Sam shook his woolly head obstinately. “Cain’t be sure of nuffin’,” he insisted.
“You’ve seen lots of ghosts, haven’t you, Sam?” asked Tommy Beals coaxingly.
“Suttinly I has! A plenty of ’em!” replied the negro, with deep conviction.
“Well, have you ever seen or heard of one that used a typewriter?” demanded Beals.
Sam was forced to admit that he never had, and Ned took advantage of this opening to discourse forcefully against such ghostly possibility. Like most of his race, Sam was readily susceptible to influence and after an hour of diplomatic argument, the boys succeeded in bolstering his resolution sufficiently to make it safe for them to leave him for the present.
“Do you think he’ll stick?” asked Ned anxiously, as he cast a backward glance at the negro, who had finally bent to his weeding of the carrot patch.
“I think he will—unless he gets another jolt of some kind,” replied Beals. “I’ll keep an eye on him till Saturday noon. The town clerk’s office closes at noon on Saturday, and after then we’ll be safe over the week-end anyhow.”
“Yes, and I’ll make it a point to be on hand with seventy-five dollars when the office opens Monday morning!” declared Ned. “I’ll feel a lot easier in my mind after that lease has been paid for in full. In the meantime we may discover who wrote this letter to Sam. If it’s only a joke, why let’s take it that way; but if it’s an attempt by somebody to interfere with our scheme, we’ll have to be on our guard.”
Two days passed with no clue to the writer of the warning letter. No further attempt had been made to frighten the negro and Sam had regained much of his usual self-confidence. Early on Saturday evening, the boys and Sam, whom they had hardly allowed out of their sight, wedged themselves into Dave’s flivver and arrived at the Coleson house in time to complete a few finishing touches before the first of a long line of autos turned in at the gate and parked among the scrubby oaks in front of the house. Tommy Beals stood at the open door to collect the admission fees and soon the rooms were filled with a gaily chattering crowd of young people who giggled and squealed their appreciation of the weird atmosphere of the place.
A hundred flickering candles cast an uncertain, wavering light over the decorations of flags and bunting which had been supplemented with dozens of black paper cats, whose white and yellow eyes made of daisy heads glared forth in baleful fashion. Numerous toy balloons, each decorated with phosphorescent paint to represent a human skull, were tethered in the dark corners, where they swayed and bobbed in the varying drafts with ghostly effect.