  Ned Blake and Tommy Beals found Sam slumped on a bench in the Beals garden, staring moodily at a long row of unweeded carrots. “Nozzur, I ain’t gwine ter have no doin’s with dead folks—not any!” muttered the negro, when Ned and Tommy had broached the subject of their visit. “But how do you know that Eli Coleson is dead?” argued Ned. “This letter was written on a typewriter and if it is really from Eli, why it proves that he isn’t dead, doesn’t it?” Sam shook his woolly head obstinately. “Cain’t be sure of nuffin’,” he insisted. “You’ve seen lots of ghosts, haven’t you, Sam?” asked Tommy Beals coaxingly. “Suttinly I has! A plenty of ’em!” replied the negro, with deep conviction. “Well, have you ever seen or heard of one that used a typewriter?” demanded Beals. Sam was forced to admit that he never had, and Ned took advantage of this opening to discourse forcefully against such ghostly possibility. Like most of his race, Sam was readily susceptible to influence and after an hour of diplomatic argument, the boys succeeded in bolstering his resolution sufficiently to make it safe for them to leave him for the present. “Do you think he’ll stick?” asked Ned anxiously, as he cast a backward glance at the negro, who had finally bent to his weeding of the carrot patch. “I think he will—unless he gets another jolt of some kind,” replied Beals. “I’ll keep an eye on him till Saturday noon. The town clerk’s office closes at noon on Saturday, and after then we’ll be safe over the week-end anyhow.” “Yes, and I’ll make it a point to be on hand with seventy-five dollars when the office opens Monday morning!” declared Ned. “I’ll feel a lot easier in my mind after that lease has been paid for in full. In the meantime we may discover who wrote this letter to Sam. If it’s only a joke, why let’s take it that way; but if it’s an attempt by somebody to interfere with our scheme, we’ll have to be on our guard.” Two days passed with no clue to the writer of the warning letter. No further attempt had been made to frighten the negro and Sam had regained much of his usual self-confidence. Early on Saturday evening, the boys and Sam, whom they had hardly allowed out of their sight, wedged themselves into Dave’s flivver and arrived at the Coleson house in time to complete a few finishing touches before the first of a long line of autos turned in at the gate and parked among the scrubby oaks in front of the house. Tommy Beals stood at the open door to collect the admission fees and soon the rooms were filled with a gaily chattering crowd of young people who giggled and squealed their appreciation of the weird atmosphere of the place. A hundred flickering candles cast an uncertain, wavering light over the decorations of flags and bunting which had been supplemented with dozens of black paper cats, whose white and yellow eyes made of daisy heads glared forth in baleful fashion. Numerous toy balloons, each decorated with phosphorescent paint to represent a human skull, were tethered in the dark corners, where they swayed and bobbed in the varying drafts with ghostly effect. In the butler’s pantry stood Sam, attired in waiter’s dress, with a gleaming expanse of shirt front, and barricaded behind containers of ice cream and bottles of soft drinks for sale at profitable prices. Promptly at eight o’clock the orchestra took its place, and the couples stepped out across the polished floor in time with the blare of syncopated jazz. For several hours dance numbers followed in rapid succession, the orchestra responding valiantly to encore applause, while black Sam, under the direction of Tommy Beals, did a thriving business in ministering to the parched throats of the perspiring dancers. “Whew! It’s hot!” gasped Charlie Rogers, after a particularly long number in which his saxophone had carried the major part. “Can’t you open those north shutters, Ned, and let a little breeze blow through here?” Laying down his trumpet, Ned crossed the room and threw open a shutter. Instantly a violent gust of wind swept in from the lake, extinguishing every candle and plunging the room into pitchy blackness. A babel of voices burst forth at this unexpected occurrence, but was instantly hushed at sight of a strange spot of light, which made its sudden appearance upon the wall of the room. For a moment it remained stationary, then with a hesitating, uncertain movement, as though feeling its way, it advanced along the wall midway between floor and ceiling and vanished. The breathless silence that followed was broken by a groan of abject terror from Sam. Somewhere a girl screamed hysterically. Closing the shutter with a bang, Ned fumbled for matches and relighted a candle. Several of the other boys followed suit and soon the room was again as bright as the rather dim flares could make it. The orchestra broke into a peppy foxtrot and the recently startled crowd, laughing gaily at what was seemingly one of the advertised “stunts,” swung again into the dance. “Nice stuff, Ned!” applauded Wat Sanford, as he finished the number with a long roll of the snare drum and the customary crash of the cymbal. “That gave ’em quite a kick! How did you manage it so cleverly?” “I’ll tell you about it later,” replied Ned. “They’re calling for an encore. Let’s give ’em a hot one.” At midnight the dance ended and a line of automobiles streamed homeward through the darkness. Pausing only long enough to assure themselves that the house was securely locked, the boys and Sam followed after. “How much did we take in, Fatty?” asked Dick Somers of the plump treasurer at his side. “Eighty-six dollars for admissions and seventeen-fifty on the refreshments,” replied Beals. “Not so bad for the first night and I guess everybody was pleased with the way things went. By the way, Ned, that was quite a stunt of yours. Tell us about it.” “Yes; let’s hear how you worked it,” urged several voices. “Well, I’m glad you all approved of it, and I guess it satisfied such of the crowd as were expecting some haunted stuff,” replied Ned. “It’s too long a story to start on tonight. Sometime I’ll try to show you how it was done.” At the outskirts of town, Sam was dropped at the gate of his humble dwelling, and hardly was the car again in motion when Ned startled his companions with this announcement. “Boys, I didn’t want to mention it before Sam, for fear of scaring him worse than he’s scared already, but I’ll tell you now that the stunt you saw was no doing of mine. What that light was or where it came from I don’t know any more than any of you do—but I mean to find out!” |
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