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