“Wait a minute,” interrupted Landon, “don’t tell us anything about that haunted room that you don’t know, personally, to be a fact.”
“I know it’s ha’nted,” asserted Stebbins, doggedly. “I’ve slept there and I’ve seen ghosts spookin’ around in it.”
“Do you think there are really such things as ghosts?”
“I know it.”
“And do you think they could be responsible for the death of Mr. Bruce and Miss Reid?”
“I know it. That Thorpe he says it’s murder, but he can’t guess how it could be. That fool of a Crawford, he don’t know nothing, of any sort. Wayburn, now, he’s a fair doctor, but, good land! what can they learn from a post-mortem? Those people was warned, and them warnin’s was carried out. What more is there to learn?”
“Well and clearly put, Mr. Stebbins,” commented the Professor. “No elaboration of phrases could state that more succinctly. They were warned,—the warnings were carried out. That is the whole truth.”
“But granting that,” said Norma, “and I’m willing to grant it, why did the spirits want to kill Vernie? A lovely, innocent child couldn’t have incurred the wrath of the spirits to that extent.”
“They ain’t no tellin’, ma’am, what them ha’nts will do.” Stebbins spoke heavily, as if burdened with fear. “Now I leave it to you folks. Ain’t you smelled prussic acid around?”
“I have,” said Norma. “And I,” added the Professor. “I know it was not brought here by any of our party——”