“My patience! Did you yell like that because you stubbed your toe?”
“You scalded it!” cried Lizzie wildly. “It went up the staircase!”
“Your toe went up the staircase?”
“No, no! An eye—an eye as big as a saucer! It ran right up that staircase—” She indicated the alcove with a trembling forefinger. Miss Cornelia put her coffeepot and her candle down on the table and opened her mouth to express her frank opinion of her factotum’s sanity. But here the detective took charge.
“Now see here,” he said with some sternness to the quaking Lizzie, “stop this racket and tell me what you saw!”
“A ghost!” persisted Lizzie, still hopping around on one leg. “It came right through that door and ran up the stairs—oh—” and she seemed prepared to scream again as Dale, white-faced, came in from the hall, followed by Billy and Brooks, the latter holding still another candle.
“Who screamed?” said Dale tensely.
“I did!” Lizzie wailed, “I saw a ghost!” She turned to Miss Cornelia. “I begged you not to come here,” she vociferated. “I begged you on my bended knees. There’s a graveyard not a quarter of a mile away.”
“Yes, and one more scare like that, Lizzie Allen, and you’ll have me lying in it,” said her mistress unsympathetically. She moved up to examine the scene of Lizzie’s ghostly misadventure, while Anderson began to interrogate its heroine.
“Now, Lizzie,” he said, forcing himself to urbanity, “what did you really see?”