“What do you mean by phenomena?” interrupted the Professor. “Not one person in ten uses that word correctly.”
“I’m that single and unique one, old top,” Wise assured him, “for my exact meaning, see Webster; but I was going to say, even granting the possibility of the two deaths being due to supernatural causes, I’m not going to accept that solution of the mystery until I’ve exhausted all other available means of finding a flesh and blood murderer, which same I strongly expect to find.”
“He’ll do it,” said Zizi, addressing the others, while her black eyes looked at Wise as at an inanimate object. “He’s an effective detective, first, last and all the time. And I’m the little cog that makes the wheels go round. So, I think, Tecky-teck, that I’ll carry out a plan I’ve just thought of. I’ll move from the pretty little bedroom I now occupy, and sleep in the Room with the Tassels.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Norma. “Something might happen to you!”
“That’s what I’m flattering myself. And it’s nice of you, Miss Cameron, to speak out like that.” Zizi’s eyes flashed a quizzical glance at Eve, who was nodding satisfaction at the proposed plan.
Eve coloured and dropped her eyes, and Zizi went on. “You see, people, Mr. Wise can’t size up these ghosts of yours unless he sees them,—and for me to see them is the same thing. So I’m going to take the haunted room for my own and if the Shawled Woman appears, I’ll pin a tag on her shawl.”
Norma shuddered. “Don’t talk like that,” she begged. “You don’t know what risk you run. Milly, don’t let the child sleep there.”
But all objections were overruled, and Zizi quietly transferred her few simple belongings to the Room with the Tassels.
At breakfast, the morning after her first night in the haunted room, she declared she had never slept better or more soundly, that there had been no disturbance of any kind, and that she adored the room.
“You saw and heard nothing?” queried Eve, looking at her intently.