“Do you know what I think about Dr. Madden’s trip to Europe, Mrs. Doane?”
“No,” came eagerly, “tell me.”
“Like you, I think that there was something queer about the old man’s death. I don’t mean, though,” came hastily, “that either Dr. Madden or Lawyer Chew are guilty of a crime. No, indeed. Dr. Madden, I suppose, did all he could to fix up the sick man. And certainly, if he had suspected that his enemy was putting across anything criminal, he would have had the lawyer arrested long before this. No, that isn’t it. Whatever crooked work Lawyer Chew is up to, it isn’t poisoning, or anything like that. Yet there’s a mystery here just as deep. And it was to clear up this mystery, I think, that Dr. Madden hurried away to Europe. Now he’s back. And I’d be willing to bet my hunks of pie for the next six months against a mosquito’s false teeth that he’s got things all set to spring a surprise. And a regular old gee-whacker of a surprise, too. You say the will is going to be read to-morrow night at ten o’clock. All right. Dr. Madden will be here, whether Lawyer Chew invites him or not, and you and Pa and everybody else in the family are going to get the surprise of your lives. That takes in old fatty, too. I think, to further spread around my ideas, whether they’re bunk or what, that Dr. Madden is the one who sent for the granddaughter. Right now he knows where she is, and at the proper moment she’ll turn up—to undo old Chew, probably.”
“Laws-a-me!” cried the amazed woman, with a bewildered face. “You’ll be telling me next that Dr. Madden is back of the door slamming here, and all the other queer things.”
Poppy got my eyes for a moment.
“We kind of have an idea who the ‘ghost’ is,” he grinned. “But for certain reasons we’d rather not tell you just now.”
He meant old Ivory Dome, of course.
“And is it your idea,” I asked him, when we were alone, “that the old man has been putting on this ‘ghost’ stuff at the doctor’s orders?”
“That’s exactly what I do think, Jerry. The three of them—the two men and the girl—are secretly and peculiarly working together. And the whole scheme, I bet you, is to undermine old Chew.”
“Well,” I grinned, “if they do scoop a hole under old fatty, I hope they make it deep enough so that he’ll have to do some tall digging himself to get back where it’s daylight.”