One witness gave a novel bit of testimony. She was a middle-aged woman attired in an out-of-date riding habit and her face was as long in expression and as solemn as that of the horse that stood beside her.
“I did not see the rock, nor the person on it,” this woman declared. “What attracted my attention was the light that blinked very strangely, off yonder.”
The woman stabbed a long finger in a direction at an angle to the rock and on a level a trifle above the trees. Following her point, others saw only the silhouetted outline of a tall apartment building to the west of Central Park.
“That light,” suggested Cardona, suddenly. “Was it like a candle, floating through the air?”
The long-faced woman thought a while, then nodded so vehemently that her horse followed suit.
“The corpse candle,” said Cardona to Weston, “or whatever they call it in Wales. The thing Miss Selmore said she saw, commissioner.”
The commissioner wasn’t impressed. He eyed the long-faced woman dubiously as though wondering if she had played the banshee and then skipped off to acquire her riding habit and her horse. But after a brief appraisal, Weston decided that this witness couldn’t have come up to the specifications of the woodland sprite who had been described in captivating terms.
It was time to tighten the cordon and bring in the banshee. So the commissioner dismissed class and went about his business, which left Margo on the bridge by moonlight, thinking she’d have a few quiet words with Lamont. But when Margo looked around, she found herself alone and realized only too suddenly that she hadn’t seen Lamont Cranston during the past ten minutes.
Somehow this setting was becoming a trifle too spooky. The ripple of the water beneath the bridge, the added tumult where it tumbled into a series of cascades down the lower slope, were sounds that threatened to drown anything less than a banshee’s wail. If such a howl should again disturb the night, Margo didn’t care to be the only person to hear it.
Looking for somewhere else to go, Margo happened to glance beyond the westward trees. A moment later she was riveted by a sight she didn’t want. It was starting again, that blinky light that Madame Mathilda and Miss Selmore had called the Canhywllah Cyrth!