fading into the darkness beside the stairs. As Val's feet touched the
floor of the hall he caught his last glimpse of it, a thin white patch
against the solid paneling of the stairway's broad side. Then it was
gone. When Rupert and Ricky came in a few minutes later and turned on
the lights, Val was still staring at that blank wall, with Satan rubbing
against his ankles.

CHAPTER IX

PORTRAIT OF A LADY AND A GENTLEMAN

Rupert had dismissed Val's story of what he had seen in the hall in a
very lofty manner. When his brother had persisted in it, Rupert
suggested that Val had better keep out of the sun in the morning. For no
trace of the thing which had troubled the house remained.

Ricky hesitated between believing wholly in Val's tale or just in his
powers of imagination. And between them his family drove him sulky to
bed. He was still frowning, or maybe it was a new frown, when he looked
into the bathroom mirror the next morning as he dressed. For Val knew
that he _had_ seen something in the hall, something monstrous which had
no right to be there.

What had their rival said before he left? "Play it that way and you
won't be here a month from now." It was just possible--Val paused, half
in, half out of, his shirt. Could last night's adventure have had
anything to do with that threat? Two or three episodes of that sort
might unsettle the strongest nerves and drive the occupants from a house
where such a shadow walked.

Something else nagged at the boy's memory. Slowly he traced back over
the events of the day before, from the moment when he had watched that
queer swamp car crawl downstream. After the visit of the rival, Lucy had
come to stay. And then Ricky had started for Charity's while he had gone
down to the bayou where he met Jeems. That was it. Jeems!

When Ricky had hinted that he knew more of the swamp than the Ralestones
did, why had he been so quick to resent that remark? Could it be because
he understood her to mean that he knew more of Pirate's Haven than they
did?

And the thing in the Long Hall last night had known of some exit in the
wall that the Ralestones did not know of. It had faded into the base of
the staircase. And yet, when Val had gone over the paneling there inch
by inch, he had gained nothing but sore finger tips.

He tucked his shirt under his belt and looked down to see if Sam Junior
had polished his boots as Lucy had ordered her son to do. Save for a
trace of mud by the rig