Fig. 2.—Mysterious hat-stand.
In the angle formed by the wainscoting and the floor a piece of simple tubing was placed, one end reaching a room on the ground floor, whilst the other was carried up behind the hat-stand to the height of about five feet. To this end a cardboard funnel was fixed, as in [Fig. 1], which, sticking out from the wall, was concealed by a hat or scarf upon the rack. A similar funnel was placed upon the other end, so that the voice of any person speaking through the tube from the room was carried with undiminished force to the hall, thus transmitting the ghostly messages and weird laughter to the guests.
In most hat-stands the pegs are screwed to the back, and taking advantage of this, Bobbie Cargill had unscrewed those pegs most likely to be used by his visitors, putting “fakes” in their place. To all appearances there was no difference between the “fakes” and the proper pegs, but in reality the former were simply gummed against the rack, just strong enough to bear their own weight, but too weak to support a hat.
Fig. 3.—Prepared hat-stand peg.
By the contrivance of a piece of string the fall of the hat-peg was made to work a kind of booby trap, explained by [Fig. 2], which shows the hat-stand in section. The false peg, A, is lightly gummed to the stand, B, C, against the hole D, where the real peg is screwed. A bent pin or nail is driven into this end of the peg, as seen in [Fig. 3], the end bending downwards. A thin piece of string, F in [Fig. 2], is fastened round this pin with a loop, passed through the hole D, and supports at the other end a tin, G, filled with bits of broken glass, marbles, and such like.
Naturally, when White hung his hat on the peg the strain brought the peg away from the stand, in its fall releasing the string and causing the tin to clatter to the floor. So simply was the whole thing arranged, however, that Bobbie Cargill had fixed it up in less time than it has taken to describe.
The absence of lights in the house served a twofold purpose. In the first place, it made the mystery and eeriness more marked, whilst at the same time it concealed several little matters which had to be hidden in order to insure success.
It will now be necessary to glance at the arrangement of the “Den,” shown by [Fig. 4]. The room was entered by the door A, whilst in the opposite wall is the fireplace B. The window C is hidden by the two heavy curtains at D and E. In the center of the room stood the table F, around which were placed the chairs G, G, G, G. Between the curtains and the window stood the ghost, who after all turned out to be none other than Dolly.