“But I’ve thoroughly searched the house,” she protested, “not once, but several times; and I know positively that nobody is hidden there—and that nobody has broken in. Besides, even if the old man was in the house, or had broken in, how did he enter my room last night?”
“Perhaps, after I’ve inspected the room—”
“Can you do it, without Mr. Peyton knowing?”
“Quite easily, I think, with our help. Since you are in need of servants, my presence can readily be explained—”
“Why, of course!” she eagerly interrupted. “Our new houseman! It will seem quite plausible, too,” she added, rising and glancing at her watch, “particularly since I’ve just engaged a new cook—who is waiting for me now, by the way, in my car. We had best start at once, Mr. Barry. It’s nearly one, and my husband is usually home before six.”
... A little later, as the Peyton limousine smartly threaded its way through the downtown streets, Barry, sitting on the front seat beside the chauffeur, planned a procedure that would either substantiate, or explode, his tentative explanation of the white-bearded “ghost.”
His first step was taken immediately: At a State Street department store he secretly bought a pad of cheap writing paper, a package of ungummed envelopes, ten two-cent stamps, a thick lead pencil, a jar of mucilage and an oblong carton of sterilized gauze.
Later still, upon reaching the “haunted house,” he saw no cause to revise his plan, and no reason to doubt that the solution he already had formed, although amazing, was essentially correct.
With the new cook installed in the kitchen, Mrs. Peyton conducted him to the second-floor front bedroom—a commodious south chamber—where she had seen the “ghost” last night. Barry looked at the small mahogany desk, surveyed the white-enameled twin beds, measured their distance from the corridor door and carefully examined the lock thereon.
Then, swiftly though systematically, he searched the rest of the house and afterward strolled outdoors. Sauntering across the velvety lawns, beneath the aged trees, he casually approached the garage some two hundred feet from the house. He had found nothing in the house, and now saw nothing in the surrounding grounds, to suggest the weird things he had heard. Here, to all appearance, was only an old-fashioned suburban home dozing peacefully in the mellow sunshine of a midsummer afternoon.