Part 15

“But I quickly shook off this feeling, assuring myself there was no such thing as a ghost, and, even if there was, that it couldn’t possibly harm me. However, remembering my promise, I locked the door and put the key under my pillow, and bolted all the windows, and, as an additional precaution, I looked under the bed and inspected both closets. And I knew _absolutely_, when I put out the light and got into bed, that I was the only person in that room.

“I was soon asleep,” said Mrs. Peyton, again feeling in her handbag, “and it seemed only a few minutes later—though I know now it was several hours—when I found myself wide awake. I suppose it was the lack of fresh air that awoke me. I’m accustomed to sleeping with the windows open.

“I was on the point of getting up to open a window when, all at once, my blood seemed to freeze. I discovered, quite suddenly, _I was not alone in the room_!”

* * * * *

Mrs. Peyton paused and drew from the handbag a sheet of blue linen notepaper. Nervously creasing the paper in her slender white fingers, she continued, with heightening agitation, her large brown eyes earnestly watching the detective’s face: “I won’t deny, Mr. Berry, that I was frightened. In fact, I confess that I was so terrified I seemed utterly powerless to move or speak. I had always supposed if I ever _should_ see a ghost I would feel no fear whatever. But now that I found myself actually looking at one—or at least looking at what, in that frightful moment, I potently _believed_ to be one—I was petrified with terror.

“It was sitting at my desk, right where I’d been sitting all evening, and its back was toward me. The moon had risen and was shining through the windows, brightening the room with a pale half-light.

“The figure at the desk appeared to be writing. In fact, I could hear the scratching of the pen. I could also hear the ticking of a small clock on the desk. That’s how still everything was.

“Well, it sat there writing—a blurred, shapeless object in the silvery moonlight—for I don’t know how long. It seemed an age! And all the time I was conscious—terrifyingly so—that I was alone in that great house with it!”

Mrs. Peyton paused and took the photograph from the desk.

“Instinctively, I tried to scream,” she went on, “but my throat was parched and I seemed unable to utter a sound. However, I must have made some sort of noise, for the thing suddenly turned and looked at me over its shoulder. And for the first time, I saw its face.”

“What was the face like?” asked Barry.

She handed him the photograph.

“That’s a picture of it,” she said.

It was a kodak “snapshot” of an aged man with flowing white hair and a patriarchal beard. Turning it over, Barry saw written on the back, “Willard Clayberg, December, 1922.”

“It’s Mr. Clayberg’s last picture,” said Mrs. Peyton. “I obtained it this morning from one of his grandsons. It was taken last winter, shortly before the dreadful tragedy at our house.”

“Getting back to last night?” reminded Barry.

“Oh, yes! Well, the thing sat there, quite silent and motionless, staring at me through the moonlight. Its face was the same as the one in that picture, only, somehow, it didn’t seem _real_. It was peculiarly pallid and lifeless—like the face of a dead person.

“Finally I found my voice and cried out: ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

“Instantly the thing rose from the desk, without making a particle of sound, and glided swiftly and silently across the room—and disappeared!

“That seemed to revive my courage—the thought that I had frightened it away—and I sprang from bed and ran to the door.

“The door was still locked! I tried the windows. They were still bolted. Neither the door nor the windows had been touched. Everything in the room, in fact, was just as I had left it upon going to bed.

“Then I crossed to my desk and lit the lamp there and found—this!” Mrs. Peyton offered the sheet of note paper, which she had been nervously fingering.

Barry unfolded it and read the words scrawled upon its blue surface:

“_Again I warn you to leave this house. This is the last—_”

“When I interrupted him,” explained Mrs. Peyton, “he apparently had just written the word, ‘last.’”

Barry nodded and narrowly examined the handwriting. It was old-style script, angular and shaky, indicative of a very aged and infirm person.

“Have you the notes received by Mr. Peyton and the cook?”

“No; but I saw them. Both were written in the same hand as that,” indicating the sheet of blue paper.

Barry again looked at the photograph, holding it to the light and inspecting it closely. Suddenly he asked:

“What sort of clothing did your visitor wear?”

“Why, as I remember, he wore a sort of long gray robe and a queer little cap—a skullcap, maybe. But it was all very blurred and indistinct. He seemed to be enveloped in a kind of gray mist. With his white hair and beard, the effect was quite ‘creepy.’”

“Anything else happen last night?”

“Nothing—except that I passed the rest of the night trying to solve the riddle. The first thing I did, after finding the note, was to try the door and windows again—and I again made sure they hadn’t been touched. I knew positively that nobody could get in the room _except_ through the door or windows, so _how_ had the old man entered?

“I was still hunting an answer to that question, and growing more perplexed than ever, when I heard a heavy footfall on the front porch; then the front door opened and closed with a _bang_, and my husband came bounding noisily upstairs. I knew from this he had seen the light at my window, even before he called to me reprovingly through the bedroom door: ‘Haven’t you turned in yet? It’s ’way after one o’clock.’

“It was then I decided to say nothing to him about what happened. And I haven’t.

“But this morning, as soon as he’d left for the office, I called on Mrs. Parker and told her everything. She suggested that I see you. I hesitated at first to do this, because only yesterday I spoke to Mr. Peyton about calling in the police or employing a detective to investigate the mystery, and he vigorously objected. He really believed the thing was supernatural and declared that no living person could overcome it. The only thing to do, he said, was to leave the house as the ‘spirit’ commanded.

“I finally decided, however, to follow Mrs. Parker’s suggestion,

## particularly as she recommended you so highly—and so, quite unknown to my

husband, here I am!

“And now, Mr. Barry,” said Mrs. Peyton, sitting back in her chair for the first time and moving her white hands in a pretty gesture of relief, “what do _you_ make of it all?”

* * * * *

Barry, examining the feeble handwriting beneath a reading-glass, discerned what appeared to be a startling solution of the mystery; but, deeming it best for the moment to say nothing of this, he offered an obvious answer to her question:

“From what you have told me, Mrs. Peyton, it would seem that an unknown person, concealed in your house, is bent on frightening you away.”

“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.

At the garage, which aforetime had been a stable, he engaged in back-stairs gossip with Frank Dominick, the chauffeur—in the presence of the gardener, John Hart, an uncommunicative person—and learned that both were preparing to “give notice.”

“We ain’t actually _seen_ old Clayberg’s ghost—at least not _yet_,” said Dominick, “but we’ve heard enough about ’im and I guess he’ll be callin’ on us next. I guess the only reason we ain’t seen ’im before is because we sleep up there,” pointing to the upper floor of the garage. “Take my advice, friend, and don’t stay here over night. Am I right, John?”

John Hart, a senile man, shifted his cud of tobacco and expectorated lavishly, thus contributing a fresh stain to his ragged white beard.

“You’re right,” said he, and spoke no more.

Returning to the house, Barry was given a white jacket and a pair of blue trousers by Mrs. Peyton; and at six o’clock, wearing these garments and a servile mien, he was laying the dinner table when the master of the house arrived. Barry, with a plate and napkin in his hands, observed him through the doorway—a trim-looking man of thirty-five—and remarked the harrowing fear that sat upon his countenance.

His haggard eyes, like those of his wife, denoted loss of sleep; and he evinced no interest in her “luck in finding two perfect servants.” In the same troubled preoccupation, he acknowledged the introduction of Barry, who was presented as Thomas Field. Clearly, he was too frightened and worried to be conscious of his environment.

Dinner over, Barry went to his room. It was a tiny chamber tucked under the eaves at the rear of the top floor, and it was here that his predecessor had beheld the “apparition” night before last. Upon the small table, where the word, “LEAVE” had been spelled with matches, Barry spread the articles which he had bought this afternoon.

Then he drew the table to the window, and lighted the lamp, and sat down and began writing letters to mythical persons in Iowa. His door stood open, and so did the window, and anybody passing in the hall, or standing north of the house, could have watched him at his employment.

For upward of two hours he sat steadily writing, his back to the door, his face silhouetted against the window; and when he had written five letters, and had stamped and directed them to his imaginary correspondents, he uncorked the mucilage pot and sealed the flaps of the envelops.

And then, somehow, he awkwardly upset the bottle of mucilage, and the stuff oozed stickily over his pencil and paper.

It was at this moment, or perhaps a little earlier, that he heard a slight rustle in the hall behind him, as of somebody moving away from his door, but, apparently intent only upon cleaning the mucilage from the table, he never looked round or gave any sign that he heard.

Presently he extinguished the light and, disrobing in the darkness, looked from his window. The old Clayberg stable, now Peyton’s garage, loomed like a great dusky shadow in the starlit night; and at a small upper window, almost on a direct line with his, a yellow light glowed.

Feeling through the dark, Barry removed the sterilized gauze from the carton, snipped off a ten-inch length, and returned the gauze and box to his pocket. Then he stretched his length on the narrow iron bed, his face to the window, his door ajar.

Wide awake, he lay staring into the darkness, his mind alert, sharpened by expectancy.

* * * * *

The moon rose in the southeast, bathing the outdoors in a silvery sheen and mitigating, somewhat, the darkness of his room. The minutes lengthened into hours; and as the hours dragged slowly by Barry fought off the desire to sleep.

The fight became increasingly difficult; and finally—he judged it was long past midnight—it seemed as though he could no longer force himself to stay awake. His eyelids drooped. He dozed....

And then, all at once, he was wide awake again, his pulse tingling. Somebody had entered his room and was standing now at the table, between the bed and window, so near that Barry could have touched him by reaching forth his hand.

Barry, however, remained motionless, simulating sleep; and beneath lowered lids he watched the intruder—a blurred gray figure—take up the pencil and start writing on the pad of paper. The moon had climbed to the zenith, and by its pale reflection Barry distinguished the salient marks of his visitor; the long gray robe, the flowing white hair and beard, the white skullcap.

Then the figure put down the pencil and vanished—gliding to the hall as swiftly and noiselessly, it seemed, as a shadow leaving the room.

Still Barry did not move. Silence ensued. Then, from some point down the hall, came a woman’s piercing scream.

Barry rose, wrapped the lead pencil in the strip of gauze, and enclosed it in the cardboard box and replaced the box in his pocket.

Then, wearing coat and trousers, he stepped into the hall and lit a gas jet there—just as the new cook, screaming with terror, emerged from her room. Hysterical with fright, she frantically flourished a scrap of wrapping paper. And when she could speak coherently:

“I just seen a spook in my room—an old man wid white whiskers. I won’t stay in this house! He writ somethin’ here—”

She broke off to examine the bit of paper by the fluttering gas flame; and when she saw the words written on her paper she uttered another terrified shriek and, heedless of her scant attire, fled toward the front staircase. She was met at the head of the stairs by Mr. and Mrs. Peyton—he in pajamas and bathrobe, she in a peignoir, and both visibly alarmed—and to them she told, or tried to tell, the reason for her mad flight.

“Now lemme get outa here!” she ended, attempting to brush past them. “He told me to leave tonight—and _I’m goin’_!”

Barry, following sleepily in her wake, rubbing his eyes as one newly awakened from slumber, heard Peyton saying: “This is dreadful, dreadful!” and Mrs. Peyton entreating the cook to “stay at least till morning.”

Unable to persuade the cook to remain, Mrs. Peyton turned appealingly to Barry. “Did you see anything in your room, Field?”

“No, mem,” said Barry, hiding a yawn. “I was fast asleep when she woke me up, mem.”

This, however, exerted no influence on the cook. Like Clara who went before her, she departed immediately for the railroad station, there to pass the rest of the night.

Peace at last returned to the house—and Barry returned to his room, locked the door and observed on his pad the same angular scrawl, “_Leave this house tonight!_” which had frightened her away. Then he went to bed and slept soundly until after sunrise.

He was up and dressed at seven o’clock; and when the Peytons came downstairs about eight he had an appetizing breakfast awaiting them. As soon as her husband had left for his office, Mrs. Peyton, returning from the front door, looked at the detective with anxious inquiry in her large brown eyes.

“Have you discovered anything at all, Mr. Barry?”

Barry took a crumpled napkin from the breakfast table and folded it thoughtfully between his long fingers. He was thinking: “Yes, Mrs. Peyton; I’ve discovered the identity of your ‘ghost,’ and you alone have the power to ‘kill’ it.” Aloud, however:

“I’ll make a report today,” he promised, and left the room with a stack of dishes and the folded napkin.

He deposited the dishes in the kitchen sink. The napkin went into his hip pocket. Then he started upstairs for his other clothes. At her bedroom door he paused, listening. The door stood open. Mrs. Peyton, downstairs, was sitting at the breakfast table, absently crumbling a bit of toast in her fingers, a faraway look in her eyes. Barry, at her bedroom door, was remarking the small mahogany desk, where, two nights ago, the “ghost” had written his warning to her.

In three swift strides he crossed to the desk, searched hurriedly among the papers there and neatly pocketed one of these. Then he continued to his room. Mrs. Peyton still sat at the breakfast table in a pensive reverie, her wistful brown gaze lost in the morning sunshine beyond the leaded casements.

* * * * *

An hour later Barry alighted from a train in Chicago and forthwith called on a colleague, whose skill in analyzing handwriting and identifying finger prints had earned him the title of “expert.” He spent considerable time with this man; and then he went to his office and wrote his report for Mrs. Peyton.

And when the report was finished he sat gazing at it musingly—somewhat as Mrs. Peyton had gazed from her breakfast-room window this morning.

With an energetic shrug, as if to shake off his odd mood, he sealed the report in an envelope, and put it in his pocket and started for an office building in lower Michigan Avenue.

Presently he entered a room in this building, luxuriously furnished and unoccupied, and abruptly halted. In the adjoining room he could hear the voices of Scott Peyton and his wife; and since the door between the two offices stood partly open, he could also see their faces. Himself unobserved, Barry stood silently watching and listening.

“I suppose you’re right, Scott,” she said, standing beside her husband’s desk and looking down at him. “After what happened last night, I’m just about ready to do as you say—give the house up and move back to town. But I do so hate to leave that old place. I wish—”

“Why should you?” he interrupted, scowling at his desk and avoiding her eyes.

Mrs. Peyton looked down, biting a corner of her lip and twisting the wedding ring of her finger.

“It’s not so much what _I_ want,” she faltered, her voice tremulously low, “but—the city is no place—not the _best_ place for our—_Oh, Scott!_” she cried passionately, and flung out her hands to him in appeal. “Can’t you _see_?”

Scott Peyton looked up and met his wife’s eyes; and the thing he saw in their liquid brown depths instantly chased the frown from his face and took him to his feet in a swift rush of remorse and gladness.

In the next instant she was sobbing in his arms; and he was tenderly patting her shoulders and saying soothingly:

“It’s all right, honey. We won’t give the place up. I don’t think—the ghost—will bother us again....”

At this juncture Barry quietly departed.

* * * * *

A little later he again sat at his desk, gazing again at the report he had written. And he now knew that this report would never be seen by any eye save his.

But while he is sitting here suppose we look over his shoulder and glance at the thing before he tears it up:

“In Re Peyton ‘ghost’: ... Using a King Lear costume, which he put on and off with lightning agility, the ‘ghost’ hoped, by his nocturnal prowling, to frighten Mrs. Peyton into abandoning the house as her husband desired.... Following his nightly appearances, he quickly removed and concealed his costume, and returned to his bed, careful to make no sound. He varied this procedure, however, night before last, when he visited Mrs. Peyton’s room. Had she left her key in the lock that night, instead of hiding it under her pillow, he would have been unable to call upon her. As it was, he readily unlocked the door and entered. Leaving silently, he hid his costume, then left the house and returned, making considerable noise.... The finger prints he left in glue last night and those he left on his napkin this morning, as well as his real and disguised handwriting positively identify the ‘ghost’ as Mrs. Peyton’s husband, Scott Peyton.”

[Illustration]

_Have You Been Reading About King Tut? If so, You’ll be Interested in_

OSIRIS

_The Weird Tale of an Egyptian Mummy_

_By_ ADAM HULL SHIRK

“_Mandrake_”

_By ADAM HULL SHIRK_

_Will appear in the July WEIRD TALES_

_It’s a Strange Yarn of Superstitious Fear_

_Don’t Miss It!_

The recent and lamentable death of Sir Richard Parmenter, F. R. G. S., is too fresh in the public’s mind to warrant further reference, and were it not that I feel myself capable of throwing light upon the incidents contributing to the sudden and apparently unnecessary snuffing out of a valuable life, I should refrain from again alluding to it.

It is well known that the physicians at the time decided that valvular weakness of the heart must have been responsible for the death of the noted Egyptologist, but the statement of his own doctor that Sir Richard had never theretofore exhibited indications of such weakness, and that he was, to all appearances, in the best of health just prior to his death, caused considerable wonder.

I had thought to let the facts remain buried, but, for certain reasons, I shall reconsider my determination and tell what I know.

I shall always remember the night on which Sir Richard summoned me, as his counselor, to attend him at his apartments in the Albermarle. It was a night of storm, and the London streets were a mass of slime and slush. A beastly wind had sprung up, and as I left my chambers at the Temple it almost took me off my feet. Therefore, it was with no little satisfaction that I found a cheery log fire awaiting me in the library of my distinguished client’s home, and the nip of brandy he provided was a life saver.

I noted, however, that for all his assumption of cheerfulness, something was preying upon his mind, and I determined to get at the root of the matter without delay:

“How can I serve you, Sir Richard?” I asked, briskly. “I see there is something troubling you.”