Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/111

Rh papers, father. He's staying up so late this year on account of the enormous war orders he's taken. You know as well as I do that that may mean real danger for Jim. What did Mr. Alden tell you?"

The inspector spread his hands helplessly.

"I sometimes think, Nora, you'd make a better detective than any of us. Alden's sick and nervous. I guess that's all it amounts to. He's probably scared some German sympathizer may take a pot shot at him for filling these contracts. And he's worried about his wife. She won't leave him there alone, and it seems all their servants, except old John, have cleared out."

"You said something to Jim about spooks," Nora prompted.

"Thought you'd come to that," the inspector said. "You're like your mother was, Nora—always on the look-out for the supernatural."

"So, I gather, were the servants," she answered drily.

"Silly talk, Alden says, about the woods back of his house. You remember. There was some kind of a fight there during the Revolution—a lot of men ambushed and massacred. I guess you saw the bayonets and gun-locks Alden had dug up. Servants got talking—said they saw things there on foggy nights."

The inspector lowered his voice to a more serious key.

"The angle I don't like is that Alden's valet was found dead in those woods yesterday morning. Not