Clue of the Silken Ladder Part 31

"Everyone must have gone away," she thought. "Oh, dear, now what shall I do?"

Penny reasoned that it was of vital importance for her to inspect Al Gepper's room during his absence. She might never have another opportunity. Yet she hesitated to enter the house while the Hodges were away, even though she felt certain the seamstress would not mind.

Walking to the rear, Penny noticed that the porch screen had been left unfastened. Entering the kitchen, she called Mrs. Hodges' name but received no answer.

"If I wait for her to come home it may be too late," decided Penny. "This is an emergency."

Her mind made up, she took the stairs two at a time to Al Gepper's room.

Her knock went unanswered. Satisfied that he was not there, she tried the door and found it unlocked.

Penny raised a blind to flood light into the darkened room. Save that a film of dust covered the furniture, everything was approximately the same as she had last seen it.

Her gaze fell upon two suitcases which had been pushed beneath the bed.

The first contained only miscellaneous clothing. The second merited a more careful inspection.

Almost at once Penny came upon an old faded picture, the one of Cousin David which Mrs. Weems had given to the photographer's "agent."

"So that was how it was done!" she thought. "Al Gepper sent one of his confederates to see Mrs. Weems and obtain information about her cousin.

The painting which appeared so miraculously during the seance was merely a copy of this! Even so, how was it painted so quickly?"

Forgetting the picture for a moment, Penny picked up several newspaper clippings which were fastened together with a rubber band. All had been taken from the obituary column and concerned the death of well-to-do Riverview persons.

"Al Gepper and his pals are ghouls!" Penny told herself. "They prey upon the relatives of persons who have died, realizing that at such a time it will be much easier to interest them in trying to communicate with the departed!"

Lifting a tray from the suitcase, her attention focused upon a small red booklet. As she turned rapidly through it, a folded sheet of paper fell to the floor.

Examining it, Penny saw a long list of names, together with pertinent information about each person. Not only was the address and financial standing of the individual given, but the deceased relatives in each family and other facts of a personal nature. The list had been mimeographed.

"This must be a 'sucker' list!" thought Penny. "No wonder it's easy for a medium to find victims and tell them astonis.h.i.+ng facts."

Thrusting the paper into her pocket, she turned her attention to the wardrobe closet. Al Gepper's clothes hung in orderly rows from the hangers. Behind them, half hidden from view, was a small box.

Pulling it to the window, Penny examined the contents. There were many bottles filled with chemicals, the names of which were unfamiliar. She noted a bottle of varnish, another of zinc white, and some photographic paper in a sealed envelope.

A glance satisfying her, she replaced the box and next turned her attention to the cabinet behind the large circular table. Here she was richly rewarded as her gaze fell upon a banjo.

"The same one which played during Mrs. Weems' seance!" she thought. "We were able to see it in the dark because it's covered with luminous paint.

But what made it rise into the air, and how could it play without the aid of human hands?"

Penny examined the instrument closely. She chuckled as she discovered a tiny phonograph with a record built into its back side. As she pressed a control lever, it began a stringed version of "Down Upon the Swanee River."

Quickly turning it off, she inspected other objects in the cabinet. At once she found a rod which could be extended to a height of five feet.

"That's how the banjo was raised!" she reasoned. "And by use of this rod it would be easy to make a ghost appear to float high overhead. This luminous material must have been used."

Penny picked up a filmy robe, shaking out the many folds. While it was clear to her that Al Gepper had employed the garment to materialize the so-called spirit of Cousin David, she could only guess how he had made it enlarge from a mere spot to a full sized figure.

"He must have wadded the cloth in his hand, and held it above his head,"

she mused. "Then he could have slowly shaken it out until it covered his entire body. Thus the figure would appear to grow in size."

In one corner of the cabinet Penny came upon a luminous slate.

"This was used for Cousin David's message," she thought. "Al probably had an a.s.sistant who wrote on it and thrust it through the curtain."

While many questions remained unanswered, Penny had obtained sufficient evidence to indicate that Al Gepper was only a clever trickster. Greatly elated, she decided to hasten to the _Star_ office to report her findings.

Noticing that she had neglected to return the two suitcases to their former places, Penny pushed them under the bed again. As she straightened, a door slammed on the lower floor.

For an instant she hoped that it was Mrs. Hodges or her husband who had come home. Then she heard footsteps on the stairs, and their rapidity warned her that they could belong only to a young person.

Frantically, she gazed about the room. The cabinet seemed to offer the safest hiding place. Slipping into it, she pulled the black curtain across the opening.

CHAPTER 21 _STARTLING INFORMATION_

Scarcely had Penny hidden herself when Al Gepper entered the room. With him was the hook-nosed young man known as Slippery.

"I tell you, Al," the latter was saying, "this town is getting too hot for comfort. We've got to blow."

"It was that Parker girl who queered everything," muttered Gepper. "How could I know that her father was a newspaper publisher? He's stirred up folks with his editorials."

"You never should have let her in here. We had a swell set-up, but now we can expect a raid any day."

"I tell you I thought she was just a smart-aleck kid, a friend of the Hodges'. Didn't learn until yesterday who she was."

"We've got to blow, Al. Sade's threatening to make trouble, too. She thinks we're holding out on the others."

"We have picked up a little extra coin now and then."

"Sure, Al, but we've always been the brains of the outfit. We take most of the risk, plan all the big jobs, so why shouldn't we have more?"

"It's time we cut loose from 'em, Slippery."

"Now you're talking! But we can't pull out until the Henley job comes off. I've had a tip that the house is likely to be deserted tonight.

Let's make the haul and then skip."

"Okay," agreed Gepper. "I have some suckers coming for a seance at eight.

I'll get rid of them in quick time, and be waiting. So long, Slippery."

A door slammed, telling Penny that the hook-nosed man had left. She was somewhat stunned by what she had overheard, believing that the Henley who had been mentioned must be her father's chief advertiser.

Nervously she waited inside the cabinet, wis.h.i.+ng that she might take her information to the police. To her intense annoyance, Al Gepper did not leave the room even for a moment.

Instead he threw himself on the bed and read a tabloid newspaper. After an hour, he arose and began to prepare his supper on an electric grill.