“We’ve got some work ahead,” he said when we were out of Silvia’s hearing.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Miss Frayne is up––and doing. What do you suppose her paper sent her here for?”
“For a rest, or to write up the mosquitoes of H. H.”
“H. H. is all right, only it happens they stand for Haunted House.”
“Not really?”
“Yes, really. The rumors of the house and the ghost, greatly elaborated, of course, reached the Sunday editor of the paper Miss Frayne is on, and he sent her up here to revive the story of the murder, translate the ghost, and get snapshots of the house. She was quite keen to have me take her there at once, so she could commence her article, but I headed her off, so she wouldn’t discover the summer boarders at the hotel annex. I assured her that daytime was not the time to gather material and the only way she could get a proper focus on the ghost and acquire the thrills necessary for an inspiration was to see the place first by night.”
“If she would view Fair Melrose aright,” I quoted, “she must visit it in the pale moonlight, but you were very clever to delay her visit long enough for us to get over there and warn the enemy. If she had gone down there and caught the Polydores unawares, she would have come back here and revealed our secret, and there would be the end of Silvia’s vacation.”