"Rob!" protested Beth.
"We know it already," I laughed. "It"s to be a story-and-a-half high."
"I think I am getting material for quite a story," declared Miss Frayne.
I knew Beth"s dislike of scenes and display of emotions--mock heroics--she called them, so I made no congratulatory speeches of the bless-you-my-children order, but presently under the cover of darkness, I felt a little hand slipped in mine, and my clasp was eloquent of what I felt.
"I hope," said Miss Frayne, "that daylight will make me so ashamed of my cowardice that I can come down here and take some pictures and go inside the house."
"We"ll all come with you," promised Beth. "There"s safety in numbers."
When we were back at the hotel I managed to have a few words with Rob before we went upstairs.
"Bless the ghost!" he said cheerily. "When Beth first glimpsed it, she just turned and fell into my arms. She was really frightened for the first time. I shall feel under obligations to Ptolemy for a lifetime."
"Thank goodness!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently, "that I am under no obligations to a Polydore. Ptolemy certainly did put up the most ghastly thing in the way of ghosts. The lights in the eyes of the skeleton were frightful."
"Did you see the ghost?" asked Silvia sleepily, when I came in.
"Yes; same old ghost, only more of him," I a.s.sured her.
She was asleep before I had uttered this reply.
"Silvia," I said, "I have a more startling piece of news for you than that."
She sat bolt upright.
"Are they engaged, Lucien?"
"They are. They are building their castle--I mean their story-and-a-half cottage already."
Alas for my own desire to sleep! I had so effectually awakened Silvia that she planned Beth"s trousseau, the wedding, honeymoon, and the furnishing of their house before she subsided.
CHAPTER XV
_What Miss Frayne Found Out_
We had planned to go to the haunted house at nine o"clock the next morning, but owing to my dissipation of the night before, it was long after the appointed hour when Silvia awoke me.
I hurried down stairs and ate my breakfast in solitude. I inquired for Beth and Rob, but the waitress told me they had left the dining-room at seven o"clock and gone for a walk in the woods. She said it with a knowing smile that told me she, too, must be a "sister of the Golden Circle."
"And Miss Frayne?" I asked.
"She went down the road over an hour ago."
Evidently her courage had come up with the sun. I was greatly disturbed at the chance of her stumbling over one or more Polydores, and Rob didn"t want to let the cat out of the bag until her article was written, as he believed that if the ghostly spell were broken, she would lose her "punch."
I was unable to think of any plausible explanation to offer Silvia as to why I should start in pursuit, and I wished all sorts of dire calamities on Rob"s blond head. Lovers were surely blind and selfish.
About ten o"clock they came strolling in.
"We didn"t know it was so late," said Beth cheerfully, "but the boys will keep in the woods all right."
"With her nose for news, there is no telling how far into the woods Miss Frayne"s investigation will take her."
"Say we go down by the lane and meet her," proposed Beth, "so that if she has run across the boys we can explain to her why we desire secrecy from Silvia."
"You and Rob go," I advised. "It would seem odd to Silvia if we didn"t ask her to go with us."
So the newly engaged couple started down the road, but in their self-absorption they didn"t notice the turn to the lane, and they got half way to Windy Creek before they came back to earth and the hotel.
Miss Frayne still had not shown up, and I began to have misgivings lest the Polydores had locked her up in the house, but finally just as we were having a happy family gathering and discussing the new event under the shade of the one resort tree, she came excitedly up to us.
"Such an interesting morning as I have had!" she exclaimed enthusiastically. "I made some corking pictures of the place, and I"ve found out about not only that ghost, but all ghosts--the whole race of ghosts."
I hurriedly interrupted her and made elaborate and jumbled apologies for not keeping our engagement, which evidently bored her and mystified Silvia.
"I am glad I went alone," she finally replied. "Otherwise I might not have got such an interesting interview."
Beth, Rob, and I made frantic and appealing gestures to her behind Silvia"s back, but she didn"t seem to notice them.
"Whom did you interview, the ghost?" asked Silvia.
"No, indeed. Some very interesting and unusual people who are staying there."
I threw her a wildly beseeching glance and Beth and Rob began at the same time to ply her with distracting questions. I think she seemed to divine that there was something in the situation that was not to be explained, but Silvia interrupted them.
"Do let Miss Frayne tell us about her interview," she said. "We all seem to be very talkative today."
I saw there was no way to dodge the denouement, so I awaited the finale in dread desperation. It proved to be more of a stunner than I had expected.
"I went down the lane," she said, "and through the grove, up the little hill, and laughed at myself for the hallucinations of the night before. There were no ghosts visible and the door to the haunted house was hospitably open. I stood on the hill long enough to make some pictures and then went on. I walked up the steps fearlessly and looked within. A woman, an untidy, disheveled-looking woman, sat at a table writing furiously in just the same breathless way I write when I have a scoop, and the presses are waiting open-mouthed for my copy.
"She looked up and scowled at my intrusion.
""Don"t bother me," she said, and continued writing.
"I went through the house and came outside again where I met an absent-minded, spectacled man. I told him who I was and of my object in coming to the house. Then he showed signs of coming to.
""Oh, the ghost!" he said. "That is what brought me here. My wife is interested in more tangible, more material things. We have just returned from a long journey, and when we were nearly to our destination, our place of residence, I happened to read in a paper about this haunted house and its apparition, so we came right up here this morning to remain overnight and see if the article were true."
"I told him how successful I had been and he became quite alert and enthusiastic. He showed me why I should not have been alarmed, because ghosts, he said, were scientific facts. He then explained to me at length how the gases from the dead arise and form a nebulous vapor or a vaporous nebula. It sounded very simple and plausible when he told me, but I can"t seem to remember it. Fortunately I have it all down in writing."
Silvia"s eyes and mine had met in speechless horror since she had mentioned the "writing woman."
"Lucien!" Silvia now said in a tragic, hoa.r.s.e whisper--"the Polydores!"