"There's something in the room!" cried Eve, hysterically, "I mean--something--besides us--something alive!" "No, ma'am," said Stebbins, solemnly, "what's in here ain't alive, ma'am. I ain't been in here myself, since that night I slep' here, and I wouldn't be now, only to show you folks the room. I sort of feel 's if I'd shifted the responsibility to you folks now. I don't seem to feel the same fear of the ha'nt, like I was here alone." "_Don't_ say ha'nt! Stop it!" and Eve almost shrieked at him. "Yes, ma'am. Ghost, ma'am. But ha'nt it is, and ha'nt it will be, till the crack o' doom. Air ye all satisfied with your bargain?" No one answered, for every one was conscious of a subtle presence and each glanced fearfully, furtively about, nerves shaken, wills enfeebled, vitality low. "What is it?" whispered Eve. "Imagination!" declared Mr. Bruce, but he shook his shoulders as he spoke, as if ridding himself of an incubus. There was a chilliness that was not like honest cold, there was a stillness that was not an ordinary silence, and there was an impelling desire in every heart to get out of that room and never return. But all were game, and when at last Stebbins said, "Seen enough?" they almost tumbled over one another in a burst of relief at the thought of exit. The great hall seemed cheerful by contrast, and Landon, in a voice he strove to make matter-of-fact, said, "Thank you, Stebbins, you have certainly given us what we asked for." "Yes, sir. Did you notice it, sir?" "What?" "The smell--the odour--in that room?" "I did," said Eve, "I noticed the odour of prussic acid." "Yes, ma'am," said Stebbins, "that's what I meant." CHAPTER V Eve's Experience The investigators had investigated for a week. They were now having tea in the great hall, to whose shadowy distances and shabby appointments they had become somewhat accustomed. Kept up to the mark by the Landons, old Jed Thorpe had developed positive talents as a butler, and with plenty of lamps and candles, and a couple of willing, if ignorant maids, the household machinery ran fairly smoothly. Supplies were procured in East Dryden or sent up from New York markets and by day the party was usually a gay-hearted, merry-mannered country house group. Every day at tea-time, they recounted any individual experiences that might seem mysterious, and discussed them. "It's this way," Professor Hardwick summed up; "the determining factor is the dark. Ghosts and haunted houses are all very well at night, but daylight dispels them as a sound breaks silence." "What about my experience when I slept in the Room with the Tassels," growled Gifford Bruce. Braye laughed. "You queered yourself, Uncle Gif, when you announced before we started, that you were not bound to good faith. _Your_ ghost stories are discounted before you tell 'em!" "But I did see a shape,--a shadowy form, like a tall woman with a shawl over her head----"