“Warning be hanged!” cried Braye, explosively.
“But think,” went on Eve, gently, “the phantom told Vernie she would die at four o’clock——”
“Four o’clock in the morning, Vernie said! If I had thought of four in the afternoon, I wouldn’t have gone out!”
“Nobody knows that the message said four in the morning. Vernie told me about it many times, and she only said four. You know, the phantom spoke no word, it merely designated by its fingers,—one, two, three, four! Also, Vernie said it carried two glasses of poison.”
“But they weren’t poisoned!”
“No; that was merely the symbol of death. Also, Rudolph, remember the Ouija board said two would die at four. You can’t get away from these things!”
“That confounded Ouija performance was on one of the nights I was in New York! I wish I hadn’t gone! But Vernie promised me she wouldn’t sleep in that room. I was a fool to believe her. You see, Eve, I feel a sort of responsibility for the child. Uncle Gif was so easy-going and indulgent,—he was no sort of a guardian for her, now she was growing up. I planned to have her put under the care of some right kind of a woman this fall, and brought up properly.”
“I know it, Rudolph; you were very fond of her.”
“Not only that, but I appreciated what she needed, and I meant to see that she got it. Oh, Eve, I can’t realize this thing.”
Doctor Wayburn came in. It was plain to be seen the man was scared. In his years of country practice he had never run up against anything tragic or thrilling before, and he was overwhelmed. With trembling step he entered the room of death, and first made examination of the body of Gifford Bruce. It did not take long. There was no apparent cause for death. No symptoms were present of any fatal disease, nor, so far as he could see, of any poison or wound of any sort.