THE LUCKY RING DISAPPEARS
What had seemed ghastly the evening before in the shadow-filled
library, was quite a different thing now, heard in the presence of them
all and with the reassuring sunlight streaming in at the window.
“Now do you think we imagined it?” cried Bab. “You heard it too, Gordon
Seymour, you know you did! Oh, look!”
In her eagerness, Bab brushed against a large crayon portrait that hung
on the wall. The picture swayed to one side. Back of it Bab saw what
appeared to be a crack in the wall.
She felt of this crack and, to her surprise, it instantly disappeared!
“Now what,” she demanded, beneath her breath, “does one make of that?”
Gordon pressed closer, examining the wall over her shoulder.
“Want to know what I believe, Bab?” he cried. “I bet there’s a panel of
some sort in this wall! It was open just now a little crack and when
you pressed on the spot, the panel closed!”
“But, Gordon,” protested Bab, “if you are right, and there really is a
panel or door of some sort in the wall, then I’m sure I never so much
as pressed against it. It--it closed of itself!”
Gerry gave a little squeak.
“The ghost!” she cried.
“Ghosts!” echoed Charlie.
“Ghosts don’t roam at nine o’clock in the morning,” added Gerry
thoughtfully. “If this were the stroke of midnight now--oh, good
gracious, this mystery gets worse and worse every minute! I must solve
it or die!”
They searched over every inch of the wall behind the picture, but found
nothing. They sat down at last to review events and to try to arrive at
some sensible conclusion.
“All we really know,” said Bab, “is that something ran across the room
and disappeared without going out the door or window.”
“Only a ghost could do such things,” remarked Gerry. “Must have been
the haunt, after all.”
“That only goes to back my theory that there must be some sort of
opening in the wall,” said Gordon, speaking to Bab.
“And whoever, or whatever, passed through the wall shut the panel after
him, I suppose,” said Charlie, with a scornful laugh. “Be yourself,
Gord, be yourself!”
“There was something in the room,” Bab flashed. “You heard it yourself,
Charlie Seymour!”
Charles yawned.
“Probably mice! Must be hundreds of them in an old house like this.”
Though this theory failed to convince them, they could find no evidence
to contradict it. They prowled about the library for another hour,
coming back again and again to the crayon portrait, but could not
unearth a single additional clew to the mystery.
“Well,” said Gerry at last, “this isn’t the only place we can look for
your fortune, Bab. Let’s try another part of the house.”
Thoughtfully, Bab held up the lucky ring, the little grinning Buddha
with the jeweled eyes.
“Bring us luck, please,” she begged, and added ruefully: “I’ve a notion
we are going to need it!”
After that the girls and boys settled to the work of searching the old
house with a seriousness and a steadfastness of purpose that seemed to
merit greater rewards than it brought.
After a whole week of concentrated effort, the old house had been
turned “inside out” from cobwebbed attic to musty cellar. And all this
energy brought to life nothing but a few mice that scurried away,
disconsolate, before the demolition of their haunts.
“There go our library ghosts!” said Gerry on one such occasion. “Oh me,
that mystery and romance should be explained by mice!”
Day after day of almost feverish effort failed of result, yet Bab
persisted in her dogged search for her hidden inheritance in the old
house in the glen.
“I can’t give up! I won’t give up!” she said, over and over again.
“Why, you don’t know what this means to me!”
The boys and girls made several trips to the village and came back
laden with provisions from the general store and, usually, a pile of
letters from the post-office.
The young folks from home wrote frequently, begging for news, “Which
we’ve got everything else but!” said Gerry ruefully. Letters came to
Bab from her grandmother and grandfather and, though these letters were
always cheerful, Bab read discouragement between the lines.
Sometimes, after a particularly disappointing day, Bab took these
letters upstairs with her and sometimes she even wept a little over
them.
“By this time I hoped to have good news for them,” she told herself,
beating her fist into the palm of one small hand. “We haven’t found the
money! We may never find it. And if we don’t, what will they do?”
These questions etched deep shadows beneath Bab’s eyes and worried her
friends. They begged her to vary the search with some outdoor fun.
“We have plenty of time to find your fortune, honey,” Gerry told her
again and again. “It isn’t as though every day were so important. Let’s
take a little time off to wander about in these gorgeous woods.”
“We want to fish, Bab. Have a heart!” Charlie put in.
“And there’s Lake Tanaka half a mile away going to waste,” Gordon would
add. “Do be reasonable, Bab, and put off finding your inheritance for a
little while.”
Bab smiled wistfully.
“I have put off finding it for some time already,” she said. “Though I
must say it isn’t my fault. You go on your picnic. I don’t mind looking
alone.”
“Silly Bab! As if we’d leave you!” cried Gerry. “No, if you must make
yourself sick we will stay and get sick with you.”
“But you see,” Bab would add, frowning thoughtfully, “it really isn’t
your fortune. I can’t expect you to feel the way I do.”
There were things happening in the old house too--queer things. Bab
alone heard them, for she often lay awake for long hours after her
companions were asleep.
Things disappeared too, mostly food, though now and again the young
folks missed something more personal.
“Sometimes,” grumbled Gerry when she found that her hairbrush had
disappeared from the dresser where she was sure she had left it the
night before, “I begin to think there is really something queer about
this house. I even begin to suspect that my nerves are not all they
should be. If this keeps up I shall probably have to be carried back to
Scarsdale on a stretcher--if I live to get back at all!”
At night Bab sometimes heard again the noise of pattering feet. This
was too distinct, she knew, to be the product of her imagination, yet
how explain the sounds?
There were queer noises below stairs too, and they seemed to come from
quite far below--in the cellar probably. Bab had never yet found the
courage to investigate.
“Although some night, I will!” she told herself resolutely.
Then, one morning Bab awoke to find that the lucky ring, the little
Buddha with the jeweled eyes, was gone!