The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

afternoon that you’d help us.” He took her hand. “Are you still willing? With my powers, joined to yours, we must succeed.”
    Trixie held her breath and watched as Fay, as if in a dream, walked slowly to the table and sat down. “I knew this was going to happen all along,” Fay said simply, “and I’m ready.”
    “I’ll bet she’s ready,” Trixie heard Mart whisper in her ear. “Can’t you see, Trix? She’s ready to confess. I’m sorry to say this, but now we know for sure your friend’s a thief!”

Sarah Sligo’s Revenge ● 18

    MOMENTS LATER, the Bob-Whites were seated at the velvet-covered table, their hands joined. A lighted candelabra, set on a small table at Fay’s elbow, threw shadows across her pale face as Mr. Hunter took his place beside her. Trixie could see Mr. Gregory, on Fay’s other side, gripping her hand reassuringly.
    Fay's nervous, Trixie thought, and she has good reason to be!
    “Is everyone ready?” Mr. Hunter asked. As heads nodded, he said, “Then let’s begin.”
    Trixie was fascinated as she watched this strange man breathe deeply, as if he were doing some kind of psychic exercise. Then, all at once, he let out his breath in one long sigh, his head sank to his chest, and a long moan escaped from his lips.
    “Are you there, Sarah?” he asked in a husky voice that didn’t sound like his own.
    Unbelievably, there came the whispered answer, “I am here! And now for my revenge!” Everything seemed to happen at once. A violent wind rushed into the room. It set the candles to flickering wildly. The flimsy black draperies reached toward them. Someone’s elbow moved sharply, and in another instant, the tall candelabra crashed to the floor. The flames from those candles joined with the others. Then, while the Bob-Whites watched, too horrified to move, the curtains caught fire.
    Fay screamed and jumped to her feet as a wall of fire licked quickly to the ceiling. “It’s the witch!” she cried. “She’s here—in this room! Oh, please! Make her stop!”
    Mr. Hunter seemed to come awake with a start. “It’s too late to stop her now,” he said sadly. “I’m sorry, but Sarah’s evil spirit was too powerful for both of us, Fay. I’m afraid the witch has won! She’s set the house on fire, just as I was afraid she would. Nothing can save it now!”
    “Except the fire department,” Trixie said as, with the others, she rushed outside to the safety of the grounds.
    “We can’t call the fire department!” Mr. Gregory cried. “It’s too late! The old house is a goner!” Then he stopped as he heard what Trixie had been hearing for the last two minutes: A fire engine’s siren wailed as it came closer and closer to Lisgard House.
    “But—but that’s impossible!” Mr. Hunter exclaimed as he watched the fire truck scream through the wide gates, which stood open, waiting for it.
    “But it isn’t impossible at all,” Trixie told the astonished man. “You see, I made the arrangements for the fire department to be called even before we arrived here tonight.”
    Jim gasped. “You mean you knew what was going to happen tonight?”
    “Then was it Zeke Collins who’s been causing all the trouble?” Di asked.
    Trixie shook her head and stared at the silent figure of Mr. Gregory. “No,” she told the Bob-Whites, “it wasn’t Zeke—and it wasn’t the Franklins, either. Oh, don’t you see? It was Mr. Gregory himself!”

    A few days later, Trixie and her friends were gathered in Mrs. Franklin’s hospital room. Even Zeke Collins, looking a bit sheepish, was there.
    Fay was radiant. As her mother kept repeating over and over, she looked like a different girl.
    “That’s because I am a different girl,” Fay told her, laughing. “No one knows what it was like believing that I was possessed by a ghost!”
    “I blame myself,” Zeke blurted. “If I hadn’t, like a blamed fool, started all those ghost stories—”
    “—which you began to believe yourself,” Dan told him sternly.
    “Begin at the beginning and tell us all about it again, Trix,” Honey said, smiling.
    Trixie sat on a corner of Mrs. Franklin’s bed. “It all began when Mr. Gregory inherited that big old house,” she said. “But he had no money, so he tried to sell it.”
    “But no one would buy,” Brian put in, “once Zeke told them his made-up history of the place.”
    “Though part of it was true,” Mart objected. “Sarah Sligo really had lived there once. And she really did