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[Illustration: _"Oh-h-h-h-e-e!" screamed Sim, "Oh, girls,
look here!"_ (_Frontispiece_)]
The Arden Blake Mystery Series
THE ORCHARD SECRET
by
CLEO F. GARIS
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers
New York Chicago
_The Arden Blake Mystery Series_
BY CLEO F. GARIS
The Orchard Secret
Mystery of Jockey Hollow
Missing at Marshlands
Copyright, 1934, by
A. L. Burt Company
The Orchard Secret
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Warning 7
II Fruit-Cake 15
III Black Danger 25
IV The Reward Circular 38
V Rescued 52
VI Apple Hazing 62
VII Terror in the Dark 72
VIII A Tea Dance 82
IX The Disappearance of Sim 91
X What to Do 98
XI Sim 107
XII Midnight Mishap 115
XIII Aftermath 123
XIV The Dean Decides 129
XV The Alarm Bell 136
XVI Arden's Adventure 143
XVII In Danger 154
XVIII In Hiding 162
XIX Strange Talk 170
XX A Dire Threat 177
XXI A Bold Stroke 182
XXII Arden Admits It 190
XXIII The Injured Chaplain 196
XXIV The Dean Explains 203
XXV Arden Is Convinced 212
XXVI The Challenge 223
XXVII A Telegram 231
XXVIII A Disturbing Message 241
CHAPTER I
The Warning
For a few uncertain moments no one had spoken. The old flivver bumped
over a little hill, and the girls seemed suddenly to realize they were
entering upon that much anticipated new experience--college life.
"It's lovely, isn't it!" exclaimed Arden Blake, resting her hand on
Terry's shoulder. "Such beautiful pines--so tall and----"
"Mysterious!" supplied Sim Westover, making a dive for her compact.
"Thank you. I was about to say--stately," remarked Arden with assumed
superciliousness. "And see the deer behind the bush, a stone deer, I
suppose. But it's all so lovely!"
"Lovely indeed," agreed Terry as she was apt to do with anything Arden
said or did. "Don't you think so, Sim?"
Sim, occupying most of the back seat of the rickety station car, felt
differently about it and said so. Sim was that way.
"It's all very well," she murmured, busy with her compact, "all very
well, my good girls, but isn't it about time we got inside the college?
After a train trip like the one we have just endured, I'll be glad to get
my feet off Arden's suitcase. Wherever did you get such a big one,
Arden?"
"It was given to me when we all decided to come to Cedar Ridge. You'll
wish it was yours when you see what's inside. Oh, look! That must be the
swimming-pool building!" There could be no mistake about it as they could
note when the harassed little flivver was slowly completing the half
circle of the cinder drive which curved like a crescent moon in front of
Cedar Ridge College, and was approaching a glass-roofed structure set
somewhat apart from the other buildings.
The roof was dome-shaped, and its glass panes, set in frames of copper
which glinted in the rays of the red autumn sun, were thick and green
like petrified ocean waves.
As they rattled past the pool building they saw a wheelbarrow standing
right in the pathway. Somehow that odd obstruction looked out of place
near a natatorium, and Sim said so, adding:
"I wonder what's the idea?"
"Oh, they're probably just cleaning it out," suggested Arden.
The cultivated rustic setting for the big gray stone structures made the
whole scene picturesquely perfect, just as the prospectus had stated. But
to the girls the college was also a little forbidding. Certainly there
was nothing cozy about it--nothing inviting--and not every girl can boast
the artist's taste.
The buildings were solid and massive, as solid and dependable as the
women instructors within who guided the four student years of "their
girls." Besides the swimming pool, only the chapel, with its tall spire,
caught the warm sunset glow and displayed it more lavishly. But that, of
course, thought Arden, was because there was so much more glass,
beautifully tinted, in the chapel windows.
As the wheels of the car crunched the cinders, Arden hoped she hadn't
been wrong in urging Terry and Sim to come to Cedar Ridge with her. They
had come because of her urging. There was no doubt of this. Had it not
been for the promise of swimming, implied by the beautiful picture of the
pool in the college prospectus, Sim would, she said, have been content to
stay at home in Pentville.
As for Terry--where Arden went, there went Terry. They had been
inseparable since the "baby grade" in Vincent Prep.
The driver of the car, a typical country taxi-man, probably too well
trained to talk unbidden to the students, pulled up suddenly as he neared
a lane that curved around a big elm and wended its way toward a distant
grove.
"Down below there's th' orchard," he said hesitantly. "Ef I was you, I
wouldn't go prowlin' around in it." He indicated a part of the extensive
farm ground that was an inheritance of Cedar Ridge College--long rows of
old gnarled trees, many of them now heavy with russet, red, golden, and
yellow fruit. The orchard was separated from the eastern end of the
dormitory building by a tall and tangled hedge but could be seen from the
hill on which the building stood. "No, don't go down there," advised the
driver as he let in the clutch.
"Why?" came a surprised and gasping chorus.
"Waal, queer things are said to happen down in that orchard. But don't
ask me what!" he quickly cautioned. "I'm only hired to drive this tin
Lizzie, an' I dassn't talk."
Terry, who sat beside Arden, evinced a desire to put a question but
thought better of it.
The girls looked wonderingly at one another as the car speeded along.
They were puzzled over this mysterious introduction to Cedar Ridge. For
here was the college. That was no mystery but a solid fact.
They were there!
The flivver chugged on to the main entrance, and the girls alighted. As
they reached the top of the massive stone steps, a young man, porter
evidently, picked up their bags as the taxi-man slid them along to him
and quickly led the way inside the portals.
The very sight of a young man there, at this college for girls, even
clad, as he was, in blue overalls, prompted a giggle. But Arden pinched
Sim's arm and Sim didn't.
Just inside the doorway, at a desk near which the young man set down the
bags, sat a severe-looking woman in black with the judicious linen collar
and cuffs. She waited with a pencil poised over a large sheet of paper.
"I suppose this is where we are expected to register," murmured Arden.
"Yes," agreed Terry, as usual.
They gave their names to the severe woman, who permitted herself a frosty
smile as she remarked:
"Oh, yes, freshmen. You young ladies have all been assigned to the same
room. Let me see." She consulted a list. "It is number 513 on the fifth
floor of the main building." She made a note on the paper, and then,
turning, addressed a distant shadowy corner, saying:
"Miss Everett will show you where it is. You may go to your room now, and
when you hear the bell you will come to the recreation hall, which you
will pass on your way. Miss Everett!" she called sharply.
A tall blonde girl came forward from the shadows, a little reluctantly,
it appeared. Just why, neither Arden nor her two chums could imagine.
They didn't even know, yet, who Miss Everett was. This stately blonde
girl, however, took matters into her own hands with some show of
authority.
"Come this way, please," she said, addressing the three freshmen. They
were a little uncertain whether or not to pick up their bags, now that
the luggage had been brought into the building for them. But Miss Everett
knew what to do.
The young fellow in the clean suit of blue overalls could now be seen at
the end of the corridor. He was apparently deeply interested in the
outside view, for he stood squarely before a window and seemed oblivious
of his humble duties.
"Tom!" sharply called Miss Everett. At that the blue-clad man turned
quickly and hurried toward the desk. "These bags to the fifth floor,
Tom!"
"Yes'm," he murmured. He kept his head bowed. Perhaps he still wanted to
retain that vision of the apple orchard in which he had been so
interested. For it was toward the orchard he had been looking, as Arden
and her chums noted when they went down toward the window. They could see
the strange gnarled trees over the top of the high dark hedge. "Fifth
floor?" questioned Tom, the porter. He was also an assistant gardener, as
the girls later learned.
"Room 513," added the woman at the desk.
"Yes'm."
Arden thought she saw a little smile playing over the face of the
good-looking young man as he started off ahead of the three freshmen, led
by the stately Miss Everett. The porter was evidently going to a service
elevator, as he passed out through a side door and was then lost to
sight, with the bags he carried so efficiently, all three of them, and
not small, either.
Arden, Terry, and Sim, following Miss Everett, started up the brown
polished stairs that reared skyward at the back of the large entrance
hall.
Up and up and up they walked. All the landings and halls looked exactly
alike, and the freshmen wondered how their guide retained her sense of
direction and maintained the count.
Halfway up Terry murmured to Arden:
"Do you think there was anything in what he said?"
"Who said?"
"The taxi-man who drove us here from the station."
"About what?"
"The orchard. You know he warned us to keep away from it. And if there is
something terrible or scary about an orchard so near the college, why,
I'm going----"
"You're going to keep right on walking up!" interrupted Arden with her
usual clear-headedness in a critical situation. "If there's any mystery
here at Cedar Ridge we'll have the time of our lives solving it. But I
don't believe there is. That orchard is no different from any other,
except, from what little we saw of it, there seemed to be some fine
apples there. Now don't go making mountains out of the camel in the eye
of the needle, or something like that."
"Oh, all right," said Terry meekly. "But I was thinking----"
"This is no time to think!" came from Sim. "Use your legs! Whew! Five
flights! Is your room this high up, Miss Everett?"
"No, I'm a sophomore. I'm a floor lower than you are. But this is the
fourth time I've taken freshies up here today. I don't see why they have
to pick on me!"
"Oh, this is too bad!" exclaimed Sim impulsively. "Perhaps if you could
have a swim in the pool before dinner tonight you wouldn't feel so
tired."
To Sim a dive into a pool with sea-green tiles on the bottom was a
cure-all and she recommended it at every opportunity.
"Try a swim," she urged.
Miss Everett came to a sudden stop on a landing and laughed in a manner
that could be described only as cynical.
"Listen, freshie!" she exclaimed, "let me tell you something about that
pool!"
The three girls looked at their guide apprehensively.
Was there something mysterious about the pool, as the taxi-man had
intimated there was about the orchard?