“Very likely to get rid of answering your questions,” responded her aunt. “Undoubtedly he knew better than to tell you girls such a silly story. He knew you would refer to it to your father and that Robert would be displeased. I believe Emily, of course. As to Mammy Luce, I don’t know. It is exactly the sort of foolish yarn that I warned you we were likely to hear down South. I am sorry that it should have cost us our cook.”
The tale of the ghostly cavalier was not disturbing Miss Carroll in the least. The loss of a cook was of far greater importance to her.
The Wayfarers, however, were more impressed by Mammy Luce’s ghost than they dared allow Miss Carroll to guess. During luncheon four pairs of bright eyes continually exchanged significant glances. They were burning to talk things over among themselves.
Miss Carroll’s announcement that she intended to take a nap directly after luncheon gave them the longed-for opportunity. Patsy’s demure invitation, “Come on into Bee’s and my room, Perry children,” held untold meaning.
“Girls,” began Patsy solemnly, the instant the door of the room closed behind the quartette, “there’s something queer about this old house. There’s something queer about that picture. Carlos knows more than he pretended to know. I wouldn’t feel so—well, so funny about it if I hadn’t thought I saw that cavalier in the picture move. It gives me the shivers. Do you suppose there is——Oh, there simply can’t be a ghost in this house!”
“Of course there isn’t,” smiled Bee. “Brace up, Patsy. You’re just nervous over that picture business this morning. I think perhaps Carlos told Mammy Luce that story just to be malicious and scare her. He looks like that sort of person. Maybe he dislikes us as much as his grandmother appeared to, and just because we live in the house that belonged to his former employer.”
“If that’s the case, he may have told the yarn to Mammy Luce on purpose to get her to leave, and so inconvenience us,” suggested Eleanor. “He may have thought she’d leave in a hurry without telling us why she was going.”
“Let’s begin at the beginning and see what we know,” proposed Bee. “First, there’s crazy old Rosita who called us thieves and said we’d never find something or other that Camillo, whoever he is or was, had hidden. Second, there’s Carlos, who turned out to be the grandson of Rosita, who said she was not crazy but pretended to know nothing else about anything here. Third, there’s Mammy Luce, who went off and left us because she saw, or thought she saw, a ghost. Fourth, there’s Emily, who said Carlos told Mammy Luce that the ghost of the cavalier in the picture gallery walked about this house. Fifth, there’s Patsy, who heard an odd noise in the gallery and saw, or thought she saw, the cavalier picture move. Put it all together. Does it mean something or nothing?”
“No one except Carlos can answer that question. The whole thing, except Patsy’s scare, centers on him,” declared Mabel.