(Special Delivery.)
To MRS. CLARA YANCY,
The Yadkin, Baltimore.
Washington, Dec. 22, 1906.
Dear Madam:
I regret very much leaving you so abruptly today. I will send you money
for the board owing as soon as I can. Until then will you please take
good care of my trunk.
Respectfully,
HUGH IREDELL.
_The Pink Ghost of Franklin Square_
The Ghost appeared very modestly at first. Some children sitting on a
bench just before dark saw it in the second-story window of one of those
big old brownstone fronts on Fayette street, on the south side of
Franklin Square. It seemed so uncanny and weird to them that they talked
a lot about it when they went that evening to their homes on South
Stricker street. The parents pooh-poohed it, of course, and told the
children there was no cause for alarm. But when one of the little girls,
after a restless, troubled effort to get to sleep, had had a strenuous
nightmare, and had alarmed the household by shrieking that the woman in
pink was beckoning, the older folk decided to investigate.
The next night there was no ghost. Two fathers sat with the children in
the Square from supper time until after 9 o'clock, but nothing happened.
Naturally, the fathers thought it a pure case of nerves. But the
children were so insistent and so circumstantial in their story that the
older heads wavered and returned on the following evening.
And then they saw the Ghost!
Just after the June sun had left the trees and a few dying gleams were
coloring the tops of the tall houses on Carey street, on the east side
of the Square, the Ghost showed itself at the window the children had
pointed out. It was a figure nebulous and hazy, but undeniably pink. It
appeared right at the window, and after standing still for a moment
began to wave its long arms with fantastic gestures, and to make other
movements which the children interpreted as beckoning to them. Then it
evaporated, but in another moment reappeared and went through more
gyrations.
The exclamations of the children attracted the attention of others in
the Square, and soon a score of people stood fascinated and puzzled by
the weird vision. It lasted perhaps five minutes more, quite up to when
darkness settled down on the Square, and none was able to explain or
give any reasonable solution of what all had undeniably seen. They
continued to watch, and continued to discuss, but the vanished Ghost
came no more that evening.
The next night, the news having spread, there were a hundred persons or
more in the southeast part of the Square. The Ghost came on time and
went through the same antics. The wonderment and the mystery grew. And
still none could explain, though a resident of the block stated that the
house under watch was temporarily without occupants, as the family who
dwelt in it had been gone to Europe for some weeks.
It was four days after this before the police heard of it. By that time,
with the exception of the "cops," it seemed as though everybody in
Southwest Baltimore was discussing the Ghost. A reporter worked up a
lively tale about it for an afternoon paper, and Round Sergeant Norman,
as he left the station-house that evening, was instructed to "lay the
Ghost." You know the police don't believe in the supernatural. Too often
etherealized ghosts turn out to be most mundane burglars and
housebreakers.
The Sergeant found a thousand eager watchers in the Square when he
arrived. The afternoon paper had evidently been digested well. Each
watcher was straining his eyes at the brownstone mansion on Fayette
street. From the windows of several Carey-street houses curious persons
leaned out, and even on the west, at the Franklin-Square Hospital, there
were other interested observers.
"It's either a 'fake' or a burglar," declared the Sergeant positively,
as he took the "cub" reporter to task for making such capital out of the
Ghost. He was just about to narrate some of his own experiences with
bogus spooks when the Pink Ghost became visible, and the Sergeant
started and uttered a surprised exclamation. A thousand other pairs of
eyes had seen it, and a thousand throats called out, in varied strength
of sound:
"There it is! There it is!"
A hush fell over the crowd as they watched the figure in pink. The
deepening shadows toned the dark-brown front of the mansion until it
framed the outlines in the window with considerable positiveness. But
the uncanny nature of the appearance was also in evidence, for one could
see right through the figure in pink to the room behind it. Those near
the Round Sergeant saw him remove his helmet and mop the increasing
perspiration from his forehead.
"That beats the devil," he muttered.
The Ghost began to wave its arms, to bend over and then straighten up;
to beckon and then to make gestures as if of denial. The Sergeant's awe
was great, but no whit more intense than that of the crowd. They were
face to face with a bit of the supernatural, puzzled, wondering,
doubting, scoffing, fascinated, alarmed.
"By Jiminy!" exclaimed the Sergeant. "That's the strangest thing I've
ever seen, Howard. We'll have to go into that house."
But their visit that night was destined to be futile. Some minutes were
lost in gaining access to the rear roof through the house next on the
west, and some minutes more in prying open a shutter and forcing a
carefully locked sash. By this time the twilight had deepened into
night, and the Sergeant lit a borrowed lantern to make the trip down the
stairway to the second-story front. There was nothing strange or
supernatural in the room; no sign of a pink ghost or any other being,
human or spiritual. The furniture and other fittings seemed undisturbed
and as regularly arranged as they had probably been when the owners went
away. And when Howard, the reporter, raised a window, a hundred watchers
in the street and Square were ready to vouchsafe the information that
the Ghost had been gone quite ten minutes.
The Sergeant swore. Then he muttered: "It certainly is queer." Then he
took Howard on a thorough inspection of the house, from cellar to roof.
They poked into cupboards, turned over mattresses, peeped into bureau
drawers and boxes and a score of other articles too small to have hidden
anything human. But nary a sign was there of ghost, burglar or joker.
"It beats the devil," again remarked the Sergeant as he and Howard,
perspiringly hot, left the house about 9 o'clock.
The following morning the papers were full of it. Southwest Baltimore no
longer mortgaged the new sensation. All Baltimore discussed it and
speculated what it might be. And, as a result, the crowd of watchers as
the June day drew to a close numbered not one, but many, thousands.
Around at the Concord Club they said it beat any political mass-meeting
ever seen. The Square was overrun, and everybody talked "Pink Ghost."
Captain Delany ordered out the police reserves to keep the crowd in
check and give the cars a chance to get by. With Round Sergeant Norman,
the Captain personally superintended the preparations to lay the ghost.
The Pink Ghost did not disappoint them. It came to the window on
scheduled time--just as the shadows deepened in Franklin Square--and it
waved its arms from the window and beckoned to the awed and puzzled
multitude. Captain Delany gave a signal, and from front and rear his
picked men swarmed into the empty house and rushed up the stairway. The
Round Sergeant was in the van. He had been berated and ridiculed for
not solving the mystery the night before, and he determined to be in at
the death now. But as he crossed the threshold of the front room he
started back in amazement and fell against the bluecoat behind him. The
Pink Ghost was not in the window, but swaying and frantically waving on
the west wall of the room.
"My God! what is it?" cried the man behind.
Norman could only point to the wall. His own hair was, he felt, actually
raising his helmet off his head, and there was a curious contraction in
his throat. In an instant, however, this had passed, and, with club in
hand, he charged bravely upon the Ghost. As he neared it, however, a
surprise awaited him. Instead of waving arms, he saw his own burly form
shadowed on the outer edge of the pink nebula. He turned upon his heel,
quickly bent over, and then burst into loud laughter. For him the riddle
of the Pink Ghost was solved.
"What is it, Norman? What is it, man? Is he crazy?"
The other policemen pushed into the room to be enlightened, but the
Sergeant only laughed the more immoderately. Delany became angry and
started to seize Norman by the shoulder. This brought the Captain into
the pink nebula and he understood Norman's hilarity.
"By gad, that's funny," he cried, and he entered upon a joint spasm of
mirth. The other bluecoats drew near, and as each came into the pink
glow the chorus swelled. Such a lot of uproarious policemen had rarely
been known in Baltimore.
* * * * *
Five minutes later Captain Delany and Sergeant Norman, having at last
controlled themselves, left the closing of the house to subordinates and
crossed the square to a house on Carey street, where they asked to see a
young lady abiding there. She was a very stately and fine-looking young
woman, and when she tripped down into the parlor the attractiveness of
her face was heightened by a slight flush, due most likely to her
wonderment at a visit from two policemen. When they left her ten minutes
later her face was rosy red and her stately carriage had given way to a
combination of mirth and embarrassment. But Delany had her positive
assurance that there would be no more Pink Ghost.
"For, you see, it was this way," he explained to the reporters who
stopped him outside. "The young woman seems to have a steady beau every
evening, for whom she likes to do a bit of fixin' up and primping. And
after supper she makes her way to her room, which is in the front of the
top floor, and there she combs and rearranges her hair and puts on
gew-gaws and trimmings. And in these long summer days, when the sun has
left the square, it is still comin' into those high windows."
"But what has she to do with the Ghost?" asked one irrepressible.
"I was a-comin' to that, youngster," retorted the man in blue; "but if
ye're overanxious, it may satisfy yer to know she was the Pink Ghost.
Leastwise, the sun's reflection was the ghost and she was the movin'
figure that made the shadow do such queer antics. She had a bureau in
the back of her room so fixed that when the rays of the dying sun come
into the window on the north they are reflected in the bureau glass and
pass out of the south window and across the square to that there
brownstone front where you all saw the Ghost. Every time she raised her
arms to her hair or made any other movement in dressing before the
mirror she butt into the reflection and caused your Pink Ghost to do
stunts."
"And you say there won't be any more Pink Ghost?"
"Not unless the young woman gets careless and leaves up that south
blind. For she sort o' has an idea tonight that the whole of this end of
town has been watching her get ready to meet her beau."
_The Vanished Mummy_
In the detective headquarters in the Courthouse they have mistakenly
built up a very high notion of my sleuth qualities. Personally I have
always felt that such help as I have been able to render them in two or
three different cases was most largely due to luck, and only in a small
degree to the exercise of logic and common sense in making deductions of
subsequently proven importance from apparently trivial facts.
Nevertheless, the good fortune that attended me in those cases fixed my
reputation with them as the Sherlock Holmes of Baltimore, while the
generosity with which I permitted them to take all the glory of solving
the mysteries made me solid and caused them to consult me the more
frequently in hours of perplexity. At the same time, I confess it, the
love of the game made me eager to be in it and I not only installed a
'phone in my apartment in the Arundel, but I was always careful, in
absenting myself from my office or my flat, to leave word where I would
most likely be found during the next few hours. In this way the puzzled
Vidocqs were usually able to reach me when my help was needed.
I was whiling away a rainy Saturday afternoon at the Maryland a few
weeks ago when I saw Dorland making signs to me from the passageway
behind the boxes on the right of the theatre. Lieutenant Amers'
redcoated British band, of which I had grown very fond, was rendering
the final crashing bars of the overture to "Wilhelm Tell," and, with my
passionate love for music, I was loth to leave until the programme was
completed. But Dorland was a detective who never came for me unless
there was an interesting mystery to offer and I left my seat at once and
joined him in the lobby.
"Which way, Dorland?" I asked.
"Woman's College, sir," he answered, just as briefly.
I gave an exclamation of surprise. An institution attended by hundreds
of girls from the best families of America was not the place one would
expect a mystery of crime.
"Very curious case, sir. Mummy of an Egyptian princess stolen."
"Odd affair," I remarked. "Gives promise of being most unusual. Any
clue?"
"Not a shred, sir."
On our way out to the College on a Roland-Park car, Dorland gave me a
recital of such facts as he had learned. The mummy had been secured in
Egypt with much difficulty by President Goucher and was one of the
prized possessions of the College museum. Partly divested of its
wrappings of fine linen turned brown with the centuries, the body of
this daughter of the Pharaohs had been exhibited in a glass case on the
second floor of Goucher Hall, while nearby had been placed the case in
which it had rested for ages, a case of wood painted with figures and
hieroglyphics that told the rank and virtues of the little lady. The
night before at 6 o'clock the mummy had been in its place. In the
morning when the janitor's wife was sweeping she discovered the glass
lid prized open and the mummy gone. The night watchman saw nothing,
heard nothing.
"And what are your theories?" I asked Dorland, as we passed along
Twenty-third street.
"That it was taken to be sold at a good figure to some other museum;
that it was taken to be sold back to the College; that it was a
students' prank; or that it was done by girls being initiated into one
of the College secret societies."
When I had been introduced to and cordially welcomed by a trio of
anxious College officials, the dean hastened to assure me of their
desire to avoid publicity and notoriety.
"Have you questioned any of the girls today?" I asked.
"No," replied the dean; "it being Saturday, there have been few of them
here, and we have sent for none, so that the loss might be kept secret
until we determine on the motive."
A close examination of the empty glass case and its surroundings was
fruitless. Nor did questioning of the janitor and his wife elicit
anything new.
"You cleaned very thoroughly," I said to the woman. "What did you do
with the sweepings?"
"They're in a box in the basement, sir."
At my request the box was brought up. It was a soap box almost full.
"Are these only the sweepings of today?" I asked. The janitor spoke up.
"I emptied all the others yesterday, sir," he declared. With this
assurance, I plunged my hands into the pile and began a minute and
careful search of it, dumping handful after handful on newspapers spread
over a table in Dr. Goucher's office. Dorland kept the others in
conversation, and this fortunately enabled me to make a couple of finds
unnoticed by them.
At the end of 10 minutes I had reached the bottom of the box. Turning
then to the dean, I said:
"How many Canadian students have you here?"
"Canadians? Oh, two--Miss Carothers and Miss Anstey."
"And may I see them?"
"I cannot see"----began the dean warmly.
I hastened to assure him I had no idea of suspecting them.
"Nevertheless," I added, "I should like to question them. I have a
theory that one or the other may help me."
The dean was mollified. "Miss Carothers has been absent sick for several
days. Miss Anstey you can see. She is a charming girl. Her father is one
of the leading Methodist divines of Canada, and an old friend of Dr.
Goucher and myself. She does not live in the College homes, but with a
lady around the corner on Charles street, who is also an old family
friend. I will send you there. She may not be at home just now, but you
can try."
The janitor's wife spoke up, "Miss Anstey was here an hour or so ago,
sir. She was upstairs for a few minutes, and then went out and got in
an auto with a young gentleman."
"I will go around to her home at any rate," I said.
"You have very little hope of finding the mummy, have you not, Mr.
McIver?" asked the dean, anxiously.
"On the contrary," I replied confidently. "I expect to bring back the
Egyptian princess in an hour or two."
He accepted my boast dubiously. "Whatever you do," he urged, "use no
questionable methods, for the sake of the College. If you find the
thief, let me decide whether to prosecute him. If you can get back the
mummy without injury, I would prefer to hush up the affair."
I promised him I would. "I consider this a very unusual case," I said,
"and I believe you will be satisfied with my disposition of it." With
this I left him.
Dorland and the College professor who accompanied us were both eager to
know what clue I had, but I stood them off as we walked round to the
Charles-street dwelling.
Miss Anstey was out, as I had anticipated, but we were graciously
received by Mrs. Eden, her hostess. It was a home of culture and
refinement, and the large parlor abounded in paintings, art objects and
other curios evidently picked up in foreign travel. "I expect Ethel home
soon," said the sweet-faced and sweet-voiced old lady. "She went
motoring this afternoon with a friend, and she said she would be home
to supper."
"We called to ask," I remarked, "whether she had not lost this bit of
jewelry." And to the surprise of Dorland and the professor I produced a
pin I had found in the sweepings of Goucher Hall, a tiny enameled maple
leaf, set around with pearls.
"Yes, that is Ethel's!" exclaimed Mrs. Eden. "I don't think she lost it,
however, for she had recently loaned it to a friend." She smiled. "You
know, young girls nowadays have a great habit of exchanging tokens like
this with young men. It was not so in my day."
"And if I be not rude," I continued, "may I not know the name of this
young man?"
"Why, certainly," replied the lady. "He is Mr. Raymond Harding."
"You mean," I inquired, "the son of Mr. Harding, the bank president?"
The Hardings, as everybody knows, are among the best-known millionaire
families in Baltimore society.
"The same," replied Mrs. Eden. "Miss Anstey and he have been friends for
a couple of years. I am sure both will be grateful to you for finding
this pin. Now that I recall it, it may be that they have already had
words about it being lost. He was here last evening and they were both
rather excited. At breakfast Ethel complained of having a headache and
looked as though she had been crying. They called each other up several
times by 'phone during the morning, but Ethel told me nothing, and I
thought it tactful to say nothing to her. When he came this afternoon I
told her she looked so pale she ought to rest, but she laughed me off."
"We will come again after they have returned," I said to Mrs. Eden as I
rose to go. "Perhaps, as you say, I may be able to straighten out the
little trouble. Meanwhile, I would suggest that you say nothing to
them."
It had grown dark when we stepped outside. Dorland gripped my hand
warmly. "McIver," he exclaimed, "you're a wonder! I see the whole case
now. Gee, but its a rum affair!"
The professor was mystified. "I don't quite see, gentlemen, how the
whole affair is settled. Where is the mummy? And who was the thief?"
"The mummy, professor," I remarked, oracularly, "is most probably in the
automobile of Mr. Raymond Harding."
"You don't mean that he is the thief?"
"I believe he took the mummy. I believe he dropped the pin in doing it.
This also fell out of his auto cap." I produced a gilt paper initial
"H," such as hatters put in headwear for their customers. It was my
second find in the sweepings.
"But the motive, man, the motive!" persisted the professor. "Why should
a millionaire's son break into a Woman's College building to steal a
mummy? It sounds ridiculous."
"That, sir, is the part I want Miss Anstey to explain. It is the only
element of doubt in a perfectly plain chain of circumstances. Raymond
Harding I know slightly, and he has a certain reputation for reckless
pranks, although he's not a bad fellow."
"But surely you don't suspect Ethel Anstey. Why, man, she's a"----
The mournful notes of a Gabriel's horn down at Twenty-second street
betokened the approach of an auto, and interrupted the professor's
eulogium of one who was manifestly a favorite pupil. "Quick!" I
exclaimed; "saunter to the corner." A big touring car came up Charles
street and stopped in front of the Eden home. A slender young chap
stepped out and aided a young lady to descend. They stood for a minute
on the curb beside the machine--undecided, as I figured out, whether the
mummy would be safe there if left alone--and then both passed into the
house.
The three of us with one accord moved down the pavement. "Look on the
rear seat, Dorland," I said, as the headquarters man ran to the auto. A
great part of my confidence in my well-developed solution of the mystery
would have gone to smash if the mummy had not been there. But Dorland
gave a little cry of triumph. "It's here, all right," he called,
"wrapped up in a rubber blanket." We tried to lift the bundle, but the
petrified daughter of the Pharaohs was heavier than he had calculated.
"Be careful, Mr. Dorland," the professor entreated; "don't smash her."
"Now for the young man," said Dorland, jumping down to the curb.
"No," said I. "I have a better plan. Can you run an auto?"
Dorland could.
"And have you a key to Goucher Hall?" I asked the professor.
The professor had.
"Then you two quietly take the mummy back to her box while I go in and
question Miss Anstey."
They got off without fuss, and when I had seen them turn the corner I
rang the bell and asked for Miss Anstey. In placing my hat on the
hallrack I moved Harding's cap to another peg and observed, as I had
thought, that the "H" had parted company with the other gilt initials.
I felt unfeignedly sorry for the girl when she came into the parlor a
few minutes later. She had fine regular features, and with her limpid
blue eyes was unquestionably pretty when the flush of youth and vivacity
had full play. But that day there were dark circles under her eyes, her
lids were suspiciously red and there was a pallid hue in her cheeks that
was accentuated by the dark blue silk suit she wore. A novice at reading
character could have told she had been spending hours in worry and
tears.
"You wished to see me?" she said, inquiringly, as she slowly advanced to
where I had risen to meet her.
"To return this," I answered. And I held out the maple leaf pin to her.
She grew, if possible, more white and sought the help of the piano to
support herself.
"I--I--It is not----Where did you get it?" she said, with several gulps
to keep down the sobs.
"It was found in Goucher Hall near the mummy case."
She stepped back uncertainly. Then she pulled herself together.
"You are a detective?"
I winced. "No," I said; "I am a friend of the College and of Mr.
Harding's."
At the mention of his name she broke down completely and, sinking on the
stool, leaned her head and began to cry. "Oh, Raymond!" I heard her say.
"It means disgrace. It means the penitentiary." Her form shook violently
with her emotion. It was more than I could stand.
"Listen, Miss Anstey," I said, and I laid my hand lightly on her
shoulder. "It means nothing of the kind. You have my word as a gentleman
that no one shall know the story save the two or three who already know
it."
She lifted her tear-stained face and studied me earnestly. "It was a mad
prank," she sobbed. "I am to blame. I ought to be punished. It started
as a joke. I had no idea he'd do it."
"Call Raymond down."
She went out into the hallway and a whistled signal brought Harding to
us. When he entered the parlor his surprise at seeing me was great.
"He knows about the mummy," said the girl faintly.