“Oh, that, too, would have been kind of you. Central isn’t ever very busy here. I’m sure she rather enjoyed it. The girls listen in, you know.”
“She hasn’t anything on me!” he laughed. “Well, now you know why I’m here.” They had all settled down comfortably, and it seemed, with Harry there, their party was complete.
“But I thought you said,” remarked Dot, “that you wanted solitude for Christmas,” her eyes were mischievous.
“Oh, well, there is solitude—and solitude!” he countered, his gaze sweeping them all in turn, but lingering upon Arden. “But tell me about the ghosts. Are they just too—too divine?”
They told him at dinner, which was a success in every way, Moselle and her daughter doing themselves proud in the viands and the serving thereof. Moselle simply loved company, especially young men company.
“Now, what do you think of it all?” Arden asked when the various phases of the happenings at the Hall had been recounted.
Harry Pangborn was silent for a moment as he crushed the ashes of his cigarette on the plate.
The girls waited, not a little anxiously, for his opinion. It was good to have a man around—especially such a delightful young man as Harry Pangborn—one whom they knew and could trust.
“Well?” asked Sim, at length.
“Well,” he blew out a cloud of smoke, “it sounds to me like either one of two things,” came the answer, slowly given. “It’s either a trick of some mischievous person or persons, as you have hinted, perhaps engineered by a rival contractor. Or—” again a pause—“there may be something in it.”