"BEHOLD THE GHOST OF LENOX HALL!"
Dozia insisted on carrying the "tin rompers" down stairs in her
hands and donning them in a convenient place to avoid possible
disaster.
"Yours are shorter and jauntier than mine, Jane," she argued.
"Besides, you have a better figure for tonlets. Come along, I'll
stop at the landing and buckle into the things. Give me a couple of
chains. Don't they chime beautifully?"
"Wait a minute," Jane ordered. "I just discovered the usual slip of
paper." She was extracting it from an armlet. "It's quite new and
very modern, in fact regular typewriting kind--"
"Oh, tuck it away and come along," Dozia moaned. "I hear the horde
howling and the sooner I get this stuff off the better I'll feel.
Pickles! but it's heavy."
Jane folded the slip of paper and made it secure some place, then
they proceeded to forge their way into the recreation room on the
second floor, whither the students had been hastily summoned by the
matron.
"Now I know how the baby tanks felt in the big war," panted Jane,
who was valiantly leading the way. "I mean those big human machines
that rolled over the earth and ploughed things down, as they went."
"Say, Janie, just wait a minute," begged Dozia at the first landing.
"This looks a little like a joke but who is the joker? Who got up in
that place and rattled these nightly? Also, who let out that wild
scream we heard on that first night?" She was talking quickly and in
a subdued voice. "We may be breaking the spell by raiding the secret
chamber, but suppose the old spook breaks out in a new spot?"
"I've thought of all that," confessed Jane, her smile threatening to
unhinge the visor. "But we must give the youngsters their show
first. The details will be lost in their joy of rescue."
"They come! They come!" called out Miss Gifford in an uncertain
treble. She had been waiting to give this signal.
"Land, I'm losing the panties," groaned Dozia, trying to hold up the
tonlets with one hand while she made wild grabs all over the outfit
with the other. Dozia's artistic effect was surely in jeopardy.
Majestically the two big, black walnut doors swung back, and the
crusaders passed between them.
"Behold the ghosts of Lenox Hall!" cried out Jane tragically.
"Behold, behold!" echoed Dozia, raising her arm in its chained
gusset and attempting to salute at the peak of her helmet.
Shouts from the girls spoiled further efforts at the theatrical, and
presently it was no longer a question of holding the old armor in
place, but rather that of getting out of it safely, for what those
freshmen didn't say and do to those ghosts!
"Nothing but strung up dishrags," sneered Maud Leslie. "They must
have looted every hardware store in town for these. Look!"
She sacrilegiously yanked from their wire strings the metal
dishcloths such as are used for scouring purposes, and truth to tell
there was indeed a big collection in the string of armor.
"Let's try the breastplate," begged Nellie Saunders. "I've always
longed to be a Joan of Arc." And she got her pretty hair inside the
head cage with the mouth trap under her chin, then she corseted on
the breastplate.
"And THAT'S the ghost?" scoffed Margie Winters, sitting far off in
the corner safe from "spiritual" infection.
"Disappointed?" asked Jane.
"Of course I am," growled Margie. "I expected a holiday at least to
fumigate, and here we have nothing but a lot of perfectly sanitary
junk."
"And I thought we would find a beautiful maniac walled up there,"
sighed Velma Sigsbee. "It's a perfect shame to have the thing end so
unromantically."
"Hard to suit you youngsters," commented Jane. She had fully
divested herself of the trappings, and now stood aside while the
freshmen surveyed the wreck. Someone suggested getting up surprise
theatricals and bringing before the whole college the "ghosts of
Lenox," This was a fuse to the bomb of excitement, and presently the
roll was called, secrecy pledged, and a committee of arrangements
appointed. Prompt freshmen!
"Give Sally Howland a part," called out Ruth Lawrence. "She's just
suited for something angelic."
"We'll transpose Othello and sprinkle it with cherubs," said Nellie
Saunders, who had been made chairman of the cast. "But the one thing
to remember, girls, is secrecy," she announced loftily. "No one
outside of Lenox must know what the ghosts are, or anything about
the show."
"You'll find tons of stuff up there to fit out the entire
performance," Jane informed the excited students. "It seems to me
the things have been stored there for ages, and perhaps were the
remains of some very grand affair in the early history of
Wellington. Now, girls, are you fully satisfied the ghost is
annihilated?"
"Perfectly," spoke up Nellie. "And we just don't know how to thank
you juniors. Cheers, girls, for our rescuers."
They cheered with the freshmen's dirge.
"One, two, button my shoe; three, four, knock at the door" (they
knocked at everything).
"Five, six, pick up sticks" (wild grabs).
"Sticks, sticks, freshies can's mix."
"Rawr! rawr! freshies all sore" (moans and groans).
"Gore, sore, r-o-a-r" (and they roared)!
"Thanks," responded Jane when the roar died down, "and we're glad to
be initiated in your sorority. Have a lovely time and be sure to let
us know if you need help with the spook revue."
Dozia chimed in feebly and slipped out after Jane.
"They were actually disappointed," she remarked. "I believe they
hoped for real gore."
"To tell the truth," admitted Jane, "it did seem a bit commonplace
after all the symptoms. But I almost forgot the little note. Did you
ever yet meet a case in which the written word played no part? Where
did I put that piece of paper?"
"In your shoe?" suggested Dozia as Jane exhausted all other
possibilities.
"No, here it is in my sleeve. Sit down and we'll decipher it." They
dropped to the nearest bench and smoothed out the paper.
"It's part of a letter," said Dozia, "and written by a boy! Oh, joy,
now we will have some fun--a love letter!" and she pored over the
torn page.
"Neither the beginning nor the end," said Jane, "but the climax."
She read: "'You are a brick if not a wizard, and oh, boy! how that
two hundred dollar check did look to me!'"
"Two hundred!" Dozia repeated. "No girl around these diggings ever
handled that tidy little sum. Read on, Jane, it may be a will or
something, and we may come in for a share--reward, you know."
"Here's our clue," announced Jane. "The name Shirley! Read that."
She did so herself. "'Shirley, however did you do it, I know you
neither stole nor borrowed, so it is all right and'--wait,"
interposed Jane, "that's torn." She lay the paper on her knees and
fitted in the damaged parts. "Here it is. 'I'm back in college and
in the big dorm, after the scare, and it's wonderful to have a
little sis like you.'"
"Sis!" groaned Dozia. "The lover's only a big brother!" She slumped
in her seat dejectedly.
"Shirley's brother," reasoned Jane, "and we have been blaming that
girl! She helped her brother to get back to college!" The voice
reeked with dismay and incredulity.
"Can you imagine college running in her family?" questioned Dozia
the incredulous.
"I suppose we should hardly have read the letter--"
"Why not? Should we have risked our precious lives up in that attic
and then turned down this important clue? Indeed I'm all for asking
Shirley to introduce me," and Dozia strutted off to show her height
if not to display the "runs" in her hose and the "threadbares" in
her sweater elbows.
"But it does sort of take one down," mused Jane, following her
companion toward Warburton Hall. "I hate to feel I have so misjudged
Shirley."
"Pure personal pride on your part, Jane. I have proof positive of
the girl's perfidy. Every single day I must paste anew the paper
decoration that hides her work. I mean that crack in my mirror. More
than once it has done dreadful things to my poor face. If I move
just one inch to the left the crack gashes my right cheek. You know
how a glass reflects. But this brother. May I see the paper, Jane?
His name might be between the lines."
"Oh, it's Ted," said Jane innocently. "See the signature here, but
no address, of course. And from that immature hand, Doze, I am sure
Ted is a junior."
"But, Jane!" almost gasped Dozia. "What can you do with that letter?
It would be positively dangerous to let Shirley know you found it.
It would mean, logically, that she rang the ghost chains, and that
you knew she had helped her brother financially." All the nonsense
had now died out of Dozia's voice, and she compelled Jane to stand
while she proclaimed this ultimatum.
"But how could she get up there, Dozia, when we know positively she
was not on the campus the night of the big alarm?"
"And little Sarah is innocent, I am sure," went on Dozia, "for she
handled that trash with an interest too keen for previous
acquaintance with the stuff. Each piece gave her a little spasm of
surprise. I watched just how it affected her."
"Queer, I noticed that also," said Jane. "Yes, I'm sure she never
saw the armor before. But Shirley is never around in any excitement.
I am afraid she spends a lot of time in Dol Vin's."
"But how could she ever get two hundred dollars for brother Ted?"
"I--wonder, Dozia, could she be in partnership with Dol?"
"She might, but wouldn't that mean an outlay?"
"Of course. There'll be little profit there--and two hundred!" The
amount was appalling to Jane's practical mind.
Voices broke in on the soliloquy.
"Here come the girls from their ride, and what a shame you didn't
go, Jane. Laying a ghost is all right, but if I rode a horse as you
do, I'd assign the ghosts to others. 'Lo, girls! Break your necks or
anything?" chirped Dozia.
Judith hurried to gain Jane's arm and squeezed it affectionately as
she fell in step.
"Such a glorious ride, Jane!" enthused Judith, "and we all missed
you so much. Firefly was good, but he knew you were not on his
back." Judith looked "nobby" in her riding togs.
"And whom do you think we saw out with a stable horse and
instructor?" asked Janet Clarke. "The Rebel Shirley Duncan! And you
know, Jane, what a price Clayton asks for his horses."
Jane was amazed. A riding instructor, horse and hired outfit for
Shirley Duncan!
What was the secret spring of her prodigious income?