“But what could she have done with the body?” Rouillac said. “The police searched everywhere.”
“So they say,” I observed; “but the track Simpkins was on when he passed the buggy affords countless opportunities for concealing a body. It is full of deep ditches, creeks, and crevices, covered with a thick and rank vegetation, and the police would take at least a century to explore it. Besides, from what I know of the super-physical I do not think for one moment that Stella Dean was haunted without some poignant reason.”
“Was haunted!” Rouillac observed.
“You said she was dead, didn’t you?” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” Rouillac replied slowly, “there’s no doubt whatever on that point. She’s dead right enough. But when Vera Cummings passed by the office this morning, she saw Stella Dean enter it—Stella Dean just as she looked when alive, only very white and in abject terror. She passed right in through the half-open doorway, and, as usual, Hester Holt followed her.”
CHAPTER VI.
CASES OF HAUNTINGS IN ST. LOUIS, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
One of the most extraordinary men I have ever met was Ephraim B. Vandergooch, who, at the time of my travels in America, practised dentistry in 6th Street, St. Louis. Dentists are not, as a rule, the people to associate themselves with psychical research, and it is just as well for their patients, perhaps, that they are not, for sitting up all night in dark houses looking for ghosts has an unsteadying effect on the nerves—it is apt to make one “jumpy”—and if a dentist’s hand were to jump, it is more than likely that his patient would jump too. Mr. Vandergooch, however, was an exception. He was a ghost hunter, and his investigations had but a slight and temporary effect on his nervous system. His hand was as steady as a rock, his wrists like steel. I went to him to have a tooth filled, and during the operation I asked him if he knew of any haunted houses in the town.
He was a stranger to me then, and of course I expected a superior smile, if not an actual sneer, for, as I have said, dentists are, as a rule, anything but psychics. To my surprise, however, he took me quite seriously, and said he knew of several haunted places in St. Louis, and that nothing interested him more than really first-hand ghost stories. He told me he had had an experience himself, and narrated the following:—
“A few years ago,” he began, “I learned of a haunting in a street of rather older houses than these, close to here; and as the evidence in this case was to a large extent corroborative, I decided to investigate it. It was Christmas time, and the thought of earthbound spirits pacing up and down cold, empty houses, when all around was warmth and jollity, depressed me. I felt that I must, now that an opportunity had come, try to see them, and if possible do something for them.