ONLY A BAT
The three girls sat quiet, every nerve tense, that same chilly sensation
creeping up their spines, and their hair beginning to stand on end.
Out there in that wilderness, at three o'clock in the morning, a noise
that sounded something like a motor car and yet was unlike anything they
had ever heard before, might have frightened more experienced people than
three fourteen-year-old girls.
"H-here it comes!" whispered Violet, clutching at Laura's arm, while
Laura in her turn clutched at Billie's. "It's coming closer! Oh,
girls--is it in the house?"
"Sh!" cried Billie. "It's a machine--it must be a machine--out on
the road."
"But in this forsaken place, in the middle of the night?" cried Laura,
beginning to shiver as though she were cold. "It--it can't be, Billie!"
"Sh-h," said Billie again. "Listen!"
The purring sound was coming closer, seemed almost in the house, it was
so near--Then came an awful thought to Billie. Could it really be in the
house? Was it possible that those awful stories about ghosts were true?
But no, the noise was passing on, getting softer, softer, dying off in
the distance.
"It--it must have been a machine," said Laura, beginning to laugh
hysterically. "Vi, what did you go and wake me up in the middle of the
night for just to hear an automobile? I was having such a lovely sleep."
"But I'm not so sure it was a motor car," insisted Violet stubbornly, the
spell of the dream still upon her. "It didn't sound like it."
"But it couldn't have been anything else," said Billie, trembling a
little with the reaction. "We heard it coming down the road, heard it
pass the house, and go on. It simply must have been a machine."
"Oh, all right," said Violet, adding with a little sigh: "Well, I guess
none of us will sleep any more to-night. I'm not even going to try."
"Well, I am," said Billie, leaning back and closing her eyes, yet knowing
that she was as wide awake as she had ever been in her life. "I don't see
any use in lying here and listening for things. Good night once more,
girls--I'm off."
"Meaning you're crazy?" asked Laura, to which Billie made no reply.
As a matter of fact, even while they were saying they could sleep no more
that night, the girls did go to sleep, and, what is more, slept soundly
until they were awakened by Mrs. Gilligan's voice calling to them from
the connecting doorway.
"Do you expect to sleep all day?" she was asking them, her face rosy and
herself very nice and trim in a light blue house dress. "This is the
third time I've spoken to you, and I was beginning to get worried."
"Wh-what time is it?" demanded Laura sleepily.
"About eleven," Mrs. Gilligan answered calmly, and they gasped.
"Eleven!" repeated Billie, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes hard.
"For goodness' sake, how did it get that way? I feel as if I hadn't had
any sleep at all."
"Well, I've had the most awful dreams," complained Violet, turning over
as if she intended to go to sleep again. "I've done nothing but dream of
ghosts and motor cars all night."
At the mention of ghosts Mrs. Gilligan broke into hearty laughter.
"Ghosts?" she said, her eyes sparkling. "I shouldn't think you'd be
talking of ghosts any more. Here you've spent a whole night in the house
and no spirits have bothered you yet. I should think you'd be satisfied."
"Oh, but didn't you hear that noise in the night?" Violet asked her,
turning over and forgetting the nap she had been about to take. "We
girls were just about scared to death."
"Speak for yourself," said Laura, who, whether she had really been
frightened or not, never liked to have anybody tell her about it.
"You were scared too, what's the use of denying it?" Violet demanded
hotly, but Mrs. Gilligan interrupted them.
"Never mind about that," she said, with a smile. "Just tell me about this
noise you thought you heard."
So the girls told her about their weird experience of the night before,
all talking at once and making it as hard as possible for Mrs. Gilligan
to understand what it was all about.
"A noise that sounded like a motor car," she said, when they had finished
and had paused for lack of breath. "Well, I don't see what's so very
queer about that. May have been some joy-riders or something."
"But who would be joy-riding in this part of the country?" Laura
objected. "The country people hereabouts probably don't know what the
word means."
"That particular sport does seem to belong to the idle rich," Mrs.
Gilligan agreed, with a chuckle. "Well," she added, getting up and
starting for the door, "whatever it is, or was, we needn't go without
our breakfast because of it. How would you like some bacon and eggs and
biscuits?"
The suggestion worked like a charm, and before Mrs. Gilligan had finished
the girls were out of bed and feeling about for their clothes.
"You know the room doesn't look half bad by daylight," remarked Violet,
as she was arranging her hair before an elaborately framed old mirror.
"And it surely is quite clean."
"But it's horribly gloomy, just as mother said." Billie was regarding the
dingy woodwork, now almost black with age, and the huge four-poster with
its funereal canopied top, and the large pictures of dead and gone
ancestors that adorned the walls. "The only really good things in the
whole room are the tables and chairs. They look," she added hopefully,
"as if they might bring in a little money. Perhaps I'll be able to pay
for the statue after all."
"Oh, and I'm just crazy to see the rest of the house by daylight," said
Laura, clapping her hands. "Come on, you slow pokes, aren't you ever
going to be ready?"
"We're ready now," said Billie, putting an arm about Violet and hurrying
her to the door. "Oh, is that bacon I smell--and coffee?" she asked as
through the open door came a whiff of the good things below.
"You said it!" cried Laura, making a rush for lower floor with Billie and
Violet not very far behind her. "And it isn't going to be more than
about two minutes before I taste that same bacon and eggs."
When they reached the lower hall they were surprised to see that it
looked almost as gloomy and forbidding as it had the night before, in
spite of the fact that the front door was open and sunlight was
streaming through.
"Ugh!" said Laura, with a shudder, "I don't wonder that they had gloomy
dispositions in the old days if they had to live in houses like these.
It's enough to give one the creeps."
"I'm glad you like my property so much," said Billie, with a demure
little smile. "I haven't heard you say one nice thing about it yet."
"We have treated our hostess rather rudely, haven't we?" laughed
Violet, putting an arm about Billie and drawing her out into the
sunshine. "But really, Billie, we're quite sure that you don't like it
any better than we do."
"And you are quite right," Billie assured her, then added, breaking away
and running a little in front of them: "Girls, let's see if we can find
any signs of that car we heard last night."
Eagerly they scanned the rocky road, but could see no traces of any
vehicle that would be big enough to make the noise they had heard the
night before.
"The plot thickens," said Laura, as they started back to the house
to eat the bacon and eggs and biscuits. "We hear a car, but see no
traces of it."
"It must have been a spirit car," said Violet, adding, with a plaintive
little sigh that made the girls laugh: "In spite of all my perfectly good
training, I'm beginning to believe in ghosts."
After breakfast the girls roamed around the big house, nosing into
corners, calling each other's attention to this and that queer ornament
or article of furniture--and there were plenty of them,--and otherwise
thoroughly enjoying themselves. But as yet they did not venture into the
gloomy cellar with its mysterious tunnels.
In the drawing-room they found a queer old piano which Violet declared
must date back farther than Revolutionary days and which Billie, amid
gibes and laughter from her chums, tried to play.
After she had tried and failed on half a dozen different compositions,
she gave up the attempt, and they roamed upstairs, looking through one
room after another until Billie accidentally opened the door that led to
the attic.
"Here's where we want to go, girls," she cried. "Mother said this was the
spookiest place in the whole house--except the cellar."
"Hadn't we better get Mrs. Gilligan to go with us?" asked Violet,
holding back. "After last night I've had enough spooky experiences to
last me a week."
"Oh, come on," cried Laura, running ahead of them up the stairs. "I'll
show you two 'fraid cats--"
"Who's a 'fraid cat?" cried Billie, starting in hot pursuit. "I'll have
you know that nobody dares call me such names and get away with it. Come
on, Vi, let's murder her."
"Just try it," Laura hissed at them dramatically from the head of the
stairs. "I'd turn into another ghost and haunt you!"
"Oh, for goodness' sake, leave her alone, Billie," Violet entreated.
"We've got enough ghosts around here without Laura. What's that?"
"If you're going to scare me again," began Laura, but it was Billie this
time who commanded silence.
"Hush, I did hear something queer," she said, and all three
listened intently.
It came again, a weird little noise like the brushing of wings against
some hard object, and the girls scarcely dared to breathe. Then out into
the hot open attic fluttered a tiny little object with webbed wings and
the body of a mouse.
"A bat!" cried Laura, sinking down weakly and shaking with hysterical
laughter. "Oh, girls, if I have to stay here another week I'll just die
of heart failure--I know I will!"