Lucy's secretaryship for Doctor Matthews lasted only three days. During
that short space of time she found out nothing special, bearing on the
wrong to Miss Remson which she longed to right. She learned to like the
president of Hamilton College better than ever, and wished she might
work for him longer. The only item of interest she came across was at
his residence. In the secretary's desk there she discovered the New York
address of Leslie Cairns in a small red leather address book. To her
analytical mind this was proof enough of an acquaintance between the
two.
She had not expected to do anything of moment toward helping Miss Remson
during those three days. Still she could not help confessing to Marjorie
that she was a wee bit disappointed at not having learned a single
thing.
"Never mind, Luciferous," Marjorie had consoled. "You had the will to
help Miss Remson if you did not have the opportunity. It may all come to
light when you least expect it. That's the way such things often
happen."
While Lucy had deplored her inability to obtain the desired information
she legitimately sought, the Sans loudly deplored among themselves her
temporary appointment as secretary. Coupled with it a story had reached
the ears of Natalie Weyman and Joan Myers which caused them to flee to
Leslie Cairns in a hurry. It had to do with the hazing party the
previous February. Joan had been slyly taxed with it first. Pretending
innocence, she had made an excuse to leave the senior who had intimated
it to her without having betrayed herself in any particular.
Several days afterward she and Natalie Weyman had gone through almost
the same experience with two juniors who had appeared to treat the
affair as a huge joke. The girl who had first hinted it to Joan had been
rather horrified over what she had evidently heard.
"I think it is high time we called Dulcie Vale to account!" Natalie
exclaimed stormily, as she finished the recital of what she and Joan had
just heard.
The two had burst in upon Leslie, regardless of the "Busy" sign which
now ornamented her door a good deal of the time when she was in her
room.
"Calm down, Nat. You are so mad you are fairly shouting. Take seats and
have some candy, both of you." Leslie lazily pushed a huge box of nut
chocolates across the table within easy reach of her excited callers.
"Um-m! Glaucaire's best!" Natalie forgot her wrath and helped herself to
sweets.
"I had made up my mind before you two burst in with your tale of woe
that Dulcie had escaped long enough. I have heard things, too, and just
lately. Dulcie is not the only one. She talked to Bess. Bess Walbert is
as busy a little news circulator as you'd care to find."
"What did I tell you?" Natalie cried out in triumph.
"You were right, Nat. I give you credit for reading her correctly. I
haven't seen her since the first of the week. When I do----" Leslie nodded
her head, looking thoroughly disagreeable. Elizabeth Walbert was in for
a very stormy interview with her.
"When will you call the meeting, Les?" anxiously inquired Joan. "Don't
put it off. No telling how much more mischief Dulcie may do if she isn't
curbed promptly."
"Tomorrow night," Leslie named. "See as many of the Sans as you can
between now and the ten-thirty bell. Don't go near Loretta Kelly's and
Della Byron's room. Dulcie goes there a good deal lately. Della is
coming to see me this evening after dinner. I'll tell her then. Let me
know before the last bell tonight how many of the girls are on, Nat.
Will you?"
"Surely, Leslie dear." Natalie had simmered down to affability. She was
very proud of Leslie's confidence in her.
Left alone, Leslie settled back in her chair very much as her father
might have done on the eve of a pitched battle on the stock exchange.
Her eyes roved about her room as she planned where the culprit should
stand, where she wished the Sans to group themselves, and where her
place as conductor of the arraignment should be.
A half smile flitted across her face as she remembered the last high
tribunal she had conducted. This time the culprit was a real one. It had
been hard to trump up charges against "Bean." There would be no masks
worn save the mask of deceit which she would ruthlessly strip from
Dulcie, showing her in her true colors. After she was "all through" with
Dulcie she would read the riot act to Bess Walbert. She wished to wait,
however, until the sophomore unsuspectingly came to her for a favor.
Then she would be shown a side of Leslie she had not dreamed existed.
At twenty minutes after ten Natalie came to Leslie's room with the
welcome news that "every last Sans" except Loretta and Della had been
told and would be on hand promptly at eight o'clock the next evening.
"I saw Loretta and Della," Leslie informed her chum. "They are wild.
They heard that Dulc told two juniors about my renting that house for
six months so we could use it when we hazed Bean. That's a nice report
to have in circulation on the campus, now isn't it? Does that sound like
Dulc, or doesn't it?"
"Dulcie told that, undoubtedly. There were not more than six or seven of
us who knew the terms on which you rented that house. Dulc knew. You
always let her into extra private matters because she was one of the old
guard. You and she were not so edgeways toward each other until after
the night of the masquerade."
"We never agreed on a single thing. Away back at prep school Dulc and I
were always squabbling. In her heart she has never really liked me.
Since the masquerade she has cordially hated me. That's about my feeling
toward her. I want her out of the Sans. She is a disgrace to them. I
expected Nell Ray would fight for her, but she gave in as nicely as you
please."
"The girls are all down on her for telling tales," returned Natalie. "I
wonder if she thinks they don't know the way she has gossiped about
them?"
"She will know it tomorrow night," asserted Leslie shortly.
"There goes the bell. I had better beat it. I have an hour's studying to
do tonight yet, and I am so sleepy," Natalie yawned. "One thing more."
Half way across the threshold she turned and reentered the room. "How
are you going to get Dulc on the scene?"
"Harriet is to tell her, late tomorrow afternoon, that the Sans are to
meet in my room tomorrow night at eight to discuss something very
important. She will come. She will be eaten up with curiosity to know
what is going on. She'll be just a little bit surprised when she learns
how much she has to do with that important discussion." Leslie threw
back her head and laughed in her silent fashion.
"She deserves it." Natalie's whole face hardened perceptibly. "Look out
for her, Les. She is capable of making a lot of fuss. We don't care to
have Remson coming up here to see what the trouble is."
"If she is noisy, half a dozen of us will simply take her by the arms
and bundle her off to her own room. It is only three doors from here,"
Leslie answered with cool decision. "I can manage her, I think."
The next day Dulcie received word of the meeting through the medium of
Harriet. The latter delivered the notice in a careless tone which
completely misled Dulcie.
"Why can't it be some place besides Leslie Cairns' room?" Dulcie
pettishly demanded. "I hate to go near her!"
"Suit yourself," shrugged Harriet. "You can't say I didn't tell you
about it. It won't be any place other than Leslie's room."
Her simulated indifference merely aroused in Dulcie a contrary resolve
to attend that meeting at all costs. She had not been in Leslie's room
since the opening of college. She had a curiosity to see what changes
Leslie had made in it from the previous year. Strangely enough, her own
misdeeds never crossed her mind. She had no thought, when regaling
others with her chums' private affairs, that such treachery might
possibly bring her a day of reckoning. The recent quarrels she had had
with her former intimate, Eleanor Ray, and also Joan Myers, left no
impression on her save a sullen dislike for the two girls because they
had taken her to task for betraying their confidence.
As it was, she accepted an invitation to dinner at the Colonial extended
her by Alida Burton. She lingered so long at the tea room that she
walked into Leslie's room at ten minutes past eight.
Slow of comprehension, even she felt dimly the tension of the moment.
The Sans sat or stood in little groups about the room. With her
entrance, conversation suddenly languished and died out. Every pair of
eyes was leveled at her in a cool fashion which bordered on hostility.
"It seems to me you are all very quiet tonight. What's the _matter?_
Peevish because I'm late? _Yes? What?_ Don't cry. Ten minutes won't kill
any of you," she greeted flippantly. "Hope I haven't _missed_ anything
by being a tiny bit behind time." She had adopted Leslie's insolent
swagger.
"No; you haven't missed anything," Leslie said dryly. "We were waiting
for you." She turned abruptly from Dulcie, addressing the others.
"Girls," she raised her voice a trifle, "bring your chairs and arrange
them on each side of the davenport in a half circle. Six girls can sit
on the davenport. We are all here now, so we can proceed with the
business of the evening."
Her order promptly obeyed, the Sans settled themselves in their chairs
with mingled emotions. None of them had a definite idea of how Leslie
intended to conduct the embarrassing session against Dulcie. Face to
face with the momentous occasion, a few of them felt slightly inclined
toward clemency. The older members of the Sans were too greatly incensed
by her treachery to do other than approve of the humiliation about to
descend on the traitor.
It had been Leslie's first idea to seat Dulcie in a particular chair.
Second thought assured her that Dulcie would refuse the chair, merely to
be contrary. She would undoubtedly sit where she would be most
conspicuous if left to her own devices. Leslie decided the rest of the
Sans must sit in a compact group. Wherever Dulcie might choose to post
herself in the room she could not escape arraignment.
While the girls were arranging their chairs, Leslie occupied herself
with hanging a heavy velvet curtain in front of the door leading to the
hall. That task completed, she turned to find Dulcie had seated herself
on the left hand side of the semi-circle, the last girl in the row. She
had pulled her chair forward a trifle so as to command a good view of
the company.
Dulcie was well-pleased with herself. She was still admiring her brazen
entrance into the room. She felt that she had quite outdone Leslie in
matter of cool insolence. In fact she was much better able to direct the
club than Leslie. She wondered the girls had never realized it. She eyed
Leslie with ill-concealed contempt as the latter seated herself in the
chair of office which Natalie had placed in the fairly wide space
between the ends of the half circle. Les grew homelier every day, was
her uncharitable opinion.
"We are here tonight to perform a duty, which, though not pleasant,
_must be done_." Leslie made this beginning with only a slight drawl to
her tones. "When we organized the Sans Soucians we all promised to be
loyal to one another. I regret to say that one of our number has so
completely violated this promise it becomes necessary to take drastic
measures. We cannot allow a Sans to betray deliberately either club or
personal secrets."
Leslie placed great stress on "deliberately." She was careful not to
look toward Dulcie. "Do you agree with me in this?" She put the question
generally.
_"Yes,"_ was the concerted, emphatic answer. Dulcie's voice helped to
swell the chorus.
"The Sans have done certain things as a matter of reprisal and
self-defense, which, if generally known, would entail very serious
consequences. It is vital to our welfare at Hamilton that these matters
should be kept secret, yet a member of the Sans has gossiped them to
outsiders. For example, it is known to a number of seniors and juniors
outside the Sans that a hazing affair took place last St. Valentine's
night, conducted by the Sans. Seven of us have been approached on this
subject. We know, to a certainty, that a faction, antagonistic to us,
did not start this story.
"Still more serious is a report brought to me concerning the methods
employed by Joan and I to keep a residence for the Sans at the Hall when
we were threatened with expulsion from here as sophomores. A person who
will betray such intimate matters, knowing that her treachery may ruin
the prospects of her chums for graduation from college, is not only a
fool for risking her own safety, but a menace to the club as well."
For ten minutes Leslie talked on in this strain, her hearers observing a
strained silence. She was purposely piling up the enormity of Dulcie's
misdeed so as to impress the others. As for Dulcie, she had begun to
show signs of nervousness. Once or twice her eyes measured the distance
from her chair to the door as if she were meditating sudden flight. What
remnants of conscience she still had, stirred to the point of informing
her that the coat Leslie was airing fitted her too snugly for comfort.
She had not yet arrived at the moment of awakening, however. She
believed Leslie's remarks to be directed toward someone else. Margaret
Wayne, perhaps; or, Loretta Kelly. Leslie had once said to her that
Loretta was a gossip. Dulcie now tried to recall an instance of
Loretta's perfidy. It would be to her interest to cite an instance of it
should Leslie call for special evidence. It would pay Loretta back for
once having called her a stupid little owl.
In the midst of racking her vindictive brain for evidence against a
fellow member, Dulcie lost briefly the thread of Leslie's discourse.
Mention of her own name re-furnished her with it.
"Dulciana Vale," she heard Leslie saying in a tense note quite different
from her indolent drawl, "do you know of any reason why you should be
allowed a further membership in the Sans Soucians after having become an
utter traitor to their interests?"
Dulcie struggled to her feet, her sulky features a study in slow-growing
rage. "What--what--do you--mean?" Her voice was rising to a gasping scream.
"How dare you call me a traitor. You are telling lies; just nothing but
lies."