“You sure did,” Dunlap answered.
The guard pulled his left ear and looked puzzled.
“Funny,” he finally remarked. “Was sure I heard somebody in that tower, singing soft and low like, when I passed under it a few minutes ago.”
“What was he singing?” the captain asked, bending forward and fixing a penetrating gaze on the recent arrival at the prison.
“Let me see now,” said the guard meditatively. “Couldn’t make out much of the song. Something about ‘when I die in the ocean deep,’—No, that wasn’t it. ‘When I die and am buried deep’—that’s it. Then there was something in it about this dead guy coming back to ha’nt people, and a lot of bunk like that.”
“I see,” said Dunlap, as he eased himself out of the chair. “I’m going up and have a look around in that tower. You stay in here until I return.”
Dunlap went outside the walls and up through New Tower Number Three, where he questioned Guard Jim Humphrey. Humphrey had not seen or heard anything unusual in or about Old Tower Number Three.
Captain Dunlap, as he walked over the wall toward the ghost tower, admitted frankly to himself that he was “scared stiff.” Pausing at the door, he glanced nervously through the window.
The yard lights lit up the interior of the tower sufficiently to assure him that no one—or “thing”—was inside. He unlocked the door and entered.
With a flashlight, he thoroughly examined the telephone. Dust had settled on the instrument. The receiver and the transmitter had apparently not been touched since Asa Shores left the tower. Dust had settled on the doorknobs inside. That the knobs had not been touched since Shores’ death was obvious. The one chair, the window-sills, the small washstand and wash basin, all were covered with a thin, undisturbed film of fine dust.