Ghost Stories (11 page)

“I do not know the whole story because it's one
nobody should pry into,” he went on. “But I wish to tell ye this. The witch's curse goes back to him they called the Wicked Lord, the first Lord MacElphin, centuries ago. And it continues to this day. That's why I will not go near the castle.”

He said no more as he continued into the countryside and finally stopped at a barred gate between two stone towers. One bore a plaque that read M
AC
E
LPHIN
C
ASTLE.

“This is as far as I take ye,” the driver declared. He unstrapped their suitcases from the rear of the taxi and placed them on the grass. Then he took the money Frank handed him and, with a quick wave of his hand, left.

Joe tried the gate. It was locked, so he rang the bell. A buzzer sounded, indicating that the gate had been opened by remote control from the castle. The boys went through, and, carrying their suitcases, they trudged a few hundred yards through a spreading grove of evergreens to MacElphin Castle.

They stopped in the driveway and gazed up at the tall building made of large blocks of weather-beaten stone. A circular turret rose high over one corner, and from it, whipping in the wind, flew a flag decorated with a brilliant-white skull and cross-bones against a background of jet-black.

“That's a pirate flag!” Joe exclaimed. “The Jolly Roger! People got out of the way in a hurry when they spotted it on the Spanish main!”

“But what has the Jolly Roger got to do with MacElphin Castle?” Frank was puzzled.

As he spoke the front door opened and a woman
stepped onto the flagstones outside. She was tall and thin with sharp features and a hard expression.

“I'm Mrs. Crone, the housekeeper,” she announced. “You must be Frank and Joe Hardy. Lord MacElphin is expecting you. Come in.”

The young detectives followed her into a large entrance hall, where a servant took their suitcases upstairs. Just like the housekeeper, he went about his chore with a downcast expression, as if he were afraid of something.

“This way,” Mrs. Crone said tartly. “I'll show you to Lord MacElphin's study.”

They followed her down a long hall, which was lined with portraits of former MacElphins. The faces appeared to frown on the Hardys as they passed. The brothers noticed that one spot was empty. A light oblong mark on the wallpaper showed that a picture had once hung there.

Frank was curious about the missing portrait. “Why was that one taken down?” he asked Mrs. Crone.

She scowled. “The last person to ask that question got such a fright that he left the castle and never came back!”

The boys shivered at her words. “What a mystery this is,” Frank muttered softly to himself.

They followed the housekeeper up a staircase, past suits of armor flanking both sides. A couple of crossed swords decorated the door at the top of the stairs.

When Mrs. Crone knocked, Lord MacElphin came out. He was a wizened little Scotsman wearing
a tartan kilt and a tam-o'-shanter on his head. The housekeeper introduced the new arrivals, then left.

The owner of the castle shook their hands and showed them to a sofa in his study. The room was illuminated by dim rays of sunlight filtering through a dark bay window. A heavy carpet muffled their footsteps.

The desk behind which Lord MacElphin sat down had a statue of a snarling wolf on one side and a smirking, gnomelike figure on the other. The center was bare.

“I'm glad to see you, boys,” the lord began. “I need your help badly.”

“We're here to give you all the help we can,” Joe assured him. “Just tell us what to do.”

“Before I do that, I'd better fill you in on the background so you'll know what you're up against,” MacElphin commented. “No doubt you saw the flag over my castle.”

“The Jolly Roger,” Frank said.

“You were probably surprised to see a pirate flag,” MacElphin went on. “Well, it was brought home by my ancestor, Rollo MacElphin. He
was
a pirate, one of the worst that ever traveled the Spanish main nearly three centuries ago!”

The boys looked at the man in surprise and he shrugged. “Rollo MacElphin sailed with Captain Kidd on his last voyage. Captain Kidd was hanged in the end, but Rollo MacElphin got away. He returned with enough treasure to build this place and gain the title of lord.”

Joe chuckled. “That's quite a story.”

“Aye. And Rollo always had a pirate's heart! They called him the Wicked Lord. He was a fellow who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.”

A thought occurred to Frank. “That's why his portrait was removed from its place in the castle hall.”

MacElphin nodded somberly. “But it wasn't only his reputation that made me take it down. It was his face. Look here!”

The Scotsman pressed a button and a center panel in the top of the desk rose up on hinges. He lifted an oblong canvas out of its secret hiding place, turned it around, and held it so the Hardys could see it.

They were startled to be confronted by a horrible face glaring fiercely at them. The first Lord MacElphin had matted hair, a flattened nose, a leering mouth, and crooked yellow teeth. One eye was covered with a black patch while the other had a cruel glint in it. In an upraised hand he wielded a sharp cutlass as if ready to swing it at anyone looking at his picture.

The Hardys shuddered.

“I see you don't like the Wicked Lord.” MacElphin grinned. “Visitors were always horrified when they saw this picture in the hall. So I took it down and now I keep it hidden in this secret compartment of my desk. I don't want to lose it because it completes the series of portraits of my ancestors since he became the first Lord MacElphin.”

The present owner of the castle replaced the hideous picture in the secret compartment and
closed the lid. Then he put his elbows on the desk, clasped his hands, and peered gravely at the young detectives.

“You're going to meet the Wicked Lord,” he said darkly.

“How?” Joe gulped. “He lived centuries ago.”

“He has come back,” MacElphin replied in an ominous tone. “And now he's haunting the castle!”

Frank sat bolt upright in his chair. “You mean—a ghost?”

“Exactly. The ghost of Rollo MacElphin. There's no mistaking him. He looks just like he does in the picture.”

“Then you've seen him?” Joe inquired.

“Aye. It began two weeks ago after I announced that, as I have no heirs, I intend to sell MacElphin Castle to a syndicate in Glasgow. That night I heard a weird noise. Someone was singing pirate chanteys in the cellar! I went down and, lo and behold, there was the Wicked Lord in the dungeon. When he saw me, he vanished.”

“He must have scared you out of your wits!” Joe exclaimed.

“He did. A few nights later, when I was in bed, I heard chains rattling in the cellar. The sound drifted upstairs toward my bedroom. The next moment I saw the Wicked Lord carrying chains like the ones he used to fasten his sea chest in the cargo hold of his ship. The real chains, by the way, are still in the dungeon.”

“And then he disappeared again?” Joe wanted to know.

“As soon as I looked up,” MacElphin replied. “And then there was the night I came back from Glasgow. I saw the Wicked Lord standing on the turret under the pirate flag. He was glowering at me. Of course, when I ran up to the turret, he wasn't there anymore.”

MacElphin broke off and shook his head as if trying to rid himself of the memory.

“Lord MacElphin, has anyone else in the castle seen the ghost?” Frank questioned.

The Scotsman nodded. “Mrs. Crone and Haver, my butler, have seen him. They also heard the sea chanteys and the rattling chains. My servants are now so terrified that they refuse to go near the cellar anymore.”

“Have you tried to get help?” Joe asked.

“Yes. I hired a detective from Glasgow. He didn't believe in ghosts before he came here. I showed him the portrait and he kept the dungeon under surveillance the night he arrived. But then he saw the ghost and it frightened him so much that he refused to stay at the castle any longer.”

“That must be the man Mrs. Crone told us about,” Joe said. “The one who asked about the picture and got so scared that he fled from the castle.”

“Suppose we see the ghost,” Frank said slowly. “What do we do then?”

“I consulted the occult books in my library,” MacElphin replied. “One says a ghost will sometimes talk to strangers from another country. That's why I called your father. I hope you're not afraid,” he added anxiously.

Frank shrugged. “We're not afraid, Lord Mac-Elphin. We just don't know what to expect.”

“I can't tell you what to expect,” MacElphin confessed. “I'm depending on you to decide what to do when you meet the ghost. I've made arrangements for you to spend tonight in a room opposite the dungeon. That way, you'll be able to hear everything. Haver will show you down there after dinner.”

He summoned the butler to take the Hardys to their room. Haver was a big man with a mournful look. He talked about the ghost as he escorted them up the broad staircase to the second floor of the castle.

“I saw the Wicked Lord one night last week when I passed the dungeon on my way to the storeroom,” he said. “I heard a weird noise, looked through the grill, and there he was! But he vanished when he saw me.”

“What did you do then?” Joe inquired. “Did you go inside?”

Haver shuddered. “That was the last thing I would have done. The ghost gave me such a turn I ran upstairs at once. I haven't gone down there since then. I
do
hope you boys can get rid of the ghost!”

“We'll try,” Frank promised.

The butler showed the Hardys into their room and then went downstairs. Frank and Joe sat on their beds and discussed the strange things they had seen and heard since their arrival in Scotland.

“There's a double whammy on this place,” Frank declared. “First, the witch's curse that scared the
taxi driver. And then the ghost of Rollo MacElphin.”

Joe tapped a knuckle against his chin. “I wonder if there's a connection. We'd better ask about the witch before we meet the ghost.”

When the dinner bell rang, Frank and Joe went downstairs. They met Lord MacElphin and Mrs. Crone, and the four had their meal together. It was a somber affair. Haver supervised with a doleful expression, and the maid who served appeared worried.

The conversation centered around the ghost. “I saw him in the dungeon,” Mrs. Crone informed the Hardys. “I was carrying some vegetables in from the garden when an eerie sound made me look in. The phantom was there, uttering weird cries. Unfortunately, he disappeared when he saw me.”

The Hardys questioned the housekeeper closely, but she could tell them no more.

Mrs. Crone doesn't seem as afraid as Haver does, Frank thought to himself. I wonder why.

Joe changed the subject. “Lord MacElphin, the taxi driver who brought us here mentioned a witch's curse on the castle. Have you any idea what he meant?”

“Mrs. Crone knows more about that than I do,” MacElphin replied.

The housekeeper looked embarrassed. “It's just that I belong to the Village Historical Society,” she murmured. “According to our records, a coven of witches used to meet on the land where the castle now stands. It is said that when the first Lord MacElphin
built his home, depriving the witches of their meeting place, the leader of the coven placed a curse on it. But that's just an old superstition.”

Dinner broke up shortly afterward. Lord Mac-Elphin retired to his study, Mrs. Crone went upstairs, and Haver led the Hardys down a spiral stone staircase to a passageway below. The butler took a torch from the wall. It was made of long, twisted fibers and was coated with pitch at one end. He lit the pitch with a pocket lighter and it burst into flames.

“This is a flambeau of the type used back in pirate days,” he stated. “It's been a tradition, ever since the first Lord MacElphin, to light the dungeon area in the old-fashioned way.”

Haver held the flambeau high in one hand, and it flared wildly as they moved along the dark flagstones of a narrow stone passageway. The Hardys felt eerie chills at the weird, twisting shadows thrown on the walls by the leaping flames.

The butler stopped at a massive wooden door pierced about three-quarters of the way by an iron grill. “This is the dungeon,” he said. “If we followed the passage to its end, we would reach a door leading out of the castle into the vegetable garden.”

He produced a large key from his ring, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. They went in and looked around.

The dungeon was a grim prison made of stone blocks. Near the ceiling was a heavily barred window. Handcuffs and leg irons were hanging on metal pegs driven into the walls. One peg held a couple of long, narrow chains.

“Those must be the ones the pirate used to fasten his sea chest with.” Joe inferred.

“The same kind his ghost has been rattling around the castle,” Frank added. “But now the ghost isn't here.”

The butler game him an uneasy look. “He comes when you least expect him. So you boys had better be on your guard tonight. He might sneak up on you.”

“Well take turns sleeping and standing guard,” Frank told him. “We do that often on our investigations.”

“This investigation won't be like any other you've ever undertaken before,” Haver warned.

“That's for sure,” Joe agreed.

When the Hardys finished inspecting the dungeon, the trio left and Haver locked the door. They went into a room across the hallway, which was bare except for two cots.

“This is where you'll sleep tonight,” the butler said. “If you can, that is.”

He gave Frank the key to the dungeon. Then he forced the burning flambeau into a socket beside the door, handed Joe the lighter, and left.

The Hardys sat down on their cots in the darkness that was broken only by flames of the torch shining through the doorway. They listened intently, but not a sound reached them from above.