Shaking his head, Cardona turned to Miss Sylvia.
“This thing you talked about, Miss Selmore,” said Cardona. “The family spook with a Welsh name. You’re sure it isn’t the same thing as a banshee?”
Again, Miss Sylvia exhibited her full dignity.
“Positively not!”
“Then you’re due for an argument, with an officer named Reilly,” announced Cardona. Plucking the lilac sprig from Sylvia’s hand, he added: “Right at the time Madame Mathilda was describing something, Reilly saw it. A beautiful creature over by a pool in Central Park, breaking off a bough from a lilac tree, which is against all regulations.”
Bringing two handkerchiefs from his pockets, Cardona laid the lilac twig in one, then picked up the dagger with the other, to wrap both items together. Then, to make the act official, the inspector furnished this addendum:
“Officer Reilly says the creature was a banshee,” declared Cardona, “and a banshee it is until we find out different!”
CHAPTER III
HUNTING a banshee in Central Park was a shivery sport, even on a warm night. At least Margo Lane found it so, despite the presence of police in plentitude. In fact it was the prevalence of uniformed searchers that made the situation so uncanny. Only a banshee or its equivalent could have eluded the sizeable cordon established around the rock-rimmed pool.
On the jutting rock where Reilly had seen the banshee, there was evidence to support the officer’s testimony. That evidence was a lilac bough which anybody might have wrenched from the tree, but it bore a distinctive mark linking Reilly’s banshee with Sylvia’s Gwrach y Rhibyn.