Chapter XV
What Miss Frayne Found Out
We had planned to go to the haunted house at nine o’clock the next morning, but owing to my dissipation of the night before, it was long after the appointed hour when Silvia awoke me.
I hurried down stairs and ate my breakfast in solitude. I inquired for Beth and Rob, but the waitress told me they had left the dining-room at seven o’clock and gone for a walk in the woods. She said it with 205 a knowing smile that told me she, too, must be a “sister of the Golden Circle.”
“And Miss Frayne?” I asked.
“She went down the road over an hour ago.”
Evidently her courage had come up with the sun. I was greatly disturbed at the chance of her stumbling over one or more Polydores, and Rob didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag until her article was written, as he believed that if the ghostly spell were broken, she would lose her “punch.”
I was unable to think of any plausible explanation to offer Silvia as to why I should start in pursuit, and I wished all sorts of dire calamities on Rob’s blond head. Lovers were surely blind and selfish.
About ten o’clock they came strolling in.
“We didn’t know it was so late,” said 206 Beth cheerfully, “but the boys will keep in the woods all right.”