“At noon?” said Bob. “I thought you worked nights.”
“Doing the early shift today,” explained Elmquist. “One of the other guys called in sick.”
“I’m sure the Hound isn’t in your apartment,” said Jupiter quietly. “It isn’t in any apartment in this building.”
Sonny Elmquist looked slightly disappointed. He shrugged and returned to his own place.
“How can you be so sure?” asked Prentice.
“For the obvious reason that Mrs Bortz is a snoop,” Jupe explained, “and she does her snooping here. She pries into the affairs of the tenants and everyone knows it. Until today, she has not been away from here. She has a pass key and can enter any apartment but yours. If I had stolen the Carpathian Hound and I lived in this building, I wouldn’t keep the Hound in my apartment.”
“Yes. I suppose you’re right.”
“But that doesn’t mean that the Hound isn’t close by. Why else would someone be trying to get so many tenants out of the way? Yesterday Miss Chalmers was poisoned. Today Mrs Bortz had her car bombed–and narrowly escaped injury. Then there was a fire in Mr Murphy’s apartment. I wonder about that. I’d like to talk to Murphy. When he’s feeling better he may remember something.”
Bob frowned. “You think the fire wasn’t an accident?”
“It’s possible.”
“Hey, do you suppose Sonny Elmquist set it? He came to the rescue awfully quick. Maybe he walked through the walls first, to light the fire, and then made a show of rescuing Murphy before the flames went too far!”
“How are you going to prove a crazy theory like that?” asked Pete.
“For a start,” said Bob decisively, “I’m going to talk to Dr Barrister.” He was referring to a professor of anthropology at nearby Ruxton University–a man who had helped the Three Investigators before with his knowledge of witchcraft and the occult. “Maybe Elmquist didn’t set the fire, but he sure seems able to walk through walls. Dr Barrister may know of an explanation.”
“Well, I’m going to stick to the real world!” said Pete. “I think I’ll tail Elmquist when he goes to work. He says he’s going to the market, but we only have his word for it. I can also make sure that Hassell does check into that motel.”
“And I,” announced Jupiter, “am going to pay a few hospital calls. I need some information from Miss Chalmers and Mr Murphy.”
Mr Prentice looked alarmed. “I say! I had planned to go to the bank with you boys. I don’t want to carry all that ransom money by myself.”
“No, and you shouldn’t stay here alone,” said Jupe. “Do you have a friend who could keep you company?”
“Charles Niedland, of course!”
Prentice immediately called Niedland, who promised to be at Paseo Place in a few minutes.
Bob phoned Dr Barrister and then hopped in a cab. Twenty minutes later he was in the professor’s office at Ruxton University. The man’s usually bland face was bright with excitement.
“What is it now?” demanded Barrister. “What sort of mystic phenomena have the Three Investigators uncovered?”
Bob explained about the shadow-person who visited Mr Prentice’s apartment.
“Hmm!” Barrister said. “I don’t believe this is in my field. I am an expert on the folklore of the Maori tribes and on witchcraft as practised in the Caribbean and other areas. What you describe seems to be a true psychic occurrence. I believe in many things which other people don’t take as the truth, but I do not believe in ghosts. However,” and here Barrister brightened, “I have a colleague whose mind is open on the subject.”
Bob chuckled. “I knew you could help us.”
“My pleasure,” replied Barrister. “Come along. I’ll take you to meet Professor Lantine. She’s the head of our parapsychology department. Half the faculty here think she’s loony and the other half are afraid she can read their minds. You’ll enjoy meeting her.”
Professor Lantine, whom they found in a bare little brick building behind the gymnasium, turned out to be a pleasant-looking woman in her forties. She was reading letters when Bob and Dr Barrister came into her office. She looked up at Barrister with a broad smile and waved a piece of paper.
“Guess what?” she said. “This note’s from a man in Dubuque who claims he’s haunted by the ghost of his sister–but he doesn’t have a sister.”
“You have the most fascinating mail, Eugenia,” said Barrister. He sat down across the desk from Prof. Lantine and motioned to Bob to take a seat.
“This is Bob Andrews,” he said. “He’s part of a firm of private investigators, and he has a story which I believe will interest you.”
“Private investigators?” echoed Professor Lantine. Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “Aren’t you a bit on the young side?”
“Youth has its advantages, you know,” said Dr Barrister. “Young people have a lot of energy, a lot of curiosity, and not too many prejudices. Bob, tell Professor Lantine about your latest case.”
Bob again related his story of the happenings in Mr Prentice’s apartment. This time he also mentioned Jupe’s experience with the phantom priest in the church next door.
“Ah, yes!” said Professor Lantine.
“You’ve heard of the phantom priest?” asked Bob.
“The present pastor called me about him some time ago,” said Professor Lantine. “I am often asked to look into matters of this kind. Father McGovern had never seen the ghost, but his housekeeper was in a complete state of nerves about it. The person your friend saw in the church–a thin, white-haired man dressed in clerical clothes–fits the description. The old pastor was a thin, white-haired man. His picture is in the parlour at the parish house. However, upon questioning the housekeeper, I discovered an interesting thing She comes from a small town in Ireland–Dungalway–and the church in Dungalway is famous. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of a priest who was lost at sea. I spent several nights in St Jude’s Church, and I saw nothing. I also talked to many residents of Paseo Place. Although quite a few of the older ones believed in the phantom priest, none had ever seen him. I think Mrs O’Reilly made him up. Without quite realizing it, I believe that she reconstructed him from the tales of her own childhood.
“Your spectral visitor in the apartment is something else again.”
Professor Lantine leaned forward. “You say that he has appeared in Mr Prentice’s apartment when you knew–as certainly as anyone could know—that he was in his own apartment sound asleep?”
“That’s right,” Bob confirmed.
Professor Lantine smiled. “Delicious!” she exclaimed. “He’s a wanderer!”
“Well, I guess he is,” agreed Bob. “But Mr Prentice doesn’t think it’s delicious. How does Elmquist do it?”
Professor Lantine went to a file cabinet and pulled out several folders. “If he is a true wanderer,” she said, “he gets out of his body when he’s asleep and walks around.”
Bob gaped at her.
She sat down again and opened a file folder. “We don’t have many cases that have been examined under laboratory conditions,” she said. “People who do this sort of thing don’t often come into the laboratory. They keep it to themselves. They decide they’re going barmy or they think they have second sight. But a person came into the lab just last year.
“She was an ordinary housewife, living in Montrose. I can’t tell you her name because that’s confidential.”
Bob nodded.
“She’d been troubled for some time,” said Professor Lantine. “She dreamed true dreams, you see.”
Dr Barrister leaned forward. “You mean, Eugenia, that she dreamed things and then they happened?”
“Not quite. She dreamed, for example, that she was at a birthday party in her mother’s house in Akron. She saw everything quite clearly. It was her mother’s birthday, and her two sisters were there. There was a birthday cake with white frosting and pink lettering and a single candle. She described the entire dream to her husband the next morning. He didn’t pay much attention until she got a letter from one of her sisters. Enclosed with the letter was a photograph of the birthday party. It showed exactly what the housewife had seen in her dream. The family members were wearing the same clothes, and there was even a white cake with pink lettering and one candle. The woman’s husband became upset and urged her to come see us.
“She confessed that this sort of thing happened to her rather frequently. She didn’t like it and she tried not to think about it. But when she dreamed she often saw things that were taking place far away, where she had no way of knowing what was going on, and it would turn out later that she had witnessed a real event.”
“You said you tested this under laboratory conditions,” said Bob.
“Yes. We persuaded her to stay here at the university for a few days. She slept in a room in the lab where we could observe her through a one-way window. She knew that on a shelf above her bed–a shelf too high for her to reach–was a piece of paper with a number written on it. It was a long number–ten digits–and no one knew what the number was. A secretary in another office had typed it out by hitting keys at random. Without looking at what she’d typed, she’d folded the paper and put it in an envelope.