“Well, sir,” Oscar began, “when I ran upstairs, and Miss Webb was waiting outside her brother’s door, I heard her say, to herself, ‘Oh, if it should be!’—sort of excited like.”
“Whom was she speaking to?”
“To nobody, sir, just to herself.”
“What did you mean by that speech, Miss Webb?” Hanley inquired.
“I didn’t make it,” replied Henrietta coolly. “Oscar is mistaken. He imagined it all.”
“I told you so!” Elsie cried, irrepressibly; “I knew Miss Webb was at the bottom of it all!”
“Well, such a speech as that doesn’t prove it,” Hanley observed. “It rather lets her out. If she had concealed her brother previously, why should she say those words? And if she was merely hoping he had gone away, it goes to show she had no hand in the matter.”
Henrietta’s face was expressionless, as if the subject interested her not at all.
“You will all have to agree with me, sooner or later,” Mrs. Webb began. “There is, as you’ve seen, no normal explanation. Only the supernatural remains. And, you ought to know, that room of Kimball’s has been haunted for a long time.”
“What, haunted?” exclaimed Hanley.