"But why should he dress up all in white—like a ghost?" asked Grace.
"Probably to play that part," suggested Betty. "That is one point we haven't solved—how the ghostly manifestations were brought about. I wish we could have solved that for the sake of Mr. Lagg."
"I fancy it is solved," said Mr. Blackford, with a smile. "It was the faker, all the while."
"It was?" cried Mollie. "Did he do it on purpose?"
"No, he had no intention of being a spook, but he could not have done it better had he planned it. I have been talking to him," and Mr. Blackford nodded in the direction of the court house. "He made a clean breast of everything when Allen hinted that it might have a good effect when he came to be sentenced.
"It seems that he manufactured his hair-tonic in the haunted mansion. It was necessary to heat it in a sort of furnace, and this made the groaning sound you heard, it was caused by air pressure. Sometimes it groaned and again it shrieked as the hot air rushed from the ventilator."
"And the clank of the metal?" asked Grace, not without a look over her shoulder, though it was broad daylight.
"That was when he stirred the stuff in the brass mixing kettle."
"What about the queer blue light, and the smell of sulphur?" asked Cousin Jane.
"That was the burning of sulphur which he used in the preparation. Sulphur is often used in hair-tonics I believe, though I don't know that this man used it to any advantage. At any rate he burned it, making the ghostly flashes of blue fire, and the smell. The flashes were reflected from the room where he worked into the smaller house, by the big window panes."