“I was alone in the house, too,” she continued, taking a photograph from the reticule and placing it, face down, on the desk. “Yesterday afternoon Mr. Peyton telephoned from his office that he must stay downtown rather late to attend a meeting of building contractors and suggested that I come in to the city for dinner, and bring a friend and ‘take in a show,’ and meet him afterward. But I wasn’t in the mood and told him I’d prefer to stay at home.
“‘But I won’t be home before twelve o’clock,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like the idea of your being all alone in that house at night, without even a servant on the place.’
“I reminded him that the chauffeur and gardener were still with us (they sleep in the garage and hadn’t been alarmed by the ‘spook’), and with these two and Mitch, our Scotch collie, to guard me I felt perfectly safe. As for the ‘ghost,’ I laughingly told him, I really would enjoy meeting it and having a chat on its astral adventures.
“He declined to unbend from his seriousness and became irritated when I refused to leave the house. We had quite a tiff, but I finally had my way, and the best he could get was a promise from me to lock myself in before going to bed. He said he would sleep in one of the guest chambers.
“After a pick-up meal in the kitchen, I went upstairs to our room and wrote letters until ten o’clock. Then I prepared for bed.
“For a moment I regretted not having done as my husband asked. The house _did_ seem eerie; no denying that—big and dark and silent, and not a living creature in it except myself.
“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—”