Ghost Stories (13 page)

Joe faced the ghost. “So Mrs. Crone has power over you now,” he surmised.

“Yes!” the specter snarled. “When she learned the castle was going to be sold, she ordered me to
make myself visible to those living in it. Before that I was invisible, and only Mrs. Crone knew I was here.”

“She thought if you were seen,” Joe concluded, “the castle would have to be torn down, because nobody would buy it. Then the witches would get their meeting place back.”

“And she ordered you to scare us away,” Frank inferred. “But can't you escape from this witch's curse?”

The ghost nodded his head slowly, and something like a smile spread over his ugly face. “You are enabling me to escape right now!”

The Hardys were thunderstruck by the statement.

“How are we doing that?” Joe gasped.

“You are fulfilling a prophecy made by a wizard at my funeral.” The ghost again recited some verse:

When a strange country help shall send,
Then the witch's curse will end.
When a hardy pair guards the dungeon door,
The specter needs to come no more.

Frank and Joe started when they heard the word “hardy.” Both wondered if it could be a reference to their name. The ghost answered the question for them.

“I know you come from America, and your name is Hardy. And you had the courage to watch the dungeon for a second time after you saw me. Mrs. Crone thought the first experience would frighten you. She was wrong. You are hardy in nature as well as in name. The wizard's prophecy applies to you.”

“What does that mean?” Frank wondered.

“It means you have released me from eternal doom! Mrs. Crone has lost her power over me and I can leave MacElphin Castle forever.”

The voice of the apparition dropped to an eerie whisper and finally died away. The pirate's outline grew dim, and, as Frank and Joe watched openmouthed, it faded back into the stones of the wall.

Frank rubbed his eyes. “Did we really see that, Joe?”

“Yes, we did! And we'll have some story to tell to our host in the morning.”

When they recounted to Lord MacElphin what they had experienced during the night, he was amazed.

“Now Rollo MacElphin is gone for good?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

“Unless his ghost was lying to us, he's gone,” Frank said.

“You boys are wonderful! You stayed despite the danger and saved all of us. Now no one who lives in the castle has to be afraid of being haunted anymore. But now I must deal with Mrs. Crone.”

Summoned to the study, the housekeeper confessed everything. “I am descended from a long line of witches going back to the time when the castle was being built,” she explained. “We have always known the ghost of the Wicked Lord was here.”

“But he never showed himself before,” the little Scotsman pointed out.

“That is true. I was the first with a chance to use the ghost to have the castle demolished and the meeting place of the witches restored,” she said. “It
had become necessary because of the impending sale. Better to destroy one castle than many houses that the real estate syndicate might have built on the property.”

She nodded sadly and almost sobbed as she went on. “But I failed, and therefore I have lost my occult powers. I will go to Glasgow and cease to be a witch.”

Now tears were running down her face and Lord MacElphin was too stunned to say anything. Mrs. Crone turned and left the study. Less than ten minutes later, she walked out of the castle for good.

Word that the Hardys had rid the castle of the ghost soon spread through the staff. The servants came to thank the boys and from then on went about their duties with smiles on their faces.

Haver shook Frank's and Joe's hands. “I was afraid that I could no longer stay on in my job,” he admitted. “But now you have made it possible for me to work here as long as the master wishes me to.”

“It must be strange to think you were living with a ghost all this time,” Frank said.

The butler nodded ruefully. “And who would have thought Mrs. Crone was a witch? She and I have supervised the place for quite a few years now.”

He shuddered and walked into the kitchen. The Hardy boys called the airport to reserve a flight, then went upstairs to pack their suitcases.

“We never got to use our room,” Joe laughed. “These beds look a lot more comfortable than those cots in the basement.”

“Well, we didn't spend much time on them,” Frank pointed out. “Maybe we'll get some sleep on the plane home. I'm sure tired.”

When they were finished, they went into the study to say good-bye to their host.

“Frank and Joe, you did a wonderful job, and I'll write to your father and tell him so!” MacElphin declared enthusiastically as he shook their hands and escorted them to the door.

Haver drove them to Prestwick Airport, and soon they were airborne over the Atlantic. They discussed everything that had happened to them in Scotland and agreed that they had been through an experience they could not explain logically.

“At least we had one thing going for us,” Joe observed.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

“We had the right name for the wizard's prophecy. Sometimes it pays to be a Hardy!”

 
THE MYSTERY OF ROOM 12
 

“I don't know where you're taking us, but it sure is in the middle of nowhere!” Joe Hardy said to his father, who sat behind the wheel of the family station wagon.

Mr. Hardy chuckled. “The inn is quite isolated from the rest of the coastal communities,” he admitted. “And the nearest airport is fifty miles away. But it's supposed to be a real nice place, so your mother and I thought we should try it.”

Joe stared out the window at the deserted road, which was right next to the ocean. He saw a cliff rising up straight ahead of them, with a large white building sitting right on top. “Is that it?” he asked.

Mr. Hardy nodded. “It's called the Presidents Inn, because supposedly both Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt stayed there at one time.”

“It's beautiful!” Mrs. Hardy cried out as they turned onto the steep road leading up to the hotel. “What a picturesque location!”

A few minutes later Mr. Hardy parked the car and the family got out. The inn proved to be a luxurious old place with a vast, sweeping lawn and thousands of blooming flowers still visible in the falling dusk.

“It looks more like the home of a wealthy family than a hotel,” Frank declared.

“It probably was, once,” his father agreed.

Joe suddenly stopped walking. “Even though it's beautiful, there's something ominous about it. I mean, it's so quiet, and a little eerie, don't you think?”

Frank grinned. “Your imagination is running away again, little brother,” he said. “You must be tired.”

Joe shot him a sidelong glance. Obviously they were not on the same wavelength in their impression of the place where they would spend the next few nights.

Just then a man came out to greet them. He was huge, with dark hair and bushy, beetling eyebrows.

“Welcome to the Presidents Inn,” he said and picked up their suitcases with his large hands. “My name is Jacob. Please follow me.”

Jacob led the Hardys into the lobby, where they met the innkeeper. He rose from his desk when he saw the visitors.

“Josiah Butler,” he said, sticking his hand out for everyone to shake. “Yankee born and bred. Welcome
to the Presidents Inn, Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, and your fine sons, too.”

Josiah Butler looked every inch an Old Yankee. He was spare of build and didn't seem very talkative once the greetings were out of the way.

Joe studied the interior of the inn. There was plenty of shining old wood paneling, and the ceiling was crossed by heavy beams. The lighting was soft and dignified.

“Dinner is at seven sharp,” Josiah Butler told Mr. Hardy when he had finished signing the visitors in. “Now Jacob will see you to your rooms.”

The dark, sad-looking bellhop appeared again and led the way up two flights of beautiful, winding stairs. On the landings were pieces of Early American furniture, including a grandfather clock more than seven feet tall.

“Look at that!” Frank said and pointed to an antique winepress. “I've never seen one like that before.”

“It dates back before the Revolutionary War,” Jacob explained.

He ushered Mr. and Mrs. Hardy into room number 11 and pointed out that the boys would be next to them. There was a bathroom in between that opened to both rooms.

The boys took their bags and went right through the connecting bathroom into their room. It was large and airy and faced the ocean.

“Hey, this is great!” Frank said.

Just then Jacob came through the door to the
hallway. “Will you be all right here?” he asked. “You see, this is the first time we've opened this room since the place was converted to a hotel.”

Frank shrugged. “It looks fine to me.”

Jacob nodded. “Yes. Well, I hope you'll be all right. If you need me, just call. I'm never very far away.” Somewhat hesitantly, he turned and left.

Frank and Joe looked at each other.

“What do you think he meant?” Joe asked.

“I have no idea. But he was almost apologizing that they put us in this room.”

Joe nodded. “He gives me the creeps. In a way, this whole place—”

“Aw, come on, Joe. It's a great hotel. We'll have a good time, you'll see. Just look at the view out the window!”

Joe walked up to his brother and looked outside. The sight took his breath away. They were three stories up and the building sat right at the edge of a sheer cliff. A hundred feet below them the sea was lashing the boulder- and rock-strewn shore. The waves came crashing in, hit the rocks, and sent spray high in the air.

“That,” Frank declared, “is almost scary.”

“I'm getting dizzy looking down,” Joe admitted. “But it is beautiful.”

The boys could hear the mournful bass voice of a foghorn. A heavy mist had gathered far out at sea and was moving slowly toward the shore. A red-and-white-striped lighthouse stood on a long, slender finger of land that jutted into the ocean north of the hotel.

Frank broke their reverie at the window. “Come on, we'd better unpack. I want to take a shower before dinner.”

Just then there was a knock on the door. The older Hardy went to open up and admitted a woman who announced that she was the maid.

Joe stared at her, barely suppressing a chuckle. She looks like the Good Witch of the East, he thought to himself. She even carries the right kind of broom.

The woman had a tooth missing on top, and her white hair stuck out like straw from the sides of her old-fashioned cap. Even her voice sounded like a raggedy cackle.

“My name is Elizabeth,” she said. “I'll be cleaning your room, and I just wanted to know if you needed any extra towels or anything else?”

“No, we'll be just fine, thank you,” Frank said.

The woman nodded and turned to leave. Then she stopped and looked back. “I guess you'll be all right here,” she said. “Will you be all right here?”

“Sure,” Frank said. By this time he began to feel strange, too. “Sure we will.”

Elizabeth nodded and slowly walked out the door.

“I wonder why there is so much concern about us,” Joe said when she had closed the door behind her.

“It is odd,” Frank agreed. “Maybe we'll find out at dinner.”

Shortly before seven they went down the hall and knocked on the door to their parents' room, and a few moments later all four Hardys entered the
dining room. Josiah Butler had specific seats assigned to everyone, and they found themselves at his table, together with another family with two teenage daughters.

The girls were Amy and Susan Sheridan, and soon a lively conversation ensued while the guests ate a delicious meal of oyster stew and salad.

“Have you met the maid yet?” Joe asked Susan in a low voice.

The girl giggled. “I thought she'd ride off through the window on her broom! She scared Amy half to death.”