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“Possibly an old friend of your grandfather’s,” said Jupiter. “He always wore a medallion with that design on it. It must have meant something special to him. There are rows of double-headed eagles on those two big urns by the front steps. Did you notice them?”

“I was busy,” said Tom. “We had a bed to move.”

Aunt Mathilda’s footsteps were heavy on the stairs. “I hope that man thought to get enough sheets,” worried Aunt Mathilda. “Jupiter, did you see mattresses anywhere?”

“They’re in the back room,” called Tom. “Brand new. Still have the paper round them.”

“Thank goodness,” declared Aunt Mathilda. She yanked open doors until she found the linen closet, and there were the sheets, also new, the mattresses and blankets. And two new pillows still encased in plastic.

Aunt Mathilda threw open one of the front windows. “Hans!” she called.

“Coming!” Hans was making his way up the front steps, the footboard of the brass bed balanced on his head.

“That will be a stinker to put up,” said Tom Dobson.

It was. It took the combined efforts of Tom, Jupiter and Hans to get the big bed firmly erect on its four legs. Then springs and mattress were carried in from the back room and put in place, and Aunt Mathilda began unfolding sheets.

“Oh, the groceries!” she said suddenly. “They’re still in the back of the truck.”

“Groceries?” said Mrs Dobson. “Mrs Jones, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t,” Aunt Mathilda informed her. “Your father bought enough food to take Sherman’s Army clear to the sea. I had it in my freezer so that it wouldn’t spoil.”

Eloise Dobson looked perplexed. “Father certainly seems prepared for us. So why did he run off? … Well, I’ll get the groceries,” she said quickly, and went out of the room and down the stairs.

“Jupiter, give her a hand,” ordered Aunt Mathilda.

Jupiter was halfway down the stairs

when Mrs Dobson came in, brown paper

bags in her arms. “We won’t go hungry,

anyway,” she announced, and marched

towards the kitchen.

Jupiter was close behind her when she

suddenly stopped dead. Her arms went

limp, and the bags thumped to the floor.

Then Eloise Dobson screamed.

Jupiter pushed her to one side and

stared past her into the kitchen. Near the

pantry door, three weird, eerie green

flames leaped and flickered.

“What is it?” Aunt Mathilda and Tom

thundered down the stairs. Hans came

behind them.

Jupiter

and

Mrs

Dobson

were

immobile, staring at those tongues of

ghostly green fire.

“Gracious to heavens!” gasped Aunt

Mathilda.

The flames sputtered and sank, then

died, leaving not a wisp of smoke.

“What the heck?” said Tom Dobson.

Jupiter, Hans and Tom shoved forward into the kitchen. For almost a minute they looked at the linoleum – at the places where the flames had danced. Then Hans said it. “The Potter! He came back! He came back to haunt the house!”

“Impossible!” said Jupiter Jones.

But he could not deny that there, charred into the linoleum, were three footprints

– and they were the prints of naked feet.

Chapter 6

The Investigators have a Client

HANS WAS immediately sent to the telephone box on the main road to summon the police, who appeared within minutes and searched the house from attic to cellar and found nothing — nothing but the strange, charred footprints in the kitchen.

Officer Haines sniffed at the footprints, measured them, dug a few bits of burned linoleum out of the floor and put them into an envelope. He gave Jupiter a cool look.

“If you know anything about this, and you’re holding out on us—” he began.

“Ridiculous!” snapped Aunt Mathilda. “How could Jupiter know anything we don’t know? He has been with me all day, and he was just going downstairs to help Mrs Dobson with the groceries when those—those footprints appeared.”

“Okay. Okay,” said the officer. “Only he has this habit, Mrs Jones. He’s always around when trouble happens.”

Haines put the envelope with the burned bits of linoleum in his pocket. “If I were you, Mrs Dobson,” he said, “I’d get out of here and go back to the inn.