What he did confess to was the placing of the old, battered candlestick in Miss Reid’s room the first night the party arrived.
“I done it, sort of on impulse,” he said; “I heard ’em talking about ghosts, and just to amaze them, I sneaked in in the night and took that candlestick offen Mr. Bruce’s dresser and set it on the young lady’s. I didn’t mean any harm, only to stir things up.”
“Which you did,” remarked Peterson drily. “Go on.”
The confession was being recorded in the presence of police officials, and Stebbins was practically under arrest, or would be very shortly after his tale was told.
“Well, then, the first night Mr. Bruce slept in that room, that ha’nted room, I thought I’d wrap a sheet round me and give him a little scare,—he was so scornful o’ ghosts, you know. An’ I did, but nobody would believe his yarn. So that’s all I did. If any more of them ghost performances was cut up by live people, they wasn’t me. Somebody else did it.”
And no amount of further coercion could budge Stebbins from these statements. He stuck to it, that though he had tricked his tenants, he had done nothing to harm them, and his intentions were of the best, as he merely wanted to give them what they had taken his house for.
“You intended to keep it up?” asked Peterson.
“Yes, I did, but after they took things into their own hands, and played spooks themselves, what was the use?”
“How did you get into the house at night, when it was so securely locked?” asked Peterson.
“I managed it, but I won’t tell you how,” said Stebbins, doggedly.