Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/254

 STOOD in the center of my ponderously furnished room which was in reality a ponderously fortified cell, trying to argue the matter of that apparition out with myself.

It was not the first thing of the kind that had confronted me that night. I had caught a glimpse of the ghostly head that had appeared for a moment above the stair-railing. Later on, I had walked past the apparition of Bud Griswold in the driving rain. And Copperhead Kate had declared that a specter had slipped into the room of the four-poster and dropped an automatic at her side, before vanishing.

What was the meaning of it all? Who was the white-faced wanderer loitering so anxious-eyed about the house of mysteries? And why was she so afraid of being seen? And who knew of her presence there? And what had that to do with the disappearance of the dead girl who had so mysteriously and disturbingly vanished into thin air? And, above all, what was Wendy Washburn's interest in