"There it is! There it is!"
A hush fell over the crowd as they watched the figure in pink. The deepening shadows toned the dark-brown front of the mansion until it framed the outlines in the window with considerable positiveness. But the uncanny nature of the appearance was also in evidence, for one could see right through the figure in pink to the room behind it. Those near the Round Sergeant saw him remove his helmet and mop the increasing perspiration from his forehead.
"That beats the devil," he muttered.
The Ghost began to wave its arms, to bend over and then straighten up; to beckon and then to make gestures as if of denial. The Sergeant's awe was great, but no whit more intense than that of the crowd. They were face to face with a bit of the supernatural, puzzled, wondering, doubting, scoffing, fascinated, alarmed.
"By Jiminy!" exclaimed the Sergeant. "That's the strangest thing I've ever seen, Howard. We'll have to go into that house."
But their visit that night was destined to be futile. Some minutes were lost in gaining access to the rear roof through the house next on the west, and some minutes more in prying open a shutter and forcing a carefully locked sash. By this time the twilight had deepened into night, and the Sergeant lit a borrowed lantern to make the trip down the stairway to the second-story front. There was nothing strange or supernatural in the room; no sign of a pink ghost or any other being, human or spiritual. The furniture and other fittings seemed undisturbed and as regularly arranged as they had probably been when the owners went away. And when Howard, the reporter, raised a window, a hundred watchers in the street and Square were ready to vouchsafe the information that the Ghost had been gone quite ten minutes.
The Sergeant swore. Then he muttered: "It certainly is queer." Then he took Howard on a thorough inspection of the house, from cellar to roof. They poked into cupboards, turned over mattresses, peeped into bureau drawers and boxes and a score of other articles too small to have hidden anything human. But nary a sign was there of ghost, burglar or joker. "It beats the devil," again remarked the Sergeant as he and Howard, perspiringly hot, left the house about 9 o'clock.
The following morning the papers were full of it. Southwest Baltimore no longer mortgaged the new sensation. All Baltimore discussed it and speculated what it might be. And, as a result, the crowd of watchers as the June day drew to a close numbered not one, but many, thousands. Around at the Concord Club they said it beat any political mass-meeting ever seen. The Square was overrun, and everybody talked "Pink Ghost." Captain Delany ordered out the police reserves to keep the crowd in check and give the cars a chance to get by. With Round Sergeant Norman, the Captain personally superintended the preparations to lay the ghost.
The Pink Ghost did not disappoint them. It came to the window on scheduled time—just as the shadows deepened in Franklin Square—and it waved its arms from the window and beckoned to the awed and puzzled multitude. Captain Delany gave a signal, and from front and rear his picked men swarmed into the empty house and rushed up the stairway. The Round Sergeant was in the van. He had been berated and ridiculed for not solving the mystery the night before, and he determined to be in at the death now. But as he crossed the threshold of the front room he started back in amazement and fell against the bluecoat behind him. The Pink Ghost was not in the window, but swaying and frantically waving on the west wall of the room.
"My God! what is it?" cried the man behind.