“I thought I would, ma’am, and I feared you’d laugh at me. I never supposed any harm would come of it. And now the little men have carried off Mr. Kimball!” The girl broke into tears and ran from the room.
“The little men?” said Mrs. Webb, wonderingly.
“That’s what they call any supernatural force,” said Henrietta; “here comes Elsie, let’s tell her about it.”
It was at that juncture that Elsie appeared, and as the Webbs told the story of Janet’s experiences, she told what Wallace Courtney had told her.
“There’s no doubt at all,” said Mrs. Webb, with a strange mixed feeling of satisfaction at having her own theory gain ground, and a shock of desolation at the loss of her son.
Elsie looked at her in amazement.
“Mrs. Webb,” she said, slowly, “do you really mean that you think Poltergeist, or any supernormal power removed him bodily, and took him out of his locked room, and is keeping him concealed somewhere?”
“Of course I do!”
“How are they keeping him alive?”
“I don’t know that he is alive.”