“But if you saw one with your own eyes—”
“I should probably be inclined to doubt the evidence of my senses. Have _you_ seen one?”
“Have I _seen_ one?” groaned Ritsky. “Good Lord, man, I’d give every cent I own to be rid of that thing! For two years it’s turned my nights into hell! From a perfectly healthy, normal human being I’ve been reduced to a physical wreck. Sometimes I think my reason is slipping. The thing will either kill me or drive me mad if it is not stopped.”
He buried his face in his hands.
“This is most strange,” said the doctor. “You say the apparition first troubled you two years ago?”
“Not in its present form. But it was there, nevertheless. The first time I saw it was shortly after I killed that cursed dog. A month, to be exact. I shot him on the twenty-first of August, and he, or it, or _something_, came back to haunt me on the twenty-first of September.
“How vividly I remember the impressions of that first night of terror! How I tried, the next day, to make myself believe it was only a dream—that such a thing could not be. I had retired at eleven o’clock, and was awakened from a sound sleep some time between one and two in the morning by the whining, yapping cry of a dog. As there were no dogs on the premises, you can imagine my surprise.
“I was about to get up when something directly over the foot of my bed riveted my attention. In the dim light it appeared a grayish white in color, and closely resembled the head and pendant ears of a hound. I noticed, with horror, that it was moving slowly toward me, and I was temporarily paralyzed with fright when it emitted a low, cavernous growl.
“Driving my muscles by a supreme effort of will, I leaped from the bed and switched on the light. In the air where I had seen the thing hanging there was nothing. The door was bolted and the windows were screened. There was nothing unusual in the room, as I found after a thorough search. Mystified, I hunted through the entire house from top to bottom, but without finding a trace of the thing, whatever if was, that had made the sounds.
“From that day to this I have never laid my head on a pillow with a feeling of security. At first it visited me at intervals of about a week. These intervals were gradually shortened until it came every night. As its visits became more frequent the apparition seemed to grow. First it sprouted a small body like that of a terrier, all out of proportion to the huge head. Each night that body grew a little larger until it assumed the full proportions of a Russian wolfhound. Recently it has attempted to attack me, but I have always frustrated it by switching on the light.”
“Are you positive that you have not been dreaming all this?” asked the doctor.
“Would it be possible for some one else to hear a dream of mine?” countered Ritsky. “We have only been able to retain one servant on account of those noises. All, with the exception of our housekeeper, who is quite deaf, heard the noises and left us as a result.”
“Who are the members of your household?”
“Other than the housekeeper and myself, there is only my niece and ward, a girl of twelve.”
“Has she heard the noises?”
“She has never mentioned them.”
“Why not move to another apartment?”
“That would do no good. We have moved five times in the last two years. When the thing first started we were living on the estate of my niece near Lake Forest. We left the place in charge of care-takers and moved to Evanston. The apparition followed us. We moved to Englewood. The thing moved with us. We have had three different apartments in Chicago since. It came to all of them with equal regularity.”
“Would you mind writing for me the various addresses at which you have lived?”
“Not at all, if they will assist in solving this mystery.”
The doctor procured a pencil and a sheet of note paper, and Ritsky put down the addresses.
Doctor Dorp scanned them carefully.
“Villa Rogers,” he said. “Then your niece is Olga Rogers, daughter of millionaire James Rogers and his beautiful wife, the former Russian dancer, both of whom were lost with the _Titanic_?”
“Olga’s mother was my sister. After the sudden death of her parents, the court appointed me her guardian and trustee of the estate.”
“I believe that is all the information we need for the present, Mr. Ritsky. If you have no objection I will call on you after dinner this evening, and if Mr. Hoyne cares to accompany me we will see what we can do toward solving this mystery. Please take care that no one in your home is apprised of the object of our visit. Say, if you wish, that we are going to install some electrical equipment.”
“I’ll be there with bells,” said Hoyne as they rose to go.
_II._
Shortly after his guests’ departure, Doctor Dorp was speeding out Sheridan Road toward Villa Rogers.
The drive took nearly an hour, and he spent another half-hour in questioning the care-takers, man and wife. He returned home with a well-filled notebook, and on his arrival he began immediately assembling paraphernalia for the evening’s work. This consisted of three cameras with specially constructed shutters, several small electrical mechanisms, a coil of insulated wire, a flash-gun, and a kit of tools.
After dinner he picked up Hoyne at his home, and they started for the “haunted house.”
“You say you investigated this case last night, Hoyne?” asked the doctor.
“I tried to, but there was nothing to it, so far as I could see, except the whining of that dog.”
“Where were you when you heard the noises?”
“Ritsky had retired. I slept in a chair in his room. About two o’clock I was awakened by a whining noise, not loud, yet distinctly audible. Then I heard a yell from Ritsky. He switched on the light a moment later, then sat down on the bed, trembling from head to foot, while beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
“‘Did you see it?’ he asked me.
“‘See what?’ I said.
“‘The hound.’
“I told him I hadn’t seen a thing, but I heard the noise all right. Between you and me, though, I did think I saw a white flash for a second beside his bed, but I can’t swear to it.”
“We won’t trust our eyes tonight,” said the doctor. “I have three eyes in that case that will not be affected by hysteria or register hallucinations.”
“Three eyes? What are you talking about?”
“Cameras, of course.”
“But how—”
“Wait until we get there. I’ll show you.”
A few moments later they were admitted to the apartment by the housekeeper, a stolid woman of sixty or thereabout. Ritsky presented them to his niece, a dreamy-eyed, delicately pretty school girl with silky golden curls that glistened against the pale whiteness of her skin.
“If you don’t mind,” said the doctor, “we will look things over now. It will take some time to install the wiring and make other necessary preparations.”
Ritsky showed them through the apartment, which was roomy, furnished in good taste and artistically decorated. The floor plan was quite simple and ordinary. First came the large living-room that extended across the front of the house. This opened at the right into the dining-room and at the center into a hallway which led through to the back of the building. Behind the dining-room was the kitchen, and behind that the servant’s room. Ritsky’s bedroom was directly across the hall from the dining-room. Then came his niece’s bedroom, a spare bedroom and a bathroom. Each of the three front bedrooms was equipped with a private bath and large clothes-closet.
The doctor began by installing the three cameras in Ritsky’s room, fastening them on the wall in such a manner that they faced the bed from three directions. After focusing them properly, he set the flash-gun on a collapsible tripod and pointed it toward the bed.
The room was lighted by an alabaster bowl that depended from the ceiling and could be turned on or off by a switch at the bedside. There were, in addition, two wall lights, one on each side of the dresser, and a small reading lamp on a table in one corner. These last three lights were operated by individual pull-cords.
Ritsky procured a step-ladder for him, and, after switching off the drop light, he removed one of the bulbs from the cluster and inserted a four-way socket. From this socket he ran wires along the ceiling and down the wall to the three cameras and the flash-gun. By the time these preparations were completed Miss Rogers and the housekeeper had retired.
Hoyne surveyed the finished job with frank admiration.
“If there’s anything in this room when Ritsky turns the switch those three mechanical eyes will sure spot it,” he said enthusiastically.
“Now, Mr. Ritsky,” began the doctor, “I want you to place yourself entirely in our hands for the night. Keep cool, fear nothing, and carry out my instructions to the letter. I suggest that you go to bed now and endeavor to get some sleep. If the apparition troubles you, do just as you have done in the past—turn on the light. Do not, however, touch the light switch unless the thing appears. The photographic plates, when developed, will tell whether you have been suffering from a mere hallucination induced by auto-suggestion or if genuine materialization phenomena have occurred.”