After closing and bolting the windows they placed the step-ladder in the hallway beside Ritsky’s door. Then they obtained a duplicate key from him and asked him to lock himself in, removing his key so they might gain entrance at any time.
When everything was ready they quietly brought two chairs into the hall from the spare bedroom and began their silent vigil.
_III._
Both men sat in silence for nearly three hours. The doctor seemed lost in thought, and Hoyne nervously masticated his inevitable unlighted cigar. The house was quiet, except for the ticking of the hall clock and its hourly chiming announcements of the flight of time.
Shortly after the clock struck two they heard a low, scarcely audible moan.
“What was that?” whispered the detective, hoarsely.
“Wait!” the doctor replied.
Presently it was repeated, followed by prolonged sobbing.
“It’s Miss Rogers,” said Hoyne, excitedly.
Doctor Dorp rose and softly tiptoed to the door of the child’s bed chamber. After listening there for a moment he noiselessly opened the door and entered. Presently he returned, leaving the door ajar. The sobbing and moaning continued.
“Just as I expected,” he said. “I want you to go in the child’s room, keep quiet, and make a mental note of everything you see and hear. Stay there until I call you, and be prepared for a startling sight.”
“Wh—what is it?” asked Hoyne, nervously.
“Nothing that will hurt you. What’s the matter? Are you afraid?”
“Afraid, hell!” growled Hoyne. “Can’t a man ask you a question—”
“No time to answer questions now. Get in there and do as I say if you want to be of any assistance.”
“All right, Doc. It’s your party.”
The big detective entered the room of the sobbing child and squeezed his great bulk into a dainty rocking chair from which he could view her bed. She tossed from side to side, moaning as if in pain, and Hoyne, pitying her, wondered why the doctor did not awaken her.
Presently she ceased her convulsive movements, clenched her hands, and uttered a low, gurgling cry, as a white, filmy mass slowly emerged from between her lips. The amazed detective stared with open mouth, so frightened that he forgot to chew his cigar. The filmy material continued to pour forth for several minutes that seemed like hours to the tense watcher. Then it formed a nebulous, wispy cloud above the bed, completely detached itself from the girl, and floated out through the half-opened door.
Doctor Dorp, standing in the hallway, saw a white, misty thing of indefinite outline emerge from the bedroom. It floated through the hall and paused directly in front of Ritsky’s door. He approached it cautiously and noiselessly, and noticed that it grew rapidly smaller. Then he discovered the reason. It was flowing _through the keyhole_!
In a short time it had totally disappeared. He waited breathlessly.
_What was that?_ The whining cry of a hound broke the stillness! He mounted the step-ladder in order to view the interior of the room through the glass transom. He had scarcely placed his foot on the second step when the whining noise changed to a gurgling growl that was followed by a shriek of mortal terror and the dull report of the flash-gun.
Leaping down from the ladder, the doctor called Hoyne, and they entered the “haunted” bed chamber. The room was brilliantly lighted by the alabaster bowl and filled with the sickening fumes of flash-powder.
Hoyne opened the windows and returned to where the doctor was thoughtfully viewing Ritsky, who had apparently fainted. He had fallen half out of bed, and hung there with one bony arm trailing and his emaciated face a picture of abject fear.
“My God!” exclaimed Hoyne. “Look there on his throat and chest. _The frothy slaver of a hound!_”
The doctor took a small porcelain dish from his pocket, removed the lid, and with the blade of his pocket knife, scraped part of the slimy deposit into the receptacle.
“Hadn’t we better try to bring him to?” inquired Hoyne.
After they had lifted him back in bed the doctor leaned over and held his ear to the breast of the recumbent man. He took his stethoscope from his case and listened again. Then he straightened gravely.
“No earthly power can bring him to,” he said, softly, “_Ritsky is dead!_”
_IV._
The detective remained in the house, pending the arrival of the coroner and undertaker, while Doctor Dorp hurried home with his paraphernalia and the sample of slime he had scraped from the corpse. Hoyne was puzzled by the fact that the doctor searched the house and the clothing of the dead man before departing.
The detective was kept busy at the Ritsky apartment until nearly ten o’clock. After stopping at a restaurant for a bit of breakfast and a cup of coffee, he went directly to the doctor’s home.
He found the psychologist in his laboratory, engrossed in a complicated chemical experiment. He shook a test tube, which he had been heating over a small alcohol lamp, held it up to the light, stood it in a small rack in which were a number of others partly filled with liquid, and nodded cordially to his friend.
“Morning, Doc.,” greeted Hoyne. “Have you doped out what we are going to tell the coroner yet?”
“I knew the direct cause of Ritsky’s death long ago. It was fear. The indirect cause, the thing that induced the fear, required careful examination and considerable chemical research.”
“And it was—”
“Psychoplasm.”
“I don’t get you, Doc. What is psychoplasm?”
“No doubt you have heard of the substance called ectoplasm, regarding which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has delivered numerous lectures, or an identical substance called teleplasm, discovered by Baron Von Schrenck Notzing while attending materialization seances with the medium known as Eva.
“While the baron was observing and photographing this substance in Europe, my friend and colleague, Professor James Braddock, was conducting similar investigations in this country. He named the substance psychoplasm, and I like the name better than either of the other two, as it is undoubtedly created or generated from invisible particles of matter through the power of the subjective mind.
“I have examined and analyzed many samples of this substance in the past. The plate I now have under the compound microscope, and the different chemical determinations I have just completed, show conclusively that this is psychoplasm.”
“But how—where did it come from?”
“I learned something of the history of Ritsky and his ward yesterday. Let me enlighten you on that score first:
“The man told the truth when he said he was appointed guardian of his niece, and also when he said that he had shot a dog. The dog, in question, was a Russian wolfhound, a present sent to the girl by her parents while they were touring Russia. He was only half grown when he arrived, and the two soon became boon companions, frolicking and playing about the grounds together or romping through the big house.
“Some time after the death of Olga’s parents, Ritsky, then editor of a radical newspaper in New York, took up his abode at Villa Rogers. The dog, by that time full grown, took a violent dislike to him and, on one occasion, bit him quite severely. When he announced his intention of having the animal shot the girl wept violently and swore that she would kill herself if Shag, as she had named him, were killed. It seemed that she regarded him as a token of the love of her parents who had sailed away, never to return.”
“_Shag!_ That’s the name!” broke in Hoyne, excitedly. “After that white thing floated out of the room she made noises like a dog and then answered them, saying ‘Good old Shag,’ and patting an imaginary head. She sure gave me the creeps, though, when she let out that growl.”
“The vengeful Ritsky,” continued the doctor, “was determined that Shag should die, and found an opportunity to shoot him with a pistol when the girl was in the house. Shortly after, the faithful creature dragged himself to the feet of his mistress and died in her arms. He could not tell her who had taken his life, but she must have known subjectively, and as a result entertained a hatred for her uncle of which she objectively knew nothing.
“Most people have potential mediumistic power. How this power is developed in certain individuals and remains practically dormant in others is a question that has never been satisfactorily explained. I personally believe that it is often developed because of intense emotional repressions which, unable to find an outlet in a normal manner through the objective mind, find expression in abnormal psychic manifestations.
“This seemed to be the case with Olga Rogers. She developed the power subjectively without objective knowledge that it existed. One of the most striking of psychic powers is that of creating or assembling the substance called psychoplasm, causing it to assume various forms, and to move as if endowed with a mind of its own.
“Olga developed this peculiar power to a remarkable degree. Acting under the direction of her subjective intelligence, the substance assumed the form of her beloved animal companion and sought revenge on its slayer. We arrived a day too late to save the object of her unconscious hatred.”