"But what could Jack Bray have to do with Mr. McGuire?" she asked in bewilderment.
Peter shrugged. "You know as much as I do. I wouldn't have told you this if you'd been afraid. But Mrs. Bergen is."
"Well, did you ever?"
"No, I never did," replied Peter, smiling.
"It does beat anything."
"It does. It's most interesting, but as far as I can see, hardly alarming for you, whatever it may be to Mr. McGuire or Mrs. Bergen. If the man is only your great-uncle, there ought to be a way to deal with him——"
"I've just got to talk to Aunt Tillie," Beth broke in, moving toward the door. Peter followed her, taking up his hat.
"I'll go with you," he said.
For a few moments Beth said nothing. She had passed through the stages of surprise, anger and bewilderment, and was now still indignant but quite self-contained. When he thought of Beth's description of the Ghost of Black Rock House, Peter was almost tempted to forget the terrors of the redoubtable McGuire. A man of his type hardly lapses into hysteria at the mere thought of a "bandy-legged buzzard." And yet McGuire's terrors had been so real and were still so real that it was hardly conceivable that Bray could have been the cause of them. Indeed it was hardly conceivable that the person Beth described could be a source of terror to any one. What was the answer?
"Aunt Tillie doesn't know anything about McGuire," Beth said suddenly. "She just couldn't know. She tells me everything."