CALLERS—AND THE GHOST
“I do wonder!” said Tess, with a sigh.
“What do you wonder?” asked Ruth, mildly.
“Sounds like a game,” Agnes observed, briskly. The Corner House girls
were sitting on the porch with their sewing, and it was a very warm
August forenoon. “‘Cumjucum—what do you come by? I come by the letter
T’—which stands for ‘Tess’ and ‘Trouble,’ which last is the
expression on Tess’ face,” concluded Agnes, with a laugh.
Tess’ train of thought was not to be sidetracked so easily. “I wonder
whatever became of Tommy Rooney?” she said.
“You don’t really believe that was Tommy you saw the day it rained so
hard?” cried Agnes.
“Yes, I do. And we know that Tommy stole cherries from Mr. Pease, and
milk from Mrs. Adams. Didn’t he, Dot? And then, we saw Mr. Pinkney and
that bulldog chasing him.”
“He ran into our yard to escape the dog,” said Dot, seriously.
“Well,” said Ruth, “if it was Tommy, I wish he had come to the house,
so we could have fed him. Mrs. Rooney must be awfully worried about
him. It’s been a month since we heard he had run away.”
“And he’d been gone a week, then,” added Agnes.
“Well,” said Tess, “I guess he hasn’t killed any Indians here in
Milton, or we would have heard about it.”
“I guess not,” chuckled Agnes.
“I always look for him, when I’m on the street,” said Dot.
“We’ll look for him to-day,” said Tess, “when we go to see Maria.”
Tess and Dot were going over to Meadow Street that afternoon to call
on the Maronis and Mrs. Kranz. The condition of the Maronis had
greatly improved during these weeks. Not only Joe and Maria, but the
whole family had begun to be proud of living “like Americans.”
Mrs. Kranz, out of the kindness of her heart, had helped them a great
deal. Maria helped the good German lady each forenoon, and was
learning to be a careful little housekeeper.
“She iss a goot mädchen,” declared the large lady. “Aind’t idt
vonderful how soon dese foreigners gets to be respectable, ven dey iss
learndt yet?”
Tess and Dot went up stairs to make themselves ready for their visit,
before luncheon. Upon their departure, Eva Larry and Myra Stetson
appeared at the front gate.
“Oh, do come in, girls!” shouted Agnes, dropping her sewing.
“We will, if you’ll tie up your ghost,” said Eva, laughing.
“Hush!” commanded Ruth. “Don’t say such things—not out loud, please.”
“Well,” Eva said, as she and Myra joined them on the porch, “I
understand you have ransacked that old garret. Did you chase out Mr.
Ghost?”
“What is that?” demanded Mrs. Treble’s shrill voice in the doorway.
“What does that girl mean by ‘ghost’?”
“Oh, Mrs. Treble!” cried the teasing Eva. “Haven’t you heard of the
famous Garret Ghost of the old Corner House—and you here so long?”
“Oh, don’t!” begged Ruth, sotto voce.
Mrs. Treble was not to be denied. Something evidently had escaped her
curiosity, and she felt cheated of a sensation. “Go on and tell me,
girl,” she commanded Eva.
Eva, really nothing loath, related the story of the supposed
supernatural occupant of the garret. “And it appears on stormy, windy
days. At least, that’s when it’s been seen. It comes to the window up
there and bows, and flutters its grave clothes—and—and all that.”
“How ridiculous!” murmured Ruth. But her face was troubled and Mrs.
Treble studied her accusingly.
“That’s why you forbade my Lillie going up there,” she said. “A ghost,
indeed! I guess you have something hidden up there, my girl, that you
don’t want other folks to see. You can’t fool me about ghosts. I don’t
believe in them,” concluded the lady from Ypsilanti.
“Now you’ve done it, Eva,” said Agnes, in a low voice, when Mrs.
Treble had departed. “There isn’t a place in this house that she
hasn’t tried to put her nose in _but_ the garret. Now she’ll go up
there.”
“Hush,” begged Ruth, again. “Don’t get her angry, Agnes.”
“Oh! here comes Mr. Howbridge!” exclaimed the other Kenway girl, glad
to change the subject.
Ruth jumped up to welcome him, and ushered him into the dining-room,
while the other girls remained upon the porch. As she closed the door,
she did not notice that Mrs. Treble stood in the shadow under the
front stairs.
“I have been to see this Mrs. Bean,” said the lawyer, to Ruth, when
they were seated. “She is an old lady whose memory of what happened
when she was young seems very clear indeed. She does not know this
Mrs. Treble and her child personally. Mrs. Treble has not been to see
her, since she came to Milton.”
“No. Mrs. Treble has not been out at all,” admitted Ruth.
“Mrs. Bean,” pursued Mr. Howbridge, “declares that she knew Mr.
Treble’s mother very well, as a girl. She says that the said mother of
John Augustus Treble went west when she was a young woman—before she
married. She left behind a brother—Peter Stower. Mrs. Bean has always
lived just outside of Milton and has not, I believe, lived a very
active life, or been much in touch with the town’s affairs. To her
mind, Milton is still a village.
“She claims,” said Mr. Howbridge, “to have heard frequently of this
Peter Stower, and when she heard he had died, she wrote to the
daughter-in-law of her former friend. That is her entire connection
with the matter. She said one very odd thing. That is, she clearly
remembers of having hired Peter Stower once to clean up her yard and
make her garden. She says he was in the habit of doing such work at
one time, and she talked with him about this sister who had gone
west.”
“Oh!” gasped Ruth.
“It does not seem reasonable,” said Mr. Howbridge. “There is a mixup
of identities somewhere. I am pretty sure that, as much as Mr. Peter
Stower loved money, he did not have to earn any of it in such a humble
way. It’s a puzzle. But the solving of the problem would be very easy,
if we could find that lost will.”
Ruth told him how she and Agnes had thoroughly examined the garret and
the contents of the boxes and furniture stowed away there.
“Well,” sighed the lawyer. “We may have to go into chancery to have
the matter settled. That would be a costly procedure, and I dislike to
take that way.”
Directly after luncheon Tess and Dot started off for Meadow Street
with the convalescent Alice-doll pushed before them in Dot’s
doll-carriage. Mrs. Treble, who had begun to eat down stairs again,
although Lillie was not allowed out of her room as yet, marched
straight up stairs, and, after seeing that Lillie was in order,
tiptoed along the hall, and proceeded up the other two flights to the
garret door.
When she opened this door and peered into the dimly lit garret, she
could not repress a shudder.
“It is a spooky place,” she muttered.
But her curiosity had been aroused, and if Mrs. Treble had one
phrenological bump well developed, it was that of curiosity! In she
stepped, closed the door behind her, and advanced toward the middle of
the huge, littered room.
A lost will! Undoubtedly hidden somewhere in these old chests of
drawers—or in that tall old desk yonder. Either the Kenway girls have
been very stupid, or Ruth has not told that lawyer the truth! These
were Mrs. Treble’s unspoken thoughts.
What was that noise? A rat? Mrs. Treble half turned to flee. She was
afraid of rats.
There was another scramble. One of the rows of old coats and the like,
hanging from nails in the rafters overhead, moved more than a little.
A rat could not have done that.
The ghost? Mrs. Treble was not at all afraid of such silly things as
ghosts!
“I see you there!” she cried, and strode straight for the corner.
There was another scramble, one of the Revolutionary uniform coats was
pulled off the hook on which it had hung, and seemed, of its own
volition, to pitch toward her.
Mrs. Treble screamed, but she advanced. The coat seemed to muffle a
small figure which tried to dodge her.
“I have you!” cried Mrs. Treble, and clutched at the coat.
She secured the coat itself, but a small, ragged, red haired, and much
frightened boy slid out of its smothering folds and plunged toward the
door of the garret. In trying to seize this astonishing apparition,
Mrs. Treble missed her footing and came down upon her knees.
The boy, with a stifled shout, reached the door. He wrenched it open
and dove down the stairway. His bare feet made little sound upon the
bare steps, or upon the carpeted halls below. He seemed to know his
way about the house very well indeed.
When Mrs. Treble reached the stairs and came down, heavily, shrieking
the alarm, nobody in the house saw the mysterious red haired boy. But
Uncle Rufus, called from his work in the garden, was amazed to see a
small figure squeezing through a cellar window into the side-yard. In
a minute the said figure flew across to the street fence, scrambled
over it, and disappeared up Willow Street, running almost as fast as a
dog.
“Glo-ree!” declared the black man, breathlessly. “If dat boy keeps on
runnin’ like he’s done started, he’ll go clean ’round de worl’ an’ be
back fo’ supper!”