“I know. That’s why I’m so sure that there’s something deep down behind it all that I don’t understand. Something that Dad knows and fears, and won’t admit. Something I don’t understand at all. I think it’s that mainly that has him scared — that and what he’s afraid is going to happen.”
“What is going to happen?” Merlini repeated. “Do you know?”
“No. But I think Father does, and he’s afraid — deathly afraid. I’ve never seen him like this before. I — we’ve got to do something quickly.” Her voice was strained now, and tense. She threw me a brief glance. “Dad can be a holy terror sometimes. But — Mother died when I was born. I have no one else, and — well I can’t simply stand by and see him go to pieces as he’s doing. He’s always been so completely confident, so sure of himself. And he still tries — but it’s not the same. He’s jumpy. His nerves are shot. I’ve asked him to see Doctor Haggard. He refuses. He’s tried so hard to prove that things like this are possible, and now, when he seems to have done it, it’s apparently more than he bargained for.”
Merlini regarded her thoughtfully. “What does Mrs. Wolff think? Does she agree that he has done it?”
Kay didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “You know who she was when Dad married her?”
Merlini nodded. “That’s why I asked.”
“Then she would agree, I suppose, wouldn’t she?”
“She might. But don’t you know? What has she said?”
Kay frowned. “Anne and I aren’t exactly bosom pals. She—”
“Pardon me, Kay,” I said, “but I’m way behind. Who was she before she married your father?”
“She was a medium,” Merlini answered. “She made a bit of a stir in psychic circles back in ’35. Her particular phenomena were the production of cold breezes of apparent astral origin and spirit lights. A favorable report concerning her appeared over Galt’s name in the Journal of Psychic Research which he edits and which Wolff backs. A year or so later Dudley Wolff married her.” Merlini looked at Kay. “Galt told me once that some months later the phenomena grew weaker and finally ceased altogether as sometimes happens. Is that right?”
“Yes. She hasn’t done anything of the sort in a long time.”
“But you think she might have something to do with what is happening now?”
“I don’t know what to think. You see, she’s as scared as Dad is. When we saw the ghost this morning she fainted.”
“Oh, you’ve seen it too?”
Kathryn looked up at the deserted stage and at the single electric light that shone there, hanging down on a long cord from the flies. Her face in the pale light that reached us looked white and tired. And, as she talked, the shadows of the empty auditorium crowded close around us.
“Yes. This morning — in the upper hall. We were all there, Dad, Anne, Dunning—”
Merlini stopped her. “Wait. Where did all this happen? What house is it that’s haunted?”
“Ours, in Mamaroneck. Father and the others took the plane back from Miami last night after I’d phoned long distance and told him about the flower vase that fell and smashed in the hall when Phillips and I were there less than ten feet away. I was actually looking at it when it tipped over. And it seemed exactly as if someone — someone we couldn’t see had pushed it. And then—”
“Miss Wolff,” Merlini broke in. “Please. We’re not going at this right at all. I don’t even know who Phillips is. Let’s go way back to the beginning and then sneak up on the ghost slow and easy and in a straight line. When was it that you disagreed with your father and left home?”
“Sunday morning, a week ago. With no warning at all, Dad suddenly decided that we were all going to Miami. He didn’t discuss it; he merely issued orders. When I woke I found that the maid had already packed my bags. I protested. I didn’t want to go anywhere just then. I knew you had issued a casting call for Monday morning. Dad insisted. They could have heard him across on Long Island. I can handle him sometimes, but this wasn’t one of them. I pretended finally to give in and went with them to the airport. But just before the plane took off, I ducked out.”
“Did he explain this sudden yearning for Miami?”
“I—” Kay gave me a sidewise glance, then looked at the floor. “No. He didn’t.”
“I know that answer,” I said. “He was avoiding me. The twenty-five miles between Mamaroneck and New York is too close for comfort for either of us. And he didn’t want me to see Kay. He even managed it so that I thought she was in Miami when she wasn’t. If I had known he was so afraid of ghosts, I’d have dressed up in a sheet and—”
“You,” Merlini said. “I thought you’d come into this, somewhere. The more I hear the less I understand. But go on, Miss Wolff. Then what?”
I started once more to try to talk to Kay, but she got there first.
“I took an apartment in the Village,” she said. “I rehearsed here all week. Then, on Sunday, I took a chance on going out to the house to pick up some clothes I needed. I didn’t think Phillips — he’s the butler — would dare to hold me forcibly. He wasn’t even surprised when I walked in. He was too upset. That was when the vase fell and smashed — just after I’d come in. There was no one in the house, and it wasn’t done with wires or threads. I looked.”
“No one else in the house?” Merlini asked. “Aren’t there other servants?”
“Not Sunday. Phillips was hiring more. The maids and the cook left on Friday without giving notice, the day after Scotty Douglass disappeared.”
“The day after—” Merlini shook his head in a baffled way. “You’re hopping, skipping, and jumping again. Who is Scotty?”
“Our boatkeeper and general handy man of all work. No one has seen him since last Wednesday night. None of his clothes or the other things in his rooms over the boathouse are missing. Kay looked up at the stage, frowning. “He has simply vanished into thin air like one of your tricks. I–I don’t like it. I’m afraid—”
“Were the police notified?”
“No. Phillips phoned Father Friday after the other servants quit. He suggested that. But Dad vetoed it. Phillips isn’t exactly a cheerful soul. There was a murder once at a place where he worked — an unsolved one — and I’ve always felt that he rather looked forward to the next one. He reads too many detective stories and true-crime magazines. Dad knows him and discounts his viewing with alarm. He told Phillips Scotty had probably gone off, as he’s done once or twice before, on a drinking spree. ‘When he returns,’ Dad said, ‘dock him and warn him that next time he’s fired.’ Dad’s very lenient with Scotty. He saved Dad’s life two years ago when the Seahawk burned off Montauk Point.
“But it’s been four days and more now. And not a sign of Scotty. He’s never stayed away this long before. And he couldn’t have quit like the others. He’d have taken his clothes. I like Scotty. He taught me to sail when I was knee-high to a duck. I’m afraid something has happened to him. If Dad doesn’t report to the police, I’m going to.”
“I think I agree,” Merlini said. “Scotty vanishes on Wednesday night or sometime shortly after. The maids and the cook light out on Friday. Sunday a flower vase acts oddly. What else? Did the maids see the ghost?”
“I don’t know. I think it was the midnight noises and the broken china. There are rappings all through the house, and footsteps. Dishes have a habit of getting out of the china closet in the night and breaking themselves. The last few nights pictures have begun to change places on the walls, statuary moves about, ink bottles tip over.”
Merlini’s interest waxed rapidly. “Poltergeist phenomena,” he said. “Best grade. Your father and Galt should be tickled pink at such a made-to-order chance to investigate.”