Norman could only point to the wall. His own hair was, he felt, actually raising his helmet off his head, and there was a curious contraction in his throat. In an instant, however, this had passed, and, with club in hand, he charged bravely upon the Ghost. As he neared it, however, a surprise awaited him. Instead of waving arms, he saw his own burly form shadowed on the outer edge of the pink nebula. He turned upon his heel, quickly bent over, and then burst into loud laughter. For him the riddle of the Pink Ghost was solved.
"What is it, Norman? What is it, man? Is he crazy?"
The other policemen pushed into the room to be enlightened, but the Sergeant only laughed the more immoderately. Delany became angry and started to seize Norman by the shoulder. This brought the Captain into the pink nebula and he understood Norman's hilarity.
"By gad, that's funny," he cried, and he entered upon a joint spasm of mirth. The other bluecoats drew near, and as each came into the pink glow the chorus swelled. Such a lot of uproarious policemen had rarely been known in Baltimore.
Five minutes later Captain Delany and Sergeant Norman, having at last controlled themselves, left the closing of the house to subordinates and crossed the square to a house on Carey street, where they asked to see a young lady abiding there. She was a very stately and fine-looking young woman, and when she tripped down into the parlor the attractiveness of her face was heightened by a slight flush, due most likely to her wonderment at a visit from two policemen. When they left her ten minutes later her face was rosy red and her stately carriage had given way to a combination of mirth and embarrassment. But Delany had her positive assurance that there would be no more Pink Ghost.
"For, you see, it was this way," he explained to the reporters who stopped him outside. "The young woman seems to have a steady beau every evening, for whom she likes to do a bit of fixin' up and primping. And after supper she makes her way to her room, which is in the front of the top floor, and there she combs and rearranges her hair and puts on gew-gaws and trimmings. And in these long summer days, when the sun has left the square, it is still comin' into those high windows."
"But what has she to do with the Ghost?" asked one irrepressible.
"I was a-comin' to that, youngster," retorted the man in blue; "but if ye're overanxious, it may satisfy yer to know she was the Pink Ghost. Leastwise, the sun's reflection was the ghost and she was the movin' figure that made the shadow do such queer antics. She had a bureau in the back of her room so fixed that when the rays of the dying sun come into the window on the north they are reflected in the bureau glass and pass out of the south window and across the square to that there brownstone front where you all saw the Ghost. Every time she raised her arms to her hair or made any other movement in dressing before the mirror she butt into the reflection and caused your Pink Ghost to do stunts."
"And you say there won't be any more Pink Ghost?"