“Do you know,” continued my companion, “he is performing a marvel with my little Lenore? He has gained a great ascendancy over her in these few days. This morning, for a purpose which you will realize I considered highly important, I endeavored, alone with her in my own apartment, to place her in the clairvoyant state. For the first time, I failed. Her mind is no longer a pellucid mirror, reflecting truths without color or refraction. She is under the influence of a counter-will, as strong as my own—and mine moves mountains,” he added, with a laugh.
“I shouldn’t think you would like it.”
“I don’t; but she is going home tomorrow. I will tell you why I wished to procure Lenore’s aid again. I have succeeded in tracing Leesy Sullivan to this village. She came here the day after we frightened her from Brooklyn—that is, she got off the cars at a little station about six miles from here, not daring to land at this depot, and, I have no doubt, started on foot for Blankville, coming here in the night.”
“That aunt of hers is in the work,” I exclaimed. “We are justified in taking any step to compel her to own up where she conceals that girl.”
“I am convinced that her aunt knows nothing whatever about her. Has Mrs. Scott kept a sharp lookout at the villa?”
“She has not seen her since that first day; and I believe it would be difficult for her to set her foot on the place without being discovered, for the woman has got it into her head that the place is haunted, and she is on guard night and day.”
“Haunted?”
Mr. Burton sat down and drew up his chair with an appearance of interest, which led me to recount our experiences at the villa, and my intention of completing my researches that night, in his company, if he had no objection. He said, “Of course; it would give him pleasure; he liked nothing better than an adventure of the kind.”
In fact, the idea evidently pleased him immensely; his face brightened, and after that, for the rest of the day, for the first time in our brief acquaintance, I saw him a little flurried and expectant. One of his mottoes was:
“Learn to labor, and to wait.”
His was one of those minds which would have kept silence seven years, rather than speak a moment too soon; he was seldom in a hurry, no matter what was at stake; but the fancy for lying perdu in a haunted house, to “nab” a ghost, was a novelty in his detective experience, which inwardly amused him.
He smiled to himself more than once during the intervening hours. As soon as tea was over, we excused ourselves to the family, kissed Lenore, and, saying that Mr. Burton would stay with me all night, we took our departure. I left the conduct of the proceedings in his hands. When we reached the cottage, we found Mrs. Scott disposed to regard the non-fulfillment of my engagement on the previous night as proof that I was frightened from the pursuit; she accepted my excuse, however, and highly approved of my having a companion in the spiritual dangers which I was about to encounter. She made us, moreover, some of her excellent coffee, to aid us in keeping awake, and gave us her prayers for our protection along with the keys of the house.
“Treat a ghost as you would any other burglar,” said my companion, as we approached the villa, in the darkness, by the back entrance. “Steal a march on him if you can.”
It was a wild night for an enterprise like ours. It reminded me of that night upon which Henry Moreland was murdered. One of those sudden changes in the weather, common to our climate, had been transpiring through the day, and now the warm, wild wind which brings in the “January thaw,” was blowing about the place, making every loose board creak, and rubbing the bare branches of the trees against each other with a grating sound. Black clouds, with ragged edges, skurried along the air, with the large stars looking down between, with wide, bright eyes, as of fear. While we stood outside, the great drops began to patter down; and presently it was raining violently, as it rained that night. As gently as if he were a robber making a felonious entrance, Mr. Burton turned the key in the lock; we entered the thick darkness of the house, closed the door, and stole noiselessly, I taking the lead, along the stairs and corridors, until we came to Henry’s room. This we entered, and, finding chairs, sat down upon either side the little table in absolute silence. But we might safely have knocked over half the furniture without giving alarm to any inmate—had there been an inmate of the room or villa—such a tremendous uproar was now made by the elements. As the rain dashed fitfully against the windows, and the wind shook the solitary building, I was nearly overpowered with the memories which the place and the storm so vivified. I was in a fit mood to become a convert to a nocturnal specter—in that hour of gloom and tempest, under the roof of the murdered, the material world seemed not so far removed from the awful and shadowy confines of the spiritual, as it appeared in the common routine of daylight life. As my heart thumped loudly with the agitation of feelings almost too powerful for mortal endurance, I was glad to consider that my companion was cool, calm and vigilant. He had no such memories of the wind and rain to overwhelm him as I had; this roof was not the roof of his friend—he did not know Eleanor.
It was rather impressive to the dullest imagination to be sitting there at night, in that empty mansion, in
