The Room with the Tassels

“As I told these people before we started up here, Andrew Lang has said, in one of his books, that ten out of every eleven cases of so-called supernatural manifestations are produced by fraud. When I said that, Miss Carnforth very astutely said, that it was the eleventh case that was of interest to investigators. And I agreed. If this, now, is the eleventh case, – I don’t mean only my experience of last night, but all our experiences up here, – if this is the eleventh case, that is not the result of fraud, and it certainly looks like it, why, then, we have something worth investigating.”

“Not at the cost of any more lives,” said Braye, sternly. “If it is the eleventh case, and if it is going right on being an eleventh case, I’ve had enough of it! Perhaps that apparition of a glass in the spectre’s hand, foretells tragedy to you, Professor.”

Braye spoke gloomily, rather than as an alarmist, but the Professor turned white. “I’ve thought of that,” he said, in a low voice. “That’s why I want to be sure the phantom was a real one. If it was fraud, I have no fear, but if it was really the disembodied spirit of that shawled woman, appearing in her own materialized skeleton, – I, too, have had about enough investigating!”

“What do you think, Norma?” Braye asked of the girl, as, later in the afternoon, they were walking round along the wild path that was the only approach to the great portals of Black Aspens.

“I don’t know, Rudolph, but I’m beginning to think there is a human hand and brain back of it all. I’m a sensitive, and that’s one reason why these things don’t appeal to me as supernatural. I’ve had more or less experience with supernormal matters and I’ve never known anything like the things that have happened and are happening up here.”

“Whom do you suspect, Norma? Tell me, for I, too, think there may be some trickery, and I wonder if we look in the same direction.”

“I don’t want even to hint it, Rudolph, but – ”

“Don’t hesitate to tell me, dear. Oh, that slipped out! I’ve no right to say ‘dear’ to you, but, – Norma, after we get back to town, after these horrors are farther in the past, mayn’t I tell you then, – what I hope you will be glad to hear?”

“Don’t – don’t say such things,” and a pained look came into the blue eyes. “You know you are not free to talk like that!”

“Not free? Why am I not? What do you mean?”

“You know, you must know. Eve told me – ”

“Eve couldn’t have told you that there was anything between her and me! Why, Norma, I have loved you from the very first moment I laid eyes on you! I have kept myself from telling you, because of all these dreadful things that have been going on. This atmosphere is no place for love-making, but, dearest, just give me a gleam of hope that later, – when we go back home, that I may – ”

“Oh, Rudolph! Look! What is that? See, in the Room with the Tassels!”

They had neared the house on their return stroll, and from the window of the fatal room peered out at them a ghastly, grinning skull!

It was nearly dusk, but they could see quite clearly the hollow eye-sockets and the awful teeth of the fleshless face.

Norma clung to Braye, almost fainting. He slipped an arm round her saying, “Brace up, Norma, dearest, be brave. This is our chance. Let us dash right in, and see if it is still there. Stay here, if you prefer, but I must go!”

He hastened toward the house, and Norma kept pace with him. She felt imbued with his spirit of courage and bravery, and together they hurried and burst in at the front door, which was never locked save at night.

Without stopping, Braye rushed into the Room with the Tassels. But there was no one there, and no sign of any occupant, either human or supernatural.

There was no one in the hall, and further search showed no one in the drawing room. Nor could anything unusual be found in the house.

Most of the people were in their rooms. Eve was partly ill with a headache, and Milly was looking after her.

The men appeared as Braye and Norma called out, and soon all had gathered to hear the strange new story.

“I shouldn’t believe it, if you hadn’t both seen it,” said the Professor, “but I can’t think you were both under the spell of imagination.”

“I want to go home,” Milly said, plaintively, “I don’t want to see the thing, and I’m afraid I’ll be the next one it will visit.”

“We will go, dear,” said Landon. “As soon as we can make arrangements we’ll get off. Don’t you say so, Eve?”

“Yes,” she assented, but slowly. “I would prefer to stay a bit longer, myself, but I really don’t think Milly ought to. However, I’ll do as the majority wish.”

But the matter of going away from Black Aspens was not entirely at their own disposal. The detective, Dan Peterson, had been exceedingly busy, and had wrung a confession out of Elijah Stebbins. It had been a mild sort of third degree, but it had resulted in a frank avowal of Stebbins’ implication in some, at least, of the mysterious happenings that had puzzled the people at Black Aspens.

Stebbins defended himself by the statement that he only rented his house on the understanding that it was haunted. He said, it was reputed haunted, but he knew that unless something mysterious occurred, the tenants would feel dissatisfied.

He said, too, that he saw no harm in doing a few little tricks to mystify and interest the investigators, but he swore that he had no hand in the spectral appearances nor in the awful tragedy of the four o’clock tea.

What he did confess to was the placing of the old, battered candlestick in Miss Reid’s room the first night the party arrived.

“I done it, sort of on impulse,” he said; “I heard ’em talking about ghosts, and just to amaze them, I sneaked in in the night and took that candlestick offen Mr. Bruce’s dresser and set it on the young lady’s. I didn’t mean any harm, only to stir things up.”

“Which you did,” remarked Peterson drily. “Go on.”

The confession was being recorded in the presence of police officials, and Stebbins was practically under arrest, or would be very shortly after his tale was told.

“Well, then, the first night Mr. Bruce slept in that room, that ha’nted room, I thought I’d wrap a sheet round me and give him a little scare, – he was so scornful o’ ghosts, you know. An’ I did, but nobody would believe his yarn. So that’s all I did. If any more of them ghost performances was cut up by live people, they wasn’t me. Somebody else did it.”

And no amount of further coercion could budge Stebbins from these statements. He stuck to it, that though he had tricked his tenants, he had done nothing to harm them, and his intentions were of the best, as he merely wanted to give them what they had taken his house for.

“You intended to keep it up?” asked Peterson.

“Yes, I did, but after they took things into their own hands, and played spooks themselves, what was the use?”

“How did you get into the house at night, when it was so securely locked?” asked Peterson.

“I managed it, but I won’t tell you how,” said Stebbins, doggedly.

“With Thorpe’s help,” suggested Peterson, “or – oh, by Jinks!” he whistled; “I think I begin to see a glimmer of a gleam of light on this mystery! Yes, I sure do! Excuse me, and I’ll fly over to the house and do a little questioning. Officer, keep friend Stebbins safe against my return.”

Arrived at Black Aspens, Peterson asked for Rudolph Braye, and was closeted with him for a secret session, from which Braye came forth looking greatly worried and perturbed.

Peterson went away, and Braye sought the others. He found them listening to a letter which Professor Hardwick had just received and which the old man was reading aloud.

“It’s from Mr. Wise,” he said to Braye, as the latter came in hearing. “He’s a detective, and he writes to me, asking permission to take up this case.”

“What a strange thing to do!” exclaimed Braye.

“Yes,” agreed Hardwick, “and he seems to be a strange man. Listen; ‘If I succeed in finding a true solution to the mystery, you may pay me whatever you deem the matter worth, if I do not, there will be no charge of any sort. Except that I should wish to live in the house with you all, at Black Aspens. I know all of the affair that has been printed in the newspapers, and no more. If you are still in the dark, I should like prodigiously to get into the thick of it and will arrive as soon as you summon me.”

There was more to the letter but that was the gist of it, and Braye listened in silence.

“I think,” he said, as the Professor finished, “that we don’t want that detective poking into our affairs.”

“I agree,” said Landon. “There’s been quite enough publicity about all this already, and I, for one, prefer to go back to New York and forget it as soon as we can.”

“We can’t forget it very soon, Wynne,” put in Milly, “but I, too, want to go back to New York.”

“We can’t go right off,” Braye told them, “we must wait a week or so, at least.”

“Why?” asked Eve, not at all displeased by this statement, for she frankly admitted a desire to stay longer at Black Aspens.