are strongly guarded. I have never seen a house more carefully looked after in the matter of barricades.”
The girl spoke slowly, as if on the witness stand. Then suddenly her black eyes twinkled, and she turned sharply toward Eve, saying, “Oh, do you do that, too?”
“Do what?” cried Eve, angrily. “What do you mean?”
“Scribble notes, and pass ’em to somebody. I do, too. It’s a habit I can’t seem to break myself of.”
“I didn’t!” and Eve’s face flushed and her eyes glittered with a smouldering fire.
“Oh, tra la la,” trilled Zizi, and nonchalantly turned away.
“Now for the Room with the Tassels,” said Wise, and led the way to the fateful room.
“Ghastly, ghostly and grisly!” he declared after a quick survey, “but no entrance except by door or windows.”
“And they were locked every time the room was slept in by any of our party,” announced the Professor, positively.
“That makes it easier,” smiled Wise. “You see, I feared secret panels and that sort of thing,—not uncommon in old houses. But you’ve found none?”
“None,” asseverated Landon. “If your theory of a human ‘ghost’ is right, you’ve got to account for the forcing of the big bolts of those front doors or——”
“Or suspect some of your household,” concluded Wise, practically. “Well, I haven’t suspected any one as yet; I’m just absorbing facts, on which to base my theories. Now, for the drawing room.”
The long sombre, old-fashioned room received scant examination.
“Nothing doing, Zizi?” said Wise, briefly.
“Only a Bad Taste Exhibition,” the girl remarked, making a wry face at the ornate decorations and appointments. Then, with her peculiar, gliding motion, she slid across the hall again, and examined the knob and lock on the door of the Room with the Tassels.
“Fascinating room,” she said, with a glance round it. “But horrible,” and her thin shoulders shrugged. “Those tassels are enough to make a hen cross the road!”
Milly giggled, and for the first time since the day of the tragedies.
Dinner was rather pleasant than otherwise. The detective, laying aside all thought or talk of his purpose there, was entertaining and even merry. He spoke somewhat of himself, and it transpired that he was an artist,—an illustrator of current magazine stories.
“And Zizi is my model,” he informed them, “that is, when I want a thin, scarecrow type. I don’t use her for the average peach heroine. Look out Ziz, don’t eat too much of that potato puff! You see, if she puts on a bit of flesh, she runs straight back to the movie studios.”
“Ah, a film star?” said Braye.
“Not a star,” and Wise shook his head. “But a good little actress for a brat part.”
Zizi flashed an amused smile from her black eyes and partook again of the forbidden potato puff.
“Zizi! For the love of Mike!” expostulated Wise.
“The love of Mike is the root of all evil,” said Zizi, saucily; “but then, everything is.”
“Is what?” asked Eve, interested against her will in this strange child.
“Is the root of all evil,” was the calm reply.
“Whew! this must be an evil old world!” exclaimed Braye.
“And isn’t it?” Zizi flashed back, her big eyes sparkling like liquid jet.
“Are you a pessimist, little one?” asked the Professor, studying the clever, eerie face.
“Nay, nay, Pauline,” and the small, pointed chin was raised a bit. “Not so, but far otherwise.”
“Then why do you think the world is evil?”
“Ah, sir, when one spends one’s life between a Moving Picture Studio and a popular artist’s studio, one learns much that one had better left unlearnt.”
The child face suddenly looked ages old, and then, as suddenly broke into a gay smile: “Don’t ask me these things,” she said, “ask Penny Wise. I’m only his Pound Foolish.”
“You’ll put on another foolish pound if you eat any more of that dessert,” growled Wise, scowling at her.
“All right, I won’t,” and the slender little fingers laid down the teaspoon Zizi was using. Then, in an audible aside, she added, “Hester will give me more, later,” and chuckled like a naughty child.
The next morning Pennington Wise set about his work in earnest. “I’m going to East Dryden,” he announced. “I want to interview the doctors, also Mr. Stebbins. I don’t mind saying frankly, this is the deepest mystery I have ever encountered. If any of you here can help me, I beg you will do so, for the case looks well-nigh hopeless. Ah, there, Zizi.”
The girl appeared, ready to go with Wise in the motor car. She wore a small black hat with an oriole’s wing in it, and a full-draped black cape, whose flutterings disclosed an orange-coloured lining. Inconspicuous, save when the cape’s lining showed, Zizi looked distinguished and smartly costumed. A small black veil, delicately adjusted, clouded her sharp little features, and she sprang into the car without help, and nestled into a corner of the tonneau.
Only a chauffeur accompanied them, and he could not hear the conversation carried on in low tones.
“What about it, Ziz?” murmured Wise, as they passed the aspen grove and the black lake.
“Awful doings,” she returned, merely breathing the words. “The Eve girl has a secret, too.”
“Too?”
“Yes, she isn’t the criminal, you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you will know. She’s a queer mechanism, but she never killed anybody.”
“Sure, Zizi?”
“Sure, oh, Wise Guy. Now, who did do it?”
“Well, who did?”
“We don’t know yet, and we mustn’t theorize without data, you know.”
“Rats! I always theorize without data. And I’ve never failed to corral the data.”
“You’re a deuce of a deducer, you are!”
“And you’re a She Sherlock, I suppose! Well, oh, Mine of Wisdom, go ahead. Spill it to me.”
“Can’t now. I’ve lost my place! But, after a few more interviews with some few more interested parties, I may, perhaps, possibly, maybe,—oh, Penny, look back at the house from here! Did you ever see such a weird, wild spook-pit!”
Black Aspens did indeed look repellent. No one was in sight, and the grove of black, waving trees, mirrored in the deep black shadows of the lake gave it all a doomed effect that the dull, leaden sky intensified.
The grim old house seemed the right abode for evil spirits or uneasy wraiths, and Zizi, fascinated by the still scene continued to gaze backward until a turn of the road hid it from view.
Then she became silent, and would vouchsafe no answer to Wise’s questions or make any remarks of her own.
During the interview between the detective and Elijah Stebbins, she said almost nothing, her big eyes staring at the owner of Black Aspens, until the old man writhed in discomfort.
“How did you get in?” she shot at him, as he frankly admitted his harmless tricks to give his tenants their desired