“You, too, Doctor.” The artist’s impatience had given place to amusement. “I thought better of you than that.”
“Did you?” the blind man asked mildly. Joe stood rigid. His uncle’s voice had carried an undertone that had not been there before.
But nothing more was said. They came from the house, and Roscoe Sweetman’s fumbling hand clattered the key against the lock. In the road Frederick Wingate paused.
“Doctor,” he asked curiously, “do you actually believe in ghosts?”
“I believe what I hear,” the blind man said without emotion.
Joe, struck with terror, hugged close to the safety of the dog. That night his sleep was broken by dreams—dreams of a great, monstrous heart throbbing so that all could hear it and of strange screams that faded into a swift, strange silence. In the morning an east wind blew down from the mountains and the sky was gray and overcast. Twice Joe walked toward the Farley farm, and twice he turned back. He saw Mr. Sweetman, hulked over the wheel of a small car, drive toward the village and, an hour later, drive back. And all through the morning Dr. Stone sat with his beloved pipe unlighted in his hands, and by that token the boy knew that his uncle was buried in disturbed thought.
Early in the afternoon Police Captain Tucker and Mr. Rodgers, the real estate man, came to the house in the captain’s car. Joe hovered in the doorway.
“Doctor,” Mr. Rodgers demanded, “what’s this talk about a ghost at Farley’s? Sweetman came in to see me this morning—”
“Sweetman?” The blind man was intent.
“Rubbed it under my nose that there was no market for a haunted house. Said you had heard the ghost. How about it?”