Read Online The Wrong Way Down by Elizabeth Daly - Free Book Online Page A

shoulder.”
    â€œWhat?” Miss Higgs stared at her.
    â€œSomething or somebody tapped me hard on the shoulder. A call to order—that’s what it felt like. Well, I suppose I must have been a neurotic child after all; it had a frightful effect on me.”
    Bowles said after a moment: “Somebody playing a joke on you , for a change.”
    â€œPerhaps. Whoever it was moved very quietly and fast.”
    â€œSomebody smuggled a skeptic in.”
    â€œI hoped so. I’d often heard or read of skeptics who once—just once—while they were investigating frauds, you know, happened on something they couldn’t explain. I was a skeptic, and I know what they meant…Or was I a skeptic after all? I wonder.”
    Gamadge said: “I always thought it only meant that for once the investigator ran up against somebody that was too clever even for him.”
    â€œI thought of that. But it’s different when it happens.”
    Mrs. Spiker said loudly: “The whole business had you a nervous wreck. It was a crime. Fifteen years old—heading for a crash.”
    Miss Vance looked up at the crystal globe on the mantel. “I’ve pretended to see things in that globe many times. I keep it as a reminder not to look again. I haven’t. Tonight I thought it would be a good joke to pretend to, but Mr. Gamadge tapped me on the shoulder.”
    â€œWell,” said Gamadge, “I’m flesh and blood anyhow.”
    â€œYou take the whole thing too seriously,” said Mr. Simpson. “Forget it. Doesn’t amount to anything. I don’t know why you told that story, Iris. Damned if I know.”
    Miss Higgs smiled. “I know. Iris told the story, the whole story, because she thinks Mr. Gamadge may be persuaded to believe that that thing”—she nodded towards the engraving that lay, with its top and bottom edges curled, on the far table—“really is haunted.”
    There was a curious pause. Nobody protested, and she went on: “She thinks that will settle it. She thinks he’ll go back and tell Miss Paxton that it’s the original picture, treated by ghosts; or that the original picture had that inscription on it, faded out, and then for some occult reason changed back again. That is, of course, if he believed the story.”
    â€œI believe every word of it,” said Gamadge.
    â€œSo do I. But it won’t make you think that the spirits brought out writing on the picture.” She glanced at Iris, a curious glance. “Have you no sense of character? He’ll keep at it and keep at it, unless you simply tell him you did take the picture, and that you’ll give it back.”
    Simpson shouted at her: “How do you think she’s going to give it back when she never had it? You don’t find the things growing on bushes, Gamadge said so himself.”
    â€œYou know I never took it,” said Iris.
    â€œWell, then.” Miss Higgs shrugged and turned her face towards the fire once more.
    Again that curious pause, as if they were all holding their breath. Gamadge rose and glanced from face to face; not one of them was looking at him.
    He went over to the table, rolled the aquatint in the brown paper, left the newspapers, and crossed to the door. Miss Vance was there before him. She stood silent while he put on his coat.
    â€œWell,” he said, looking down at her gravely, “I’m very sorry I can’t subscribe to the ghost theory. Did you really expect me to?”
    â€œI hoped you would.”
    â€œLess bother, of course. Miss Paxton couldn’t very well put it in the inventory, though, could she?”
    â€œDo you still think I’d steal a picture?”
    â€œCertainly not for the value of it in money. I don’t know what to think, and that’s a fact.”
    â€œThen can’t you drop the whole thing? Miss Paxton would if you advised her to.”
    â€œI’m acting for her,