“Tell me, Miss Selmore, you saw these things that the medium talked about, didn’t you?”
“Partly,” acknowledged Sylvia. “I am sure I saw the Canhywllah Cyrth.”
Cardona repeated Sylvia’s pronunciation of a term he never could have spelled.
“Canhywllah Cyrth,” said Joe. “What does it mean?”
“The English call it a corpse candle,” explained Sylvia. “Canhywllah Cyrth is the Welsh term. I am Welsh, you know. My family dates back to early Pennsylvania, shortly after its settlement. The Canhywllah Cyrth is a strange, tiny light that announces the arrival of the Gwrach y Rhibyn.”
Weston gave a despairing gesture at hearing this second name repeated, but Cardona was persistent.
“What is the Gwrach y Rhibyn?”
“A family spirit,” explained Sylvia. “Some call its appearance a bad omen, but not those who understand. More often than not, the Gwrach y Rhibyn brings a fair warning. I didn’t see the Gwrach y Rhibyn, but Madame Mathilda did, which proves she must have materialized somewhere.”
“Who materialized?” put in Weston, briskly. “Madame Mathilda?”
“No,” retorted Sylvia. “The Gwrach y Rhibyn. I have seen her myself, when death threatened the family. She appeared as a hideous old hag -”
“I get it,” interrupted Cardona. “A banshee.”
The comment stiffened Sylvia’s hauteur.
“A banshee indeed!” The portly lady was indignant. “Banshees are wayward creatures that howl around the walls of Irish castles for any and all to see. In Wales our family spirits are more particular. They manifest themselves in ancient halls or beside sylvan pools.”
“That’s what Madame Mathilda saw!” Sylvia was becoming eager now. “She saw my family spirit materialized beside some forest pool. As a token, the Gwrach y Rhibyn sent this” - Sylvia picked up the sprig of lilac from the floor - “But with it there was a warning.” Pausing, the portly lady pointed stiffly at the dagger. “A warning that might mean death,” Sylvia continued. “No wonder the Gwrach y Rhibyn vanished with a wail!”
Sylvia finished that statement with a shudder and in a moment, most members of the group were quaking too. For from outside the house there came a rising wail that at this instant carried everything unearthly in its hideous cry.
Lamont Cranston wasn’t one who shuddered, but he had to press a reassuring hand upon the shoulder of a scared girl who was standing beside him. She was Margo Lane, who accompanied Cranston on many of his milder adventurers. Margo had thought it a lark to attend a spirit seance, but this one hadn’t proven the mild affair she’d anticipated.
In fact, despite Cranston’s steadying clasp, Margo would have let out a wild scream of her own, if she hadn’t suddenly recognized what the wail was - a thing which Cranston had caught upon the instant.
Neither human nor supernatural, the howl was purely a mechanical utterance from the siren of a police car wheeling past the house in the direction of Central Park.
Immediately alert, Weston and Cardona exchanged glances that were promptly answered by the jangle of the telephone. Cardona took the call in official fashion; then hung up and turned to Weston.
“Headquarters,” stated Cardona. “They knew you were here, commissioner. That’s why they called. All available patrol cars have been ordered to Central Park.”
Staring a moment, Weston demanded:
“A murder?”
Shaking his head, Cardona turned to Miss Sylvia.
“This thing you talked about, Miss Selmore,” said Cardona. “The family spook with a Welsh name. You’re sure it isn’t the same thing as a banshee?”
Again, Miss Sylvia exhibited her full dignity.
“Positively not!”
“Then you’re due for an argument, with an officer named Reilly,” announced Cardona. Plucking the lilac sprig from Sylvia’s hand, he added: “Right at the time Madame Mathilda was describing something, Reilly saw it. A beautiful creature over by a pool in Central Park, breaking off a bough from a lilac tree, which is against all regulations.”
Bringing two handkerchiefs from his pockets, Cardona laid the lilac twig in one, then picked up the dagger with the other, to wrap both items together. Then, to make the act official, the inspector furnished this addendum:
“Officer Reilly says the creature was a banshee,” declared Cardona, “and a banshee it is until we find out different!”
HUNTING a banshee in Central Park was a shivery sport, even on a warm night. At least Margo Lane found it so, despite the presence of police in plentitude. In fact it was the prevalence of uniformed searchers that made the situation so uncanny. Only a banshee or its equivalent could have eluded the sizeable cordon established around the rock-rimmed pool.
On the jutting rock where Reilly had seen the banshee, there was evidence to support the officer’s testimony. That evidence was a lilac bough which anybody might have wrenched from the tree, but it bore a distinctive mark linking Reilly’s banshee with Sylvia’s Gwrach y Rhibyn.
There was a jagged mark where a portion of the branch had been ripped away and when Cardona fitted the twig that he had brought from the seance room, it corresponded exactly!
Certainly this made it seem that Madame Mathilda had viewed the actual scene upon the cliff above the pool and that in departure, the phantom had projected a souvenir of the occasion into Mathilda’s parlor.
To emphasize his testimony, Reilly led the investigators back to the spot from which he had first seen the banshee. Pointing to the rock, he declaimed:
“‘Twas there she stood, reaching for the branch, which as any eye can see, was a good bit above her head. What she was wearing I wouldn’t know, after seeing her from this distance only, but ‘twas scanty. The moon is higher now, but right then it was bucking traffic over from across the park and against it I could see the banshee’s hair, all waving with the black glisten of a raven’s wings.
“Only half way there I was, when she gave the banshee screech and vanished. Mind you, there is nowhere else she could have gone except into nowhere, as others here will testify. Some saw her from the bridge, others heard her from the bridle path and the drive. It’s their word, not mine that you can take, though nobody lives that has ever questioned the word of a Reilly.”
At Weston’s suggestion, they went around to the bridge and studied the rock from there, only to find the mystery even tighter. Though the top of the rock was dim because of the overhanging tree, the front surface caught the full glisten of the moonlight.
Except for slight crevices and the tough, stunted bushes that grew from them, the rock was almost sheer until it reached the water’s edge. It certainly couldn’t have hidden a random figure, but Weston’s doubts concerned the brow of the rock. With a cautious look at Reilly, to make sure that the patrolman wouldn’t feel that his own testimony was being criticized, Weston spoke to persons who had been on the bridge.
“Regarding the woman on the rock,” said the commissioner. “Are you sure you really saw her there? It’s dark up there from this angle. You didn’t have as good a view as Reilly.”
“There was moonlight then,” returned one of the witnesses. “It was shining straight at the rock top. The lower part was darker at that time.”
Another witness corroborated this statement. In addition there were some who had arrived when they heard the wild departing shriek of the creature that was more and more assuming the proportions of a banshee. Some had heard the crackling of the lilac bough; others had glimpsed the sylphlike figure that had flung the tree branch. All admitted that their view was vague, but that the shape was real until the moment that it dwindled, as if swallowed by the rock itself.
One witness gave a novel bit of testimony. She was a middle-aged woman attired in an out-of-date riding habit and her face was as long in expression and as solemn as that of the horse that stood beside her.