“Good!” muttered Nick. “I'll back these ghosts against any that Colonel Richmond can raise in his house.”
Almost immediately there was the sound of a voice in the room beyond the doors.
“Does any person present recognize a departed friend?” it said.
Then Colonel Richmond's voice arose, hoarse and trembling with emotion.
“Aunt Lavina,” he said, “tell me what you wish me to do. I will obey you absolutely.”
“I thought so,” chuckled the detective. “The colonel has come to attend a spiritualistic seance.”
CHAPTER VI. A ROUND-UP OF SPOOK-ARTISTS.
It began to look very much as if Horace Richmond's theory was correct. Certainly the colonel had fallen again into the clutches of bogus mediums.
It might be that the whole plot was directed to that end, and that the transfer of the jewels to the Stevenses was only to be an incidental result of the plot.
Yet so long as Miss Stevens' unusual conduct remained unexplained, it would not do to go upon this theory.
“One of the principal things that Horace Richmond employed me to do,” said Nick to himself, “was to break up his uncle's belief in spiritualism. I guess that this is a first-class chance to do it.”
He softly crept to the corner where the gliding figures had disappeared.
There, as he expected, he found one of those movable panels which the bogus mediums prepare so cleverly.
His experience of such affairs taught Nick exactly what he should find in the other room.
There must be a little cabinet in the corner covering the other side of the sliding panel.
The medium might be in it, or she might be sitting blindfold just by the door.
But the cabinet was certainly not empty. Two figures had gone into it, as Nick had observed.
One of these was doubtless playing the part of Aunt Lavina.
The other must be waiting to appear in some other role.
Nick listened. He could hear the colonel questioning the supposed spirit.
The replies were put in that silly and mysterious language supposed to be appropriate to visitors from the other world.
The meaning of them, however, was plain enough. Colonel Richmond was commanded to restore the jewels to Millie Stevens.
This point was made so exceedingly clear, and his promise was demanded in such stringent terms that Nick was no longer able to doubt that the interests of the Stevenses were being very carefully attended to by these “spook-compellers.”
In view of the facts already known, it was hardly possible to reach any other conclusion than that Millie Stevens had hired this medium to do the whole job.
That it was being done “to the queen's taste,” Nick was forced to admit.
Yet he couldn't help being sorry to believe that such a charming and beautiful girl as Millie Stevens should be mixed up in such a dirty business.
He waited till Colonel Richmond had completed his solemn protestations, and then suddenly slid the panel and passed through.
There was another person in the cabinet, who was, of course, instantly aware of Nick's entrance.
But the place was so dark that at first the bogus ghost did not know that Nick was not one of the regular company of spirits.
He had a chance to get his bearings before the discovery was made.
The shade of Aunt Lavina was just retreating toward the cabinet making that absurd series of nods and gestures which such spirits always use.
Nick could see this performance through an aperture in the side of the cabinet.
He instantly leaped out, and grappled with the spook.
Then there was an uproar. The whole room was in indescribable confusion.
Somebody turned up the light. For an instant Nick, grappling with the spirit, saw Colonel Richmond.
The colonel had not been given a private seance. Possibly he had not desired it. He had come with a dozen other victims of the same delusion.
He had been given a seat a little in the rear.
Before him, as is usual, was a row of persons who were “in the game.”
The space where the spirits appear is always encircled by such a line as a guard against possible attempts at exposure.
Of course, everybody in the room was on his feet.
Some of the front-row people were rushing upon Nick.
Others had crowded around Colonel Richmond so closely that Nick was afraid he might not fully see the exposure of this fake.
The person whom Nick had seized was not a woman, as might have been expected, but a man. He was of short stature, but surprising strength.
Even in the mighty arms of the detective, he managed to struggle vigorously, and for a moment prevented Nick from tearing away the white and ghostly wrappings.
But a complete expose could not have been long delayed. In spite of the odds against him, Nick was certain to come out ahead.
He called out to Colonel Richmond:
“Look! Look at this! It's a man!”
Just at that instant a tall man who had been standing beside the female “medium,” and acting as master of ceremonies, seized an ornament from the mantelpiece, and hurled it not at Nick, as the detective expected, but at the lamp in the corner of the room.
This lamp had been turned up by one of the timid believers as soon as the row began.
The missile which the spiritualistic “bouncer” hurled was well directed. It smashed the lamp to fragments, and the room for a minute was dark.
Then another light flashed up. The broken lamp had set fire to the window curtains.
The scene hadn't been what one would call peaceful before, but it had been nothing at all to what it became when the fire leaped up.
Pandemonium broke loose. Doors and windows were burst out, and everybody rushed toward the outer air.
Among the last to emerge was Nick.
He held the “bouncer” in one hand and the ghost of Aunt Lavina in the other.
Both of them were very badly used up. When the detective dropped them on the lawn they made no attempt to rise.
Some of the medium's stool-pigeons were beginning to get their wits together, and were making preparations for putting out the fire.
Nick yelled to them, and pointed to a line of garden hose on the lawn.