Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/153



EALIZING that nothing further could be gotten from the nerve-racked man that night the chief at a nod from Odell ordered that Peters be taken away.

"What do you make of it? Hysteria or just plain lies?" he asked when the door had closed behind the limp, shambling form.

"Neither," Odell replied slowly. "I should not be surprised to learn that he was telling the straight truth."

"Truth!" Captain Lewis exploded. "Are you going to tell me next that you believe in ghosts, Barry Odell?"

"I believe in the one Peters heard, and I'm going to make it my business to find it," the detective responded gravely. "I think it will help mightily in the solution of the whole problem to learn just what it was doing in the upper regions of the house at the moment when the family, or the rest of the family, were plunged in their first numbing shock and grief."

"Well, it sounds fishy to me," the chief asserted. "If it were the murderer why should he go wandering around the house with a light talking to himself? Peters's story is thin, too; the atmosphere of the house didn't seem to get on his nerves to the extent of making him sneak away from it until he knew we were going to start an investigation. I'll let 141