"I'm more than willing," said Tracy, "I'm anxious to help him for, as you say, Braye, if there's a human mind capable of devising means to commit such a crime, it surely ought to be within the province of some other human mind to discover it."
"Suppose we start out on that basis," suggested Braye. "I mean, assume that a live person did the deed, and it's up to us to find him. Then if we can't do it, fall back on our occult theories."
"I know where I'd look first," said Landon, grimly.
"Toward Eli Stebbins. I've always thought he or the Thorpes, or all of them together, know more than we suspect they do. Why, think a minute. Do you remember the first queer, inexplicable thing that happened up here?"
"I do," Eve spoke up. "It was the night we arrived. That battered old candlestick moved itself from Mr. Bruce's room to Vernie's."
"Yes, Eve, that's what I have in mind. Well, I thought then, and I think now, that Stebbins moved that thing himself."
"I thought I saw him sneaking across the hall that night. And as you know, none of us would have done it, and I don't think Mr. Bruce did. I thought that at first, but since Mr. Bruce's death, I know he never played any tricks on us."
"Oh, that doesn't follow," objected Hardwick. "I always suspected Bruce would trick us if he could, but when it came to his own death, I've no notion that he compassed that!"
"No," agreed Braye, "whatever the truth may be, there was no suicide."
And so they talked, discussed, surmised, argued and theorized, without getting any nearer a positive belief, or proof of any sort to uphold their opinions.
Each seemed to have marked out a certain line of thought and doggedly stuck to it.
Professor Hardwick was, perhaps, the one most positive regarding supernatural causes, though Eve and Norma were almost equally certain.
Braye and Landon were not entirely willing to accept these beliefs, but confessed they had no plausible substitutes to suggest. Tracy, as a clergyman, was loth to accept what seemed to him heathen ideas, but he was more or less influenced by the talk of the Professor and of Eve Carnforth, who was exceedingly persuasive in manner and argument.
Milly had little thought of her own about the matter, but was always ready to believe as her husband did, though, she, too, was swayed by the strong statements and declarations of Eve Carnforth.