Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/301

 ing vengeance on Signora Wetterbee. No sooner was it buried than strange things began to happen. Signora Wetterbee had been unable to sleep and in the middle of the night she had heard music and sounds of wild gayeties in the garden. She, Margharita, had heard none of the sounds nor any of the other servants, but Signora Wetterbee insisted there were sounds and accused them of disturbing her rest, although, said Margharita, they had all been sleeping soundly. It went on night after night and then one morning Signora Wetterbee packed all her belongings and got into the Ford with her dogs and the parrot Anubis without even saying good-by, and Giovanni drove her back to Brinoë. Signora Wetterbee, she said, was a strange woman and imagined things. It was her belief that perhaps Signora Wetterbee was a witch. She had seen her standing on her head on the terrace in the moonlight clad only in a pair of man's trousers. Surely such goings-on could be indulged in only by a witch. What did the Signor think?

Mr. Winnery, who by now had begun to think that he was losing his reason, said that perhaps she was a witch or perhaps she was only doing the exercises that were part of a certain religious cult. Who, he asked, had bought the villa?

It was the Principessa d'Orobelli. Margharita had heard that she had bought it suddenly without even asking the price and that she meant to retire to it and spend the rest of her life there. She had not even come to see the place. She had heard that the Principessa planned to install bathrooms. That, thought Margharita, would be exciting. She had