them.”

“Well, do you believe in ghosts?”

“What do you mean by ghosts? How do you define a ghost?”

“Ah, there’s the rub,” said Landon. “These people are all talking at cross purposes. Mr. Bruce means a scarecrow phantom rigged up in sheets, Miss Camforth means a supernatural being of some sort, but I take a ghost, in the proper sense, to mean the visible soul of someone who has died.”

“What do you mean by visible soul? Disembodied?”

“No,” considered Landon, “I suppose I mean clothed in a body—that is an apparent body.”

“And raiment?” asked the old Professor.

“Yes, certainly. I never heard of a nude spook!”

“Then your visible soul is concealed by a body of flesh, and clothes, of fabric, or, at least, apparently so. The soul, I take it, would show but low visibility.”

“Good, Hardwick!” cried Mr. Bruce. “Give them a jolt, they need it—talking such rubbish!”

“Rubbish, Bruce? What do you mean by rubbish?”

“Why, all this ghost gabble—”

“How do you know it’s rubbish? Have you personally disproved it? Do you mean intentional rubbish? Are they talking deceptively, or are they themselves deceived?”

“By the Lord Harry, Hardwick, I had forgotten you were such a stickler for words! I must choose my diction carefully. Do you, then, believe that so-called supernatural appearances are caused by psychical influences or are hallucinations of the senses? There, I think I’ve put it clearly.”

“Fairly so. But I can’t answer clearly. I never express an opinion on a grave question—”

Milly’s hand flew up to her mouth to repress an involuntary giggle. “A grave question!” she exploded. “It surely is.”

The Professor looked at her thoughtfully. “It is,” he went on, “and it is no laughing matter. As I was saying, I never state an opinion without being sure of my facts. Now, I’ve had no experience, personally, with supernatural matters, and so am unfit to discuss them. But, I admit I should be very glad to have some such experience. Yes, I certainly should.”

“Really,” and Eve Carnforth looked interested. “I can arrange it for you, Professor Hardwick.”

“No, no, my dear lady, I do not mean that I want to go to a séance, where the so-called medium throws flowers and things out of a cabinet, or toots trumpets and bangs cymbals! No, thank you, I’ve seen such often.”

“What would you choose as an experience?” asked Landon.

“I’d like to go to a house that is reputed haunted, and in circumstances that preclude all possibility of fraud, see the haunting spirits or hear them for myself.”

“Me, too!” cried Vernie. “Oh, I do think that would be the rippingest fun! If you ever do it, Professor, mayn’t I go with you?”

“I’ll go along,” said Eve. “Wouldn’t that be a splendid proof! To have such a scientific and open-minded man as the Professor, and a few others who are in earnest and anxious to learn. You couldn’t go, Mr. Bruce. You are too skeptical.”

“I’m just the one you need,” he laughed. “A balance wheel to keep you enthusiasts straight. But haunted houses are not to be found on every bush in America. If we were in England now—or Scotland.”

“They do have some over here,” Landon asserted. “I read of one recently, and I’ve heard of others.”

“Let’s find one,” suggested Eve, “and spend our summer vacation in it! Wouldn’t that be a lark? “

“Oh, do!” exclaimed Vernie. “I’d just love it! May I go, Uncle Gifford? Oh, please let me.”

“Only if I go myself, child. The spooks—I beg their pardon, phantasms, might carry you off. I’ll have to go along to rescue you.”

“Phantasms don’t carry people off,” said Eve, contemptuously. “And though I’d like to consider this plan, I’d only do so, if we were all in earnest as investigators, whatever our opinions may be.”

“Come on, let’s go,” said Landon. “I think it a great little old scheme. Make up a party, you know, but every one who joins must promise to be earnest and honest. Must promise to do nothing to fool or mislead the others, but keep a fair and open mind for any developments. Of course, there won’t be any developments, but we can have a jolly time and we can have wild discussions.”

“Wynne would rather have a discussion than eat,” said his wife. “I’ll go, and I’ll be the housekeeper and chaperon of the crowd, if, as Wynne says, there’ll be no developments. I’d love the outing, and I think this a splendid party to belong to. And let’s take Norma Cameron. She’s a sensitive, or whatever you call it, and she’ll help you out, Eve.”

“Why make the party any larger?” asked Eve, a little petulantly. “The crowd here now seems just right and congenial and all that.”

“Why lug in Norma?” said Braye, smiling. “I don’t know said Norma, but I agree with Eve that the party here is just sort of complete.”

“Yes, I will take Norma. The poor child never gets an outing, and she’d just love this chance.”

“You talk as if we were going to a summer resort,” said Landon. “In the first place, Milly, I doubt if we can find a properly haunted house in a pleasant locality, that is for rent.”

“Of course we can’t,” declared Mr. Bruce. “The whole scheme is idiotic. But if you can work it out, Landon, I’ll go along, and take this little piece of property.” He looked smilingly at the eager-eyed Vernie. “She’s due for some fun after her school work, and if she likes this stunt, let’s try to put it over.”

“How would you set out to find a house?” asked Braye.

“Advertise,” said Landon, promptly. “I know a firm of real estate agents that I’ll bet could manage it in short order. Say we try it?”

“I’m going to take Norma,” insisted Milly. “Mayn’t I, Wynne?”

“Take anything or anybody you wish, my cherished one. But then, oughtn’t we to have another man?”

“Yes,” said Milly, decidedly. “I hate a bunch of hens, without plenty of menfolks about. Who knows a nice, good-natured, all round adaptable dinner man?”

“I know just the chap,” said Braye, “but he’s a minister. Or, at least, he used to be. But he’s an awfully good fellow and most agreeable parlour company.”

“What’s his name?” asked Landon.

“Tracy. I met him first in Chicago, some years ago, and I’ve always liked him.”

“All right, if Milly asks Norma, you ask your friend, but it’s a case of first catch your house!”

“It’s got to be a nice house, and fairly comfortable,” Milly stipulated, “or I won’t go.”

“It’s got to have a well-authenticated ghost, or I won’t go,” laughed Braye. “I don’t believe in the things, but I’d like to have a chance to hear their clanking chains, or whatever they perform on.”

“I’ll go just for the fun of the thing,” said Vernie, “and if we do catch a ghost, so much the better!”

CHAPTER II

1. 1. The Old Montgomery Place

At the Fisher and Hibbard Real Estate and Country House Agency, Wayne Landon had a spirited interview with their Mr. Fisher, and finally induced that somewhat unwilling gentleman to advertise for a haunted house.

“It’s a purely business matter,” Landon argued, “and if you’re any sort of a live agency you ought to do your best to get for your clients any such peculiar domiciles as they may desire.”

“I understand that,” patiently explained Mr. Fisher, “but it’s such a crazy thing to do. How would a dignified firm like ours look advertising for a house warranted haunted?”

“Don’t use your own firm name, then. Have answers sent to a fictitious address. Oh, you can manage it, Fisher. I don’t mean you can surely get one, but you can manage to try. And if the house is pleasant and attractive, it doesn’t matter, between you and me, if there isn’t any ghost after all. But I want a bona fide story. I mean, I don’t want a house that the owner pretends is haunted, just so he can rent it. It must be a well-known legend or ghost story connected with the place.”

“There are plenty of such,” and Fisher laughed. “I’ve struck them occasionally, and because of that well-authenticated story, known to all the neighbours, I couldn’t rent them. To have one asked for is a new experience here.”

“Well, I’ve told you the whole state of the case. You see why we want it, and though the ghost part is the primary factor with some of us, my wife and I care more about a pleasant setting for a month’s house party.”

Landon’s personality went far toward gaining his end, and Mr. Fisher promised to do what he could. As a lawyer of fine standing, and a man of ample means, Wynne Landon was a desirable man to please, and the order was taken.

And when, a few weeks later, word came that a possible opportunity had offered, Landon telephoned for Braye to go with him, and they went to investigate it at once.

“It’s this way,” said Mr. Fisher to the listening men. “There’s a big house up in Vermont—in the Green Mountain region, not so very far from Manchester. But it’s a lonely locality, quite high up, and near a lake.”

“Sounds fine so far,” commented Landon; “go on.”

“A man named Stebbins is the owner. I haven’t seen him, but here’s his letter. Read it, you’ll get the idea better than I can tell you.” So they read:

“FISHER AND HIBBARD:

“Dear sirs:

“I’ve got a house, and it sure is haunted. It’s up here in the mountains, and it’s a good house, and a big one, but in some disrepair. Leastways, things is old-fashioned, and not, as you may say, up to date. But nothing ornery. All high-toned and proper, only old and somewhat wore out. It’s the old Montgomery mansion, built along about 1700 and something. But it’s been added to since, and it’s a sort of mixed up architecture. About forty rooms into it, I should judge, though I ain’t never counted them. And most of them haunted. But they ain’t no use going into particulars unless somebody really wants to rent it. I’ve tried nineteen years, and nobody’ll take it, cause it’s so lonesome like. It’s called Black Aspens, mostly I guess, cause the thick groves of aspen trees all around look black at night, and Lord knows it’s a fit place for ghosts. Anyway it’s haunted and I can swear to that. But the story of the haunt I won’t set down until I hear from you again. But you can take my affydavy it’s a real haunt and there’s a real reason for it.

“Yours truly,

“ELIJAH STEBBINS.”

“Sounds good to me; what do you think, Rudolph?” said Landon.

“All right, if it’s genuine. Some of us ought to go up there and size it up before the whole crowd goes. Think so?”

“Yes, unless we can get a photograph, or some sort of a plan of the place. And, you know, Braye, I don’t care such a lot about a ghost, if we can get a good intelligent crowd of people together. That’s the only sort of vacation I care for. I wouldn’t give a picayune for a month in a big summer hotel, or a little summer boarding-house, where you may meet good talkers and you may not. But with Eve Carnforth and Norma Cameron and the Professor and, pardon the bouquet, you, I foresee some good old chin-chins. And, add to this, picturesque, even wild mountain scenery, I somehow think we’re in for a good time.”

“I agree. Wish Uncle Gif and Vernie weren’t going, though. He’s a dictatorial old chap, though a good sport, and as to Vernie, I don’t think it’s the right place for a flapper.”

“Oh, it won’t hurt the kiddie. She’s a mighty sensible little piece and she’s ready to eat up experiences. She may as well be with her own people.”

“That’s just it. She’s lived nearly all her life alone with Uncle, and he isn’t enough people for her. She ought to have a woman to look after her, now she’s out of school.”

“Well, what’s the matter with Milly? For this trip at least. Milly loves the little girl, and will have a good influence over her.”

“That’s right as rain, but I’m not sure Eve Carnforth is desirable company for Vernie.”

“Oh, Eve isn’t a bad sort. And with her strict Uncle, and you and Milly and me to look after the child, Eve can’t do much to counteract.”

“She probably won’t do anything. It’s all right, Wynne. Now shall we decide to take this Montgomery place?”

“Oh, no, we can’t decide positively. I’m pretty sure we shall take it, but I think we ought to call a confab of the whole bunch to discuss it.”

* * * *

Meantime, Eve Carnforth was talking it over with Milly Landon.

“I adore the plan,” Eve said, “except your insistence on taking Norma Cameron. I don’t like her, Milly, and you know it.”

“Now, Eve, cunnin’ little cherub child, don’t let the greeny-weeny-eyed monster claim you for his own! You know perf’ly well,” Milly giggled, “that you don’t want Norma along because you think she will attract Friend Braye.”

“Why, Milly Landon! What nonsense! I don’t care two cents for Rudolph Braye—”

“Oh, I don’t mean romantically, but I do know you want to be top of the psychic heap up there and you think little Norma will get ahead of you in phantasmagoria, or whatever you call it.”

“No, it isn’t that; but Norma does think she knows it all, and she puts on such airs about her clairvoyance and calls herself a sensitive and all that.”

“Well, let her. You can hold your own; and too, Eve, if we carry out this scheme, I think we ought all to pull together, and help each other. And we can’t do that if there’s antagonism or rivalry now, can we? And if you’re in earnest, as you’ve always insisted you are, you ought to be glad of any help Norma can give. She feels that way about you. When I asked her to go, she was delighted that you were to be in the party because, she said, you were so interested and so well up in all these things we’re going to discover.”

“I suppose I am silly. I may as well confess I’m not sure of Norma. She wouldn’t be above pretending she heard or saw things, even if she didn’t.”

“Fiddlesticks! There won’t be any pretending! Or, if there is, it’ll be discovered right straight off. Why, Wynne is terribly in earnest—about having it all fair and square, I mean—and so is the Professor, and I’d like to see anyone fool Gifford Bruce! And little Vernie is a real wide-awake. There won’t be anything doing that that child doesn’t know, if it’s fraud or foolery! Don’t you believe it, my dear. Norma Cameron won’t pull any wool over anybody’s eyes in our party. No, siree!”

* * * *

The crowd came together that night to discuss the house that had been offered, and to come to a decision.

Norma Cameron was present, and her manner and appearance were so exactly opposite to those of Eve Carnforth, that it was small wonder the girls were not congenial.

Norma was blonde, and had what her friends called a seraphic countenance and her enemies, a doll-face. For Norma had enemies. She was prominent in war relief work and public charities of many kinds, and it is seldom possible for such a one to go through the world entirely peaceably. But all conceded that her doll-face was a very pretty one, and few who criticized it would not have been glad to wear it.

Her golden hair was softly curly, and her sky blue eyes big and expressive. But her complexion was her greatest beauty; soft as a rose petal, the pink and white were so delicately blended as to make a new observer suspect art’s assistance. A second glance, however, removed all such suspicion, for no hare’s foot could ever have produced that degree of perfection. Her softly rounded chin, and creamy throat were exquisitely moulded, and her usual expression was gentle and amiable.

But Norma was no namby-pamby character, and her eyes could turn to deep violet, and her pink cheeks flush rosily if she ran up against injustice or meanness. That was why her career of philanthropy was not always a serene path, for she never hesitated to speak her mind and her mind was of a positive type.

Always outspoken, though, was Norma. No slyness or deceit marked her procedure, never did she say behind anyone’s back what she would not say to his face.

And this was the principal reason why Norma and Eve could never hit it off. For Eve frequently carried tales, and sometimes denied them later. Milly, however, was friends with both girls, and secretly hoped that if they could all get away together, the two warring natures might react on each other for good. Then, too, both were immensely interested in psychics, and if they were rivals in this field, so much better chance for all concerned to find out the things they were to look for.

“I think,” said Norma, at the confab, “it would be better for two of the crowd, say, Mr. and Mrs. Landon, to go up first and look at the house. It sounds fine, but it may be impossible. So, why get us all up there, only to come home again?”

“I don’t think so,” said Eve, promptly, while Milly giggled to hear the two begin to disagree at once. “I think it would be a lot more fun for us all to go and see it for the first time together. Then, if it isn’t livable, we can all come back, but we shall have had a sort of picnic out of it, at least.”

“Yes, I think that, too!” put in Vernie, who was beside herself with joy at the outlook. “Oh, what a gorgeous party it will be! Do we go in the train, or motors or what?”

“Hush, Vernie,” said her Uncle, “we haven’t decided to go at all, yet. Where is this place, Landon?”

“The post office is East Dryden. The house is about a mile further up the mountain. I fancy it’s a picturesque sort of a place, though with few modem appointments. Fisher got a little more data, somehow, and he says it’s a hodge-podge old pile, as to architecture, as it’s been rebuilt, or added to several times. But I don’t care about all that, I mean, if we don’t like the appointments we needn’t stay. What I want is the ghost story. Shall we send to Stebbins for that before we take the place, or go on a wild goose chase entirely?”

“Oh, let’s start off without knowing anything about it,” and old Mr. Bruce’s eyes twinkled like a boy’s at thought of an escapade.

“Good for you, Uncle!” and Vernie shouted with glee. “I didn’t know you were such an old top, did you, Cousin Rudolph?”

“Well, I’ve known him longer than you have, Flapper, and I’m not so surprised at his wanting a sporting proposition. But, I say, Milly, if we’re going to take Tracy, you people ought to see him and give him the once over first. Maybe you won’t like him at all.”

“Oh, your friends are sure to be our friends, Rudolph,” said Landon, “but telephone him to run up here, can’t you? It’s only fair to let him in on the planning.”

Tracy came, and he made good at once. His ministerial air was softened by a charming smile and a certain chivalry of address that pleased the women and satisfied the men.

“What about servants?” he asked, after the main details had been explained to him.

“That’s what I’m thinking about,” said Milly. “I don’t want to take our servants, they’d be scared to death in such a place, and, too, we can’t go ghost hunting under Charles’ nose! He’d sniff at us!”

“Right you are!” agreed Landon. “Charles is one estimable and valuable butler, but he’s no sort to take on the picnic we’re out for.”

“Don’t let’s take any servants,” suggested Eve, “but get some up there. Natives, you know.”

“That would be better,” said Mr. Bruce. “Then, they’ll be used to the place, and can tell us of the legends and traditions, you see.”

“You’re poking fun,” said Eve, reproachfully, “but it’s true, all the same. Do we go in motors?”

“I think so,” said Landon. “Two big cars would take us all, and we can leave our luggage to be sent up if we stay.”

“Of course we’ll stay,” asserted Milly. “I love that old house already, and if there’s no ghost at all, I’ll be just as well pleased, and I’ll stay the month out, with whoever wants to stay with me.”

“I’ll stand by you,” said Norma, “and I’ll own up that I don’t really expect any spectral manifestations up there, anyway.”

“It matters little what you expect,” and Professor Hardwick looked at her thoughtfully. “We’re going investigating, not expecting.”

“Don’t you expect anything, Prof?” asked Vernie, gaily.

“What do you mean by expect, child? Do you mean wish or think?”

“Gracious, goodness, Professor! I never know what I mean by the words I use, and I never care!”

Professor Hardwick’s hobby was the use of words, and rarely did he fail to question it, if a word was misused or uncertainly used in his presence. But he smiled benignly on the pretty child, and didn’t bother her further.

Finally, the men drew together to make up the budget of necessary expenses and the women talked clothes.

“Smocks all round,” said Norma, who loved the unconventional in dress.

“Not for me!” said Eve, who didn’t.

Milly giggled. “Let every one wear just what she chooses,” she settled it. “I’m at my best in white linen in the summer time, but what about laundry? Well, I shall leave two sets of things packed, and then send for whichever I want.” Norma, uninterested in clothes, edged over toward the men. Though a friend of the Landons and acquainted with Professor Hardwick, she had never met Braye or Tracy before.

Both succumbed to her surefire smile, but Tracy showed it and Braye didn’t.

“Sit here, Miss Cameron,” and Tracy eagerly made a place for her at his side; “we need a lady assistant. How much do you think it ought to cost to provision nine people and two or three natives for a month?”

“It isn’t a question of what it ought to cost,” returned Norma, “but what it will cost. But in any case it will be less than most of us would spend if we went to the average summer hotel. So why not just put down some round numbers, divide ’em by nine and let it go at that?”

“Fine!” approved Landon. “No food dictator could beat that scheme! I wonder if ghost-hunters are as hungry as other hunters, or if we’ll be so scared we’ll lose our appetites.”

“I have a profound belief in ghosts,” Norma asserted, “but I shall only indulge in it between meals. Count me in for all the good things going, three times a day.”

“What do you mean by profound?” asked the Professor; “deep-seated or widely informed?”

“Both,” answered Norma, flashing her pretty smile at the serious old man. “Profundity of all kinds is my happy hunting-ground, and on this trip I expect to get all the profundity I want.”

“And I’m the girl to put the fun in profundity,” cried Vernie, coming over to them. “My mission is to keep you serious people joyed up. Mr. Tracy, your profession won’t interfere with your having a jolly time, will it? No, I see it won’t, by that twinkly little smile.”

“You may count on me,” said the clergyman a bit stiffly, but with a cordial glance at the girl.

“And I can wind Professor Hardwick round my finger,” Vernie went on, “for a companion on a gay lark, I don’t know anyone better than a dry-as-dust old college professor!”

The object of this encomium received it with a benignant smile, but Gilford Bruce reproved his saucy niece.

“I’ll leave you at home, miss, if you talk impertinences,” he declared.

“Not much you won’t, my bestest, belovedest Uncle! Why, I’m the leading lady of this troupe. And I expect the spectre will appear to me first of all. That’s my motto: ’Spect the Spectre! How’s that? Then the rest of you can inspect the spectre!”

“Vernie! don’t be so excruciatingly funny,” begged Braye, while Milly Landon giggled at the pretty child, whose charm and sweetness took all rudeness from her foolery.

“Perhaps we ought to call in an inspector to inspect the spectre,” contributed Landon.

“There, there, Wynne,” said Braye, “we’ll take such stuff from an ignorant little girl but not from a grown-up man.”

“Ignorant, huh!” scorned Vernie. “I’ll bet you couldn’t have passed my examination in psychology!”

“Perhaps not,” admitted Braye, “but after this trip of ours, we’ll all be honour men.”

“I want it thoroughly understood,” said Mr. Bruce, “that I range myself on the side of the skeptics. I don’t want to sail under false colours and I wish to state positively that there are no ghosts or phantasms or any such things. Moreover, I announce my intention of fooling you gullible ones, if I can.”

“Oh, that isn’t fair!” exclaimed Landon. “I don’t believe in the things either, but I want an honest test. Why, you take away the whole point of the experiment if you’re going to put up a trick on us!”

“No, no, Bruce,” said the Professor, “that won’t do. Come, now, give me your word there’ll be no hocus-pocus or I refuse to go at all.”

“If it’s any sort of a real test, Hardwick, it oughtn’t to be possible to fool you.”

“That’s true,” said Eve; “and I’m not afraid of any tricks. If they are tricks, I’ll know it—”

“I too,” said Norma. “I’m sensitive to all psychical manifestations and if I can’t tell a real phantasm from Mr. Bruce’s tricks, I deserve to be fooled.”

“I think it’s a good thing that Mr. Bruce warned us,” observed John Tracy. “It puts us on our guard. But I think the rest of us ought to agree not to do anything of that sort. We can expect and discount Mr. Bruce’s little game, but if others are going to do the same, it seems to me the game isn’t worth playing.”

“Right you are!” declared Landon, and forthwith everybody present except Gifford Bruce solemnly pledged his or her word to do nothing tricky or fraudulent, and to preserve an open-minded, honest attitude toward any developments they might experience.

“And with eight argus-eyed inquirers watching him, Mr. Bruce can’t put anything over,” opined Landon, and the others agreed.

CHAPTER III

1. 2. Black Aspens

Though mid-July, it was a chilly dusk through which the two motor cars ascended the last stretch of mountain road toward the old Montgomery mansion. The sun set early behind the Green Mountains and the house, halfway up an eastern slope, appeared faintly through the Shadows.

To the right, tall forest trees waved their topmost branches with an eerie, soughing sound, or stood, menacingly silent, in black, sullen majesty. Beneath them a tangled underbrush gave forth faint, rustling hints of some wild life or suddenly ceased to a grim stillness.

Then the road lay through a thick grove of aspens, close, black and shivering as they stood, sentinel like and fearsome, only dimly outlined against the dark, clouded sky. Once in the grove, the shadows were dense, and the quivering sounds seemed intensified to a muttered protest against intrusion. A strange bird gave forth a few raucous notes, and then the dread silence returned.

A quick, damp chill foreboded still water and the road followed the margin of a small lake or pond, sinister in its inky depths, which mirrored the still blacker aspen trees.

Suddenly, in a small clearing, they came upon the house. In the uncertain light it seemed enormous, shapeless and beyond all words repelling. It seemed to have a personality, defiant and forbidding, that warned of mystery and disaster. Aspen trees, tall and gaunt, grew so close that their whispering leaves brushed the windows, and crowded in protecting, huddled clumps to ward off trespassers.

No lights showed through the deep caverns of the windows, but one faint gleam flickered above the entrance door.

“Whew!” cried Landon, jumping from his seat with a thud on the stone terrace, “I won’t go through that wood again! I’ll go home in an aeroplane—and I’m ready to go now!”

“So am I,” said Milly, in a quivering, tearful voice. “Oh, Wynne, why did we ever come?”

“Now, now,” cheered Braye, “keep your heads, it’s all right. Only these confounded shadows make it impossible to know just where we’re at. Here’s the house, and by jinks, it’s built of marble!”

“Of course,” said the Professor, who was curiously feeling of the old ivy-grown stone, “this is the marble country, you know. Vermont marble was plenty enough when this house was put up.”

“Let’s get in,” begged Vernie. “It isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be.”

They went, in a close group, up a short flight of broad marble steps and reached a wide portico, in the centre of which was a spacious vestibule indented into the building, and which stood within the main wall. Though the walls of the house were of marble, those of this vestibule were of paneled mahogany, and the entrance doorway was flanked on either side by large bronze columns, which stood half within and half without the mahogany wall.

“Some house!” exclaimed Tracy, in admiration of the beautiful details, which though worn and blackened by time, were of antique grandeur. “These bronze doors must have come from Italy. They’re marvelous. I’m glad I came.”

“Oh, do get in, Wynne,” wailed Milly. “You can examine the house tomorrow. I wish we hadn’t come!”

Landon was about to make search for knocker or bell, when one of the big bronze doors swung open, and a man peered out.

“You folks here?” he said, a bit unnecessarily. “Bring another lamp, Hester.”

“Yes, we’re here,” Landon assured him, “and we want to get in out of the wet!”

“Rainin’?” and the man stepped out of the door to look, blocking all ingress.

“No! that’s a figure of speech!” Landon’s nerves were on edge. “Open that door—the other one—let us in!”

“Go on in, who’s henderin’ you?” and the indifferent host stepped out of the way.

Landon went in first and Braye followed, as the others crowded after. At first they could see only a gloomy cavernous hall, its darkness accentuated by one small lamp on a table.

“Thought I wouldn’t light up till you got here,” and the man who had admitted them came in and closed the door. “I’m Stebbins, and here’s the keys. This is the house you’ve took, and Hester here will look after you. I’ll be goin’.”

“No, you won’t!” and Landon turned on him. “Why, man, we know nothing of this place. You stay till I dismiss you. I want a whole lot of information, but not till after we get lights and make the ladies comfortable.”

“Comfortable! At Black Aspens! Not likely.” The mocking laugh that accompanied these words struck terror to most of his hearers. “Nobody told me that you folks came up here to be comfortable.”

“Shut up!” Landon’s temper was near the breaking point. “Where’s that woman with the lamps? Where’s the man I engaged to look after things?”

“Hester, she’s here. She’ll be in in a minute. Thorpe, that’s her husband, he’s goin’ to be a sort of butteler for you, he can’t come till tomorrow. But Hester, she’s got supper ready, or will be, soon’s you can wash up and all.”

Hester came in then, a gaunt, hard-featured New England woman, who looked utterly devoid of any emotion and most intelligence.

Stebbins, on the other hand, was apparently of keen perceptions and average intellect. His small blue eyes roved from one face to another, and though he looked sullen and disagreeable of disposition, he gave the effect of one ready to do his duty.

“All right,” he said, as if without interest, “I’ll set in the kitchen and wait. Hester here, she’ll take the ladies to their rooms, and then after you get your supper, I’ll tell you all you ask me. But I rented this place to you, I didn’t agree to be a signboard and Farmers’ Almanac.”

“All right, old chap,” and Landon smiled faintly, “but don’t you get away till I see you. Now, girls, want to select your rooms?”

“Y-Yes,” began Eve, bravely, and then a glance up the dark staircase made her shudder.

“What we want is light—and plenty of it,” broke in Braye. “Here you, Hester, I’ll relieve you of that lamp you’re holding, and you hop it, and get more—six more—twelve more—hear me?”

“We haven’t that many in the house.” Dull-eyed the woman looked at him with that sublime stolidity only achieved by born New Englanders.

“Oh, you haven’t! Well, bring all you have and tomorrow you manage to raise a lot more. How many have you, all told?”

“Four, I think.”

“Four! For a party of nine! Well, have you candles?”

“Half a dozen.”

“And three candlesticks, I suppose. Bring them in, and if you’re shy of candlesticks, bring old bottles—or anything.”

“Good for you, Braye, didn’t know you had so much generalship,” and Gifford Bruce clapped his nephew on the shoulder. “I’m glad I don’t believe in ghosts, for every last one of you people are shaking in your shoes this minute! What’s the matter with you? Nothing has happened.”

“It was that awful ride through the woods,” said Vernie, cuddling into her uncle’s arm. “I like it—I like it all—but, the local colour is so—so dark!”

“That’s it, Kiddie,” said Braye, “the local colour is about the murkiest I ever struck. But here are our lights, hooray!”

Hester brought two more small hand lamps, and after another trip to the kitchen brought six candles and six battered but usable candlesticks.

A candle was given to each of the four women, and Norma politely selected the oldest and most broken holder.

“Land sake!” exclaimed Stebbins, coming in, “you goin’ to use that candlestick? That’s the very one the murderin’ woman used!”

With a scream, Norma dropped it and no one moved to pick it up.

“Get out, Stebbins!” roared Landon, “you queer the whole business.”

“I’ll take this one,” and Mr. Bruce picked up the old brass affair; “I’m not afraid of such things. Here, Miss Cameron, take mine, it’s new and commonplace, I assure you.”

White-faced and trembling, Norma took the cheap crockery thing, and shortly they all followed Hester up the stairs to the shadows of the floor above.

The place was silent as the grave. Hester’s slippered feet made no sound, and a voluntary scraping of Tracy’s shoes stopped as soon as he realized its enormous sound in those empty halls. A multitude of doors led to rooms in all directions, there seemed to be no plan or symmetry of any sort. The candle flames flickered, the small lamps burned with a pale sickly light.

Hester paused midway of the main corridor. “What rooms you want?” she asked, uninterestedly.

“Give me a cheerful one,” wailed Milly. “Oh, Wynne, let us take a little, cozy one.”

“Of course you shall,” said Braye, kindly. “Hester, which is the pleasantest room in the house? Give that to Mr. and Mrs. Landon! And then we’ll put all you girls near them. The rest of us will camp anywhere.”

“Let’s all pretty much camp anywhere till tomorrow,” suggested the Professor. “I’d like to select my room by daylight.”

“I’ve made up some of the rooms, and some I ain’t,” volunteered Hester.

“Then, for Heaven’s sake, show us the made-up rooms, and get out!” burst forth Landon. “I wish we’d brought our maids, Milly; that woman affects me like fever and ague.”

But after a time they were assigned to various more or less inhabitable bedrooms, and as quickly as possible, all reappeared in the great hall below, ready for supper.

The dining room, toward the back of the house, was not half bad, after all the available lights had been commandeered for the table.

“You knew there were no electrics,” said Braye to Eve, who was bewailing the fact.

“Of course I did, and I thought candles would be lovely and picturesque and all that; and kerosene gives a good soft light, but—well, somehow—do you know what I thought as we came through that dreadful wood?”

“What?”

“Only one sentence rang through my mind— and that was—The Powers of Darkness!”

“That isn’t a sentence,” objected the Professor, a little querulously, and everybody laughed. Also, everybody blessed the occasion for laughter.

But Eve went on. “I don’t care if it’s a sentence or a syllogism, or what it is! It just rang in my ears. And I tell you this whole place is under the Powers of Darkness—”

“Do hush, Eve,” pleaded Milly. “I was just to pull myself together, and now you’ve upset me again.”

“But Milly—”

“Let up, Eve! For the love of Mike, let up! You’re enough to give anybody the creeps.” Landon glared at her.

“It’s only a question of light,” Tracy broke in, in his pleasant way. “Now, we’ve light enough for moment, and tomorrow we’ll make this the house of a thousand candles and a hundred lamps, and a few lanterns if you like. Incidentally, Friend Hester makes first-rate doughnuts.”

“Aren’t they bully!” chimed in Vernie. “I’ve eaten six and here goes for another.”

“Lucky they’re small,” said her uncle. “But seven doughnuts are enough to make you see the ghost of old Montgomery himself!”

“And all the Green Mountain boys,” added Tracy, who was determined to keep conversation away from fearsome subjects.

By the time they had finished the meal, every one felt more at ease, Landon had recovered his poise, and Milly her cheerfulness.

“Now then,” the Professor asked, as they left the table, “shall we explore the house tonight—”

“Lord no!” cried Braye. “Leave it lay till daylight. Also, don’t quiz old Stebbins as to who’s who in Black Aspens! Let’s turn on the Victrola and dance, or let’s play poker or sing glees, or anything that’s a proper parlour trick. But nothing, I insist, pertaining to our mission up here. That’ll keep.”

“As you like,” and now Landon could smile. “And you mollycoddles may pursue those light-minded pleasures. But I’m going to have it out with Steb, because I want to know some several Laws for Beginners. But, don’t let me interfere with your plans. Go ahead, and have play ‘Hide and Seek All Over the House,’ if you choose. That used to be my favourite indoor game.”

“Oh!” squealed Vernie, “what an awful suggestion! In this house!”

“I move we hear the story of the house tonight —right now,” said Eve.

Milly clasped her hands over her ears, instead of, as usual, over her mouth, and cried, “No! I forbid it! Don’t let ’em, will you, Wynne?”

“Seems to me,” remarked Mr. Stebbins, “you folks don’t know your own minds! You want a ha’nted house, then when you git it, you’re too scared to hear the story of the ha’nt.”

“I’m not scared,” asserted Norma, “but somehow, a ha’nt sounds so much worse than a haunt. Doesn’t it, now? “

“It sure does,” agreed Braye. “A ha’nt is concrete, while a haunt is abstract.”

“Good!” and Hardwick nodded approval. “Now, I suggest that we look around a bit, get the general lay of the house and then all go to bed early. A good night’s sleep will put our nerves and muscles in condition again. I’m delighted with the place, and I foresee a first-class vacation ahead of us.”

“I wish it was behind us, and we were just starting for home,” murmured Milly, but Eve reprimanded her.

“Don’t be a spoilsport! I like the place too, Professor, and I’m going to investigate a little. What room is this?”

Eve’s graceful figure crossed the great square hall, where they were all standing about, and paused at the closed door of a room just at the right hand as one entered the house.

“Why, it’s locked!” she exclaimed. “That won’t do, Mr. Stebbins! This whole domain is ours now, you know. Open this door, please.”

Eve wore the light gray skirt of her travelling costume, and a thin sheer white silk blouse, whose V’d neck fell away from her long, slender throat. Her hand on the door knob, she suddenly turned her strange beryl eyes toward Stebbins, her face turning whiter and her thin lips redder as she gazed.

“This is the room—isn’t it?” she breathed, and her hand slowly fell from the knob and hung loosely at her side.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Stebbins, stolidly. “How’d you know?”

“How could I help knowing!” and Eve’s voice rang out like a clarion. “I see it! I see it all!”

She rushed across the hall and fell trembling on a settee. Tracy flew to her side, and took her hand.

“There, there, Miss Carnforth, brace up! We’re all right here. Nothing can hurt you.”

“Beats all how she knew!” muttered Stebbins.

“You see that’s the room—”

A cry from Milly stirred Landon to action.

“Drop it, Stebbins,” he said, and took a step toward him. “None of that tonight. We do want your haunted house, but the long journey up here, and your confounded negligence in the matter of lights and servants and general good will, has got on the ladies’ nerves. Beat it now, to the kitchen, or wherever your quarters are, but you stay here tonight and be ready to report in the morning. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” and shrugging his shoulders, the man disappeared among the shadows in the back of the hall.

The great main hall was so large that the lights they had were all insufficient for illumination. There seemed to be innumerable doors and openings of side corridors, also a second staircase, far behind the main one.

“Here’s a good-looking room, let’s go in here,” said Tracy, stepping through some old, faded draperies to the room on the left of the hall as one entered the house.

Hardwick followed, and the others with lamps and candles pushed in. It was a large, dignified apartment, evidently a parlour or ballroom of the old mansion. The furniture was of old, carved rosewood, its upholstery worn, but fairly decent. Oil portraits were on the walls and massive ornaments of imitation bronze stood about, showing white here and there where the coating was chipped off.

Yellowish onyx vases graced the mantels, and the windows were hung with heavy rep curtains which, however, veiled no lighter ones.

“Ghastly!” cried Norma.

“What do you mean by ghastly?” began the Professor, and Tracy laughed.

“She didn’t mean it at all, Professor,” he said, “Miss Cameron meant to say hideous. Now, don’t ask me what I mean by hideous, just look at the interior decorations here and draw your own conclusions as to my meaning. But though not to be called aesthetic, this furniture is fairly comfy. The springs of this sofa are intact—come sit by my side, little darling.” This last to Vernie, who was wide-eyed and alert, lapping up these strange, new impressions.

“All right,” and she flung herself down beside him. “You’re a real comfort, Mr. Tracy—you’re so—so—unministerial!”

“Thank you, my child. One needn’t carry one’s pulpit voice into social life.”

“Oh, I don’t mean you do or say anything that a man of your calling oughtn’t to, but you’re so nice about it.”

“I think so too,” chattered Milly, “I do think a clergyman with a sense of humour makes a fine combination.”

The mental atmosphere gradually lightened and when Landon suggested they all retire, it was a composed and merry hearted group that obeyed the summons.

When twelve sonorous strokes boomed from the tall clock in the upper hall, the men beneath the roof of Black Aspens were all sleeping more or less soundly.

Milly, with only occasional little quivering shudders, slumbered in Landon’s arms. Vernie slept with the sound dreamless sleep of youth.

But Eve and Norma were wide awake, and unable to close their eyes.

In adjoining rooms, the communicating door ajar, they could hear one another toss restlessly, but they said no words.

Norma’s blue eyes were wide open, her thoughts rambling over the strange surroundings in which she found herself, and her mind leaping forward, speculating on what might happen.

Eve, her long, glittering eyes half-closed, listened for any sound; her nerves alert, her thoughts darting from material things to the supernatural, every muscle tense with a nameless apprehension.

More hours were rung out by the old clock, and at last dawn began to creep in at the deep narrow windows of the old house.

With a shrug and a stretch Vernie awoke. Drowsily, in the half light she tried to make out her surroundings, and then, suddenly remembering where she was, she dove her head under her blanket, in a quick rush of fear. Then curiosity conquered, and she came to the surface again, and looked about. The light, growing gradually stronger, showed the appointments of the room, the ugly old four-poster bedstead, of light wood—apple or hickory—the heavy rep lambrequins, that seemed to be a feature of the house, and the scantily appointed dresser, on which, the night before, she had set her extinguished candle.

Shadows still lurked in the corners of the room, still hung round the draperies and furniture, yet through the gloom Vernie saw something that made her eyes stare and her flesh creep. Clenching her hands till her sharp nails bit into her palms, she gave a shriek that rang through the silent house.

CHAPTER IV

1. 3. The Story of the House

From their nearby rooms Eve and Norma rushed to Vernie’s room.

The child was huddled beneath the bed clothes and at their entrance shot her head out, crying wildly, “Look! look! the old candlestick!”

Milly came running, in dressing-gown and slippers, and from distant regions came the voices of the men.

“What’s the matter?” asked Gifford Bruce. “Wasn’t that Vernie’s voice?”

“Yes, Uncle Gif,” Vernie called out “Oh, did you do it?”

“Do what?” and in his hastily donned bathrobe, old Mr. Bruce appeared.

“Why,” and Vernie was calm now, “there’s that old candlestick, the one the—the murderer used— on my dresser! Last night I had a little china one!”

“What are you talking about—a murderer! Wake up, child!”

“I’m not asleep. But I see, now. You had this old one, Uncle Gif, and, you know you said you were going to fool us if you could, and so you sneaked it in here to pretend the haunt did it!”

“What! What nonsense! I did nothing of the sort!”

“Who did, then? You know you had this one last night”

“I certainly did. Wonder what’s in my room now.”

Mr. Bruce ran back to his room and returned with the little china candlestick Vernie had carried to her room the night before. They had certainly been exchanged during the night.

Everybody stared at the two candles, so worthless in themselves, but so inexplicably transferred, if, as he declared, Gifford Bruce had not exchanged them.

“Of course I didn’t do it,” he repeated, angrily. “I did say, in fun, that I meant to trick you, but when I saw how nervous and wrought up all you women were last night, I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing! Why Vernie, I think too much of you, dear, to add to your fear or discomfort in Any way.”

At last everybody concluded it was the work of someone of their number, and there were varying opinions as to the identity of the perpetrator of what must have been meant for a joke.

But at breakfast time the matter was discussed very seriously and each avowed in all honour that he or she knew nothing of it.

“I can speak not only for myself,” said Professor Hardwick, gravely, “but for Mr. Tracy and Mr. Braye. They would have had to pass my door to move around the halls, and I was awake all night, looking and listening, and I know they did not leave their rooms.”

“I speak for myself,” said Gifford Bruce, haughtily. “I declare on my oath that I did not leave my bed. Somebody exchanged those candles—but it was not I.”

The Landons spoke for each other, and no one, of course, could suspect Wynne or Milly. And naturally, the two girls, Eve and Norma, would not go to Mr. Bruce’s room to play a trick like that.

“I don’t mind now,” said Vernie, “when it’s all light and cheerful and you’re all around me, and the breakfast is so good and all. I think it’s the beginning of these experiences we came up here to look for. Why are you all so surprised? Because I had the first party?”

The merry-eyed girl was unafraid now, but Hardwick shook his head.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “We can’t investigate if there’s a trickster among us. You didn’t do it yourself, did you, Vernie?”

“No, Professor,” and the pure truthful gaze of the brown eyes left no room for disbelief. “Honest, I didn’t. But,” she laughed mischievously, “if I had, I should say I hadn’t!”

“Vernie! This won’t do!” and Eve glared at her, “You little minx, I believe you did do it!”

“Don’t you look at me like that, Eve Carnforth! Stop it! You scare me.” Vernie fairly cowered before Eve’s basilisk eyes. “I believe you did it!”

“There, there, girls,” broke in Tracy, with his gentle smile, “don’t get to hair-pulling. If we’ve all finished breakfast, let’s now hear the story of the house, and then we can tell if its patron ghost is the sort given to exchanging bedroom furniture o’ nights.”

“Yes,” agreed Norma, “I’m crazy to hear the story. Where’s Mr. Stebbins, does anybody know?”

“I’ll dig him up,” Landon assured them. “Where shall we congregate?”

“In the drawing room,” said Milly, “that’s the only room I’m not afraid of.”

“I’m fearfully afraid of that!” said Tracy, in mock terror. “Those rep lambrequins get on my nerves!”

“Aren’t they awful!” and Norma laughed. “They don’t frighten me, but they jar my aesthetics terribly.”

“No,” said Elijah Stebbins, firmly, as the conclave began, “not in that there parlour. Here in the hall. You folks want this house, you want the story of this house, now you sit here to hear it.”

“Very well,” said Braye, agreeably. “Just as you say, Mr. Stebbins. Now begin at the beginning, but don’t drool too long a spiel.”

The whole party grouped themselves in the great hall, and for the first time began to take in the details of its appointments. Though in disrepair as to walls and cornices, the lines of its architecture were fine and it was of noble proportions; the staircase was beautifully planned; and the wonderful bronze doors, which they had not examined the night before, were truly works of art.

“The old Montgomery who brought them doors from Italy, pretty much built the house behind ’em,” Stebbins volunteered, “and them colyums, of course, come with the doors. They’re some valu’ble, I’m told. You see, the doors is the same outside and in, and the colyums is, too. Well, then, he had the vestibule of murhoggany, to sort o’ set off the bronze, I s’pose, and the rest of the walls is marble—solid old Vermont marble, which Lord knows was to be had for the pickin’, up here.”

“Get along to the story, Steb,” urged Landon.

“Yes, sir. Well, the Montgomery that built this house—though, it was part built before, he added on to his father’s house—well, he was a daredevil, and a tyrant. Little mite of a man, but full of the old Nick. And, as those little men will do, he married a reg’lar Hessian of a woman. Big, sort o’ long and gaunt, they say she was, and a termagant for sure! She led him a life, and also, he led her one. For he was a terror and so was she. What he lacked in size he made up in temper, and she had both. Well, here’s the story.

“He took sick, and she nursed him. They didn’t have trained nurses and specialists in them days.

“Now some says, he was jest naturally took sick and some says, that she give him slow poison. But, be that as it may, one night, she give him prussic acid, and he died. She threw a shawl over her head, and ran screamin’ to the village for the doctor. I s’pose remorse got her, for she confessed, and said ‘I killed him! I killed him! At four o’clock I killed him!’

“She went crazy, they say, then and there. Well, the doctor he said he’d come right away, but she ran home first. And he followed as fast’s he could, and—when he come, here was the woman—and she was a washin’ the dead man’s lips—she said, to get the smell of the bitter ammonds off—you know, prussic acid is for all the world the smell of bitter almonds. The doctor, he found the man was really dead, and he was for havin’ her arrested, but she was so plumb crazy, he decided to take her to an asylum instead.

“He had to go off to get help, and he left her— here alone in this house with the body. They was in that room,” Stebbins pointed to the room with the locked door, at the right hand of the hall as one entered, “the room with the tassels, it’s called.”

“Why is it called that?” broke in Eve, whose piercing eyes were fairly glittering with excitement, “what sort of tassels?”

“Great heavy tassels on the curtains and lambaquins, ma’am—want to see it?”

“Not now,” ordained Landon, “the story first.”

“Well,” resumed Stebbins, “they was in that room, the dead husband and the live wife, when the doctor went away, and because he knew she was out of her head, he locked ’em in. And when he came back—she was setting there, just where he’d left her, still in a dazed sort o’ stupor, and—the corpse was gone.”

“Gone! Where?” rasped out the Professor.

“Nobody knows. Nobody ever knew. It had just disappeared from off the face of the earth. The doctor and the village folks all agreed that it was sperrited away. ’Cause that woman—she couldn’t get out o’ the doors to cart it off, and she couldn’t ’a’ got out of a winder with it, without showin’ some signs, and if she had, what in the world could she ’a’ done with it? It wasn’t buried nowhere around, and if she’d ’a’ threw it in the lake, s’posin’ she’d got out a winder, how’d she got in again? Anyhow, that’s the story, and they all said she was a witch and she bewitched the body away, so’s the doctor and sheriff couldn’t smell the prussic acid on it and hang her for murder. They searched and searched but they couldn’t find no signs of her havin’ even moved outen her chair. She sat there like a dead woman herself, when the doctor left her and likewise when he come back.”

“The tale is very circumstantial,” observed Gifford Bruce, a bit drily.

“I’m tellin’ it as I’ve many a time heard it, sir,” said Stebbins, a little resentfully. “This here story’s been common talk around these parts a many years, and I ain’t one to add to nor take from it.”

“Go on,” commanded Landon, briefly.

“They put her away, in a loonytic asylum, and she died in it. They never found hide nor hair of the dead man, and the place fell to some kin that lived down Pennsylvania way. They come up here for a while, I b’lieve, but the ha’nt scared ’em off. It’s been sold some several times and at last it fell to my father’s family. Now it’s mine, and it’s a white elephant to me. I can’t sell or rent it, and so you folks may well believe I jumped at the chance to have you take it for a spell.”

“We haven’t heard about the haunt yet,” said Norma. She spoke quietly, but her lips quivered a little, and her fingers were nervously picking at her handkerchief.

“That,” and Stebbins looked even more sombre than he had, “that’s my own experience, so I can give it to you first hand.

“I come here to live, ’bout ten years ago, and I was plucky enough to hoot at ghost stories and tales o’ ha’nts.

“So I set out to sleep in that—that room with the tassels—out o’ sheer bravado. But I got enough of it.”

The man’s head fell on his breast and he paused in his narrative.

“Go on,” said Landon, less brusquely than before.

Milly stirred nervously. “Don’t let him tell the rest, Wynne,” she said.

“Oh, yes, dear. Remember, this is what we’re here for.”

Most of the men shifted their positions; Hardwick leaned forward, both hands on his knees. Gifford Bruce sat with one arm flung carelessly over his chair back, a slight smile on his face.

Braye was beside Norma, and watched alternately her face and Eve’s, while Tracy was holding Vernie’s hand, and his gentle calm kept the volatile child quiet.

“I see it all so plainly—that first night—” Stebbins said, slowly. “First night! Land! there never was another! Not for me. I’d sooner ’a’ died than slep’ in that room again!”

“See a ghost?” asked Bruce, flippantly.

“Yes, sir,” and Stebbins looked straight at him. “I seen a ghost. I’m a sound sleeper, I am, and I went to sleep quiet and ca’m as a baby. I woke as the big clock there was a strikin’ four. It was that what woke me—I hope.”

“Is there—is there a bed in that room?” asked the Professor.

“Lord, yes, it was them folkses bedroom. In them days, people most always slep’ downstairs. I come awake suddenly, and the room was full of an icy chill. Not just coldness, but a damp chill—like undertakers’ iceboxes.”

Vernie shuddered and Tracy held her hand more firmly. Landon slipped his arm round Milly, and Eve and Norma glanced at each other.

Gifford Bruce replaced his sneering smile, which had somehow disappeared.

“It was winter, and plumb dark at four o’clock in the morning, but the room was full of an unearthly light—a sort of frosty, white glow, like you see in a graveyard sometimes.

“And cornin’ toward me was a tall, gaunt figure, with a shawl over its head, a white, misty shape, that had a sort of a halting step but was cornin’ straight and sure toward that bed I was lyin’ on. I tried to scream, I tried to move, but I couldn’t—I was paralyzed. On and on came the thing—halting at every step, but gettin’ nearer and nearer. As she—oh, I knew it was that woman—”

“I thought it was a man who was murdered,” put in Mr. Bruce, in his most sardonic tones.

“So it was, sir,” Stebbins spoke mildly, “ but it was the murderess doin’ the ha’ntin’. I s’pose she can’t rest quiet in her grave for remorse and that. She came nearer and—and I saw her face— and—”

“Well?”

“And it was a skull! A grinning skull. And her long bony hand held a glass—a glass of poison —for me.”

“Er—did you take it?” This from Bruce.

“No, sir. I swooned away, or whatever you may call it. I lost all consciousness, and when I come to, the thing was gone.”

“Ever see her again?” inquired Mr. Bruce, conversationally.

“No, sir,” and Stebbins eyed him uninterestedly. It was impossible to annoy the storyteller. “No, I never seen her.”

“Heard her?” asked Braye.

“Yes; many’s the time. But—I ain’t never slept in that room since.”

“I should say not!” cried Eve “But I will! I’ll brave the phantasm. I’d be glad to see her. I’m not afraid.”

“You needn’t be,” said Mr. Bruce, with a short laugh. “You won’t see anything, Miss Carnforth. I’d be willing to try it, too.”

“What other manifestations have you experienced?” asked Braye. “What have you heard?”

“Mostly groans.”

“And hollow laughter,” interrupted Bruce. “Those are the regulation sounds, I believe.”

“Oh, hush!” cried Eve. “Mr. Bruce, you drive me frantic! I wish you hadn’t come!”

“I don’t,” declared Bruce. “I think it’s most interesting. And do I understand, Mr. Stebbins, that this charming lady of large size and hard heart, carried usually that candlestick that I made use of last night?”

At last Stebbins resented Bruce’s chaff.

“So the story goes, sir,” he said, curtly. “And many’s the time I’ve known that candlestick to be moved during the night, by no mortal hand.”

“Look here, Uncle Gif,” said Braye, good-naturedly, “you don’t want to get yourself disliked, do you? Now, let up on your quizzing, and let’s get down to business. We set out for a haunted house. I, for one, think we’ve got all we came after, and then some! If the ha’nt began moving her candlestick around the first night, what may she not do next? You didn’t do it, did you, Uncle?”

“I’ve told you I didn’t, Rudolph, and I again repeat my word. But it was scarcely necessary for me to do it, when such a capable spook—I mean, phantasm is regularly in attendance.”

“Now, I’ve told you the tale,” and Stebbins rose, and shook himself as if he had done his duty. “I ain’t nowise responsible for your believin’ it. What I’ve told you is true, so far’s my own experience goes; and what I’ve told you hearsay, is the old story that’s been told up in these parts by one generation after another, since old Montgomery’s day. Now do you want to see the room with the tassels? “

“I don’t!” cried Milly, “I can’t stand any more.”

“You needn’t, dear,” said Landon; “suppose you go out on the terrace and walk about in the sunlight. You go’ with her, Vernie, you can see the room, later on.”

“I’ll go too,” and Tracy tactfully offered his escort. “The tassels will keep. Come on, Braye?”

“No; I’ll see the show through. You can look after the ladies, Tracy.”

So the others crowded round Stebbins, as he prepared to unlock the door of the fatal room.

“Tain’t no great sight,” he said, almost apologetically. “But it’s the ha’nted room.”

Slowly he turned the key and they all filed in. The room was dark, save for what light came in from the hall. All blinds were closed, and over the windows hung heavy curtains of rep that had once been red but was now a dull, nondescript colour. There were more of these heavy, long curtains, evidently concealing alcoves or cupboards, and over each curtain was a “lambrequin” edged with thick twisted woolen fringe, and at intervals, tassels—enormous, weighty tassels, such as were once used in church pulpits and other old-fashioned upholstery. Such quantities of these there were, that it is small wonder the room received its name.

And the tassels had a sinister air. Motionless they hung, dingy, faded, but still of an individuality that seemed to say, “we have seen unholy deed— we cry out mutely for vengeance!”

“It was them tassels that scared me most,” Stebbins said, in an awed tone. “I mean before—she come. They sort of swayed—when they wasn’t no draught nor anything.”

“I don’t wonder!” said Braye, “they’re the ghostliest things I ever saw! But the whole room is awful! It—oh I say! put up a window!”

“I can’t,” said Stebbins simply. “These here windows ain’t been up for years and years. The springs is all rusted and won’t work.”

“There’s something in the room!” cried Eve, hysterically, “I mean—something—besides us— something alive!”

“No, ma’am,” said Stebbins, solemnly, “what’s in here ain’t alive, ma’am. I ain’t been in here myself, since that night I slep’ here, and I wouldn’t be now, only to show you folks the room. I sort of feel’s if I’d shifted the responsibility to you folks now. I don’t seem to feel the same fear of the ha’nt, like I was here alone.”

“Don’t say ha’nt! Stop it!” and Eve almost shrieked at him.

“Yes, ma’am. Ghost, ma’am. But ha’nt it is, and ha’nt it will be, till the crack o’ doom. Air ye all satisfied with your bargain?”

No one answered, for every one was conscious of a subtle presence and each glanced fearfully, furtively about, nerves shaken, wills enfeebled, vitality low.

“What is it?” whispered Eve.

“Imagination!” declared Mr. Bruce, but he shook his shoulders as he spoke, as if ridding himself of an incubus.

There was a chilliness that was not like honest cold, there was a stillness that was not an ordinary silence, and there was an impelling desire in every heart to get out of that room and never return.

But all were game, and when at last Stebbins said, “Seen enough?” they almost tumbled over one another in a burst of relief at the thought of exit.

The great hall seemed cheerful by contrast, and Landon, in a voice he strove to make matter-of-fact, said, “Thank you, Stebbins, you have certainly given us what we asked for.”

“Yes, sir. Did you notice it, sir?”

“What?”

“The smell—the odour—in that room?”

“I did,” said Eve, “I noticed the odour of prussic acid.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Stebbins, “that’s what I meant.”

CHAPTER V

Eve’s Experience

The investigators had investigated for a week.

They were now having tea in the great hall, to whose shadowy distances and shabby appointments they had become somewhat accustomed.

Kept up to the mark by the Landons, old Jed Thorpe had developed positive talents as a butler, and with plenty of lamps and candles, and a couple of willing, if ignorant maids, the household machinery ran fairly smoothly. Supplies were procured in East Dryden or sent up from New York markets and by day the party was usually a gay-hearted, merry-mannered country house group.

Every day at tea-time, they recounted any individual experiences that might seem mysterious, and discussed them.

“It’s this way,” Professor Hardwick summed up; “the determining factor is the dark. Ghosts and haunted houses are all very well at night, but daylight dispels them as a sound breaks silence.”

“What about my experience when I slept in the Room with the Tassels,” growled Gifford Bruce.

Braye laughed. “You queered yourself, Uncle Gif, when you announced before we started, that you were not bound to good faith. Your ghost stories are discounted before you tell ’em!”

“But I did see a shape—a shadowy form, like a tall woman with a shawl over her head—”

“You dreamed it,” said Milly, smiling at him.

“Or else—”

“Milly daren’t say it,” laughed Eve, “but I will. Or else, you invented the yarn.”

“If I’m to be called a—”

“Tut, tut, Mr. Bruce,” intervened Tracy, “nobody called you one! Playful prevarication is all right, especially as you warned us you’d fool us if you could. Now I can tell an experience and justly expect to be believed.”

“But you haven’t had any,” and Eve’s translucent eyes turned to him.

“I have,” began Tracy, slowly, “but they’ve been a bit indefinite. It’s unsatisfactory to present only an impression or a suggestion, where facts are wanted. And the Professor says truly that hints and haunts are convincing at night, but repeated, at a pleasant, comfortable tea hour, they sound flimsy and unconvincing.”

“What did you think you saw or heard?” asked Norma, with a reminiscent, far-off look in her eyes.

“Every morning, or almost every morning, at four o’clock, I seem to hear the trailing robes of a presence of some sort. I seem to hear a faint moaning sound, that is like nothing human.”

“That’s imagination,” said Braye, promptly.

“It is, doubtless,” agreed Hardwick. “but it is due to what may be called ‘expectant attention.’ If we had not connected four o’clock with the story of this house, Mr. Tracy would not have those hallucinations at that time.”

“Perhaps so,” the clergyman looked thoughtful. “But it seems vivid and real at the time. Then, in the later morning, it is merely a hazy memory.”

“You know Mr. Stebbins said that every one who died in this house always died at four o’clock.”

“I know he said so,” and Braye looked quizzical.

“Oh, come now, don’t doubt honest old Stebbins!” and Eve frowned. “We must believe his tales or we’ll never get anywhere. I’m going over to East Dryden to see him tomorrow, I want a few more details; And, it seems to me, we’re getting nowhere—with our imaginations and hallucinations. Now, tonight, I’m going to sleep in the Room with the Tassels. I’ve no fear of it, and I have a deep and great curiosity.”

“Oh, let me sleep there with you I! Mayn’t I, Eve? Oh, please let me!” Vernie danced about in her eagerness, and knelt before Eve, pleading.

“No, Vernie, I forbid it,” said her uncle, decidedly. “If Miss Carnforth wants to do this thing, I have nothing to say, but you must not, my child. I know you people don’t believe me, but I surely saw an apparition the night I slept there, and it was no human trickster. Neither was it hallucination. I was as wide-awake as I am now—”

“We know the rest, Uncle Gif,” and Braye laughingly interrupted the recital. “Stalking ghost, hollow groans, and—were there clanking chains?”

“There were not, but in its shrouded hand the spectre held a glass—”

“Of prussic acid, of which you smelt the strong odour! Yes, I know—but it won’t go down, old chap—”

“The prussic acid won’t?” and Landon chuckled.

“Nor the tale either,” said the Professor. “It’s too true. The shawled woman filled the specifications too accurately to seem convincing.”

“You’re a nice crowd,” grumbled Mr. Bruce. “Come up here for experiences and then hoot at the first real thing that happens.”

“All your own fault,” retorted Norma. “If you hadn’t advertised your propensity for fooling us, your word would have carried weight.”

“All right, let somebody else sleep in that room, then. But not Miss Carnforth. Let one of the men try it.”

“Thank you, none for me,” said Braye. “I detest shawled women waking me up at four o’clock, to take my poison!”

“I’ll beg off, too,” said Tracy. “I wake at four every morning anyway, with those aspen boughs shivering against my windows. I’d trim them off, but that doesn’t seem like playing the game.”

“Wynne shan’t sleep there, and that settles that,” and Milly’s grasp on her husband’s coat sleeve was evidently sufficiently detaining.

“That leaves only me, of the men,” asserted the Professor. “I’m quite willing to sleep in that room. Indeed, I want to. I’ve only been waiting till I felt sure of the house, the servants and— excuse me, the members of our own party! Now, I’ve discovered that the servants’ quarters can be securely locked off, so that they cannot get in this part of the house; I’ve found that the outside doors and the windows can be fastened against all possibility of outside intrusion; and, I shall stipulate that our party shall so congregate in a few rooms, that no one can—ahem—haunt my slumbers without someone else knowing it. I’ll ask you three young ladies to sleep in one room and allow me to lock you in. Or two adjoining rooms, to which I may hold all keys. Mr. Tracy, Mr. Bruce and Mr. Braye, I shall arrange similarly, while the Landons must also consent to be imprisoned by me. This is the only way I can make a fair test. Will you all agree?”

“Splendid!” cried Eve, “of course we will. But, Professor, let me try it first. If you should have a weird experience, it might scare me off, but now I am brave enough. Oh, please, do that! Let me lock you all in your rooms, and let me sleep in the Room with the Tassels tonight! Oh, please say yes, all of you! I must, I must try it!” The girl looked like a seeress, as, with glittering eyes and flushed cheeks she pled her cause.

“Why, of course, if you want to, Miss Carnforth,” said the Professor, looking at her admiringly. “I’ll be glad to have the benefit of your experience before testing myself. And there is positively no danger. As I’ve said, the locks, bolts, and bars are absolutely safe against outside intrusion, or visits from the servants. Though we know they are not to be suspected. And as you are not afraid of the supernatural, I can see no argument against your plan.”

“Suppose I go with you,” suggested Norma, her large blue eyes questioning Eve Carnforth’s excited face.

“No, Norma, not this time. I prefer to be alone. I’ll lock you and Vernie in your room; I’ll lock Milly and Wynne in their room; I’ll lock you four men in two rooms, and then, I’ll know—I’ll know that whatever I see or hear is not a fraud or trick of anybody. And I think you can trust me to tell you the truth in the morning.”

“If there’s anything to tell,” supplemented Braye. “I think. Eve, as to ghosts, you’re cutting off your source of supply.”

“Then we’ll merely prove nothing. But I’m determined to try.”

Again Vernie begged to be allowed to share Eve’s experiences, but neither Mr. Bruce, nor Eve herself would consider the child’s request.

“Every one of us,” the Professor said, musingly, “has told of hearing mysterious sounds and of seeing mysterious shadows, but—except for Bruce’s graphic details!—all our observations have been vague and uncertain. They may well have been merely imagination. But Miss Carnforth is not imaginative, I mean, not so to the exclusion of a fair judgment of what her senses experience. Therefore I shall feel, if she sees nothing tonight, that I shall see nothing when I sleep in that room tomorrow night.”

“I am especially well-adapted for the test,” Eve said, though in no way proudly, “for I have a premonition that the phantasm will appear to me more readily than to some others. Remember, I knew that was the haunted room before we had been told. I knew it before we entered the house that first night. It was revealed to me, as other things have been even during our stay here. You must realize that I am a sensitive, and so better fitted for these visitations than a more phlegmatic or practical person.”

“What else has been revealed to you, Eve?” asked Braye.

“Perhaps revealed isn’t just the word, Rudolph, but I’ve seen more than most of you, I’ve heard voices, rustling as of wings, and other inexplicable sounds, that I know were audible only to me.

“My Lord, Eve, you give me the creeps! Finished your tea? Come out for a walk then. Let’s get off these subjects, if only for half an hour.”

That night, Eve Carnforth carried out her plans to the letter.

Gifford Bruce, and his nephew Braye in one room; the Professor and Tracy in another, were locked in by Eve, amid much gaiety of ceremony.

“Set a thief to catch a thief,” Braye declared. “Tracy, look after the Professor, that he doesn’t jump out of the window, and you, Professor, watch Tracy!”

“They can’t jump out the windows,” said Eve, practically, “they’re too high. And if they could, they couldn’t get in the tasseled room. Those windows won’t open. And, too, I know the Professor won’t let Mr. Tracy out of his sight, or vice versa. Rudolph, you tie your uncle, if he shows signs of roving.”

Eve’s strong nerves gave no sign of tension as she completed all her precautionary arrangements. She locked the doors that shut off the servants’ quarters; she locked the Landons in their room, she locked the door of the room that Norma and Vernie occupied, and last, with various gay messages shouted at her through the closed portals, she went downstairs to keep her lonely vigil.

She did not undress, for she had no intention of sleeping that night. A kimono, and her hair comfortably in a long braid were her only concessions to relaxation.

She lay down on the hard old bed, and gazed about her. A single lamp lit the room, and she had a candle also, in case she desired to use it.

The light made strange shadows, the heavy, faded hangings seemed to sway and move, but whether they really did so or not, Eve couldn’t determine. She got up and went to examine them. The feel of them was damp and unpleasant, they seemed to squirm under her hand, and she hastily dropped them and returned to the bed.

There was an uncanny, creepy atmosphere that disturbed her, in spite of her strong nerves and indomitable will.

She had locked the door, now she arose and took the key out and laid it on a table. She had heard that a key in a lock could be turned from the other side.

Then, on a sudden impulse, she put out the lamp, feeling utter darkness preferable to those weird shadows. But the darkness was too horrible, so she lighted the candle. It was not in the historic old brass candlestick, but in a gay affair of red china, and the homely, cheap thing somewhat reassured her, as a bit of modernity and real life.

She listened for a long time, imagining sighs or sounds, which she could not be sure she really heard. The whispering aspens outside were audible, and their continued soughing was monotonously annoying, but not frightful, because she had accustomed herself to it.

At last, her over-wrought nerves wearied, her physical nature refused further strain, and Eve slept. A light, fitful sleep, interspersed with waking moments and with sudden swift dreams. But she kept fast hold of her perceptive faculties. If she slept and woke, she knew it. She heard the aspens’ sounds, the hours struck by the great hall clock, and the sound of her own quick, short breathing.

Nothing else.

Until, just as the clock tolled the last stroke of four, she heard a low grating sound. Was someone at the door? She was glad she had taken out the key.

The candle still burned, but its tiny light rather accentuated than lifted the gloom of the shadowy room.

Slowly and noiselessly the door swung open, inward, into the room. Eve tried to sit up in bed, but could not. She felt paralyzed, not so much frightened, as numbed with physical dread.

And then, with a slow gliding motion, something entered—something tall, gaunt and robed in long, pale-coloured draperies. It was unreal, shadowy in its aspect, it was only dimly visible in the gloom, but it gave the impression of a frightened, furtive personality that hesitated to move, yet was impelled to. A soft moan, as of despair, came from the figure, and it put out a long white hand and pinched out the candle flame. Then, with another sigh, Eve could feel, in the utter black darkness that the thing was coming to her side.

With all her might she tried to cry out, but her vocal cords were dumb, she made no sound. But she felt—with all her senses, she felt the apparition draw nearer. At her bedside it paused, she knew this, by a sort of sixth sense, for she heard or saw nothing.

Then, she was conscious of a faint odour of prussic acid, its pungent bitterness unmistakable, though slight.

And then, a tiny flame, as of a wick without a candle, flashed for a second, disappeared, and Eve almost fainted. She did not entirely lose consciousness, but her brain reeled, her head seemed to spin round and her ears rang with a strange buzzing, for in the instant’s gleam of that weird light, she had seen the face of the phantom, and—it was the face of a skull! It was the ghastly countenance of a death’s head!

Half conscious, but listening with abnormal sense, she thought she descried the closing of the door, but could hear no key turn.

The knowledge that she was alone, gave her new life. She sprang up, lighted the candle, lighted the lamp, and looked about. All was as she had arranged it. The door was locked, the key, untouched, upon the table. Nothing was disturbed, but Eve Carnforth knew that her experience, whatever its explanation, had not been a dream.

When her senses had reeled, she had not lost entire control of them through her physical fear, she had kept her mental balance, and she knew that what her brain had registered had actually occurred.

Alert, she lay for a long time thinking it over. She felt sure there would be no return of the spectre—she felt sure it had been a spectre—and she was conscious of a feeling of curiosity rather than fright.

At last she rose, and unlocking the door, went out into the great hall. By the light of her lamp, she looked it over. The carved bronze doors between the enormous bronze columns were so elaborately locked and bolted as to give almost the effect of a fortress.

The windows were fastened and some were barred. But all these details had been looked after in advance; Eve gazed at them now, in an idle quest for some hint of hitherto unsuspected ingress.

But there was none, and now the clock was striking five.

She went slowly upstairs, unlocked the various doors, without opening them, and then went to her own bedroom.

“What about it?” cried Norma, eagerly, running to Eve’s room.

“A big story,” Eve returned, wearily. “But I’ll tell it to you all at once. I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me at eight, will you, Norma?”

Disappointed, but helpless, as Eve closed her door upon the would-be visitor, Norma went back and told Milly, who was waiting and listening.

“I don’t like it,” Norma said, “for by eight o’clock she can cook up a story to scare us all! I think two ought to sleep in that room at once.”

“Go to bed,” said Milly, sleepily. “And don’t you suspect Eve Carnforth of making up a yarn or even dressing up the truth! She isn’t that sort.”

As to Eve’s veracity, opinions were divided.

She told the whole story, directly after breakfast, to the whole group, the servants being well out of earshot.

She told it simply and straightforwardly, just as it had happened to her. Her sincerity and accurate statements stood a fire of questions, a volley of sarcastic comments and a few assertions of unbelief.

Professor Hardwick believed implicitly all she said, and encouraged her to dilate upon her experiences. But in nowise did she add to them, she merely repeated or emphasized the various points without deviation from her first narrative.

Norma and Braye went for a walk, and frankly discussed it.

“Of course, Eve colours it without meaning to,” declared Braye; “it couldn’t have happened, you know. We were all locked in, and Lord knows none of us could have put that stunt over even if we had wanted to.”

“Of course not; that locking in business was unnecessary, but it does prove that no human agency was at work. That leaves only Eve’s imagination —or—the real thing.”

“It wasn’t the real thing,” and Braye shook his head. “There ain’t no such animal! But Eve’s imagination is—”

“No. Mr. Braye, you’re on the wrong tack. Eve’s imagination is not the sort that conjures up phantoms. Vernie’s might do that, or Mrs. Landon’s—but not Miss Carnforth’s. She is psychic—I know, because I am myself—”

“Miss Cameron—Norma—” and Braye became suddenly insistent, “don’t you sleep in that infernal room, will you? Promise me you won’t.”

“Why?” and the big blue eyes looked at him in surprise. “As Sentimental Tommy used to say, ‘I would fell like to!’ Why shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, I don’t want you to,” and Braye looked really distressed. “Promise me you won’t— please.”

“Why do you care? ’Fraid I’ll be carried off by the Shawled Woman?”

“Ugh!” and Braye shivered. “I can’t bear to think of you alone down there. I beg of you not to do it.”

“But that’s what we came for. We’re to investigate, you know.”

“Well, then promise you won’t try it until after I do.”

“Trickster! And if you never try it, I can’t!”

“You see through me too well. But, at least, promise this. If you try it, don’t go alone. Say, you and Miss Carnforth go together—”

“Hello, people,” and Vernie ran round a corner, followed more slowly by Tracy. “We’ve had a great little old climb! Hundreds of thousands of feet up the mounting side—wasn’t it, Mr. Tracy? “

“Thar or tharabouts,” agreed Tracy, smiling at the pretty child.

“And Mr. Tracy is the delightfullest man! He told me all the names of the wildflowers—weeds, rather—there weren’t any flowers. And oh, isn’t it exciting about Eve’s ghost! I’m going to ballyrag Uncle Gif till he lets me sleep in that room. He’ll have to give in at last!”

“Don’t, Vernie,” begged Braye. “What possesses all you girls! I wish we’d never started this racket! But you mustn’t do it, Kiddie, unless, that is, you go with somebody else. But not alone.”

“Why, Cousin Rudolph, what are you afraid of? Are you a mollycoddle?”

“No, child, I’m afraid for you. A shock like that, even an imaginary fright, might upset your reason and—”

“Fiddle-de-dee! My reason is deeper rooted than that! Come on, Mr. Tracy, I’ll race you to that big hemlock tree!”

The two started off, Vernie’s flying legs gaining ground at first, over Tracy’s steady well-trained running step.

CHAPTER VI

At Four O’Clock

The game grew more absorbing. Most of the party managed to store up enough courage by day to last well into the darker and more mysterious hours. It was at four in the morning that manifestations were oftenest noticed. At that hour vague moanings and rustlings were reported by one or another of the interested investigators, but no human agency was found to account for these.

Many plans were tried for discovering the secret of the Room with the Tassels, but all scrutiny failed to show any secret panel or concealed entrance. Indeed, their measurings and soundings proved there could not possibly be any entrance to that room save the door from the hall.

Eve and Norma believed thoroughly in the actual haunt of the woman who had poisoned her husband. They had no difficulty in swallowing whole all the strange noises or sights and attributing them to supernatural causes.

Not so Gifford Bruce. He still held that it was all trickery, cleverly done by some of the party, but as this was so clearly impossible, his opinion carried no weight.

Professor Hardwick was open-minded, but exceedingly alert of observation and ready to suspect anybody who would give him the slightest reason to do so. Nobody did, however, and the weird sounds continued at intervals. The other men were noncommittal, saying they hadn’t yet sufficient data to base conclusions on.

Milly was nervous and hysterical, but controlled her feelings at Landon’s plea, and awaited developments with the rest. Vernie was merely an excited child, gay with youthful spirits and ready to believe or disbelieve whatever the others did.

Soon after Eve’s experience, which no one, unless Gifford Bruce, doubted, Professor Hardwick slept in the haunted room. He had no results of interest to report. He said he had lain awake for a few hours and then fell asleep not to waken until daylight. If the Shawled Woman prowled about, he did not see or hear her. This was disappointing, but Tracy tried with little better success. In the morning, after a wakeful but uneventful night, the clergyman found the old battered brass candlestick in the room.

It had not been there the night before, and he had locked the door as the others had done. This was inexplicable, but of slight interest compared to a real haunting.

“You might have made up a ghost story,” Braye reproached him, “as Uncle Gifford did, and as Miss Carnforth—didn’t!”

The last word was distinctly teasing and Eve frowned gaily at him, but did not defend herself. She knew her experience had occurred just as she had told it, and, deeply mystified, she was earnestly and eagerly awaiting more light.

One day Braye found it necessary to go down to New York for a couple of days on some business matters. Before leaving, he made Vernie promise she would not sleep alone in the haunted room while he was gone.

“I forbid it, child,” he said. “Uncle Gif is so easygoing that I’ve no doubt you could wheedle permission out of him, but I beg of you not to. You’re too young to risk a nerve shock of that sort. If you want to try it with Miss Carnforth or Miss Cameron, all right, but not alone. Promise me, Flapper, and I’ll bring you a pretty present from town day after tomorrow.”

Vernie laughingly gave the required promise, but it did not weigh heavily on her conscience, for no sooner had Braye really gone, than she confided to Mr. Tracy her indecision regarding the keeping of her word.

“Of course you’ll keep your promise,” and Tracy regarded her seriously. “Nice people consider a spoken word inviolable. I know you, Vernie; you like to talk at random, but I think you’ve an honourable nature.”

So Vernie said nothing more to him, but she confided in Eve Carnforth her intention of sleeping in the Tasseled Room that very night.

Eve did not discourage her, and promised to tell no one.

The plan was easily carried out. As it was understood no one was sleeping in the haunted room, no special precautions were taken, save the usual locking up against outside intruders. And after the great locks and bolts were fastened on doors and windows, it would have been a clever burglar indeed who could have effected an entrance to Black Aspens.

The evening had been pleasantly spent. Some trials of the Ouija board, a favourite diversion, had produced no interesting results, and rather early they all retired.

At midnight, Vernie softly rose, and went downstairs alone in the darkness. A night lamp in the upper hall gave a faint glimmer below stairs, but after the girl turned into the great hall the dark was almost impenetrable.

Feeling her way, she came to the door of the room, softly entered it and walked in. Passing her hands along the walls and the familiar furnishings she found the bed and lay down upon it. Her heart beat fast with excitement but not with fear. She felt thrills of hope that the ghost would appear and thrills of apprehension lest it should!

She had left the door to the hall open, and though it could scarcely be called light, there was a mitigation of the darkness near the door. A not unpleasant drowsiness overcame her, and she half slept, waking every time the clock struck in the hall.

At three, she smiled to herself, realizing that she was there, in the Room with the Tassels, and felt no fear. “I hope something comes at four—” she thought sleepily, and closed her eyes again.

One—two—three—four—boomed the hall clock.

Vernie opened her eyes, only half conscious, and yet able to discern a strange chill in the air. Between her and the open door stood a tall gaunt shape, merely a shadow, for it was too dark to discern details. Her calm forsook her; she shivered violently, unable to control her muscles. Her teeth chattered, her knees knocked together, and her hair seemed to rise from her head.

Yet she could make no sound. Vainly she tried to scream, to shriek—but her dry throat was constricted as with an iron band.

Her eyes burned in their sockets, yet she was powerless to shut them! They seemed suddenly to possess an uncanny ability to pierce the darkness, and she saw the shape draw slowly nearer to her.

Clutching the bed-clothing, she tried to draw it over her head, but her paralyzed arms refused to move. Nearer, slowly nearer, the thing came, and horror reached its climax at sight of the face beneath the sheltering shawl. It was the face of a skull! The hollow eye-sockets glared at her, and lifting a deathlike hand, with long white fingers, the spectre told off one, two, three, four! on the digits. There was no sound, but a final pointing of the fearsome index finger at the stricken girl, seemed a death warrant for herself.

The thing disappeared. Slowly, silently, as it had come, so it went. From nowhere to nowhere—it evolved from the darkness and to the darkness returned.

Vernie didn’t faint, but she suffered excruciatingly; her head was on fire, her flesh crept and quivered, she was bathed in a cold perspiration, and her heart beat madly, wildly, as if it would burst.

The vision, though gone, remained etched on her brain, and she knew that until that faded she could not move or speak.

It seemed to her hours, but at last the tension lessened a little. The first move was agony, but by degrees she changed her position a trifle and moistened her dry lips.

With the first faint glimmer of dawn, she dragged herself upstairs and crept into bed beside Eve Carnforth.

“Tell me,” begged Eve, and Vernie told her.

“It was a warning,” said the child, solemnly. “It means I shall die at four o’clock some morning.”

“Nonsense, Kiddie! Now you’ve come through so bravely, and have such an experience to tell, don’t spoil it all by such croaking.”

“But it’s true, Eve. I could see that awful thing’s face, and it counted four, and then beckoned—sort of shook its finger, you know, and pointed at me. And—oh, I hardly noticed at the time, but it carried a glass in its hand—it seemed to have two glasses—”

“Oh, come now, dearie, you’re romancing. How could it have two glasses, when it was shaking its hand at you?”

“But it did, Eve. It had two little glasses, both in the same hand. I remember distinctly. Oh, every bit of it is printed on my brain forever! I wish I hadn’t done it! Rudolph told me not to!” A flood of tears came and Vernie gave way to great racking sobs, as she buried her face in the pillow.

“Yes, he was right, too, Vernie; but you know, he only wanted you not to try it because he feared it would upset your nerves. Now if you’re going to square yourself with Mr. Braye, you can only do it by not letting your nerves be upset. So brace up and control them. Cry, dear, cry all you can. That’s a relief, and will do you a heap of good. Then we’ll talk it over, and by breakfast time you’ll be ready to tell them all about it, and you’ll be the heroine of the whole crowd. It’s wonderful, Vernie, what you’ve got to tell, and you must be careful to tell it truly and not exaggerate or forget anything. Cry away, honey, here’s a fresh handkerchief.”

Eve’s calm voice and matter-of-fact manner did much to restore Vernie’s nerves, and as she looked around the rational, familiar room, bright with sunlight, her spirits revived, and she began to appreciate her role of heroine.

* * * *

Her story was received with grave consideration. It was impossible to believe the honest, earnest child capable of falsehood or deceit. Her description was too realistic, her straightforward narrative too unshakable, her manner too impressively true, to be doubted in the least degree or detail.

Gifford Bruce laughed and complimented her on her pluck. Mr. Tracy reproved her for breaking her word to her cousin, but as he was in no way responsible for Vernie’s behaviour, he said very little.

Landon scolded her roundly, while Milly said nothing at all.

The whole affair cast rather a gloom over them all, for it seemed as if the spectre had at last really manifested itself in earnest. An undoubted appearance to an innocent child was far more convincing than to a grown person of avowed psychic tendencies. Eve Carnforth might have imagined much of the story she told; her ‘expectant attention’ might have exaggerated the facts; but Vernie’s mind was like a page of white paper, on which the scene she passed through had left a clear imprint.

That night Vernie herself got out the Ouija board and asked Eve to help her try it.

“No,” was the reply. “I’m too broken up. And, too, the people don’t believe me. Get your uncle or Mr. Tracy or some truthful and honourable person to help you.”

It embittered Eve that her earnestness and her implicit belief in the supernatural made it more difficult for the others to look upon her as entirely disingenuous. She resented this, and was a little morose in consequence. Norma Cameron, herself an avowed ‘sensitive,’ had had no spiritistic visitant in the haunted room, and Eve thought Norma had doubted her word.

At last after trying all the others that she wanted, Vernie persuaded good-natured Mr. Tracy to move Ouija with her, and the two sat down with the board between them.

Few and flippant messages were forthcoming, until, just as Vernie had laughingly declared she would throw the old thing out of the window, a startling sentence formed itself from the erratic dartings of the heart-shaped toy, and Vernie turned pale.

“Stop it!” ordered Tracy, “I refuse to touch it again!”

He removed his hands and sat back, but Vernie, glaring at the letters, held it a moment longer. “Tomorrow! It says tomorrow!” she cried. “Oh, Eve, I told you so!”

“What, Vernie? What is it, dear?” and Eve Carnforth came over to the excited child.

“Ouija, Eve! Ouija said that tomorrow at four, two of us are to die! Oh, Eve, you know every death in this house has occurred at four o’clock in the morning! Mr. Stebbins said so. And now, two of us are to die tomorrow!”

“Nonsense!” cried Mr. Tracy, “don’t listen to that rubbish! The Ouija ran off its track. Maybe Vernie pushed it—maybe I did.”

“Now, Mr. Tracy, I didn’t push it, and you needn’t try to make anybody think you did! You never’d push it to say a thing like that! Why, it spelled it all out as plain as day! Uncle Gifford, do you hear! Two of us to die tomorrow!” Vernie’s voice rose to a hysterical shriek.

“Hush, Vernie! Hush, child. I’ll take you away from here tomorrow. We ought never to have brought you,” and Gifford Bruce glowered at the others as he clasped the sobbing child in his arms, and took her from the room.

“You’re right,” agreed Mr. Tracy, “and Braye was right. He said a fright or shock would upset that child’s nerves completely. But she must have pushed the board herself. It flew round like lightning, and spelled out the message, just as she said. I tried to steer it off, but she urged against me. I felt her doing so. I don’t mean she made up the message to create a sensation, but I think the ghost last night affected her as a warning, and her mind is so full of it, that she unconsciously or subconsciously worked up that message.’ At any rate, I’ve had about enough of this, if she’s to be here. It isn’t right to frighten a child so, and Vernie is little more than a child.”

“That’s so,” said Norma, thoughtfully. “I’ve had enough, too. If the rest of you want to stay on, I’ll go down to New York tomorrow, and take Vernie to stay with me for a while. We’ll go to the seashore, and I’ll see to it that she has no psychic or supernatural experiences.”

“Why, Norma,” and Eve looked surprised, “I thought you were so interested in these things.”

“So I am, but not to the extent of so affecting the nervous system of a sweet, innocent child, that it may result in permanent injury.”

“She’s all right,” said Gifford Bruce, returning, alone. “It’s hysteria. I think I’ll take her back to town tomorrow or next day. There’s something uncanny up here, that’s certain. I didn’t take any stock in the experiences of you people, but I can’t disbelieve Vernie’s story.”

The party broke up and all went to their rooms. There was no volunteer to sleep in the haunted room that night, and every one felt a shivering dread of what might happen at four o’clock the next morning.

Not one admitted it, but every one secretly shuddered at thought of Ouija’s message.

And when, as the hall clock rung out its four strokes the next morning, and nothing untoward happened, every one drew a long breath and soon went to sleep again, relieved, as of a heavy burden.

Gaily they gathered at breakfast, daylight and good cheer reviving their spirits.

“But Ouija is henceforth taboo,” said Mr. Tracy, shaking his finger at the now laughing Vernie.

“For little girls, anyway,” supplemented Eve.

“Little girls are taboo, also,” declared Gifford Bruce. “I can’t get off today, for I want to see Rudolph on his return, but tomorrow, I pack up my Vernie child and take her back to our own little old Chicago on the lake. These Aspens are too black for us!”

“Now, Uncle, I don’t want to go,” and Vernie pouted prettily. “And sumpum tells me I won’t go,” she added with a roguish glance at her uncle, whom she usually twisted round her rosy little finger.

But he gave her a grave smile in return, and the subject was dropped for the moment.

Soon after noon, Braye came up from the city, and listened, frowning, to the tales that were told him.

“You promised me, Vernie,” he said, reproachfully.

“I know it, Cousin Rudolph, but you see, I’ve never kept a promise in my whole life—and I didn’t want to break my record!”

“Naughty Flapper! I won’t give you the present I brought for you.”

“Oh, yes you will,” and so wheedlesome was the lovely face, and so persuasive the soft voice, that Vernie, after a short argument, seized upon a small jeweler’s packet and unwrapped a pretty little ring.

“Angel Cousin,” she observed, “you’re just about the nicest cousin I possess—beside being the only one!”

“Doubtful compliment!” laughed Braye. “Anyway, you’re the prettiest and naughtiest cousin I own! As a punishment for your disobedience I challenge you to a round with old Ouija tonight! I’ll bet I can make it say something more cheerful than you wormed out of it last evening.”

“All right, we’ll try it,” and Vernie danced gaily away to tease her uncle not to take her home.

A little later, Milly, as housekeeper, discovered some serious shortage in the commissariat department, and Braye offered to drive her over to East Dryden, marketing.

They started off, Milly calling back to Eve to preside at the tea-table, if she didn’t return in time.

“All right,” agreed Eve, though Vernie vociferously announced her intention of playing hostess in Milly’s absence.

The shoppers had not returned when old Thorpe brought in the tea-tray.

“You can pour, Eve, and I’ll pass the cakies,” said Vernie, who was in high spirits, for she had partially persuaded her uncle to remain longer at Black Aspens. He was just phrasing certain strong stipulations on which his permission was to be based, when the tea things arrived.

They were, as usual, in the hall, for though they sometimes suggested the plan of having tea out of doors, there was no cheerful terrace, or pleasant porch. The hall, though sombre and vast, had become more or less homelike by virtue of usage, so there they took their tea.

Mr. Tracy, always graceful in social matters, helped pass the cups and plates, for no one liked to have the old Thorpes about unnecessarily.

“No tea for me, please,” declared Norma; “I think it upsets my nerves—”

“And that is not the thing to do in this house,” laughed Landon. “This is mighty good tea, though—didn’t know anybody could brew it as well as Milly. Congratulations, Eve.”

“Thank you,” and Eve’s long lashes swept upward as she gave him a coquettish glance.

“Referring to that matter of which we were talking, Hardwick,” Gifford Bruce began, “I—”

Even as he spoke, the clock chimed four, and, as always, they paused to count the long, slow strokes.

Then Bruce began again: “I think, myself—”

A strange change passed over his face. His jaw fell, his eyes stared, and then, his teacup fell from his hand, and he slumped down in an awful—a terrifying heap!

Landon sprang to his assistance, Norma ran to him, while Tracy, with a quick glance at Vernie, flew to the child’s side.

“What is it?” he cried to her, “what’s the matter, Vernie?” He slipped an arm round her, just as, with a wild look and a ringing shriek, the girl’s head fell back and her eyes closed.

“Oh,” cried Eve, “what has happened?”

“I don’t know,” and Tracy’s voice shook. “Help me, Miss Carnforth—let us lay her on this sofa.”

Between them they carried the girl, for she was past muscular effort, and as they placed her gently on the sofa her eyes fluttered, she gave a gasping sigh, and fell back, inert.

“Oh,” cried Eve, “she isn’t—she isn’t—oh, it’s just four o’clock!”

Landon ran to Vernie’s side and felt of her heart.

“She is dead,” he said, solemnly, his face white, his voice shaking; “and Gifford Bruce is dead, too. It is four o’clock!”

CHAPTER VII

The Mystery

In the panic-stricken moments that followed the realization of the double tragedy, the natural characteristics of all those present showed themselves. Eve Carnforth, strong and calm, suddenly became self-appointed dictator.

“Lay Mr. Bruce flat on his back,” she called out, as she darted upstairs for her room, and returned with smelling salts, ammonia and such things.

Tracy, also capable and self-possessed, took a vial from her and held it before the face of the stricken child, while others strove to bring back to consciousness the motionless figure of Gifford Bruce, now stretched on the floor.

“It’s no use,” declared Landon, flinging the beads of sweat from his forehead, “they are dead—both of them. Oh, what does it mean?”

Norma sat in a big chair, her hands clutching its carved arms, and her face stony white. She was using all her will power to keep from utter collapse, and she couldn’t understand how Eve could be so natural and self-possessed.

“Brace up, Norma,” Eve admonished her; “here, take this salts bottle. Now is no time to make more trouble!”

The brusque words had the effect of rousing Norma, and she forced herself to rise.

“What can I do?” she whispered.

“Do!” cried Eve, “there’s everything to do! Someone telephone for a doctor!”

“I—can’t,” Norma moaned. “You do that, Professor—won’t you?”

“Oh, I can’t!” and Hardwick fell limply into a chair. “I—I’m all upset—”

“Of course you are, Professor,” said Tracy, kindly. “I’ll telephone, Miss Carnforth. Do you know the village doctor’s name? Of course—it’s too late—” he glanced at the two still forms, “but a physician must be summoned.”

“No, I don’t know any name—call Thorpe, or Hester.”

Tracy rang a bell and Thorpe came shuffling in. At sight of the tragedy, he turned and ran, screaming. Hester came, and proved the more useful of the two. Her stolidity was helpful, and she told the doctor’s name and number.

“Dead, ain’t they?” she said, with a grieved intonation that robbed her words of curtness. “What happened to ’em?”

The simple question roused them all. What had happened? What had killed two strong, well, able-bodied people at the same moment, and that the very moment said to be fatal in that dread house?

“I believe,” said the Professor, dropping his face in his hands, “I believe now in the supernatural. Nothing else can explain this thing.”

“Of course not,” and Eve solemnly acquiesced. “There is no possibility of anything else. What could kill them like this, at once and at four o’clock exactly, except a supernormal agent?”

“But that seems so impossible!” and Tracy’s practical, matter-of-fact voice did indeed make it seem so.

“What else is possible?” broke in Landon. “It isn’t suicide, it isn’t murder. It isn’t death from natural causes—at least, it can’t be in Vernie’s case—I suppose Mr. Bruce might have died from heart disease.”

“That’s why we want a doctor,” said Eve. “We can judge nothing until we know the immediate cause of death.”

“I wish we were in the city,” Tracy said, “the doctor will be nearly an hour getting here, I suppose.”

“Did you tell him all?” asked Eve.

“No, I didn’t. It didn’t seem wise to spread the news in that way. I told him to get here as soon as he possibly could—that it was a matter of life and death.”

“Which it certainly is,” murmured Norma. “Oh, Eve, what do you really think?”

Eve Carnforth looked at the other girl. Eve, so poised and collected, strength and willpower written in every line of her face—Norma so fragile, and shaken by the awful scenes about her.

“I don’t know what to think,” Eve replied, slowly. “There’s only one thing certain, Vernie received a warning of death—and Vernie is dead. Mr. Bruce received no definite warning, that I know of, but he may have had one. You know, he said he was visited by the phantom, but we wouldn’t believe him.”

“That’s so!” and Tracy looked up in surprise. “We never quite believed Mr. Bruce’s statements, because he scorned all talk of spirit manifestations. If he really did see the ghost that night that he said he did—”

“Of course he did,” declared Eve. “I believed him all the time. I can always tell when anyone is speaking the truth. It’s part of my sensitive nature.”

Wynne Landon stalked about the hall like a man in torment. “What shall I do with Milly?” he groaned. “She and Braye will be back soon—any minute now. She mustn’t see these—”

“They ought to be placed in some other room,” said Eve, gently.

“One mustn’t touch a dead body before—” began Professor Hardwick, but Tracy interrupted him. “That’s in case of murder, Professor,” he said; “this is a different matter. Whatever caused these deaths, it wasn’t by the hand of another human being. If it was fright or nervous apprehension, those are to be classed among natural causes. I think we are wholly justified in moving the bodies.”

After some discussion, Landon and the Professor agreed with Tracy, and with the help of Thorpe and Hester, the stricken forms were carried out of the hall, where the group so often forgathered.

“It is better,” said Eve, “for we need this hall continually, and if we don’t move them at once, the doctor may forbid it, when he comes.”

By common consent, the body of Gifford Bruce was laid in the drawing room, on a large sofa, and Vernie’s slender figure was reverently placed on the bed in the Room with the Tassels.

“No spirit shape can frighten her now,” said Norma, weeping bitterly, as Thorpe and Hester carried the dead girl in. Then both doors were closed, shutting off the silent figures, and those who were left felt a vague sense of relief.

“Now we can break it to Milly more gently,” said Eve. “Clear away that broken cup, Hester, and make some fresh tea, I’m sure we all need it.”

On the great rug the damp spot remained where the spilled tea had fallen, and Eve ordered a smaller rug placed over it.

Braye and Milly came in laughing.

“We’ve bought out the whole of East Dryden!” Milly exclaimed, “and what do you think? We found some fresh lobsters, still alive and kicking— and we commandeered them at once. What’s the matter with you people? You look solemn as owls!”

“Come up to your room, Milly, to take off your wraps,” and Landon took her arm to lead her away.

“Nonsense, Wynne, I’ll throw them off down here. I’m thirsty for tea.”

“No; come on, dear. Come with me.”

Awed at his tone, Milly went with him, and they disappeared up the staircase.

Then Professor Hardwick told Braye what had happened. The others had begged the Professor to do this, and in a very few words the tale was told.

“It can’t be!” and Braye rose and walked up and down the hall. “I wish I had been here! Oh, forgive me, all of you, I know you did all you could—but—restoratives—”

“We did,” said Eve, “I ran for sal volatile and such things, but you don’t understand—it was instantaneous—wasn’t it, Mr. Tracy?”

“It was,” replied Tracy, gravely. “Mr. Bruce was speaking, naturally and normally. He paused when the clock struck—we ’most always do, you know, it’s a sort of habit.”

“We have to, really,” said Norma. “That clock strikes so loudly, one can’t go on talking.”

“And then,” began the Professor, “he was talking to me, you know, and I was looking straight at him, his face changed in an instant, his fingers spread, as if galvanized, his teacup fell from his hand, and in a moment, he was gone! Yes, dead in a second, I should say.”

“And—Vernie?” Braye spoke with difficulty. “I chanced to be looking at Vernie,” said Mr. Tracy. “The outcry concerning Mr. Bruce made us all look toward him, and then, a sudden sound from Vernie drew my attention to her. She gasped, and her face looked queer—sort of drawn and gray—so I sprang to her side, and held her up, lest she fall. She was standing, looking at Mr. Bruce, of course. I felt her sway, her head fell back, and then Miss Carnforth came to my assistance, and we laid her quickly down on the sofa. In an instant, the child was dead. It is incredible that it should have been a case of sudden fright that proved fatal, and yet, what other theory is there? It couldn’t be heart disease in a child of sixteen!”

“No,” mused Braye, “and yet, what could it have been? I won’t subscribe to any supernatural theory now! It’s too absurd!”

“It’s the only thing that isn’t absurd!” contradicted Eve. “Remember, Rudolph, Vernie had the warning—”

“Warning be hanged!” cried Braye, explosively.

“But think,” went on Eve, gently, “the phantom told Vernie she would die at four o’clock—”

“Four o’clock in the morning, Vernie said! If I had thought of four in the afternoon, I wouldn’t have gone out!”

“Nobody knows that the message said four in the morning. Vernie told me about it many times, and she only said four. You know, the phantom spoke no word, it merely designated by its fingers— one, two, three, four! Also, Vernie said it carried two glasses of poison.”

“But they weren’t poisoned!”

“No; that was merely the symbol of death. Also, Rudolph, remember the Ouija board said two would die at four. You can’t get away from these things!”

“That confounded Ouija performance was on one of the nights I was in New York! I wish I hadn’t gone! But Vernie promised me she wouldn’t sleep in that room. I was a fool to believe her. You see, Eve, I feel a sort of responsibility for the child. Uncle Gif was so easy-going and indulgent—he was no sort of a guardian for her, now she was growing up. I planned to have her put under the care of some right kind of a woman this fall, and brought up properly.”

“I know it, Rudolph; you were very fond of her.”

“Not only that, but I appreciated what she needed, and I meant to see that she got it. Oh, Eve, I can’t realize this thing.”

Doctor Wayburn came in. It was plain to be seen the man was scared. In his years of country practice he had never run up against anything tragic or thrilling before, and he was overwhelmed. With trembling step he entered the room of death, and first made examination of the body of Gifford Bruce. It did not take long. There was no apparent cause for death. No symptoms were present of any fatal disease, nor, so far as he could see, of any poison or wound of any sort.

“I cannot say what an autopsy may divulge,” declared the frightened practitioner, “but from this superficial examination, I find no cause of dissolution.”

Then he crossed the hall, to the Room with the Tassels.

Braye followed him in, Eve also. The Professor and Tracy stood in the doorway, but Norma remained in the hall, her face buried in some sofa cushions.

“No apparent cause,” the Doctor repeated. “This child was in perfect health; I should say fright might have killed her, but it doesn’t seem credible. I know of no cause of any sort, that could bring about death in an instant of time, as you report.”

“Maybe not an instant,” corrected the Professor, carefully. “As I look back, I should judge there was at least a half a minute between Mr. Bruce’s first symptom of unease, and his falling to the floor.”

“So with Vernie,” said Eve, thoughtfully. “I saw Mr. Tracy go quickly toward her; I followed immediately, and I’m sure there was nearly a half minute, but not more, before she gasped and died.”

“It’s hard to judge time on such occasions,” said the Doctor, looking sharply at Eve.

“I know it, but I was very conscious of it all, almost clairvoyantly so, and I can assure you it was not longer than a half minute in either case, between the state of usual health and death itself. Is there any cause or agent that will work as quickly as that?”

“I know of none,” replied Doctor Wayburn, positively.

“There is none,” Eve assured him. “These deaths were caused by supernatural means, they were the vengeance of certain Powers of Darkness.”

“Oh, come now, Eve,” expostulated Braye, “don’t get off that stuff to the Doctor. Keep that for our own circle. You know these fatalities couldn’t have been caused by a ghost!”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know. Fright, perhaps, or over-apprehension because of the warnings. Auto-suggestion, if you like, and so indirectly the result of the spooks, but not the direct work of a disembodied spirit.”

“It was, all the same!” and Eve left the room and went to sit by Norma.

But the girls were not in sympathy. Their conversation resulted in disagreement, and, at last, in Norma’s bursting into tears and running upstairs.

She sought Milly, and found her prostrated by Landon’s news. But she was trying to be brave, and earnestly endeavoring to preserve her self-control.

“I know every one thinks I’ll go to pieces,” she said, pathetically, “and make more trouble for you all—but I won’t. I’ve promised Wynne I’ll be brave and if I can’t keep quiet and composed, I’ll stay in my room, and not upset the crowd.”

“You’re all right, Milly,” Norma reassured her, “you let yourself go all you want to. Don’t overdo your restraint. I’ll look after you.”

“Yes, do, Norma. Don’t let Eve come near me. I cant’ stand her!”

“Why? You mustn’t be unjust to Eve. She behaved splendidly at that awful time.”

“Yes, I know. But if it hadn’t been for Eve we never would have come up here at all.”

“Oh, Milly, that isn’t fair! We all agreed to come here. It wasn’t Eve’s doing any more than mine!”

“Yes, it was. But, look here, Norma, tell me truly. What do you think killed Mr. Bruce and Vernie?”

“I don’t know, Milly, dear. You know I do believe in psychics and in spiritism and in the return to earth of the souls of people who have died, but— I can’t believe that any such spirit would kill an innocent child, or a fine old man. I can’t believe it!”

“But why not, Norma? If you believe in the return to earth of good spirits, why not bad spirits, as well? And if so, why couldn’t they kill people, if they want to?”

“You sound logical, Milly, but it’s absurd.”

“No, it isn’t. You and Eve believe in good spirits and in their power to do good. Why not, then, in bad spirits and their power to do evil?”

“Let up, Milly,” begged Landon, who stood near by. “She’s been going on like that, Norma, ever since I told her. Can’t you explain to her—”

“Explain what?”

“Lord! I don’t know! But make her see how impossible it is that the ghost of that woman who killed her husband here so long ago, should have any reason to do away with two modern present-day people!”

“But I want to think so, Wynne,” and Milly’s eyes stared with a peculiar light. “I’d rather think they were killed by that ghost than by a person— wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean, Milly? Murdered?”

“Yes, Eve. That’s what it must have been, if not spirits. They had no mortal disease, either of them.”

“Don’t mention that before anyone else,” admonished Eve, very seriously. “There are other explanations, Milly. Many deaths have been brought about by sudden fright or by continuous apprehension of imaginary danger. Vernie had been warned twice. True, I didn’t think of four in the afternoon, but doubtless she did, and maybe, seeing the sudden attack of Mr. Bruce, so startled her that she thought of the four o’clock doom and gave way herself.”

“She might give way to the extent of fainting, or a fit of hysterics,” admitted Milly, “but not to the extent of dropping dead! It’s unthinkable—it’s unbelievable—”

“It’s almost unbelievable that they should be dead,” Eve said, softly, “but as to how they died, let’s not speculate, dear. I suppose we must have a doctor up from New York—what do you think, Mr. Landon?”

“Eh?—oh, I don’t know—I’m sure I don’t know.”

“But you’ll have to take charge, won’t you?” asked Eve. “You two are really the heads of this house—”

“All I want is to get away,” moaned Milly. “When can we go, Wynne?”

“I don’t know, dear. Say, Eve, won’t you take Milly down tonight? I can’t leave, of course, but I daren’t keep her here, lest she go to pieces. You take her home—there’s a train in about an hour.”

“Oh, I can’t I want to stay here. Send Norma—no, she’s no good—perhaps Mr. Tracy will take Milly down. He’s awfully kind, and ready to do anything.”

As Milly declared herself now willing, the three went downstairs. They found the others in the hall, the Doctor still there, and the tea things still about. Eve gave Milly some tea, and took some herself.

“I’ll have to call in the coroner,” Doctor Wayburn was saying; “it isn’t apparently a murder, and yet it’s a mysterious death—they both are. Yes, the county physician must be summoned.”

The Doctor had gotten over the first panic of surprise, and began to feel a sense of importance. Such a case had never come near him before, and the whole affair gave him a pleasant feeling of responsibility and foreshadowed his prominence in the public eye.

The suggestion of a coroner was resented by all who listened, but the Doctor’s word was law in the case, so they unwillingly consented.

“I think I’d better go down to New York tonight,” said Braye. “There are so many things to see to, so many people to notify, the reporters to look after, and—undertaking arrangements to be made. Unless you want to go, Wynne?”

“No,” said Landon, “it’s better for you, Rudolph. But I wish you’d take Milly. Take her to her mother’s and let her get out of this atmosphere. Will you go, Milly?”

“I did want to, Wynne, when I was upstairs. But, now, with people all about—if Norma will stay here, too, I’d rather stay with you. When are you going down, Wynne?”

“I don’t know, dear. We’ll have to see how things turn out. Well, you go ahead, Rudolph, you’ll have to hustle to get over to the train. And there are a few matters I wish you’d look after for me.

The two men went off to discuss these matters, and then Doctor Wayburn, who had been telephoning, announced that the coroner could not come until the next day, as he was in another township attending to some duties.

“And I’m glad of it,” said Eve, “for we’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

And so, by ten or eleven o’clock, the house was locked up and the members of the household gone to bed, all except old Thorpe, who sat in the great hall, with the two doors open into the rooms where the still, tragic figures lay. Before him, on a table, Hester had placed coffee and sandwiches, and the old man sat, brooding on the awful events of the afternoon.

CHAPTER VIII

By What Means

The night was full of restlessness. Tracy and Professor Hardwick, in their adjoining rooms, were the only ones in the wing that had the night before also housed Braye and Gifford Bruce.

“Shall we leave the door between open?” Tracy asked, more out of consideration for the Professor’s nerves than his own.

“Yes, if you will. And don’t go to bed yet I can’t sleep, I know, and I must discuss this thing with somebody, or go mad!”

“All right, sir,” and Tracy took off his coat and donned an old-fashioned dressing-gown.

Hardwick smiled. “That’s the first ministerial garb I’ve seen you wear,” he said. “I’d pick that up for a dominie’s negligee every time!”

“I’m rather attached to the old dud,” and Tracy patted it affectionately. “Queer, how one comes to love a worn garment No, I don’t wear clerical togs when off on a vacation. I used to, till someone told me it cast a restraint over the others, and I hate to feel I’m doing that.”

“You’d never do that, my friend. You’ve a natural tact that ought to carry you far toward general popularity. But, tell me, as man to man, how do you size up this awful mystery?”

“I don’t know, Professor. At times my mind’s a blank—and then, I get a hint or—well, I can’t call it a suspicion—but a thought, say, in one direction, and it’s so fearfully absurd, I discard it at once. Then comes another idea, only to be dismissed like the first. What do you think?”

“I am a complete convert to the supernatural. You know, Sir Oliver Lodge and many other scientists only believed after they had had undeniable personal experience. Now, here were warnings— definite, positive prophecies, and they were fulfilled. What more can anyone ask?”

Tracy mused over this. “I know that,” he said, at last, “but I can’t quite swallow it whole, like that. Do you mean there was no physical cause? Such as fright, expectant attention—”

“Expectant attention is a fine phrase—much like auto-suggestion. They are all right as far as they go, but they can’t go to the extent of killing people. Then again, suggest even a theory, even a possible means of the death of those two by any human agency. Murder is out of the question—suicide even more so. And they had no desire to end their lives. A young girl, happily looking forward to gaiety and pleasure—a man in the prime of life, hale, rich, prosperous—no, they had no wish to die!”

“True enough; but I can’t quite see it. Why did the spirits want to kill them, if spirits did kill them?”

“For interfering with this haunted house—in a frivolous and flippant way. I’ve always heard that departed souls bitterly resent scoffing, or merely curious investigation.”

“But why choose those two? Or Vernie, anyway? Perhaps Mr. Bruce was needlessly sarcastic and skeptical.”

“So was the child—”

“Oh, but in such an innocent, harmless way! However, Professor, I’ve nothing to offer in place of your argument. My creed does not admit of my subscribing to your theory, but I confess I’m unable to suggest any other. As you say, it couldn’t have been suicide, and there’s no possibility of foul play.”

The two men talked on, or sat in silent thought, far into the night. The clock struck twelve before they at last retired, leaving open their communication door, and securely locking their hall doors.

Less than an hour later, a slender white-robed figure tiptoed from one of the bedrooms and looked over the banisters. Peering down through the darkness, the dim outline of old Thorpe’s form was visible. He was huddled in his chair, his head fallen forward on the table. Softly returning to her room for a wrap, Eve again stealthily came to the staircase, and sat down on the uppermost step.

Later still, another door silently opened, and a pair of surprised blue eyes saw Eve sitting there.

Suppressing a startled exclamation, Norma scurried back to her room, but Eve did not hear her.

Milly was wakeful and restless. Several times she declared she heard sounds, but when Wynne wanted to go and investigate, she refused to let him do so.

The house surely seemed haunted. The aspens brushed against the windows with their eternal soughing, their leaves whispering—hissing creepy secrets, and their branches tapping eerily on the panes. The halls were full of shadows, vague, indistinct, fading to nothingness.

At four o’clock the great clock tolled the hour, and every one in the house heard it. No one was asleep, every heart was beating fast, every eye wide open, every nerve tense.

But nothing happened; no shriek rent the silence, no unusual or terrifying sound was heard.

Relieved, some went to sleep again, some tossed restlessly on their pillows until rising time.

At breakfast all looked haggard and worn. The day was cool and pleasant, the dining room bright with sunshine, and old Hester’s viands most appetizing.

Thorpe had closed the doors of the rooms given over to the presence of death, and as the various members of the party came down the staircase quick apprehensive glances were followed by a look of relief.

Elijah Stebbins came while breakfast was in progress, and at Milly’s invitation took a seat at the board.

“Well,” he said heavily, “you folks wanted spooks, I hope you’re satisfied.”

“Don’t use that tone, Mr. Stebbins,” Landon reproved him. “A dreadful thing has happened. I cannot think it is by supernatural causes nor can I see any other explanation. But that is no reason for you to speak flippantly of our investigations of your so-called haunted house.”

“No offence meant,” and Stebbins cringed. “But I’m thinkin’ you folks had better go away from here, or there’s no tellin’ what might happen.”

“Do you know anything about the mystery?” Professor Hardwick shot out the question so suddenly that Stebbins jumped.

“No, sir, of course I don’t, sir! How could I?”

“Then why do you warn us off the premises?”

“I don’t exactly do that, but I’d think you’d reason for yourselves that what happens once can happen ag’in.”

The dogged look on the man’s face seemed portentous of evil, and Milly began to cry.

“Oh, take me home, Wynne,” she begged; “I don’t want to stay here!”

“Come with me, Milly,” said Eve, and rising, she led Milly from the room.

It was shortly after that the coroner arrived.

“I don’t want to see that man,” said Stebbins, “him and me ain’t good friends,” and rising quickly, the owner of the house fled toward the kitchen quarters, and spent the rest of the morning with the Thorpes out there.

Doctor Crawford, the county physician and coroner, was a man of slow speech and dignified manner. He was appalled by the circumstances in which he found himself, and a little frightened at the hints he had heard of ghostly visitations.

Indeed, that had been the real reason for his delay in arriving—he had not been willing to brave the darkness of the night before. This was his secret, however, and his excuse of conflicting duties had been accepted.

The whole party gathered in the hall to hear what the newcomer had to say.

Eve and Milly returned, the latter, quivering and tearful, going straight to her husband’s side, and sitting close to him.

Norma was pale and trembling, too, and Tracy’s watchful eye regarded her sympathetically, as he led her to a seat.

Eve, self-reliant and calm, flitted about incessantly. She went to the kitchen and talked over household matters with Hester, for Milly was unable to do this. Then, returning, Eve went into the drawing room, and after a few moments returned, closing the door again after her. Then she stepped into the Room with the Tassels. She was there longer, but at last came out, and locking the door behind her, retained the key. No one noticed this but Norma, and she kept her own counsel, but she also kept a watchful eye on Eve.

Even before he went to look at the bodies of the two victims of the tragedy, Doctor Crawford asked some questions.

His slowness was maddening to the alert minds of his listeners, but he methodically arrived at the facts of the case.

“I am told by my colleague, Doctor Wayburn,” he said, “that there is no mark or sign on the remains to indicate the cause of death. There will, of course, be need of autopsies, but for that I will await Doctor Wayburn’s return. He will be here shortly. Meantime, I will inquire concerning this strange information I have received, hinting at a belief in—ahem—in spiritualism, by some of the people here present. Is such belief held, may I ask?”

“Perhaps belief is too strong a word,” the Professor volunteered, as no one else spoke, “but I may tell you that we came here to this house for the purpose of investigating the truth of the story that the house is haunted.”

“And have you made such investigations?”

“We have tried to do so. The results have been mysterious, startling and now—tragic—but I cannot say we have proved anything, except that supernatural influences have most assuredly been at work.”

“I am not willing to accept such an explanation of two sudden deaths,” Crawford said, in his dignified way, “at any rate, not without a most exhaustive investigation into the possibility of their having been brought about by natural agencies. Let me take up first the case of Mr. Bruce. Was this gentleman in robust health?”

“Entirely so,” said Landon, “so far as we know. It is not inconceivable that he had some heart trouble or other malady that was not noticeable, but of that I cannot say positively. It seems to me, Doctor, you would better look at him, you might note some symptom that would enlighten you.” Crawford shuddered perceptibly, but tried to hide his disinclination. Though accustomed to gruesome sights, his dread of the supernatural was such that he feared the proposed examination. However, ashamed of his hesitation, he rose, and asked to be shown the body of Gifford Bruce.

Landon started to officiate, but Milly’s detaining hand held him back; the Professor made no move, but Eve and Tracy started simultaneously to rise.

“I’ll go,” said Eve, a little officiously, and Tracy sat down again.

She led the way to the big drawing room, where the remains of Gifford Bruce lay, and stood by while Doctor Crawford looked down at the still, white face.

A long time they stood there, no word being spoken. Then Eve said softly, “Don’t let your disbelief in supernatural powers blind you to their possible reality. There are many matters yet unknown and spiritism is one of them. Remember that we who are here gathered are sensitives and psychics. We are prepared for and expect experiences not vouchsafed to less clairvoyant natures— though we did not look for this! But I beg of you, sir, to realize that there are things of which you have no cognizance, that yet are real and effective.”

Doctor Crawford looked at the speaker. In the partially darkened room, Eve’s strange eyes glittered with an uncanny light. Her face was pale, and her red hair like a flame aureole. She took a slow step nearer to the doctor, and he recoiled, as from a vampire.

“You are afraid!” she said, and her tone was exultant. “Do not be afraid—the phantasms will not hurt you if you do your duty. Unless you do your duty—” she stretched her hand toward him, and again he drew away, “the phantasms will haunt you—haunt you—haunt you!”

Her voice fell to the merest whisper, but it thrilled through the room like a clarion note to the shocked ears of the listening man.

Against his will her eyes held his; against his will, without his volition, he whispered, “What is my duty?”

“To declare—to declare in accordance with your own conviction, in proof of your own belief—that these two deaths were the direct result of a supernatural power. What power, you know not, but you do know—remember, you do know, that no mortal hand brought the tragedy about, either the hands of the victims themselves or of anyone else.” Fascinated, frightened, Crawford stared at this strange woman. He had never before encountered such a face, such a sinuous, serpentine form, a personality that seemed to sway his very being, that seemed to dominate and control his whole will power, his whole brain power.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Eve went on, “don’t think for a moment, I am advising you wrongly, or with intent to deceive. Only, I see you know nothing of occult phenomena, and moreover, you are even ignorant of your own ignorance of them. Therefore, seeing, too, your quick appreciation and perceptive faculty, I warn you not to ignore or forget the fact that these things exist, that unseen powers hold sway over us all, and they must be reckoned with.”

The flattery was subtle. More than the words, Eve’s glance implied a keen apprehension on the part of the doctor, which, as he didn’t possess it, seemed a desirable thing to him, and he gladly assumed that he had it.

“And now,” Eve said, as they left the room, “do you want to go to the other room—the Room with the Tassels?”

“No—please, not now,” and Crawford shuddered, for he had heard much of that room. Also, he was desirous of getting back to more normal associates than this strange being, and he resolved to leave the examination of the other victim until the return of his fellow physician, who at least was practical, and an unbeliever in spooks.

Shaken by the whole episode, Doctor Crawford concealed his disquiet by a manner even more slow and deliberate than usual. He said no word of Gifford Bruce, but announced his desire to ask a few general questions concerning practical matters.

“Where is your home, Mr. Landon?” he inquired, and then asked the same question of each.

He learned that they were all residents of New York City, except Mr. Tracy, who had lived in Philadelphia, but was contemplating a move to New York.

“I have had a call to a pastorate there,” Tracy stated, “and it seems advisable to me to accept it.”

“Mr. Bruce lived in Chicago, did he not?” went on Crawford, “and Miss Reid, also?”

“Yes,” said Landon, “but Miss Reid had been at school in Connecticut for the last three years. She was graduated in June, and her uncle and guardian, Mr. Bruce, came East for the occasion. They concluded to spend the summer with us, intending to return to Chicago next month.”

“Mr. Bruce was a wealthy man?” inquired the questioner.

“Yes;” answered Landon, “not a financial magnate, but worth at least two million dollars.”

“And who are his heirs?”

The question fell like a bombshell. It had not been thought of, or at least not spoken of, by any of the party. The bareness of it, the implication of it, gave a shock, as of a sudden accusation.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Wynne Landon said, slowly.

“But you know?” queried Crawford.

“Of course I know. Unless Gifford Bruce left a contradictory will, his estate must revert to Rudolph Braye, the son of Mr. Bruce’s half-brother—”

“Why, Wynne,” interrupted Milly, “you’re a cousin.”

“I am,” and Landon flushed unaccountably, “but I’m a second cousin. Braye would inherit, unless a will made other proviso.”

“Where is Mr. Braye?”

“He went to New York last evening and has not yet returned.”

“You expect him soon?”

“This afternoon, probably. Of course, he has realized that he is the heir of a great fortune, but naturally he would not discuss it last evening, when we were all so alarmed and excited over the awfulness of the situation.”

“Was Mr. Braye present at the time of the—tragedy?”

“No,” Landon stopped to think. “He wasn’t. Where was he?”

“He was with me,” said Milly. “We went in his car to East Dryden. We went to the markets and did some other shopping at the stores.”

“And when you returned it was—all over?” Crawford looked gravely at her.

“Yes,” said Milly, “we were both away, and oh, I’m so glad! I couldn’t have stood it!”

She broke down and sobbed in her husband’s arms but Crawford went on asking questions.

“The autopsy will show,” he said, “but I will ask if any of you can show cause to suspect that a poison of any sort could have been administered to the victims of this disaster.”

“Not possibly,” said Professor Hardwick. “We were at tea, and had all been served from the same teapot and from the same plates of cakes. I can affirm this, for I’ve thought over every moment of the occasion. Mr. Bruce had taken part of his tea, and had eaten part of his cake—”

“Are you sure of this?” the coroner interrupted.

“I am sure that he sat next to me, that he was talking to me, and that he received his tea at the same time I did. We sat stirring our cups, and nibbling our cake as we discussed a matter in which we were both interested. Less than a half minute before that man died, he was as well as he had ever The scene is perfectly before my eyes. He held his cup and saucer in one hand, his spoon in the other—when I saw his eyes open queerly, his face change to a clayey gray, and his fingers relaxed, letting his cup fall to the floor. I set down my cup quickly and sprang toward him, but in an instant it was all over.”

A hush fell on the group as all remembered the details, so exactly as the Professor had related them.

“And the young lady,” said Crawford, at last, rousing himself from thought, “did she too drink tea?”

“No,” said Eve Carnforth, musingly. “I remember I was just fixing Vernie’s tea. She liked it sweet, and I was adding a lump of sugar when the commotion began.”

“I noticed Miss Reid first, I think,” offered Tracy; “at least, I happened to look toward her when Mr. Bruce fell forward in his chair. She made a slight sound, as of horror, and when I glanced her way, she looked so stunned I thought she was going to collapse, so I stepped across toward her. As I did so, she looked suddenly very strange, and I feared she was ill—aside from her shock at sight of Mr. Bruce. I grasped her by the shoulders just as she was about to fall. She cried out as if in pain, and then Miss Carnforth came to my assistance, and we laid the child on that sofa. In an instant, she, too, was gone.”

“She had taken no tea?”

“No,” said Eve, positively. “Nor any cakes. As a rule, the elders were served first and Vernie last. So there is no chance of there having been poison in the tea or cakes—nor could it be possible, anyway, as we all ate them—didn’t we?”

Every one present affirmed that they had partaken of the tea and the cakes, and declared they were both harmless and just such as they had had served every afternoon since their arrival.

“That settles that point, at any rate,” and the coroner nodded his head. “There can be no question of poison after what you’ve told me. Unless, either or both of them took poison themselves or gave it to the other intentionally.”