A HAUNTED HOUSE
The model tenement which Miss Lovejoy had pointed out to them was soon
reached. A door on the ground floor was labeled "Office," and so Gloria
pushed the electric button.
A trim young woman whose long-lashed, dark eyes suggested her
nationality, received them, but regretted to have to tell them that every
flat in the model tenement was occupied. She looked, with but slightly
concealed curiosity, at these three applicants who, as was quite evident,
were from other environments.
Gloria glanced about the neat courtyard and up at windows where flowers
were blossoming in bright window boxes, then glowingly she turned back to
the girl: "It was a splendid thing for those wealthy society women to do,
wasn't it," she said, "erecting this really handsome yellow brick
building in the midst of so much poverty and squalor. It must have a most
uplifting effect on the lives of the poor people to be able to live here
where everything is so sweet and clean, rather than there," nodding, as
she spoke, at a building across the street which looked gloomy,
crumbling, unsafe and unsanitary.
The office attendant spoke with enthusiasm. "No one knows better than I,
for I used to live in the other kind of tenement when I was a child, but
Miss Lovejoy's club for factory girls gave me my chance to learn
bookkeeping, and now I am agent here. My name is Miss Selenski. Would you
like to see the model apartment?"
"Thank you. Indeed we would," Gloria replied with enthusiasm; then she
added, "Miss Selenski, I am Miss Vandergrift, and these are my sisters,
Roberta and Lena May. We hope to be your neighbors soon."
If there was a natural curiosity in the heart of the dark-eyed girl, she
said nothing of it, and at once led the way through the neatly tiled
halls and soon opened a door admitting them to a small flat of three
rooms, which was clean and attractively furnished. The windows, flooded
with sunlight, overlooked the East River.
"This is the apartment that we show," Miss Selenski explained. "The
others are just like it, or were, before tenants moved in," she
corrected.
"Say, this _is_ sure cosy! Who lives in this one?" Bobs inquired.
"I do," Miss Selenski replied, hurrying to add, "But I did not fit it up.
The ladies did that. It has all the modern appliances that help to make
housekeeping easy, and once every week a teacher comes here to instruct
the neighborhood women how to cook, clean and sew; in fact, how to live.
And the lessons and demonstrations are given in this apartment."
When the girls were again in the office, Gloria turned to their new
acquaintance, saying, "Do you happen to know of any place around here
that is vacant where we might like to live?"
At first Miss Selenski shook her head. Then she added, with a queer
little smile, "Not unless you're willing to live in the old Pensinger
mansion."
Then she went on to explain: "Long, long ago, when New York was little
more than a village, and Seventy-eighth Street was country, all along the
East River there were, here and there, handsome mansion-like homes and
vast grounds. Oh, so different from what it is now! Every once in a while
you find one of these old dwellings still standing.
"Some of them house many poor families, but the Pensinger mansion is
seldom occupied. If a family is brave enough to move in, before many
weeks the 'for rent' sign is again at the door. The rent is almost
nothing, but--" the girl hesitated, then went on to say, "Maybe I ought
not to tell you the story about the old place if you have any thought of
living there."
"Oh, please tell it! Is it a ghost story?" Bobs begged, and Gloria added,
"Yes, do tell it, Miss Selenski. We are none of us afraid of ghosts."
"Of course you aren't," Miss Selenski agreed, "and, for that matter,
neither am I. But nearly all of our neighbors are superstitious. Mr.
Tenowitz, the grocer at the corner of First and Seventy-ninth has the
renting of the place, and he declares that the last tenant rushed into
his store early one morning, paid his bill and departed without a word of
explanation, but he looked, Mr. Tenowitz told me, as though he _had_ seen
a ghost. I don't think there is anything the matter with the old house,"
their informant continued, "except just loneliness.
"Of course, big, barnlike rooms, when they are empty, echo every sound in
a mournful manner without supernatural aid."
"But how did it all start?" Bobs inquired. "Did anything of an unusual
nature ever happen there?"
Miss Selenski nodded, and then continued: "The story is that the only
daughter of the last of the Pensingers who lived there disappeared one
night and was never again seen. Her mother, so the tale goes, wished her
to marry an elderly English nobleman, but she loved a poor Hungarian
violinist whom she was forbidden to see. Because of her grief, she did
many strange things, and one of them was to walk at midnight, dressed all
in white, along the brink of the dark swirling river which edged the wide
lawn in front of her home. Her white silk shawl was found on the bank one
morning and the lovely Marilyn Pensinger was never seen again.
"Her father, however, was convinced that his daughter was not drowned,
but that she had married the man she loved and returned with him to his
native land, Hungary. So great was his faith in his own theory that, in
his will, he stated that the taxes on the old Pensinger mansion should be
paid for one hundred years and that it should become the property of any
descendant of his daughter, Marilyn, who could be found within that time.
"I believe that will was made about seventy-five years ago and so, you
see, there are twenty-five years remaining for an heir to turn up."
"What will happen if no one claims the old place?" Gloria inquired.
"It is to be sold and the money devoted to charity," Miss Selenski told
them.
"That certainly is an interesting yarn," Bobs declared; then added
gleefully, "I suppose the people around here think that the fair Marilyn
returns at midnight, prowling along the shores of the river looking for
her white silk shawl."
Miss Selenski nodded. "That's about it, I believe." Then she added
brightly, "I'll tell you what, I'm not busy at this hour and if you wish
I'll take you over to see the old place. Mr. Tenowitz will give me the
keys."
"Thank you, Miss Selenski," Gloria said. "We would be glad to have you
show us the place. There seems to be nothing else around here to rent and
we might remain in the Pensinger mansion until you have a model flat
unoccupied."
"That will not be soon," they were told, "as there is a long waiting
list."
Then, after hanging a sign on the door which stated that she would be
gone for half an hour, Miss Selenski and the three interested young
people went down Seventy-eighth Street and toward the East River.
Bobs was hilariously excited. Perhaps, after all, she was going to have
an opportunity to really practice what she had, half in fun, called her
chosen profession, for was there not a mystery to be solved and an heir
to be found?