don’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve hiked and camped up there with Kent and the twins. I think I know where that lodge is. Isn’t it a big log house with a porch looking out over the lake, off in the direction of Rake Island?”

“Yes, that is the place. Ever been in it?”

“No, but we’ve passed it in a canoe. There was a party at the lodge at the time. There is another cabin close by, a small log building.”

“Yes, that is the Bronson cabin. It is owned by a retired lawyer friend of mine, and he never uses it any more. It is very close to the lodge.”

“Well, tell me about this mystery, Dad. Do the people around there think the place is haunted?”

“There aren’t very many people around there to think that, but some of our town people won’t go to the place. I suppose you remember that Mrs. Morganson’s nephew disappeared up there over a year ago and has never been found.”

Barry slung one leg over the arm of the chair. “I do remember hearing something about that,” he replied. “Wasn’t he kidnaped and carried off to Canada somewhere?”

“It seemed so,” his father nodded. “There was one letter from Canada, telling his aunt not to worry, that he was being well treated. But no trace of him has ever been discovered, and some splendid detectives have been looking for Felix Morganson. Well, since the time that he disappeared, things haven’t been going well at Bluff Lodge.”

“Is that when the haunting began?” Barry asked.

“A little later than that. You see, Felix Morganson disappeared during a Thanksgiving party at the lodge. There was quite a crowd at the lodge, and they were enjoying a gathering at the time. Along about ten o’clock or so at night Mr. Morganson walked out of the place smoking a cigarette. Several saw him go, but no one asked him where or why he was going. As time went on they missed him, and finally some of the men walked out on the bluff which overlooks the lake, following his footsteps in the light snow that had fallen. Close to the edge of the bluff they found the snow kicked and scuffed up and his cigarette only partially smoked. Then there were long, dragging marks in the snow that seemed to indicate that he had been pulled along down the path to the lake. All trace of him was lost at that point, because the lake was frozen over and the ice was as smooth as glass.”

Barry was absorbed in the story. “No one in the lodge heard anything? No outcry or anything?”

His father shook his head. “No. But that same night a servant, a Frenchman, disappeared. He was a man that had been hired to cook and to wait on the tables, and this man was gone. No one knows whether he had anything to do with it all or not, but he left the lodge about the same time Felix Morganson did. No trace of him was ever found.”

“How long after the disappearance of Mr. Morganson before they heard from him?”

“About a month later. Then a hastily scrawled letter came from a little town in Canada, telling his aunt that he was well and not to worry. He stated that he did not have time to write any more at the moment. Of course the detectives hustled up to that town, but so far have been unable to learn anything or to uncover a single clue.”

“He has been missing well over a year now, hasn’t he?” Barry mused.

“Yes, because Thanksgiving was three weeks ago, and it was at that time that he vanished. The queer part about it all is the fact that no request for a ransom was ever received. Mrs. Morganson is quite wealthy, and a considerable sum could be raised among the friends of Felix. But there has never been any demand.”

“It’s funny.” Barry slumped lower in the chair, his mind busy with the details of the event. “But how about this haunting that you spoke of? That came later, didn’t it?”

“About three months after Felix Morganson disappeared,” Mr. Garrison answered. “Besides going up there herself once in a while, Mrs. Morganson also rents the place out to sportsmen who go up for the winter season to hunt, and to those that go there in the summer to fish. Well, late in January a group of sportsmen went there, and the understanding was that they would stay about three weeks. But at the end of one week they gave it up and took a smaller place down at the tip of the lake. They complained of ghostly rappings, or knocks on the door and no one there when they opened, and they also complained that some of their things had been stolen.”

“Sounds foolish,” Barry said.

“We thought it was, at first. You see, I handle all of Mrs. Morganson’s business, and I had rented the place to these men, who came from Connecticut. We thought for a while that they were just cranky and let it go at that. But two weeks later another party went in, and it was the same thing over again. Added to that, one of the men had an expensive fur coat stolen, and he wanted to bring suit against us. It seems that they heard about the experience of the former party and claimed that we had rented the lodge to them under false pretenses. We had some trouble getting out of that.”

“It must be just some ordinary thief that lives in the woods near there,” Barry ventured.

“If so, he goes around annoying everybody that puts up in the lodge. Later in the year some fishermen took over the place, and they had similar experiences, and, besides all that, they found their fishing boat scuttled one morning, three holes bored in it. Fortunately we had told them the reputation that the place was getting, but they had just laughed at it. They came away mad as hornets. Well, you can see what it is all doing. No one will rent the lodge now, and it had a long list of prospective renters once. The value of it keeps going down, and since we cannot rent or sell it at a decent price, it is standing idle.”

“Does Mrs. Morganson want to sell it?”

“She does now. We have both become so tired of the place and its problem that we would like nothing better than to get it off our hands. There is only one buyer at present, a man named Brand Curry, but he wants it at a price so low that we won’t even discuss it. The man never comes to me, he always goes directly to Mrs. Morganson.”

“But look here, Dad, did you ever have a detective on the case? Ever have any one go up there?”

“Oh, yes. I have had two private investigators spend some time on the case. One of them didn’t find anything or have any kind of an experience. But the other man did. He was a big, chunky fellow named Riley, and he said he could catch anything he went after. Said he would come home dragging the ghost or spook, or whatever it was, by the neck. He remained there two days and then came back and resigned from the case. The first night he was kept busy investigating thumps all over the place, and the second night his shoes and shirt were mysteriously whisked away somehow and he was in a fix because he hadn’t taken any baggage with him. He had to go to Fox Point and outfit himself there, and he had to go down there without shirt or shoes. He didn’t hear anything that night, and all the time he was there he didn’t see anything. He was a disgusted man when he came back here, and it was his opinion that the National Guard should be ordered up there.”

Barry and his father laughed at the plight of the private detective who had been so sure of victory over the haunting presence at Bluff Lodge. “But of course, Dad, you believe that someone is doing all this for a purpose?”

“I can’t see any other explanation,” his father confessed. “But I can’t figure out any reason