Peyton entreating the cook to "stay at least till morning."
Unable to persuade the cook to remain, Mrs. Peyton turned appealingly to Barry. "Did you see anything in your room, Field?"
"No, mem," said Barry, hiding a yawn. "I was fast asleep when she woke me up, mem."
This, however, exerted no influence on the cook. Like Clara who went before her, she departed immediately for the railroad station, there to pass the rest of the night.
Peace at last returned to the house—and Barry returned to his room, locked the door and observed on his pad the same angular scrawl, "Leave this house tonight!" which had frightened her away. Then he went to bed and slept soundly until after sunrise.
He was up and dressed at seven o'clock; and when the Peytons came downstairs about eight he had an appetizing breakfast awaiting them. As soon as her husband had left for his office, Mrs. Peyton, returning from the front door, looked at the detective with anxious inquiry in her large brown eyes.
"Have you discovered anything at all, Mr. Barry?"
Barry took a crumpled napkin from the breakfast table and folded it thoughtfully between his long fingers. He was thinking: "Yes, Mrs. Peyton; I've discovered the identity of your 'ghost,' and you alone have the power to 'kill' it."
Aloud, however:
"I'll make a report today," he promised, and left the room with a stack of dishes and the folded napkin.
He deposited the dishes in the kitchen sink. The napkin went into his hip pocket. Then he started upstairs for his other clothes, At her bedroom door he paused, listening. The door stood open. Mrs. Peyton, downstairs, was sitting at the breakfast table, absently crumbling a bit of toast in her fingers, a faraway look in her eyes. Barry, at her bedroom door, was remarking the small mahogany desk, where, two nights ago, the "ghost" had written his warning to her.
In three swift strides he crossed to the desk, searched hurriedly among the papers there and neatly pocketed one of these. Then he continued to his room. Mrs. Peyton still sat at the breakfast table in a pensive reverie, her wistful brown gaze lost in the morning sunshine beyond the leaded casements.
AN HOUR later Barry alighted from a train in Chicago and forthwith called on a colleague, whose skill in analyzing handwriting and identifying finger prints had earned him the title of "expert." He spent considerable time with this man; and then he went to his office and wrote his report for Mrs. Peyton.
And when the report was finished he sat gazing at it musingly—somewhat as Mrs. Peyton had gazed from her breakfast-room window this morning.
With an energetic shrug, as if to shake off his odd mood, he sealed the report in an envelope, and put it in his pocket and started for an office building in lower Michigan Avenue.
Presently he entered a room in this building, luxuriously furnished and unoccupied, and abruptly halted. In the adjoining room he could hear the voices of Scott Peyton and his wife; and since the door between the two offices stood partly open, he could also see their faces. Himself unobserved, Barry stood silently watching and listening.
"I suppose you're right, Scott," she said, standing beside her husband's desk and looking down at him, "After what happened last night, I'm just about ready to do as you say—give the house up aid move back to town. But I do so hate to leave that old place. I wish—"
"Why should you?" he interrupted, scowling at his desk and avoiding her eyes.
Mrs. Peyton looked down, biting a corner of her lip and twising the wedding ring of her finger.
"It's not so much what I want," she faltered, her voice tremulously low, "but—the city is no place—not the best place for our—Oh, Scott!" she cried passionately, and flung out her hands to him in appeal. "Can't you see?"
Scott Peyton looked up and met his wife's eyes; and the thing he saw in their liquid brown depths instantly chased the frown from his face and took him to his feet in a swift rush of remorse and gladness.
In the next instant she was sobbing in his arms; and he was tenderly patting her shoulders and saying soothingly:
"It's all right, honey. We won't give the place up. I don't think—the ghost—will bother us again. . . ."
At this juncture Barry quietly departed.
A LITTLE LATER he again sat at his desk, gazing again at the report he had written. And he now knew that this report would never be seen by any eye save his.
But while he is sitting here suppose we look over his shoulder and glance at the thing before he tears it up:
"In Re Peyton 'ghost': . . . . Using a King Lear costume, which he put on and off with lightning agility, the 'ghost' hoped, by his nocturnal prowling, to frighten Mrs' Peyton into abandoning the house as her husband desired. . . . Following his nightly appearances, he quickly removed and concealed his costume, and returned to his bed, careful to make no sound. He varied this procedure, however, night before last, when he visited Mrs. Peyton's room. Had she left her key in the lock that night, instead of hiding it under her pillow, he would have been unable to call upon her. As it was, he readily unlocked the door and entered. Leaving silently, he hid his costume, then left the house and returned, making considerable noise. . . . . The finger prints he left in glue last night and those he left on his napkin this morning, as well as his real and disguised handwriting positively identify the 'ghost' as Mrs. Peyton's husband, Scott Peyton."
