“I wish he would!” Marta joined in eagerly.  “That might cure you of your silly imaginings, Minna.  She actually thinks, Colonel Bouchard, that she hears them groan and moan and even shriek.  Didn’t you say they shrieked as well as groaned and moaned once about 3 A.M.?” she asked jocularly.

“A ghost must be hard put to it when he shrieks,” observed Bouchard, glaring from one to the other.

“It’s all very well for you to make fun of me because you have the advantage of an education,” said Minna to Marta, “but you yourself—­you—­”

“Yes, I did hear what sounded like moaning voices,” admitted Marta rather sheepishly.  “But of course it was imagination.  Now we have a man with nerve enough to go into the dungeons, we’ll lay this ridiculous psychological bugaboo at once; that is, if you have the nerve!” She arched her brows in challenging scrutiny of Bouchard, while her eyes twinkled at the prospect of adventure.  “I thought I had, myself, but before I got to the dungeons the clammy air wilted it and I was rubbing my eyes to keep from seeing all kinds of apparitions.”

She puzzled Bouchard, she was so facile, so ready, so many-sided.  But the more she puzzled him the stronger became his conviction of her guilt.  He guessed that all this talk was only a prelude to some trick to keep him out of the tunnel.  Poor at speech at best, slightly fussed by her candid good humor and teasing, he hesitated as to his next remark.  He was going to be short with her in stating that he would go into the tunnel immediately, when she took the words out of his mouth.

“This way, please.  I’m all impatience.  I only wish that you had suggested it before.”

As they passed out of the room Minna leaned against the wall, exhausted and wonder-struck.

“Miss Galland is beyond me!” she thought.  “Does she think those hawk eyes will miss that little button of the panel door?”

“We’ll need a lantern,” said Marta as she took up the one she had been using from a corner of the tool room; while Bouchard, slowly turning his head like some automaton, was examining every detail of floor and wall, spades, hoes, and weeders, for a hidden significance.  The lantern was still hot, and Marta’s finger smarted with a burn, but she did not twitch.  She was so keyed up that she felt capable of walking over red-hot coals, while she joked about ghosts.  “There!” she exclaimed, after the lantern was lighted.  “This is going to be great sport.  Ghost hunting—­think of that!  We might have made a ghost party Too bad we didn’t think of it in time.  Yes, it’s a pity to be so exclusive about it.  Even now we might send for General Westerling and some of the other staff-officers.”

She paused and looked at Bouchard questioningly, perhaps challengingly; at least, he thought challengingly.  He had half a mind to concur.  Could anything be better than to have Westerling present if suspicions proved correct?  But no.  She wanted Westerling and that was the best reason why he should not be present.  Yet there was no sign of chicane in the brimming fun of her eyes that went with the suggestion.  Bouchard’s search for the proper words of dissent left him rather confused and at a disadvantage.  With sympathetic quickness she seemed to guess his thoughts, and in a way that he found all the more exasperating.