There was no one in the hall, and further search showed no one in the drawing room. Nor could anything unusual be found in the house.
Most of the people were in their rooms. Eve was partly ill with a headache, and Milly was looking after her.
The men appeared as Braye and Norma called out, and soon all had gathered to hear the strange new story.
“I shouldn’t believe it, if you hadn’t both seen it,” said the Professor, “but I can’t think you were both under the spell of imagination.”
“I want to go home,” Milly said, plaintively, “I don’t want to see the thing, and I’m afraid I’ll be the next one it will visit.”
“We will go, dear,” said Landon. “As soon as we can make arrangements we’ll get off. Don’t you say so, Eve?”
“Yes,” she assented, but slowly. “I would prefer to stay a bit longer, myself, but I really don’t think Milly ought to. However, I’ll do as the majority wish.”
But the matter of going away from Black Aspens was not entirely at their own disposal. The detective, Dan Peterson, had been exceedingly busy, and had wrung a confession out of Elijah Stebbins. It had been a mild sort of third degree, but it had resulted in a frank avowal of Stebbins’ implication in some, at least, of the mysterious happenings that had puzzled the people at Black Aspens.
Stebbins defended himself by the statement that he only rented his house on the understanding that it was haunted. He said, it was reputed haunted, but he knew that unless something mysterious occurred, the tenants would feel dissatisfied.
He said, too, that he saw no harm in doing a few little tricks to mystify and interest the investigators, but he swore that he had no hand in the spectral appearances nor in the awful tragedy of the four o’clock tea.