“I think it is no fair test,” I said, “unless you leave it there overnight. Both of the other robberies were committed just at midnight. This ghost may be of a bashful disposition, or possibly not good-natured enough to walk at your call in broad daylight.”
“Well, if he doesn’t appear within a half hour I’ll give him another chance, ‘in the dead vast and middle of the night,’ ‘when churchyards yawn,’ et-cetera. Here, Milly, lend me your watch, that I may time our visitor.”
We all sat for a few moments silently watching the cabinet, but presently Adelaide tired of this mummery and exclaimed:
“Really, this is too absurd! I have my Latin prose composition to write, and cannot spend any more time in such nonsense, Winnie.”
“Write your exercise in this room. We will all keep still, and I must have all the Amen Corner as witnesses of my little experiment.”
Winnie pulled out the writing shelf, and Adelaide seated herself at the cabinet and wrote steadily until Winnie cried, “Time’s up.”
Milly and I approached the cabinet, and Winnie made a few magical passes in the air and repeated an ancient hocus-pocus:
“There was a frog lived in a well,
To a rigstram boney mite kimeo.
And Mistress Mouse she kept the mill,
To a karro karro, delto karro,
Rigstram pummiddle arry boney rigstram
Rigstram boney mitte kimeo,
Keemo kimo darrow wa,
Munri, munro, munrum stump,
Pummididle, nip cat periwinkle,
Sing song, kitchee wunchee kimeo.”
Adelaide pushed in the writing shelf and stepped aside, and Winnie threw open the cabinet door. We could hardly believe our eyes—the essay had disappeared.
Milly gave a shriek of dismay. “It must have been a ghost. How else could it have vanished with all of us on the watch?”