Dot and Mr Holmes have discovered a strange machine like a cinema projector, and an old fashioned gramophone too, in a secret room on the attic floor. Is THIS what’s been making the spooky noises and ghostly sights at Dendringham Hall? They’re about to find out…
"A-ROOOOOOOOOO!"
The noise was so loud Dot couldn't hear herself think!
It was obvious what had happened.
Just as the latest ghostly sights and sounds had stopped when the electricity did - so they had started up again because the generator had come back on!
"A-ROOOOOOOOOOOO! A-ROOOOOOOO!"
The AMAZINGLY loud sound was coming from the strange trumpet thing on the machine that looked like a record player.
The disc on top of it was now spinning round, its shiny black surface reflecting the single light bulb in the ceiling above them - which had also come on of course, casting a dim yellow light into the attic room behind the hidden door.
"Hold it down, can'tcha!" grumbled Mr Mouse from his hidey-hole under the shoulder of Dot's dress. "What a racket!"
But there was no holding that racket down - nor stopping what happened next!
With a whirring noise, the huge metal disc with all the pictures round the rim started to spin too.
"Of course!" yelled Mr Holmes above the howling – which was all the louder because it couldn’t “get out” as it was meant to do, through the hatch in the roof, but was stuck inside, bouncing off the walls. "Of course!” he said again.
“A phonoscope!"
Standing up in front of the long, black tube coming out of the projector, the huge disc began to spin faster and faster, till its whirring made a steady hum that could be heard below the sound coming from the record player.
Then - pffft! - a brilliant white light shot out of the front of it, and the figure of the spooky horseman, tiny in size but exactly the same as the one they'd seen so often before, appeared on the sliding hatchway in the roof!
"A-ROOOOOOOO! A-ROOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"Excellent!" shouted Mr Holmes, grinning all over his face as he watched.
Dot stuffed her fingers in her ears and screwed her face up. It was all getting too much!
But the machine hadn't finished showing everything it could do - not by a long way.
Suddenly there was a buzzing sound which seemed to come from the wall to the right of the room.
"Look at that!" shouted Mr Holmes.
Dot looked. There on the wall was a black box, with brass corners and a sign in spidery writing on it that read: 'The Excelsior Midget Winch - Always Pulls Its Weight'.
Out of the box came a wire, which was lying on the floor between what looked like a set of rails - very like the ones that the sliding panel in the slope of the roof must run on. Strangely, though, they sloped up towards the box on the wall.
Yet another howling - "A-ROOOOOOO!" It seemed louder than ever.
"What's that for?" shouted Dot.
Mr Holmes opened his mouth to answer - but then he didn't need to.
With a “twang!" the wire tightened - and started to pull the projector towards it.
As it did so, the picture of the ghostly galloping horseman moved across the inside of the roof - just as it did when it appeared outside the Hall.
And just as it would have done AGAIN, had the sliding panel in the roof been open!
"I think we have found our ghost rider!" said Mr Holmes to Dot, in a gap between the howlings. "Black Sir Crispin rides again? I think not, dear Dorothea!"
But then, just as quickly as it had begun the howling and the pictures stopped - for the projector was now right up to the wall with the black box in it.
"Phew!" said Dot, taking her fingers out of her ears. "I think I'd have gone deaf if that had gone on any longer." She stepped forward to take a closer look at the machine. "I wonder where -"
"LOOK OUT!" shouted Mr Holmes.
