“He fell down a well and was drowned.”
Horror froze Joe Morrow’s blood. Words passed back and forth in the room—he did not hear them. By and by the three men were in the road and headed for Farley’s. He trailed along. They stopped at Mr. Sweetman’s for the key.
“Doctor,” the farmer said heavily, “not for one thousand dollars would I go into that house again.”
“You’d buy it though,” Dr. Stone said mildly.
“Not now. Since this morning I am told that when you tear down a ghost house the ghost follows you into yours. Maybe it is so. I do not take a chance.”
“Who told you that?” the real estate man snapped.
Mr. Sweetman’s eyes shifted. “I do not say.”
The house, on this drab, gray day, was bleak and forbidding in its emptiness. Cold shadows lurked in the corners. However, there was daylight, you could see, and Joe did not feel the frozen terror of last night. Captain Tucker relentlessly searched the house. In the end he came up from the cellar with a paper in his hand.
“Find anything,” Mr. Rodgers asked eagerly.
“The cover from a magazine and a scrap torn from a page. Matt’s been out of here for years; this magazine is a last August issue. How did it get here?”