a hummer, you are! I s’pose you’re clairvoyant, yourself! Well, let me advise you to keep your trap shut about Miss—that lady you referred to. This is my house, and those are my tenants, and I won’t stand any talk from you about ’em.”
“That’s right, Thorpe,” admonished his wife. “Mr. Stebbins, he’s right. An’ he’s right about the ghosts, too. Why, I happen to know that the spooks warned that little Reid girl she’d die at four o’clock, and die she did, jest at four! Can you beat it? Spooks? Why, of course it was spooks! What else?”
“Yes, and the message was that two of ’em ’d die, and two of ’em did,” added Stebbins. “How could any mortal human bein’ bring that about? I ask you?”
“Land! I don’t know! I told you I didn’t. But,” and Thorpe wagged his head positively, “it wasn’t spooks.”
The same questions were being discussed in the hall by the ones more intimately interested.
Doctor Wayburn had arrived, and he and Crawford were shut in the drawing room endeavouring to wrest from the unknown, the secret of Gifford Bruce’s death.
The little group, still gathered in the hall, were talking earnestly of the immediate future.
“It’s so pathetic,” Norma was saying, “that there are so few to mourn for poor little Vernie. That child had actually no relatives but her uncle and Mr. Braye.”
“Wynne is a sort of a cousin, too,” put in Milly, “and indeed, Norma, I feel as sorry as if Vernie had been my own sister.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that,—of course, we all feel that way. But, she was so alone in the world. Mr. Braye is terribly broken up. He loved her——”
“Not only loved her,” said Eve, “but he was ambitious for her. He wanted her put in care of a capable woman this fall, and brought up properly. Mr. Bruce was no sort of a guardian for the child—I mean he was all right, of course, as a legal guardian, but he was no man to have charge of her social and home life.”
“He knew that,” said Landon, “he told me he meant to have Vernie properly chaperoned and all that, this winter. She was a dear kiddie.”
“Oh, she was,” and Norma wept afresh.
“I am a complete convert to spiritualism, now,” said the Professor, gravely. “I’ve thought over these things very deeply, I’ve considered every possible aspect of the case, and there is no explanation of those two mysterious deaths, except supernormal forces. It is no use to shirk the supposition of murder, indeed we must consider it very carefully, but it is out of the question. Nobody could have compassed those two deaths in an instant of time, however secret or subtle the methods. Do you all agree?”
“Of course,” said Eve, positively, and Tracy added, “That is undeniable, Professor, foul play was impossible. But, moreover, there was no one here present but our own party. I can’t let the implication pass that it could have been in the heart of any one of us——”
“Nonsense!” interrupted Hardwick, “that’s absurd, Mr. Tracy. When I speak of murder, it is in the abstract, and because it is right that we should consider the matter from every angle. We must even think of suicide, and of——”
“Suicide is as absurd as murder,” said Landon, indignantly. “But what other atrocity had you in mind?”
“Don’t lose your temper, please,” the Professor said, mildly. “I am obliged to preserve an impersonal attitude, or I can’t think at all! The other thought is, that one of the victims killed himself and the other one.”
“Please, Professor,” said Eve, “at least confine yourself to rational common sense. But since you raise this absurd theory, let’s settle it once and for all. Could Mr. Bruce have willingly killed himself and Vernie?” she asked of them all.
“No!” replied Landon. “Mr. Bruce was fond of life and he adored that child! Cut that out!”
“Then,” pursued Eve, “could Vernie have killed herself and her uncle?”
“Rubbish!” cried Landon, “don’t say such things, Eve. Professor, are you answered?”
“And remember,” put in Tracy, “the two were the width of this hall apart. What means could have been employed?”
“What means were employed, anyway?” said Norma. “Oh, what did kill those people?”
“The utter absence of any material means proves the fact that it was supernatural,” declared the Professor. “I only mentioned those other theories to prove their absurdity. Now, as I say, I am a convert to spiritualism in all its form and phases. How can one help being after this? And I, for one, desire to stay here for a time and I feel sure that the departed spirits of our friends will communicate with us.”
Milly shuddered at the idea, but Eve’s wonderful eyes glowed with a sudden anticipation.
“Oh, Professor Hardwick!” she exclaimed, “how splendid! Will you really stay here a while? Will you, Milly? I can’t stay unless you and Wynne do. Will you stay, Norma? and you, Mr. Tracy?”
“Oh, I can’t!” Milly moaned. “I needn’t, need I, Wynne?”
“No; darling, not if you don’t want to. I can’t see, Eve, why you wish to stay here. It gives me the horrors to think of it. And if you really expect spiritual communications from Vernie or Mr. Bruce, you can receive them just as well anywhere else.”
“Not just as well,” demurred the Professor. “The conditions here are ideal for investigations. We haven’t taken it up seriously, you know.”
“But, Miss Carnforth, can’t you ask some other friends to come, if the Landons prefer to return to New York? I don’t doubt you know the right ones, who could chaperon you, and also take an interest in our work.”
“Yes,” began Eve, thoughtfully, and then Stebbins came into the room.
“The doctors through yet?” he asked; “what they found out?”
“No, they’re not through yet,” answered Landon. “Sit down, Stebbins, and talk a little bit. I wish you’d tell us of anything you know of your own experience, not hearsay, mind you, that has happened in this house, that can truly be called supernatural.”
“Well, that ha’nted room,——”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Landon, “don’t tell us anything about that haunted room that you don’t know, personally, to be a fact.”
“I know it’s ha’nted,” asserted Stebbins, doggedly. “I’ve slept there and I’ve seen ghosts spookin’ around in it.”
“Do you think there are really such things as ghosts?”
“I know it.”
“And do you think they could be responsible for the death of Mr. Bruce and Miss Reid?”
“I know it. That Thorpe he says it’s murder, but he can’t guess how it could be. That fool of a Crawford, he don’t know nothing, of any sort. Wayburn, now, he’s a fair doctor, but, good land! what can they learn from a post-mortem? Those people was warned, and them warnin’s was carried out. What more is there to learn?”
“Well and clearly put, Mr. Stebbins,” commented the Professor. “No elaboration of phrases could state that more succinctly. They were warned,—the warnings were carried out. That is the whole truth.”
“But granting that,” said Norma, “and I’m willing to grant it, why did the spirits want to kill Vernie? A lovely, innocent child couldn’t have incurred the wrath of the spirits to that extent.”
“They ain’t no tellin’, ma’am, what them ha’nts will do.” Stebbins spoke