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The Country Gentleman, 30 August 1924, with "Frozen Paper"
"Craig Kennedy on the Farm,
Harper & Brothers, New York, 1925
"TERWILLIGER is afraid of his life. Why, Kennedy, they found him one morning in the middle of January numb from exposure, in his bed, outside his front door! He remembered nothing except that he had retired in his room as usual the night before. It was his hired man who found him, bed and all, moved out into the yard. The hired man left that day too!"
It was a beautiful spring day, clear, with not too much wind. Kennedy and I were speeding along through the Jersey towns in company with Doctor Lord of the Psychical Research Society.
"You're a good salesman, Doctor," smiled Kennedy. We had left New Brunswick and were bowling on toward the little villages of Cranbury and Hightstown. "You've sold me your ghost!"
I was really delighted at the prospect of the adventure that night. The "Terwilliger Ghost," down near Yardville, had first stirred up farmers round about, then the newspapers all over the country. When Doctor Lord came to request Kennedy to look into it for the Research Society I knew that this ghost was made.
"And you know, Doctor," I put in," when Craig gets after a ghost it has to do some stepping to keep its reputation."
DOCTOR LORD joined in the laugh. "Spook hunting should be a pleasant diversion from crook hunting for your friend, Mr. Jameson," the psychic researcher returned good-humoredly to me.
Kennedy looked across from the wheel, a quizzical smile playing on his lips and a glint of humor in his eyes. "How does this mysterious stranger make his appearance? In the house? Outside?"
"It's all over the place. That's the trouble. It has driven Martin Terwilliger almost crazy."
"Has Terwilliger had the farm long? " pursued Kennedy.
"No. Scarcely two years. It was the old Ezra Lawrence place, and you know what happened there!" Doctor Lord's tone was solemn. He hung on the last words as though the very morbidity of the ideas aroused by the name was too great to allow his tongue to move freely.
"Ezra Lawrence!" I exclaimed. "Why, Craig, you must recall that murder case on the Lawrence farm."
Kennedy nodded. "Yes, it was terrible, Walter. As I recall it, little Elvira Lawrence, a very pretty girl, was found murdered near the body of her lover, Warren Lalor, the organist of the little church in White Hill. Both had been shot. He left a wife and two children. Elvira left her father. It was too much for the old man. He shot himself the next night. And the shots were all found to have been from the same gun. Some say he did the shooting; others that he paid to have it done, because her disgrace worked on his religious mind."
"Well," agreed Lord," whatever happened, the effect on the Lawrence farm was the same. No one wanted it."
"Terwilliger was the next owner, then." Kennedy's thoughts were plumbing unknown depths, his eyes faraway, ahead on the road. I felt he was mentally poking about the Terwilliger farm already.
"Yes, and I feel sorry for the man, too, in a way. It seems Terwilliger came of a race of New Jersey farmers. But cities, factories, and all that, attracted him. He went to Trenton to work when he wasn't much more than a boy. He was living in the suburbs and the city was encroaching fast on the small garden he cultivated in his spare time. He skimped and saved up a few hundred dollars or so."
"How big is this Lawrence farm?" asked Kennedy. "You can't get a very big farm for a few hundred dollars in Jersey now."
"That's where you're wrong in this case. No one wanted this farm. You couldn't have got a Lawrence heir even to go on it. The house was in decay. Tramps from the railroad tried to make a hobo hotel of it. The barns were sagging, the fences down. It was the picture of neglect and squalor.
"But the estate had to be settled up. The farm had to be sold, even at a sacrifice. Concessions were made to get rid of it. It's about forty acres, a few miles outside of Trenton.
"Yes, it was some feat to purchase forty acres with only a few hundred dollars. But the heirs were willing, and the balance of the purchase price was allowed to remain on mortgage. The deal was arranged through Jonas Throop, president of the Yardville Trust Company, the nearest bank."
"How successful has Terwilliger been?" asked Craig, negotiating a short cut as Lord directed.
Doctor Lord shrugged. "Terwilliger's troubles, I suppose, are the troubles of all farmers today. He has not been very successful. He has had to face falling prices for his products; fertilizer costs him more; labor is scarce and high, and so on. But, as he told me the first time I talked with him, 'I can go on with ordinary trouble—but this ghost just about finishes things for me.'"
"How has the ghost disturbed him—other than by making it mighty uncomfortable?" I asked.
"A ghost isn't much of a partner," admonished Lord. "It keeps everybody away."
"How did people find out about it first?" asked Kennedy. "Did Terwilliger tell?"
"QUITE the contrary. He tried to keep the knowledge of his supernatural tenant to himself. But people are sure to hear of things like that sooner or later. As in many other cases, children were the first outsiders to see the specter. Let him tell it. Ask him. Here we are."
We drove in along a locust-bordered lane. Through some evergreens I could see the old-fashioned farmhouse nestling at the foot of a gentle hill. It must have been built years ago. The chimneys, the windows and the doorway told the tale of colonial days. We idled up the roadway, past the old house, on to the barn, and stopped. Across a field we caught sight of a solitary figure. Kennedy beckoned and the figure waved back, starting toward us.
I studied the man as he came over the rail fence. Tall and spare, with intelligent, sparkling blue eyes, Terwilliger did not impress me in the least as being of the type that would get excited over supposed supernatural events.
He paused, staring at us sharply. Doctor Lord introduced us.
"What can I do for you?" he asked simply.
"This is my friend, Mr. Kennedy, one of the society," explained Doctor Lord. "This is Mr. Jameson, of the Star. They've been reading a great deal lately in the papers about your trouble here."
"You ought to say troubles! I have enough!" He spread out his hands inclusively, with a sort of bitter gesture.
"Well, Terwilliger," ingratiated Kennedy, "the papers and I seem to be interested in the same one—the ghost."
"Ghost?" he repeated. "I have a ghost, all right. Everybody's talking about it. I can't understand it, either. Why didn't the blame thing walk before I took this place, or when I first took it, eh? Answer me that! Ghost! There's no use denying it. Ghost! Maybe it's lighter than air—but this here ghost is the last straw that's breaking this camel's back, I can tell you!" He stood dejected.
"I've always been more afraid of real troubles than of ghostly troubles, Terwilliger," went on Kennedy, trying to be encouraging. "Don't you think these may be just workings of your own brain, tired of carrying too heavy burdens?"
The farmer straightened. "I wish it was!" he exclaimed with a fervent return to the old pugnacious bitterness. "No, Mr.-er-Kennedy, I don't think so. It isn't that I have just seen the ghost, felt it. You see, others have seen it. I can't hide it. I can't boss it. I can't evict it. It's real to me. That's the trouble."
He passed his hand over his forehead. "I'm worried. That's true. Why, I hoped for a big and early crop this year. But you see how even the weather has gone back on me. Winter has hung on. It's spring only when you look at the calendar. It's been cold; the season has been long drawn out. I've been hanging on to things for dear life. Now the ghost will be the finish of me!"
His face wore a strained, worried expression. It showed in his eyes.
"And," he lowered his voice confidentially to Lord, "to make matters worse for me, I am in deathly fear of this ghost. I'm no playmate for sperrits! I don't like 'em! They make my flesh creep."
We had turned toward the house. "So many strange things have happened to me in the old house, I'm 'most afraid to stay at night in it alone. But I have to—or abandon it. I can't even get a farm hand to stay in the barn, let alone the house. They'd as soon hang 'emselves, or swallow poison."
We were entering the house. It was one of those old farmhouses that agents designate as "with possibilities." It had wide white shingles, small windows with shutters, and up under the eaves were garret windows shaped in a semicircle.
Inside, the beams were of chestnut and the floor-boards were heavy, old, made of pine. It was a large house, with low rambling rooms and a central hall that ran all the way through to the rear, two stories and attic in height.
Kennedy was tall. His head came perilously near touching the ceiling. I noticed old hardware, locks, hinges, latches still in use. They would have been an inspiration to a connoisseur. And in the kitchen the huge fireplace remained. With its brick oven at the side, the fireplace itself was so large that I could stoop down and see the sky above me as I looked up the sooted chimney.
TERWILLIGER passed his hand wearily over his forehead as he extolled the few comforts of the house. He seemed preoccupied. Occasionally a sigh would escape his lips. I felt sorry for the man. It is tough fighting real things. But supernatural cares take more than even the determined chin and lips of a Martin Terwilliger.
"Perhaps you can tell me, Terwilliger," prompted Doctor Lord, "just how the story of the ghost got out. I mean, to the public."
"Well, you see, it was this way." Terwilliger rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. "It started one night during the winter when the boys and girls of the neighborhood was skatin' on the frozen pond, half on my farm, half on the adjoinin' seventy-acre farm of Squire Jarvis. It was moonlight skatin' and the night was sharp. They had started a bonfire on the edge of the pond."
He paused.
"Suddenly some of them says they saw a white figure float over the hill in the moonlight, on down the hill. It passed its bony hands over the fire. The fire went out! Then the figure floated away.
"When they summoned courage enough to approach where the fire had been, they found it was not only out but that already the embers were cold. The fire had just been started and there was a bunch of newspapers to one side of it. The papers were unburnt, just the edges charred. They, too, had gone out."
This, it seemed, was the beginning of strange happenings about the old house and farm, at least the first the world heard of them. Terwilliger had had to admit it wasn't new, that he had tried to conceal it.
"Just to show my dumb luck," he sorrowed on, "my one hired man, the only man in the township that'd do an honest day's work for fair wages, left me flat after that bed episode in the yard. He said the rappin' and the flittin' drove him near daffy. Then the whole country round here got excited and frightened. The other farmers said it meant worse times for 'em all. So it got into the city papers. Now I calc'late all over the country they calls it Terwilliger's Ghost!"
Kennedy smiled encouragingly. As for me, I began to feel that it was nothing you could so easily laugh off, at that.
"Well, you haven't given up yet," Craig nodded. "I admire you for that. Now, I'll tell you. All I want is that you let Mr. Jameson and myself stay in the house with you tonight."
I admit that I had been keen to come along on this expedition. But the worry, the evident sincerity of Terwilliger were a new phase to me. I felt a sort of shiver as Kennedy laid down the program. It was like the toothache departing the moment one rings the dentist's door-bell. But there was no stopping Kennedy now.
"Perhaps you can get some rest, Terwilliger. We might get a chance to become acquainted with the ghost. You see, what Mr. Jameson wants is a good story for the Star."
Terwilliger eyed us both long and searchingly. He was not taking overkindly to the idea of our staying all night at his place.
"I don't know," he wheezed. "You might be spying around here. I don't want anything more walkin' around at night. There's enough now!"
"Mr. Throop seems to think the whole ghost story is a fake," remarked Doctor Lord casually, prepared for this turn of events.
"Any night he picks I can put him up here," bristled Terwilliger. "Mr. Throop can see for himself!"
Lord smiled at the quick retort. "That's it. He prefers to doubt at a safe distance, to ask my opinion."
"So he doubts it to you, eh?" demanded Terwilliger. "He don't dast doubt it to me. I'd change places with him any night. He don't dast do that, eh?"
Terwilliger swung about to us. "If you fellers got nerve, I ain't got no objections to you stayin'. You can sleep upstairs in one of them front rooms. I keep 'em clean."
He shook his head, still eyeing us skeptically. "But I got harrowin' to do." He jerked his thumb in the direction of the field. "You come back—about sundown."
As Terwilliger's twisted legs carried him out of earshot back over the field, Doctor Lord ventured his first question.
"What do you think of it, Kennedy?"
"I'm going to that bank first," decided Craig. "I want to see Jonas Throop at the Trust Company—alone. I'll drop you off in Trenton. "
It was near closing time when we entered the country bank in Yardville, a small two-story brick building. No sooner had we stated our business than Jonas Throop led us into the board room.
Throop was a short stout man, fairly along in his sixties, affable, with a stock of witty stories. To me he seemed almost too suave.
By way of introducing the subject Kennedy related the gist of ghostly gossip.
"What do you think of it, Mr. Throop?" he wound up.
"Think of it, Mr. Kennedy?" repeated the banker, balancing Craig's card. "I never believed in ghosts. I doubt if you will find many bankers who do. I'm inclined to think you're not flimflammed by them either. Bankers have to be on watch for all sorts of shady things—and ghosts are the shadiest of all!" He ended with a cracked laugh that made every button on his waistcoat vibrate and strain.
I could not repress a strong feeling of distrust for Mr. Jonas Throop. Kennedy's face was immobile and his manners betrayed nothing but cordiality and frankness. "Well, then, what do you think of Martin Terwilliger?"
Throop leaned back, waxed confidential. "A hard-working man who has had much hard luck. Everything has gone against him. I'm afraid his capital was too small. The trust company, as trustees, would have foreclosed long ago if they had thought it advisable." Tapping his pencil lightly on the table he went on. "The mortgage is long overdue. He hasn't paid the interest."
"Aren't you unusually generous for a bank?"
"Well—ah—we are, perhaps. But what if we did foreclose? No one would take the place with its reputation. In a sense, then, Terwilliger is really acting for us as the caretaker."
"Yes; it comes to that, doesn't it? Have you tried to sell the place?"
"Quietly. We haven't advertised. But prospective purchasers don't like the ghost."
"Have you put it in the hands of the real-estate agents?"
"I am the real-estate agent," returned Throop pompously.
"The only agent?" asked Kennedy, fishing.
Throop's face clouded with a scowl. "Well, the only one that has any standing in this territory. There's a New York firm. Come to think of it, I hear they've been obtaining options on some farms out this way—Squire Jarvis' place, I understand, for instance, next to Terwilliger's."
It was evident that the mere thought of the New York firm soured him.
"It takes patience to get the 'lowdown' in a community like this," I commented a few minutes later outside as we climbed back into the car. "There's a strange conflict and interlocking of interests somewhere. Here's a new angle on the case."
Kennedy ventured nothing. The afternoon was wearing along and, with a glance at his watch, he swung the car around, started out the Pike way again.
There was a general atmosphere of thriftiness until we reached the Terwilliger place. Kennedy drove past, intending, I thought, to get a good look at the farm and come back.
"There's the Jarvis place that Throop spoke about," he observed. "Let's drop in there first."
Squire Jarvis was a redoubtable countryman, a sportsman, attended all the shoots, and won many prizes. He was tall, spare, with a loud voice and a bad cough.
"This is the Jarvis place?" inquired Craig.
A vigorous nod of the head affirmed the answer. "Pretty nice old place, ain't it?" He looked about with a perfectly reasonable pride as he saw we were looking about. "You lookin' for land to buy?"
"Yes. Out this way to look things over."
The squire wagged his head up and down. "They tell me this is much too valuable to be used just as one big farm—that I can divide it up into five-acre plots, and make some money on it. I was thinkin' of goin' into the real-estate business myself, maybe, start with sellin' this place, then buy up others and dispose of 'em the same way. I got people in New York who have the customers. I know the land."
I was silent and thoughtful. Was I beginning to see a ray of light in the darkness? The Terwilliger farm added to the Jarvis farm made well over a hundred acres. In those two places alone there would be over twenty five-acre tracts. I felt I was getting the lay of the land, all right.
"I've been looking for a place with a pond on it," continued Kennedy. "Jonas Throop tells me there's quite a lake on the next place."
The squire laughed uproariously. "More than a lake on Martin Terwilliger's, I'm a-tellin' ye! Man alive, they got ghosts over there!"
Kennedy looked incredulous.
"Yes, sir—sperrits! Nobody wants that place. I'm a-warnin' yer. Jonas Throop! Well, that's the old Lawrence farm, eh? I s'pose yer know Jonas Throop married a Lawrence? Yes, sir! The only niece of the old chap who shot hisself and his da'ter and her lover! There was other nevvews, but they're out of it now—all of them are out of it. And the trust company's in. I hear that some of the directors wishes they was out of it, too! That lake, gentlemen, well, it's partly on my property, much as it is on his'n. Why go further—and fare worse?"
The last remark made me think. In fact, the more I thought, the more things pointed to villainy of some kind.
Kennedy drove on down the road. If he was thinking anything, he kept it to himself.
We turned in to go back to Terwilliger's for the night.
It was early evening, almost twilight. Terwilliger was in the ample kitchen fussing over a frugal supper. He invited us to sit down, which we did.
"After that night at the skating pond," prompted Kennedy, "people began, you say, talking about the ghost."
Terwilliger nodded. "Yes. There's a woman down the road toward town, claims to have some powers, sort o' medium, I guess. She came out here one day 'bout twilight to see about a séance 'r somethin'."
Kennedy nodded and the farmer proceeded.
"Near the little brook in the field are some weeping willows. She says she was a bit frightened by a groan as she passed the willows. She thought it was the night wind, first. But she hurried, almost runnin'. She looked back, she says, and there under the willows she saw three lights."
"It may have been purely subjective," observed Kennedy, "in her own head. Or it may have been a will-o'-the-wisp."
Terwilliger shook his head. "But, you know, three people met their deaths by violence here; two of them was found under them willows."
"Good stuff!" I exclaimed irreverently. Here was copy, just the thing to thrill the readers of the Star.
"Do you know any thing else that has happened like that?"
"Many things," returned Terwilliger gravely. "Some things that don't seem to have no point, yet maybe they does, I don't know. Like a white figure roamin' around, head bowed, as if in sorrow. Other times, wild screeches heard as far as the road, as if from a tortured soul."
It was getting late and Terwilliger called attention to it. It was after half past nine. We accompanied him upstairs, with an oil lamp. It was then that I began to realize what candles and oil lamps had done for ghosts, how unkind are electric lights to them. Shadows danced and played on wall and floor and ceiling.
The house was sparsely furnished. In the big front room where we were to sleep was a double bed with an old-fashioned quilt as a cover. A couple of chairs two or three pieces of old walnut furniture, and a faded old-fashioned plain matting on floor comprised the interior decoration. I looked about it as Terwilliger left us. Its very look was eerie, to me.
Kennedy was silent, standing over in the corner of the room farthest from me, busy fingering some things in his bag.
"Are you going to bed?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No; if I have to, Walter, I want to be able to get away—quick. I'd advise you to do the same."
Martin Terwilliger slept in a room in the rear over the kitchen. He was quiet, moved about unobtrusively, always with a sort of expectant air, as if he were waiting for somebody.
In a few moments we heard the door of his room shut quietly.
FOR what seemed to be hours Craig and I sat, now and then exchanging a word in a low voice. With no heat in the house it was just damp and cold enough in the room to make me feel chilly and uncomfortable. My feet were getting colder by the minute. Cold chills were running up and down my spine.
"What's the matter?" asked Craig. "Don't you feel well?"
"Yes," I lied nervously. "But I've got cold feet—I mean my feet are cold. Do you feel as if you were in a draft?"
"I was wondering if you felt it, too. Yes; my fingers are like icicles. And there's a fireplace in this room, too!"
"I've been looking at it," I agreed. "But there's no wood."
In a distant part of the house I could hear with a certain degree of regularity and precision the squeak as of a rocking chair, as if someone dozed in it, rocking slowly. Except for the rocking one could have heard a clock tick, or perhaps even the scurry of a mouse.
"Craig, I can't stand it. I'm cold. Do you mind if I go down cellar to hunt for some wood?"
I felt I must be moving, anything.
Beside the fireplace was an empty soap box painted by a thrifty hand to serve as wood-box. I picked it up, shaking.
Craig smiled. "Nervous about going down cellar?"
"No!" I denied brazenly. "Bring on your ha'nts!"
My heart belied the words. But I had started something. I felt my honor depended on going through with it.
As I started down cellar I tried nonchalantly to whistle. It was as feeble as one whistles under compressed air. Simply nil. I managed to strike a light, found a stump of candle. There was a pile of logs. I started over toward it.
Suddenly, with what sounded like a terrible groan, the pile of logs collapsed in my direction. I moved my feet just in time. But it was not caution that moved them.
"What's that, Walter?" boomed Kennedy, far above me.
"I—I don't know—just the woodpile, I mean—got jazzy!"
THE cellar was damp and darker than black. Most of the logs were too large. I caught sight of a buck-saw.
I started to saw one on the buck. Voices, groans, moans, cries seemed to emanate from the farthest depths of the cellar. I stood it until I was part way through the first log. Then I jumped on it to finish the job quickly. I filled the box with scraps. I started as the cellar door slammed. The candle was out now and it was entirely dark. I groped forward in the direction I remembered having taken when entered. I felt a sense of panic steal over me. I had only one thought in the darkness with an unseen enemy—to get to Kennedy. I tried to call him, but my tongue seemed frozen.
Only to be out of this cellar! Gone now was my chilliness. Instead, a dripping perspiration was oozing from my pores.
I felt something touch my throat. Desperately I put my hand up to my neck. I almost fell against the door, pushing it open.
How good that faint streak of light at the top of the stairs looked! My ascent might have been called rather a wild flight as my speed was increased by sheer terror of the unseen.
"Craig! Craig!" I dashed up the hall, threw open the door.
Kennedy was gone. The old rocking chair in which he had been sitting was overturned.
For a moment I stood in suspense, terror, panic. I felt as if danger now was as imminent in this little bedroom as it had been in the big dark dank cellar below. Where had Craig gone? Was he safe? There was his bag on the floor by the old bureau. He must have meant to come back, I thought—until it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps his absence was not voluntary. I shivered. Was I next?
Outside I could hear Terwilliger's dog barking, breaking the quiet of the night, rendering weird and mournful howls. Flashed over me the old superstition.
I knew I could not stay in that room longer alone. From Terwilliger's room came the rocking of his chair on a creaking board. The old fellow was getting some rest, at least of a kind. I was the victim of the ghost's wandering that night.
But where had Craig gone? I looked out the window to see if he were prowling. Only the shadows of the trees in the fitful moonlight moved. The shadows oscillated like malignant personalities.
"Craig! Craig!" I shouted.
No answer. Only the echo hurled back from the hill.
I started again. Upstairs, above me, rather heavy, as if physically dragging I fancied, came the sound of footfalls, chains, so weary seemed the tread. Back and forth, with a peculiar monotonous rhythm they went until my skin contracted in goose flesh. I was almost on the point of shouting out. At any minute I expected the ghostly owner of those feet and those chains to pass right through the door and confront me—even worse, to carry me off as Craig had been carried. I was not reassured by the discovery from the pictures on the wall that I was in the room that had once belonged to Elvira Lawrence.
Desperation came to my rescue at last. With a rush I was down the stairs and out in the lower hall leading to the front door.
THE next thing I knew I was standing, a bit dazed, on the little front porch yelling, "Craig!
No answer.
"Craig! Where are you?"
I would have thought that old Terwilliger would have showed enough interest to find out what all the commotion was about, at least to the extent of coming downstairs. Only his incessant rocking was what I heard at intervals.
Still Craig did not answer. This was alarming. What could it spell—disaster?
I determined to search the wood and meadow near by, to try to find him.
It was not until I reached the little brook that I realized I had gone blindly, directly into the very neighborhood of those fateful weeping willows where the bodies of Elvira and her lover had been found years ago.
My heart gave a leap, then almost stopped. Coming down the path was a figure in white, subdued, chastened, floating Hamlet-wise, in a dejected, morose attitude. Its sigh seemed like nothing human. As it approached, my presence must have aroused it. It stopped. So did I.
It advanced. I didn't. Retreat was uppermost in my mind. I turned to flee, silently, swiftly.
I was about to turn a little lane leading up from the chicken run when I stopped again. There, coming at me from another direction, was the ghost.
What would I do now? I couldn't go forward. I looked hastily over my shoulder. There he was, there! I looked ahead. Good heavens, there were two ghosts!
I HAD to think quickly. I sought to escape both of them. Fortunately I had reached a point where the path split, one fork to the house, the other to the barns. I turned toward the barns for safety. Looking back I caught a glimpse of my first ghost still floating after me wildly, white draperies flying out behind. In an instant I decided to hide behind a clump of shrubbery. Quietly, I pulled the branches of a syringa bush aside and sprang behind its protecting foliage.
My ghostly pursuer passed me by, and as he went I felt a cold, miasmatic breath of air. Unconsciously I thought of the frozen paper of the bonfire—the paper that would not burn.
A moment and my curiosity got the better of my cowardice. My head moved cautiously forward to see where the solemn ghost had fled.
I received the shock of my life. Pell-mell up the path was coming the second ghost. I had just time to draw back my head when he passed the syringa bush, gliding swiftly, unerringly, after the first.
Could I believe my own eyes? One ghost was chasing the other!
I was too far away to hear the strange netherworld sounds that came to my ears only indistinguishably. But I was fascinated. One ghost was actually fleeing in terror.
Suddenly there came a wild, unearthly scream of terror from the first ghost. I almost keeled over as the long bony arm of the second ghost, luminous to the elbow, shot out and seized the ghost ahead of him. I slumped in the bushes. This was a terror I had myself only narrowly escaped.
Again I peered out. This time I was sure I heard voices.
I was right. There, in anger, were two ghosts berating each other roundly.
COULD these be the ghosts of old Lawrence and his erring daughter, Elvira? I crept closer.
Suddenly it seemed that one ghost sank to the ground in a state of collapse. Could it be possible I was seeing reenacted the tragedy of years ago?
I made very little noise as I crept nearer. But it must have been just enough to cause the victorious ghost to heed me.
The luminous forearm was suddenly extended full at me. I shrank back, turned to flee again. My hair was almost on end. The bony, luminous arm came closer. I froze.
"Give the password! Walter!"
I felt the revulsion of feeling. It was Kennedy!
You may imagine my discomfiture. Even before a friend like Kennedy, a man doesn't like to feel he is making a fool of himself. However, my sense of humor came to my rescue as I took a step or two closer to the two strangely-clad figures.
The ghost prone on the path was in a state of low visibility.
"Come!" ordered Kennedy, sharply. "Get up—Terwilliger!"
Slowly the farmer picked himself up under Craig's flashlight. A ghost covered with dust of a path and green of chlorophyll is not so impressive as a freshly-laundered ghost.
"I suspected it," nodded Kennedy, lighting a cigarette with his luminous arm as if the match had sprung directly from it. "I saw you first tonight when you came from the cellar after you pushed over the woodpile. You weren't a ghost then; just in black clothes. So was I. I saw you had fixed up a cord from that rocker to a loose shutter for the wind to keep it going on a loose board so I'd think you were in your room. I saw you doll up. Yes, Terwilliger, I suspected at first you were the white figure that floated over the hill to the skating pond. And the paper that wouldn't burn? Well, perhaps white snow put out the fire. Nothing more occult, I'll wager. "
TERWILLIGER stood in sullen silence now. But Kennedy was not finished. "With your native shrewdness, Terwilliger, you reasoned out that if no one would buy a haunted house—as seems to be the case—then with what you have learned on this farm about farming and with a chance for better farming conditions, better markets, and so on, you might hang on another
spring and summer, might scrape together a few dollars, relieve the pressure at the bank, renew the mortgage, save your a money and keep the farm. It was the old case with the trust company of what the bankers call 'frozen paper.' The Terwilliger farm is no liquid asset. Far from it. You froze it!"
As Kennedy paused again, I was astounded at my own reaction toward the old fellow.
"I've acquired a certain respect for your doggedness, Terwilliger," went on Craig, putting his hand not unkindly on the shoulder of the bedraggled specter. "I must make a report to Doctor Lord and the society. But it does not have to be ready right away. Before I make it, before this frozen paper thaws out even a bit as a result of it, may I ask whether you think that, say, five hundred dollars would satisfy the trust company for the present?"
Terwilliger muttered something.
"It would?" repeated Kennedy. "Then keep your farm, Terwilliger. I'll take a second mortgage on you. Perhaps, even, I might forget to have it recorded right away, if that will do any good. I believe you're not only a clever man, Martin, but an honest man!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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