Page:Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car.djvu/220

208 "Oh, yours is fine, I think. But the dim light might have deceived him."

"But why should he dress up all in white—like a ghost?" asked Grace.

"Probably to play that part," suggested Betty. "That is one point we haven't solved—how the ghostly manifestations were brought about. I wish we could have solved that for the sake of Mr. Lagg."

"I fancy it is solved," said Mr. Blackford, with a smile. " It was the faker, all the while."

"It was?" cried Mollie. "Did he do it on purpose?"

"No, he had no intention of being a spook, but he could not have done it better had he planned it. I have been talking to him," and Mr. Blackford nodded in the direction of the court house. "He made a clean breast of everything when Allen hinted that it might have a good effect when he came to be sentenced.

"It seems that he manufactured his hair-tonic in the haunted mansion. It was necessary to heat it in a sort of furnace, and this made the groaning sound you heard, it was caused by air pressure. Sometimes it groaned and again it shrieked as the hot air rushed from the ventilator."

"And the clank of the metal?" asked Grace,