“We want to talk to you,” said Mr. Sanders more seriously. “You told the boys, did you not, that you and your friends had been making the old house your headquarters?”
“Not exactly ‘headquarters,’” replied the tramp. “We used to stay some nights there.”
“And you used the ghosts to scare people off or keep them away from the old house?”
“That’s what we did,” admitted the tramp, laughing loudly as he spoke. “It would do your heart good if you could only have seen some of them leave.”
“What were those groans that we heard?” spoke up Fred. “I never quite understood them. We found out about the birds in the chimney and the speaking tube that ran from the kitchen to the front room, but how about those groans?”
“Why, there were usually two or three of us, and when we had visitors we took our stand in different rooms and one answered the groan of the others. Sometimes we groaned all together. Usually, though, we did not have very much to do, because after one or two groans we usually found the old house deserted.”
“What about that automobile horn?” inquired George.
“Oh, that was another way we had of scaring people, that was all.”
“Where did you get the horn?” inquired Mr. Sanders.
“I can’t just say. We had it a long time.”