“No, I don’t think that.  The tenants were honest enough, but who owned the house before Mr. Searles?” I was resolved to give no hint of the information imparted to me by Mrs. Packard.

“The Misses Quinlan, the two maiden ladies who live next door to Mayor Packard.”

“I don’t know them,” said I truthfully.

“Very worthy women,” Mr. Robinson assured me.  “They are as much disturbed and as completely puzzled as the rest of us over the mysterious visitations which have lessened the value of their former property.  They have asked me more than once for an explanation of its marked unpopularity.  I felt foolish to say ghosts, but finally I found myself forced to do so, much to my lasting regret.”

“How?  Why?” I asked, with all the force of a very rapidly increasing curiosity.

“Because its effect upon them has been so disastrous.  They were women of intelligence previous to this, one of them quite markedly so, but from that day they have given evidence of mental weakness which can only be attributed to their continual brooding over this mysterious topic.  The house, whose peculiarities we are now discussing, was once their family homestead, and they shrink from the reproach of its unfortunate reputation.  What! you don’t think so?” he impetuously asked, moved, perhaps, by my suggestive silence.  “You are suspicious of these two poor old women?  What reason have you for that, Miss Saunders?  What motive could they have for depreciating the value of what was once their own property?”

So he knew nothing of the lost bonds!  Mrs. Packard had made no mistake when she assured me of the secrecy with which they had endured their misfortune.  It gave me great relief; I could work more safely with this secret unshared.  But the situation called for dissimulation.  It was with anything but real openness that I declared: 

“You can not calculate the impulses of an affected mind.  Jealousy of the past may influence these unfortunate women.  They possibly hate to see strangers in the rooms made sacred by old associations.”

“That is possible, but how could they, shut up in a house, separated from yours by a distance of several feet, be held accountable for the phenomena observed in 393?  There are no means of communication between the two buildings; even the doors, which once faced each other across the dividing alley, have been closed up.  Interference from them is impossible.”

“No more impossible than from any other outside source.  Is it a fact that the doors and windows of this strangely haunted house were always found securely locked after each occurrence of the phenomena you have mentioned?”

“So I have been told by every tenant I have questioned, and I was careful to question them, I assure you.”

“That settles the matter in my mind,” I asserted.  “These women know of some means of entrance that has escaped general discovery.  Cunning is a common attribute of the unsettled brain.”