On these occasions doors to the wardrobes and closets of the strange room would open suddenly as if sprung from their fastenings by unseen hands, while panels would slide back and forth, cracks in the ceilings and walls would open alarmingly, until, in fact, to the woman's vivid imaginations every portion of the lonely old chamber or its weird furnishings seemed possessed of supernatural life or motion. The fact is, Mrs. Winslow was trembling like the house itself; but after a few moments she snuffed the waning candle which the frugal Mrs. Deck had given her, and in its flickering rays hastily began preparing for bed.
Just as she bent over to blow out the candle, some invisible assistant did the work for her, and at the same moment a hissed "Beware!" caused her to start with a scream and plunge for the bed, into which she scrambled after upsetting a chair or two, when she pulled the covering over her head and groaned with fright.
And now the blessed materializations began.
A sudden click and then a sliding sound above her head announced that the "control" had begun operations, and in a moment a few grains of plastering and some strange and weird combinations of musical sounds seemed to simultaneously fall into the room. The plaster, of course, came right down, some of it upon exposed parts of the trembling medium's person; but the music, which seemed to be badly out of harmony, appeared to have the power of circling in the air, which it did for some little time, and as suddenly ceased as it had begun, when from these mysterious upper regions came a long, low, tremulous, unearthly groan, that died away into a ghastly sigh as the storm clutched the decayed old mansion and shook it until it rattled and rattled again.
"My God!" quavered the half-smothered woman, "that's Mrs. Deck's first man's ghost; he'll kill me! Mur——!"
She had begun to shout "Murder!" but a still more awful voice proceeding from the direction of the bureau bade her keep silence.
She was silent for a moment, but the storm wailed about the house so dismally that the "poor dear," who, according to Mrs. Deck, was brave enough to cheerily retire in what had been the bed-chamber of the dead, could bear the horror of her position no longer, and began a vocal lamentation which gave promise of attracting more than a spirit audience, when the materialized spirit of "Mrs. Deck's first man," or whatever owned the voice, laid a heavy hand upon the trembling woman, sepulchrally warned her to desist from her outcries, and then read her such a lecture from the Other World as she had never transmitted in her most effective "seances;" after which she was ordered, on pain of instant death, to leave Mrs. Deck's and Terre Haute as soon as morning should come, and a pledge being secured from her to the effect that she would, and that she would under no circumstances leave the room for the night, the spirit—which had very much the appearance of Detective Pinkham, the commercial traveller from Cincinnati—left the room by the door in a twinkling, very like a mortal, and still very like a mortal, quietly stole upstairs and helped extricate Miss Ruggles from her gloomy position, where she had done "utility" business as a groaning garret ghost.
All that dreary night the wicked woman moaned and wept for day. Her coward heart shrank from the evil she knew she deserved. The storm never ceased, but rose and fell as if keeping pace with her terrors, and the old place furnished her crazed imagination untold horrors.
At last the dawn came, but she had found no moment's sleep, and before the household was astir the wretched woman crept out upon the street, and plodding through the swollen drifts, followed by a very pleasant appearing commercial traveller from Chicago, she staggered to the station, and was rapidly borne away from her sympathizing friends towards the east.
Being apprised by telegraph of Pinkham's rather strange method of giving her an impulse in the direction of Rochester, I at once proceeded to that city with Superintendent Bangs, anticipating her arrival there shortly after our own; but was again disappointed, the adventuress having doubled on the detective, and so successfully avoided him, that the third day after leaving the Hoosier City he arrived in Rochester with a long face and in an extremely befogged condition.