A Visitor
When they came to the scene of what was so nearly a terrible accident a
week or so before they found that the big tree which had extended clear
across the road was gone and that the underbrush also had been cleared
away.
They stopped the cars a little the other side of the path that led into
the woods and slowly stepped down into the road.
When they caught sight of each other's faces they began to laugh shakily.
"We certainly look as if we were going on a ghost hunt," Mollie said. At
this Grace uttered a little cry of protest. The thought had struck too
near her own disquieting thoughts to be comfortable.
"For goodness' sake, somebody say something cheerful," she begged. "I've
got to get up my courage some way."
"Well, I haven't any to lend you," grumbled Mollie, as she linked her arm
in Betty's and the two went along toward the path. "I don't like this job
a little bit."
"Don't you think," suggested Amy, holding back a little, "that somebody
ought to stay here and take care of the cars?"
"No, you don't!" said Mollie, catching her by the hand and pulling her
along after them. "If one of us goes we are all going."
"Oh, come along," urged Betty, eager to get the thing over with. "I think
we are all acting like a lot of geese. It might help some if we tried to
remember that we are Outdoor Girls."
This challenge did a great deal toward bolstering up the girls' courage
and they hurried along the path more confidently.
Their pace slowed a bit, however, when they reached the cleared space
where the little cottage stood and they paused for a moment in the shelter
of the trees to discuss what to do next.
"Do you think we had all better go?" asked Grace nervously. "Perhaps the
four of us would frighten him--"
"No, we will all go together," said Betty decidedly. "There is nothing to
be gained by standing here talking about it. Come on, girls."
She started across the cleared space and the girls followed slowly. The
little cottage looked deserted and forlorn and the dreary aspect of it
served to increase the girls' uneasy sense of disaster.
Betty knocked gently on the door which had, upon that other occasion not
so very long ago, been hospitably opened to them. But, though they waited
breathlessly for a response, none came--the house was as silent as a tomb.
"Do it again, Betty. He might be asleep or something." suggested Mollie,
with a glance over her shoulder at the quiet woodland. "Knock harder this
time."
Betty obeyed, but with no better success than the first time. Everything
was as silent as before.
"Isn't there a bell, I wonder?" suggested Amy, wishing ardently that they
were back on the road once more. "Perhaps your knock isn't loud enough for
him to hear."
"We might tap on the window," suggested Grace. "If I use my ring on the
window pane he surely ought to hear that."
She started to suit her action to the words when an exclamation from Betty
made her pause. The latter had tried the door and found to her surprise
that it gave to her touch.
"The door is unlocked," she said. "I don't believe the professor is in
here at all and if he has gone into the woods to hunt his butterflies and
beetles I am sure he wouldn't mind our going inside. What do you think?"
She was about to push the door open, but Grace detained her with a nervous
hand on her arm.
"Oh, I don't think we had better go in, Betty!" she cried. "You know what
we were speaking of in the car. Suppose we should find that he has--that
he has--"
"That he has what?" asked Amy, her eyes wide. "For goodness' sake, what do
you mean, Grace?"
Betty tried to stop her, but Grace hurried on heedlessly.
"He may have committed suicide," she cried, adding, in response to
Mollie's and Amy's cry of horror: "You know he must have been desperate
enough to do anything, poor old man, out here all alone."
At the conviction in Grace's tone, Betty felt her own nerve slipping. She
did not want to go into that silent house any more than the other girls
did. Every instinct in her commanded that she run from the place to the
commonplace safety of the road. She was afraid of what she might find on
the other side of that unlocked door. And yet--
"I'm going in," she cried, and, suiting the action to the word, pushed the
door quickly open and stepped over the threshold.
Emboldened by her example, the other girls followed and stopped short with
a cry of dismay. They had not found what they feared--but something almost
as bad.
The room, which had been so neat and orderly when they had last seen it,
was now the scene of such utter confusion as one might only hope to see
depicted in a cubist's nightmare.
The animal skins which had adorned the walls had been torn down and lay in
a tattered heap upon the floor. The shelves upon which had rested the
professor's botanical specimens had been swept clean and their contents
also were scattered about the floor.
The bench upon which the girls had sat and partaken of the queer little
man's hospitality was overturned and the one chair in the room was upside
down on top of it. The whole room looked as though a cyclone--or a maniac
--had been at work.
The girls stared for a minute and then drew closer together as if seeking
protection from some unseen menace. They had some vague conception of what
had taken place here in this lonely little cottage. The elderly and
already nervous professor, reading the tragedy of his sons' death, all
alone perhaps, with no one to comfort or restrain him, had lost his mind,
temporarily at least, and had found an outlet in ruthlessly destroying
everything which came within reach of his hand.
And if this were so, might he not even now be hiding about somewhere,
watching them, perhaps?
This thought seemed to strike the girls at the same time, for after
peering for a second about the room, they turned and made a concerted dash
for the door.
Once outside the room, in the reassuring sunshine, they turned and looked
at each other sheepishly. Then Betty wheeled about and started for the
door again.
"Betty, you are never going back into that place again?" cried Amy wildly,
holding to her skirt. "I won't let you! Do you hear me? Come back here!"
But Betty had no intention of coming back. She turned and faced the girls
calmly, though inwardly she was trembling.
"Of course I am going back," she said. "Professor Dempsey may be in one of
the other rooms and he may be sick. If nobody will go with me, I'm going
in alone."
Of course the three girls could not let her go in alone, so they trailed
back at her heels into the house, being very careful, however, to leave
the door wide open behind them, in case a hasty retreat became necessary.
Cautiously Betty opened the door at the other end of the room and stepped
into what had evidently been a sort of rough kitchen. Now it was nothing
but a nightmare like the other room, and she shuddered as she looked about
at the desolate confusion.
There was a door at the farther end of this room, and after some
hesitation and an inward struggle Betty crossed hastily to it and flung it
wide open.
What she half expected and feared to find there nobody but Betty herself
ever knew, but whatever it was, she gave a great sigh of relief at not
finding it there. The room was upset, though not quite as badly as the
other two, but there was no sign of human occupancy anywhere.
She turned to the girls who had come up behind her and were eagerly and
half shudderingly peering over her shoulder.
"There's nothing here," she announced, the relief she felt showing in her
voice, "and as there doesn't seem to be any other room in the place, I
suppose we might as well go back."
Echoing her suggestion heartily, me girls started to retrace their steps
when a slight sound in the other room made them stop short in a panic.
"What was that?" Amy questioned, but Mollie held up her hand impatiently.
There came the sound of some one stumbling over something. This was
followed by a muttered exclamation.
While the girls looked about them wildly for a means of escape Mollie
began to laugh hysterically.
"We have a visitor," she announced in a strangled voice. "And he is
between us and the only door in the place. Come on, girls, let's see who
it is."
They stepped out into the cluttered living room and came face to face with
a young man who seemed more startled at seeing them than they had been at
sight of him.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he exclaimed, and at sound of the commonplace
phrase the girls could have hugged the speaker in relief. Also they felt a
rather hysterical desire to laugh long and foolishly.
As it was, the stranger stood staring at the girls and the girls at him so
long that the funny side of the situation struck Betty and she really did
begin to laugh.
"We haven't the slightest idea who you are," she told the astonished young
man. "But I am sure of one thing, and that is that we were never so glad
to see any one in all our lives as we are to see you."