LITMIR.BIZ

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the village. He read it and slipped it in his pocket without a word.

      After breakfast he requested the entire household, including the servants, to gather in the hall.

      He addressed them in grave, earnest tones, without anger or undue excitement, saying, in part:

      “I have made considerable progress in the investigations of the tragedies that have occurred in this house. I have learned much regarding the crimes and I think I have discovered who the guilty party is. I may say, in passing, that there is not, and has not been any supernatural influence at work. Any one who says that there has, is either blindly ignorant of or criminally implicated in the whole matter. The two deaths were vile and wicked murders and they are going to be avenged. The kidnapping of Zizi is the work of the same diabolical ingenuity that compassed the deaths of two innocent victims. A third death, that of my clever child assistant, was necessary to prevent discovery, hence Zizi’s fate.”

      “Is she dead?” wailed Hester, “oh, Mr. Wise, is she dead?”

      “I will tell you what happened to her,” said Wise, quietly. “She was taken from her bed in the so-called haunted room, she was carried out of the house, and a bundle of bricks was tied to her, and she was thrown into the lake. That’s what happened to Zizi.”

      Milly screamed hysterically, Norma Cameron cried softly and Eve Carnforth exclaimed, with blazing eyes, “I don’t believe it! You are making that up! How can you know it? Why didn’t you rescue her?”

      The men uttered various exclamations of incredulity and horror, and the servants sat, aghast.

      Pennington Wise surveyed rapidly one face after another, noting the expression of each, and sighing, as if disappointed.

      “She is not dead,” he said, suddenly, and watched again the telltale countenances.

      “What!” cried Wynne Landon, “bricks tied to her, and thrown in the lake but not drowned! Who saved her life?”

      “She herself,” returned Wise, “didn’t you, Zizi?”

      And there she was, in the back of the hall, behind the group, every member of which turned to see her. Peterson was with her, and the two came forward.

      Zizi was garbed in clothes that Mr. Peterson had lent her, and though too large, she had pinned up the plain black dress until it looked neither grotesque nor unbecoming.

      “Yes, I’m here,” she announced, “but only because a bag o’ bones can’t be sunk by a bag o’ bricks! Your Shawled Woman,—only he didn’t have his shawl over his head,—carried me off about as easy as he might have sneaked off a doll-baby! Then,—shall I tell ’em all, Pen?”

      “Yes, child, tell it all, just as it happened.”

      “Well, he stuffed a bale of cotton into my mouth, which same was soaked with chloroform, so, naturally I couldn’t yell; likewise, I didn’t know just where I was at for a few minutes.”

      “Who was he?” exclaimed Braye, “what did he look like?”

      “Was it the skull face?” asked Eve.

      “Nixy on the bone face!” returned Zizi, “he was a plain clothes man in civilian dress, with a black mask over his patrician features.”

      “Don’t you know who it was?” and Eve’s voice was intense and strained.

      “Not positively,” Zizi answered. “Well, he picked me up like I was a feather, and how he got out of the house I’ve no idea, but I felt a breeze of night air, and there was I by the bank of the lake, and there was he, busily engaged in tying a load of bricks to my ankles!”

      “Did you scream?” asked the Professor, absorbed in the account.

      “My dear man, how could I, with my mouth chock-a-block with a large and elegant bundle of gag? I was thankful that my wits were workin’, let alone my lung power! Well, he tossed me in the nasty, black lake, and that’s where he spilled the beans! For ground and lofty tumbling into lakes is my specialty. I’m the humble disciple of Miss Annette Kellerman, and not so awful humble, either! So, I held my breath under water long enough to wriggle my feet out of those ropes, the old stupid didn’t know how to tie anything but a granny slip knot! and I scrambled out, just as my windpipe was beginning to go back on me.”

      “You make light of it, Zizi, but it was a narrow squeak,” said Wise, looking at her gravely.

      “You bet it was! If he’d had a softer rope, I’d been done for. It was the stiffness of that rope, and—well, the stiffness of my upper lip,—that rescued your little Ziz from a watery grave, and horrid dirty old water, too!”

      Wise slipped his arm round the child, and told her to go on with the story.

      “Then,” she proceeded, “I squz out what wetness I could from my few scanty robes, in which I was bedecked, and I borrowed the long cloak, which friend Kidnapper had kindly wrapped me in.”

      “What kind of a cloak?” asked Eve.

      “Nothing very smart,” said Zizi, nonchalantly, “looked to me like an old-fashioned waterproof,—the kind they wore, before raincoats came in. Only, it wasn’t waterproof, not by several jugs full! But I wrung it out all I could, and then I tried to get in the house. But,—it was all locked up, and as it seemed a pity to disturb all you sound sleepers, I ran to the village and begged a lodging with my friend, Mr. Peterson. He and his wife were most kind, and put me in a nice dry, little bed, that had no tassels or ghosts attached to it. I sent Mr. Wise a note, as soon as I could, so he wouldn’t worry.”

      “That was the note I received at the breakfast table,” Wise informed them. “Now, you see, there is a real man at the bottom of the villainy going on up here. He desired to remove Zizi, lest she discover his crime, and I daresay, he planned to dispose of me also, if he could manage it. His seems to be a will that stops at nothing, that is ready to commit any crime or any number of crimes to save his own skin. Has anybody present any idea of the identity of this man? Any reason to suspect any one? Any light whatever to throw on the situation?”

      “No!” declared Landon, “we have not! I speak for myself, and for all present, when I say we have no knowledge of a wretch answering to that description! Nor did I suppose that such existed! Can you track him down, Mr. Wise? Is your power sufficient to discover and deal death to this beast you describe?”

      “I hope so,” and Penny Wise carefully scrutinized the face of the speaker. “I think, Mr. Landon, that with Zizi’s help, with the enlightenment her awful experience gives us, I can get the criminal and that in a short time.”

      “Good!” exclaimed Hardwick. “I am not vindictive, but I confess I never wanted anything more than to see brought to justice the man who could conceive and carry out such diabolical crimes!”

      “Are you sure they are one and the same?” asked Braye, “I mean the man who killed Mr. Bruce and Vernie, and the one who carried off Miss Zizi?”

      “Yes,” said Wise, thoughtfully. “There are not two such, I should say. But the quest of one person is my immediate business. If I find there are others implicated, I shall get them, too. I am not more incensed over the attack on Zizi than on your two friends, but I don’t deny it has given me an added wrong to avenge. But for the child’s strong nerve, and clever quickness of action, she would now lie at the bottom of the lake where——”

      He stopped abruptly.

      “Go away, all of you,” he said, in a low, strained voice. “I mean, go about your business, but leave me to myself for a time. Peterson, come in here.”

      He went into the Room with the Tassels. Peterson followed, and Zizi glided in beside them. The door closed and the group left in the hall looked at one another in perplexity and horror.

      “I can’t understand, Wynne,” said Milly, “who took Zizi away?”

      “I

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