Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 111, No. 4, June 12, 1937

Ghost in C-Minor by Richard Sale

Daffy Dill tackles the Case of Mad Music in a madman’s house and the restless ghost of a cocker spaniel...!

It was about five P. M. on a Friday evening and I was cleaning up my desk in the city room of the New York Chronicle, the metropolis’ best (self-termed) newspaper, when the telephone buzzed a couple of times in its merriest tune.

Dinah Mason, the light of my life, was standing by the desk at the time. She looked ravishing and she looked hungry. When she heard Alexander Bell’s folly speak its piece, she scowled darkly. “Don’t answer it,” she ordered. “You’ve invited me to dinner and I intend to eat. From the tone of that musical chime, it sounds as though the Old Man had plans to send you garnering news.”

“On the other hand,” I returned blithely, “it might be a pair of lawyers calling to inform me that my long lost uncle has kicked the bucket and left me his estate of a hundred thousand dollars Mex. It is a code of the Dill family never to turn down a telephone call. If you will kindly attend—” I picked up the handset and said hello.

Dinah — unhappily — was correct. It was the Old Man, that bald-headed little gnome who city edits the Chronicle — who sits behind his desk with a dark green eyeshade down over his face.

“If I am speaking with D. Dill,” he opened sardonically, “it is merely to say that his presence is required quicker than he can present himself.”

“If you will glance at the mechanism you call a clock which rests on the southwest corner of your desk,” I replied with fervor, “you will note that Eastern Standard Time says five o’clock — which same is the hour that said Daffy Dill stops working and begins to play.”

“Ha-ha!” the Old Man chortled sadly. “That was very funny. Even odd. I ask you to consider the human wreck lounging across the street by Pier Twelve. You can see him from your window. That is what unemployment does to a guy. Get in here fast or it’s your neck.”

“Listen, Rasputin—”

“I’m telling you, Daffy—”

“But I’ve got a date with Dinah for dinner and she’ll disown me if I don’t keep this one—”

“I wouldn’t give a damn if she decapitated you. I’ve got a yarn for you to cover and—”

“Okay, okay!” I snapped. “And I hope your next herring bone has a slow passage through your Adam’s apple.”

“May the levees that hold the water off your brain have weak moments,” he finished, and slammed up.

Dinah and I shrugged at one another. I got up, put on my hat and coat, and we both went over to the Old Man. He said hello brusquely. “Never mind the black looks, Dinah,” he said. “There’ll be plenty of time for the free dinner.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “Free for me or for Daffy?”

“Never mind that,” countered the Old Man. He turned to me. “Do you know what this is?”

“Why,” I said, ogling at the black object which he held up. “It looks like one of those things that takes pictures.”

“It’s a camera,” agreed the Old Man snappily. “It’s a speed Graphic with a Kalart Synchronizer, lens Tessar f/4.5 and a focal shutter with speeds from 1/10th to 1/1000th of a second.”

“Very interesting,” I said. “I have a Brownie snapshot camera myself which I bought in 1909. Sometimes it makes pictures. I don’t know much about it. I care even less. And I’m hungry.”

“You’re going to operate this machine tonight,” barked the Old Man. “I’ll make it as simple as possible. I’ve set the shutter at 1/50th of a second, same timing as the photoflash bulb. All you have to do is sight through this range-finder and when you see what you’re shooting clearly, press this lever and you’ll have a picture. The lens is already stopped to f/8.”

“My friend,” I replied suavely, “I am a newspaper reporter. I garner news, not pictures. If you want pictures, use a staff fotog. If you want especially good pictures, hire Candid Jones to shoot ’em. If you want no pictures, I’ll handle the camera.”

The Old Man sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “This isn’t the time to be funny, Daffy. There’s a good yarn in this thing and if you can get anything at all with the camera, it’ll be terrific.”

“What is he supposed to shoot?” Dinah asked, curious.

“A ghost,” answered the Old Man calmly.

There was a long silence. Dinah and I stared at him. The Old Man is not superstitious and hardly a romanticist. He was as cynical an old guy as had ever been spared by the buzzards. There wasn’t an ounce of flumduggery in his skull. There wasn’t an ounce of tomfoolery in his makeup. And it was plain that he was absolutely on the level.

“A g-ghost?” Dinah faltered. “You don’t mean a real g-ghost?”

“A real ghost,” affirmed the Old Man. “Remember, Daffy? The last time we had ghosts in the Chronicle was when old Major Culpepper came back from the grave with his .31 caliber grave-scratcher. That was a phony. Maybe this is, too. I don’t know.”

“For a possible phony,” I said, “you take it pretty seriously. What is all this anyway?”

“It begins with Walter Nurbeck,” said the Old Man. “You know — the big-game hunter who brings ’em back more or less alive. I know Walt pretty well myself. After this last trip to Malaya, he delivered a cargo of animals to the Rachenbach Circus quarters out on Long Island. He was pretty much fed up with traveling around and figured he’d stay in New York for a spell until the winter was over.”

“Go ahead.”

“Now you may remember something about Walt Nurbeck. He was married to Gloria Canova back in 1921—”

“Gloria Canova, the actress?” Dinah breathed reverently.

“That’s the one,” said the Old Man.

“But she disappeared about eight years ago!” I said. “I remember all that fuss. I was a mere stripling at the time, but it had the country gaga. Nurbeck was in Africa at the time.”

“Here’s how it happened,” explained the Old Man. “Walt was in Africa with Akeley on a job for the Natural History Museum. His wife was playing in The Taming of the Shrew, a revival at the Broadhurst Theater. She came home from the theater this particular night with her agent, Karl Anderson, and her producer, Philip de Mare. They were sitting in the living room and the maid was serving them liqueurs when suddenly Miss Canova rose, said she was going to change her clothes, and went upstairs. She never returned!”

“I remember,” I said.

“I don’t want to remember,” Dinah said, shivering. “What happened to her anyhow?”

“I wish I knew,” said the Old Man wistfully. “It would make a sweet yarn... As a matter of fact, Dinah, no one knows what happened. She was never found. She went upstairs with her white cocker spaniel — the dog was faithfully devoted to her — and she was never seen again.”

“And the dog?”

“The cocker disappeared with her. Never seen either. Walt Nurbeck came home, grief-stricken — offered rewards which were never claimed. No trace of the girl was ever found. It was established that Gloria Canova could never have left by the front door because her agent, Karl Anderson, could see it from where he sat. She didn’t leave by the back door because the cook was there and would have seen her. She could have lowered herself out of a window with rope and sheets, along with the dog, and made an exit into eternity that way, but... well... where did she go? What happened to her?”

“There’s murder in it,” I said.

“Baloney,” said the Old Man. “Always a nose for sudden death. Keep this one sane. I’ll resume. Now during the time that Walt Nurbeck was on his way home from Africa, the maid and cook kept up housekeeping there in the house, waiting for him. They telephoned the police one night after the disappearance, terrified. When the cops got there, the maid was a case. She’d seen a ghost — the ghost of the cocker spaniel. She heard deathly wails — the wails of her missing mistress. And a strange satanic organ had played a ghastly tune during the whole thing. Needless to say, the cook and maid both left the premises. The police found nothing. And Walt Nurbeck arrived home to an empty house, already steeped in tragedy, and quickly acquiring a nasty reputation.”

I said: “The newspapers had a field day with that case. It comes back like a picture now. They called the place the Old Dark House and they referred to it thereafter as New York’s number one haunt. Gloria Canova’s spook was supposed to walk the place, moaning loudly, the white ghostly cocker at her side, and sometimes unseen hands would touch an unseen organ and the results would be terrific. Cops on the beat heard the organ. I remember that. They said it was terrible!”

“The organ,” remarked the Old Man sagely, “was another red herring. Nobody could figure it out. Of course, the guy who owned the house before Walt Nurbeck was an organist and also a nut. He killed himself with a straight razor one night. So, naturally, the story went around that he came back to play in spectral form.”

It was getting late. Outside the night had come down and you couldn’t see the Hudson River anymore, out the window. You couldn’t see much of anything, as a matter of fact, since a greasy fog had seeped in over a greasy sea, and all the lights of Manhattan were clotted with the white cotton mist; they stood out like dim fuzzy balls up off the sidewalk.

“Well,” I said presently, “and what has all this talk about ghosts to do with the nocturnal assignment?”

The Old Man stared at the calendar on the wall and pecked at a front tooth with his right forefinger, frowning as he thought. “Walt Nurbeck is a close friend of mine,” he said. “That’s why I’m doing this. He doesn’t believe in ghosts either.”

Dinah asked: “So what?”

“He telephoned me this afternoon.” said the Old Man. “I told you: he wants to stay in town for the winter. So he has opened up the Old Dark House on East 72nd Street. It hasn’t been open since he closed it up after Gloria Canova disappeared, eight years ago. He hired some help — a male cook and a valet. He had the gas and water and light turned on yesterday morning. He spent his first night there last night.”

I began to feel goose pimples forming down my spine as if I had an intuition of what the Old Man was going to say. I choked and then gulped: “Yeah?”

“He hasn’t got a cook nor a valet this evening. They hauled out of the Old Dark House bright and early this A. M.”

“Why? Ghosts?” Dinah asked breathlessly.

“Ghosts!” said the Old Man firmly. “And the startling fact is that Walt saw one himself. He saw the cocker spaniel last night, shortly after midnight. He’d been in the living room. He turned off the lights as he left the room. As he started for the stairs in the hallway, he saw the cocker run down from the upper floor, pause on the first landing, then scoot up to the second floor again. The dog was there all right, but he could see right through the beast, as though it were running around in a coat of ectoplasm. He was quite shaken, put it down to imagination, and went to bed. At intervals throughout the night, he heard the organ — no practiced hand playing it — just a lot of minor chords, jumbled, horrible, filling the whole house and yet, not being there at all.”

I took a deep breath. “And I, foul fiend,” I protested, “am supposed to lay the banshee of the Old Dark House all by my lonesome tonight?”

“Not exactly,” the Old Man replied. “Walt didn’t believe his ears nor his eyes. He wanted me to send up one of my best men to cover the place. And he wanted a camera along for a quick picture of the cocker’s spook. You’re the man.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly. I glanced at Dinah. “Want to come along, Angel-Eyes? Your sex appeal might help.”

Dinah set her chin out firmly. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, her voice a trifle tremulous. “I think it’s all a fake. I think you’re trying to rib Daffy on this one. And just to prove it, I will go along!”

“So will I,” boomed a big new voice. We all wheeled, startled, and who should we find standing there but Captain Bill “Poppa” Hanley of the New York Homicide Bureau.

“Poppa!” I said, sighing in relief. “You, too? What a pleasure!”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Poppa Hanley said, smiling slightly as he tilted his red homely face toward us. “Couldn’t help overhearing you. And if you ask me, there’s something that isn’t quite so phony about the whole business. Why should the same things happen after eight years? There’s something in that house. And I’d like to find what it is. After all, wouldn’t it be nice to get a lead on what happened to Gloria Canova eight years ago? I’d like to break that case, by thunder!”

“May you, may you!” I said. “But have you got a rod?”

“You’ll probably need it.” said the Old Man, smiling as though he were enjoying a huge joke. “Look at the calendar!”

We all had a look. And we suddenly learned that this particular Friday fell on a thirteenth and that it was a night of the full moon, despite the fog. I felt lower than a catapillar’s tummy.

“Huh!” Poppa Hanley grunted noisily.

No more was said. I picked up the Speed Graphic, took Dinah’s arm, and Hanley followed us out.

It was a nasty night. The fog had closed down so that you couldn’t see the lights of buildings a short block away. It was that thick drizzling type of fog which seems to pick up the soft coal dust over the city and lay it down on everything — windshields, faces, clothes — until you felt like a secondhand soda straw.

We rode uptown in a cab to East 45th Street and we had dinner at the Divan Parisienne. It was a good dinner, but somehow, it didn’t give us a lift. Dinah Mason was very nervous. She kept chewing celery stalks and staring at me. I didn’t like the way she stared at me. You’d have thought I was a candidate for lilies or something.

Ghosts, however, did not affect Poppa Hanley’s appetite at all. He put it all away and looked for more.

As for myself, the story which the Old Man told seemed to reach me more than I liked. It was a depressing sort of thing. If some departed soul had staged a spectral spree in the Old Dark House, I’d have known it was a phony and it would have been fun to lay the banshee. But the fact that the spook was the shade of a faithful cocker spaniel — that kind of got me. Just like it had got Dinah and the Old Man.

There was something rather sad in the ghost of a dog.

When we finally left the Divan Parisienne and went uptown even further, to East 72nd Street, my spirits were lower than the fog. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the entire business. The night was worse; rain had started to needle down in a fine spray. When we reached the place, it was nearly eight-thirty P. M.

We got out. I paid off the cab driver and made a mental note, duplicating the sum for the swindle sheet.

We gave the Old Dark House a once-over lightly.

It was a fine mansion for spooks. Surviving as a relic of the ancient regime of New York, it stood in East 72nd Street like an anachronism in a shining city. It was medieval, compared with the two ultra-modern apartment houses which flanked each side of it. It was a dreary gray-stone house, with gingerbread effects all up the front of it, including a bizarre Byzantine fencing around the flat surface of the roof.

There were three floors. Only the lower floor was lighted. The amber glow behind the drawn shades of the windows downstairs made the windows resemble two huge eyes, softly veiled by the rain and the fog of the night.

We went up the four steps to the front door and we rang the bell.

The man who answered was Walter Nurbeck himself. I recognized him from motion pictures of his various safaris in Africa. I had never met him before in my life. He was older than his pictures had indicated. There were weather lines in his face and a touch of maturity at his temples, a fine pepper-and-salt sprinkling of gray hair. He looked at us, quietly surprised, and then said: “I beg your pardon. I hadn’t expected—”

“I’m from the Chronicle,” I said. “The Old Man sent me. The handle is Daffy Dill. The job is taking pictures of a ghost while an organ plays in C minor.”

“Yes,” Nurbeck nodded. “But—”

“This is Miss Mason,” I said. “She’s to write a story on what she sees in case I’m busy with the camera. And this is Captain Hanley of die homicide bureau; he figures the ghost may have a lot to do with the disappearance of Gloria Canova eight years ago, and he’d like a chance to prove it.”

“By all means!” Nurbeck exclaimed, his voice quivering. “Do come in, gentlemen and Miss Mason. Sorry to have been impolite, but — my nerves aren’t at their best tonight. You’ll just have to drop your coats here in the hall. No servants around. They departed after last night, poor souls, and I can’t blame them.”

There was a Chinese teak chest in the hall by the door and we laid our hats and coats on it before we had a look around.

“Before we go into the living room,” Nurbeck said, “I’d like you to glance up at the staircase. We’ll come out here later on. The dog came down from the top landing there to the intermediate landing, stood still momentarily, then turned and ran to disappear into the wall behind its back.”

I looked hard. It was a gloomy house at best. The most modern furniture wouldn’t have changed it. The walls were all of paneled oak, stained very dark like mahogany. The staircase — very narrow — went up to a small landing on the left side of the hall. Here, at the landing, it made a ninety-degree right turn and went up to the second floor of the house. All around the left side of the staircase as it descended, the paneled oak motif held.

“Hmmm!” said Poppa Hanley with profundity.

“Let’s go inside,” Dinah suggested, because her knees were knocking together with the speed of a rolling drum and she had to sit down.

Nurbeck led us into the living room. It looked cheerful, which was a nice change. He had a fire going in the big stone fireplace and the furniture looked comfortable, and there was a flagon of port wine which Nurbeck immediately served to us. We all sat around the fire and we drank the wine slowly and didn’t say much, and I kept the Speed Graphic close to me, set at hyperfocal distance and loaded with a flash bulb and ready to go.

Then I began to feel it...

I felt it twice before. Once when I visited the little green room at Sing Sing where the electric chair sits in the room and rows of benches stretch out before it for witnesses. The time I saw it the room was empty, except for my guide and myself. But I felt death there, as distinctly as if a man had been dying while I watched. You couldn’t get away from its actuality. It was there in that little green room.

Another time I felt it was in an operating room when I was watching a very simple appendectomy. There was no reason on earth why the operation should not have been successful and the patient should have lived, regardless. But I felt death that time, close, sure, its presence making the small of my back prickle like a desert cactus and get cold and bloodless. The patient died on the table.

...It was here, too, in this house, suddenly. The cactus flourished once more down my spine and breathing came hard and my veins felt cold despite the roaring fire, and death visited the premises.

The vigil for a ghost went on for three hours while we chatted idly, or, for long periods, said nothing at all. At eleven-thirty, the room was entirely silent and we were all staring morosely at the dying flames in the fireplace; Nurbeck’s head had fallen to his chest and his eyes shone glassily in the fire’s reflection, as he stared intently at the embers; Dinah watched the flames too, her chin on her hands, her face very white. Poppa Hanley leaned back in his chair as he chewed stolidly on an unlighted stogie, for Poppa liked to chew, but never smoked.

“What is it?” Dinah asked suddenly, sitting up straight and rubbing her elbows briskly.

“What’s that?” I snapped, nerves on edge.

“I... I heard something,” Dinah quavered.

“Yes,” said Nurbeck, his face very pallid, even in the red touch of the fire flare. “You did hear something!”

“I didn’t hear anything,” affirmed Poppa Hanley. “Not a doggone thing.”

I said: “Nor I.”

“It’s time,” Nurbeck said, disregarding us completely. “A little earlier tonight than last night, but it’s started.” He rose and began putting out the lights of the living room. Soon we were completely in the dark, seeing each other only by the glow of the moribund hearth embers.

“What’s to happen?” I asked.

“Mr. Dill,” Nurbeck began, his voice high and thin and unsure, “above all else, you must get a picture tonight. I’ve had doubts about my own mind after what took place last night. Tonight, I want a picture. I must have a picture and the testimony of reliable witnesses. You won’t fail me?”

“I’ll get the picture,” I said, “if there’s one to get. But for pete’s sake, will you give me an in on what’s to come off?”

He held up his finger in a solemnly prophetic manner.

“Listen!”

I heard it and froze. Dinah heard it and gasped. Poppa heard it, slowly removed the cigar from his mouth and drawled: “Well, blow me down, it’s on the level!”

At first, it was only the hoarse whisper of rushing wind, filling the house in one tremulous gust, emanating from nowhere yet reaching everywhere. A vibrant reedy concussion which could only be felt inside your mind; then: a rush of sound which broke the trembling silence like a splitting crack of thunder. The sound of a pipe organ welling up to a ghastly cresendo throughout the house, within the walls of the house, everywhere!

C minor — then a horrible crashing discord! B flat — and another rending discord! C minor — and a series of tripping de, de, dum, dum, do, do, DUM! like spectral rivulets of mistaken melody falling from the mad fingers of a madder madman as his hands tripped along a keyboard without rhyme or reason.

Without warning, all sounds ceased. It was as though a magician’s hand had passed over the Old Dark House and had left it without life, without pulse, without breath. We were all standing on our feet at that point, wild-eyed, gasping, pale. My ticker was hitting against my ribs until I thought it would crack one of them.

“It... it seemed to come from the hall outside,” Dinah faltered.

“It comes from everywhere,” Walter Nurbeck declared soberly. “I’ve tried to trace it down but I can’t. It’s in the walls themselves and it’s... it’s terrifying—”

“Judas!” Poppa Hanley grunted, holding up his hand.

Again sound. This time, a single wavering soprano note, penetrating, sharp, holding onto its pitch for ten eternal seconds before it broke into a series of mashed notes all struck at the same time and ending in a crash of discordant noise which shook us.

“Let’s see the hall,” Hanley snapped.

“Yes,” said Nurbeck. “But go quietly. It’s time. And Mr. Dill — your camera—”

We moved into the hall. The reflection of the embers did not reach out there. The hall was solidly black now. We could not see the staircase at all. We moved in the intangible pitch by feeling our way against each other.

“Wait and watch,” Walter Nurbeck whispered hollowly.

“And listen,” Dinah added hoarsely. “There goes little Joe on the organ again.”

She was right. The organ crashed out for the third time, and this rendition was almost entirely played on the bass keys of the ectoplasmic instrument, cannonades of rumbling sounds whose vibrations — mute but strong — played themselves upon our bodies as we stood, bathed in the blackness.

It was Poppa Hanley who spoke next.

We had waited for the canine ghost for something over ten minutes. The vigil had been something to go through, sitting in a lonely, gloomy hallway, waiting for a spectre others had seen, knowing it would come, disbelieving in its reality, yet believing in its presence, and all the time, at frequent, unexpected intervals, the horrific crash of the unseen organ while hands crashed across an unseen keyboard.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel very funny. And then Poppa Hanley said slowly and strangely quiet: “There’s death in this house. I can feel it as though I could see it.”

“I know,” I whispered, holding the Speed Graphic up in front of me, waiting for a picture of a ghost.

“I’ll find it,” Hanley said. “It’s here somewhere and I’ll find it.” And none of us knew what he meant just then.

None of us paid any attention to what he said at that particular moment, in fact. For Dinah interrupted him with a knife-like hiss, a gasp caught as it was born: “On the stair! Good!—”

It came from the top landing lightly, that ghost, skipping down sure-footed and nimble and low to the ground, a white cocker spaniel by slight stretch of the imagination. You could see through it — the stairs were suddenly visible behind it, and the hall seemed to glow a little bit in reflecting the whiteness of the beast.

I became aware that the hair on the back of my neck was standing out like quills on a porcupine’s spine, and I could hardly breathe. I was gripping the Graphic camera so damned hard that my knuckles were hurting.

The white shadow ran down the stairs to the intermediate landing and paused here. It seemed to turn and bark at the oaked panel behind the landing. It couldn’t be described: it was just there. A nucleus of lights and shadows which made a cocker, made dark spots in the shadow where there might have been eyes and a mouth and a nose. It had a flowing quality like liquid.

I snapped the plunger on the Graphic.

There was a blinding flash of light which illumined the entire place with startling clarity for one-fiftieth of a second, and I had a picture.

When the flash had faded and we could focus once more — a tough job after a photoflash — the ghost was gone, vanished completely.

“Lights!” Poppa Hanley roared.

“But it’ll return!” Nurbeck said.

“The hell with that!” said Hanley. “I want lights and let’s have ’em. That spook kept looking at that panel. Maybe it’s a hunch. Maybe Fate works it this way. Gimme lights!”

Nurbeck gave him lights. The moment they were on, Hanley dashed up the stairs to the intermediate landing and began to pound the oak panel there — the one the dog had looked at. It sounded solid enough but it was oak and you couldn’t tell.

“Come on up here,” Hanley said. “Everybody feel around and see if anything opens here — never mind! I’ve got it!”

We were all up on the landing in a flash. The panel had shot inward and Poppa Hanley had nearly catapulted in after it. He’d been leaning against it when he found the wood piece — a carved leaf in the border of the panel — which, when depressed, unlocked the panel. A concealed spring pulled it in. You had a good chance of diving in head first. Hanley darn near did.

“Take it easy,” Hanley said from where he stood beyond the panel. “There’s a stone stairway here. It leads down to a room. And there’s your organ down there. An electric light is on. There—” he paused.

“Let me in,” I said.

“You come, Daffy,” said Hanley. “Dinah, stay out of this. There’s something down here you won’t want to see. Nor you, Mr. Nurbeck. Stay up here and we’ll have a look and be right up.”

“You couldn’t get me down there,” Dinah said, “for a permanent wave with a million bucks thrown in.”

“I’ll... I’ll stay—” Nurbeck faltered.

He looked thin and gaunt and piqued suddenly. He knew what we would find.

We went down the stairs. There were fifteen of them and they led to a subcellar which had been cut out of the ground beneath the front of the house. The concrete room wasn’t large. Couldn’t have been more than six by six.

But there was a single bulb on and it showed four things in that six-by-six tomb. It showed an organ. It showed two bodies. It showed rats...

I took a couple of pictures for the paper while Poppa Hanley had a closer look. I finished when he did. “Do you get the lay of this thing?” he asked.

“You tell me,” I said. “I’m still shaky.”

“That’s Gloria Canova,” said Hanley. “And that’s the cocker dog you’ve heard so much about.”

She was in a silver fox collared coat, wrapped tightly around what was left of her body. The dampness of the cellar hadn’t been kind. There was only a skeleton left along with a fetid, heavy smell. I could see the fracture in front of the skull, and the right leg, snapped in two. She was lying face down on the concrete floor close to the organ and she had one hand extended up to the organ bench. The dog lay close beside her, skeletal in form, on its right side.

“When she left to go upstairs that night,” Hanley said, “she must’ve leaned against that panel and opened it when she reached the middle landing. She wasn’t prepared for it and she fell straight through and down these stairs. You can see: she busted a pin and cracked her skull. But that didn’t kill her.”

“No?”

“No,” said Hanley. “She must have regained consciousness at one time with just enough strength to turn the electric switch on the organ and push down some of the keys. Maybe she hoped some one would hear it and come looking for her. That switch has been left on for eight years from the night she died.”

“The motor for pumping couldn’t have lasted for eight years of constant turning over.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Hanley. “But the juice was all turned off when Nurbeck closed the house. So the organ motor hasn’t been running in eight years. It is now. It started running when Nurbeck had the electricity turned on again and opened up the house. Since then, at night, the rats come out and run across the keyboard and that’s why the damned spine-chilling sounds we heard.”

“What about the dog?”

“Died of starvation, I figure,” said Hanley. “There he is; he stuck to the last.”

“I mean the ghost!” I said.

“Let’s go downtown and develop that plate,” said Poppa, “and I’ll explain about the ghost.”

We went upstairs and told Dinah and Walter Nurbeck what had happened. It broke Nurbeck all up. We didn’t want to leave him alone there, so we took him along to headquarters.

Poppa Hanley had one of his police fotogs develop my plate and while he was doing it, I telephoned the Old Man at the Chronicle office and spilled the whole yarn to him. It was one I wasn’t pleased to call in. It was one which did not elate the Old Man. Somehow the picture of those bodies in that cellar was pathetic.

When the police fotog had the plates ready, he printed them and gave us a soaking wet job to look over. The shots I’d taken in the subcellar were all perfect. But it was the one of the ghost in the hall that knocked me on an ear.

There were the stairs, all in perfect focus. The walls with all their detail. The paneling. The bannisters. The rug.

But on the middle landing where the cocker had been when I snapped the picture — there was nothing!

“Uh-huh,” said Hanley.

“What do you mean ‘uh-huh’?” I demanded. “You saw the thing. We all saw the thing. I caught it with the flash. And there’s nothing there!”

Hanley smiled.

“What’d you expect? A ghost isn’t anything to begin with. This was just a regular ghost. That is to say: nothing. And that is what you took a picture of.”

“But what did we see then?”

“We saw light,” said Hanley. “Light that could be anything we wanted it to be. In this instance, I will admit, it was a dead ringer for a white cocker. I don’t know but what you could call it a ghost at that. It led us to the right panel.”

“But what caused it?”

“Three things,” said Hanley. “Defective glass, an automobile, and a mirror. Neat, eh? But while you people watched the ghost, I watched to see what made it. The car that came by had high lights on. Those high lights caught a whorl in the living room window on the right side, and focused a blob of light into the hall mirror which — in turn — shot the light up the stairs. As the car moved past the light came down the stairs and when it had reached a ninety-degree angle with the window, the ghost vanished.

“However, your photoflash was a bright light. It deleted the lesser light which made the ghost and thus you had no picture at all of the ghost. Light versus light. The flash won. If you could have made a time exposure, you’d have had a picture. You still can make a shot if you want. I’ll drive the prowl car up and park it just right for the ghost to be on the landing. Then you can make a time—”

“Skip it,” I said.

“Sure,” said Poppa Hanley quietly, “I know how you feel, Daffy. Lights or no lights, that cocker was the only ghost I ever saw in whom I’d like to believe. After all. it was as though he were trying to break through and let us know about his mistress. It was as though — having been unsuccessful in keeping her alive — he was doing his best to see her buried. And it worked.” He turned to Nurbeck: “I’m sending the squad up along with the medical examiner, Mr. Nurdeck. The house’ll be cleared shortly and you can go home.”

“No,” said Nurbeck. “No. I’ll never live in the place again. It murdered her. I’ve had an offer. I’m selling it to be razed. The man who owned it before me was mad, they said. Killed himself. Some sort of wealthy musician who felt he was being persecuted. Of course he had the room built where he could play the organ in solitude. But who would have thought—”

Hanley’s office was very still and very sad.

“Let’s go home,” Dinah said, sniffling slightly.

And we went...