Anthony M. Rud

“ Macey seemed reluctant to make the admission. “Ethel has, though. And my dog Pete!”
“You say your dog has seen ghosts?” I asked incredulously.
Macey bowed somberly. “Pete is as crazy as the rest of us. When the noises start, he runs up and down the house with his hair standing up in a ruff around his neck and along the ridge of his back. Now and then he stops and howls at something in the empty room from which the noise is coming! If it were a person, he would bark. No, he howls like a wolf!” ”

“ There!” shrilled Lew Macey, starting up from the chair he was occupying in the living-room.
“Come on, Bert!” exclaimed Masters from between clenched teeth. He drew his revolver and ran up the front stairway three steps at a time. I was on his heels.
Before we reached the landing, all was quiet above, but we hurried to the point from which the noise had seemed to come. Pete, the dog, was there, standing in the middle of the upstairs hall, whimpering. His hair stood up all along his back just as Macey had said. ”

“ A GHOST at large in Montclair, New Jersey? As soon a matinée of the Folies Bergères in Old Trinity! I never would have believed it for an instant if it hadn't been for Lew Macey.
It did not require a clairvoyant to see that Macey believed it, though. Ordinarily he is a prematurely settled sort of chap, bald at thirty, wearing thick double lenses, getting his lightest recreation out of reading The New Republic, and all that. Just the type of build you'd expect to find in an anchor man in the city bowling league, but refined by education and thought instead of coarsened by beer and exercise. ”

“ Macey leaned forward on the table, grasping his short glass. “Grant that I have imagined all that I have heard. My wife and daughter have been scared out of their wits! They are down recuperating now, as I told you.”
I smiled tolerantly. “You probably did the scaring yourself,” I suggested, thinking that such might well be the case, as Macey certainly looked the part of temporary insanity.
He shook his head. “No sir, Hoffman. You have no conception of what it means to be converted to a belief in spirits. You know I did not use to take any stock in such things? Yes! Now I do. ”

“ I concluded, “and he's a mighty intelligent dog. Half bull and half collie, isn't he, Lew?”
Macey nodded acquiescence. “Yes. Good watchdog. Crazy, though—just as crazy as the rest of us.”
Masters spread his long hands flat on the table, palms down. “Well, Mr. Macey,” he began, “Hoffman and I are just hungering for a chance at being entertained by a real spook. Do you think that if we went out to Montclair this evening with you we could be satisfied?”
Macey's mouth twitched, I think with anger. “Yes!” he answered gruffly. “I wont answer for what happens to you, though!” ”

“ Macey nodded dully. “As you say, Hoffman,” he replied.
JIGGER MASTERS was crouched morosely on one of the players' chairs when I found him. His opponent, Archie Spalding, was busily engaged in clicking off a continuous chain of points, nursing the object-balls in one corner of the billiard-table.
“This is a beastly game, Bert,” growled Masters as I approached. “You have to sit down too long between shots. ”

“ How d'you suppose I got the wires in? I build a house about every ten or eleven months. Make about fifteen thousand a year beside my—hm!—salary as ghost, so I can afford to laugh at the loss of this.”
Masters snapped around quickly. “Yes, and you can keep on laughing for about ten years, Mr. Seppel!” he announced. “Take him away, Bixby, and hold him for charges.”
DESPITE the joker's protestations, he was led away. For my part I think he was lucky, since Lew Macey at that moment was meditating nothing less than homicide.
Macey cooled down somewhat as Masters started speaking. ”

“ It had two banks of keys, and a row of what looked to be stops.
“Here's where your ghost really walks, Macey,” said Masters, pointing at the odd appliance. “This is part of an electrical system that is hooked up to all parts of your house. When the occupant of this cave wants a ghost to shriek, he presses one of these keys.”
“Well, how do you like the layout?”
We looked up to see the owner descending the ladder, grinning over his shoulder, while Bixby crouched above, watching his every move.
“Fine!” said Masters cordially. “Think it out yourself?” ”

“ It sounded so much like an instrument invented once by a certain Robert Hope-Jones—he was the chap who first perfected the 'unit orchestra.'
“The blood in the dining-room clinched it, though. For a few minutes it scattered my theories galley west, I'll admit, for it seemed a far cry between a 'unit orchestra' and a smudge of blood. When I came to examine the blood, though, I found out several interesting things. First, it was not human blood at all. It wasn't even normal blood from any animal! ”

“ Masters raised his clenched fist. “You bet we'll do something, Macey!” he said solemnly. “We'll have him up at Sing Sing cracking rock until he's a ghost himself!”
{{quote“THE AFFAIR AT STEFFEN SHOALS,” another exciting exploit of Detective Masters, will be described in the next—the October—issue of The Green Book Magazine.}}
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”