THE REASON WHY
“Oh, Marjorie Dean; dear old Marvelous Manager! I’m _so_ glad you’ve
come back to the campus. I feel like squealing for joy. I was never
before quite so glad to see anyone!”
Marjorie, first off the train of her party, walked straight into Robin
Page’s welcoming, outstretched arms. The Sanford-bound party had left
the campus under rain-threatening skies. They were returning to find
Marjorie’s first Hamilton friend decorated with a carpet of soft cold
white. On Saturday the weather had grown colder. Sunday afternoon had
brought a mild snow storm.
“Gracious; you must have missed me! This is surely a cordial reception,
Pagie dear.” Marjorie laughed her pleasure of re-union as she warmly
returned Robin’s hearty embrace.
“I have; _I have_,” Robin’s tones rose in a mild wail. “Oh, you lucky
gang,” she cried, surveying fondly the eight returned Travelers. “I
drove your car down tonight, Vera. Leila’s hasn’t come home from the
repair shop yet.”
Robin kept up a lively chatter as she was passed from one to another of
the octette. Her extreme charm of face and manner made her place in the
hearts of the little coterie of friends a very individual one. A less
sensible girl than Robin might easily have been spoiled by the knowledge
of her peculiar power to charm.
“Phil and Barbara ought to be here, too.” Robin made a searching survey
of the white, drifted platform with her eyes. “They started out to see
if they could beg, borrow or steal a car. They wanted to come with me,
but I told them to go and hunt a car of their own. I said: ‘When you
find it you may bring it to me,’” laughed Robin. “I knew we’d need two
cars. I didn’t care to call a station taxi. Wait till you hear my reason
for cutting out those same taxies.” Robin’s delicate face hardened a
trifle. “It’s a very good——”
A sharp little shout of welcome broke in upon what Robin was saying.
Phil, Barbara and Gussie Forbes suddenly appeared on the platform. Phil
and Barbara were escorting Gussie with a great show of respect. Each had
her by an arm. Both were endeavoring to look dignified. Gussie was
frankly giggling her enjoyment of the situation.
“Captured a soph; tallest in captivity; absolutely primitive; untamed,
probably belongs to the cave dwellers union,” recited Phil, indicating
Gussie with an enthusiastic flourish. “She may even be a Celt.” Phil
arched significant brows at Leila.
“May she, indeed?” Leila pretended deep surprise.
“You heard me say she _might_ be,” Phil retorted grandly. “Anyway, she
has a car that’s not in the repair shop. That’s more important this
evening than being a Celt.”
“Now where is the one who told you that?” Leila glared about her, as if
determined to hunt out the offender.
“You mustn’t be _too_ personal.” Phil put her hand to her lips.
Shielding them cup-fashion she said in a loud whisper: “Keep quiet. She
mustn’t suspect the reason we invited her.”
“I doubt if she ever finds out,” was Leila’s satirical assurance.
“Poor, benighted soph.” Vera turned a pitying look on the primitive,
untamed soph who returned it with a bold wink.
“She seems to understand a few things,” Muriel made equally sarcastic
comment.
“I’ll guarantee not to ditch the car, even if I do have an untamed air,”
chuckled Gussie. “Come on, Travelers. No place like home when home’s a
good place. Six to a car. Come, choose your east. Come, choose your
west.”
The Travelers obeyed the call, laughingly dividing themselves into two
groups. Robin, Marjorie, Muriel, Phil, Lucy and Vera took possession of
Vera’s car. Leila, Jerry, Kathie, Barbara, Ronny and Gussie fell to
Gussie’s big high-powered touring car. They were all in an uproariously
merry mood as their frequent peals of laughter went to testify.
Phil magnanimously volunteered to forego the delights of re-union and
drive the car so that Robin could tell the girls the campus news. Lucy
elected to ride on the front seat beside her. “Such a noble act deserves
the reward of my company. Besides, I’ll hear the same news later.
There’ll be at least half a dozen editions of it,” she slyly prophesied.
Marjorie’s first eager question: “How did everything go?” set Robin off
on an account of the calamity that had overtaken the dormitory girls on
Thanksgiving morning. She had just reached the point in her narrative
where she and Barbara and Phil had piled the umbrellas belonging to the
dormitory girls into the automobile and started for the inn when Phil
brought the car up in front of Wayland Hall and called out in stentorian
tones: “All out. Step lively.”
“I’ll have to tell you the rest when we are settled again up in
Marjorie’s room. This is the Tragedy of Page minus Dean, in two acts.
Wait till you hear the sensational climax of Act One,” Robin animatedly
informed the absorbed listeners.
The brightness of reunion had been gradually fading from Marjorie’s face
as she listened to Robin to give place to an expression of almost stern
gravity. Robin had not yet brought Leslie Cairns into the narrative.
Nevertheless her name had suddenly leaped into Marjorie’s mind. Why
Robin’s recital of her difficulties with two warring Italian garage
owners should have reminded Marjorie of Leslie Cairns she was
momentarily at a loss to understand. She conceived a swift, unbidden,
formless suspicion of Leslie which she instantly tried to dismiss as
unworthy. It continued to tantalize her brain until she recalled with
relief that it was the mention of the Italians as garage owners that had
brought Leslie to the fore in her mind. Leslie herself was a prospective
garage owner.
Half an hour later when Robin had resumed her story to her interested
audience of chums Marjorie sat, chin on hand, staring in secret
bewilderment at Robin as the latter indignantly recounted the
sensational mud-spattering climax of Act One, with Leslie Cairns as the
villain. Her curious, flitting suspicion of Leslie had not then been
idle. She felt as she might have if she had suddenly reached up and
picked her conviction of Leslie’s treachery out of the atmosphere.
“Phil insisted from the first that Leslie Cairns had an object in view
when she stood in the store watching us from behind the palms. I tried
to give her the benefit of the doubt. Afterward, when she _deliberately
ran her car through that mud puddle as hard as she could drive it, and
as close to our car as she dared_, I decided Phil was right,” Robin
asserted with an energetic bob of her head.
“What do you think her object was, Phil? Leslie Cairns’, I mean?” Vera
voiced the curiosity of the others. “Do you think she heard about the
dinner to the off-campus girls from her friends?”
“Of course. She must have. Hard to say what her object may have been.
She was probably hunting mischief. When she couldn’t find any to do, it
put her in a worse humor than ever with us and she vented her spite in a
mud-spattering act.” Phil accompanied her opinion with a contemptuous
shrug.
“That ends the first act, ladies and Gentleman Gus,” announced Robin.
“The second act has nothing to do with Leslie Cairns. It features
Guiseppe Baretti, the hero of the hour and the knightly defender of the
dormitory girls.” She accompanied the announcement with flamboyant
gestures.
“Thank you for special mention.” Gussie stood up and bowed.
“You’re welcome,” beamed Robin. “I couldn’t resist including you. It
sounded well.”
“It’s a poor way to do, to be calling attention to oneself in the middle
of a story,” grumbled Leila. “My fine old Irish manners tell me that.”
“Ask them to tell you to practice the lost art of silence,” Muriel
blandly requested. “When you get the information pass it on to Gentleman
Gus. Whisper it so we can’t hear it. We’re anxious to hear the rest of
Robin’s tale.”
“Ah, but you have an idea you are talking!” Leila exclaimed with
withering sarcasm.
“_Taisez-vous._” Robin shook a playfully threatening finger at the merry
gabblers. “I’ll resume before you have time to interrupt me again. After
Phil, Barbara and I got our mud shower we hustled to Silverton Hall. We
were late for dinner; awfully late, but everybody was good to us and the
dinner was splendiferous. We started for the gym the minute we had
finished dinner. Gussie, you can tell the crowd about the game
afterward. I want to keep to the subject of my own troubles as a
promoter, minus a partner. It was a great game. I’ll say that much.”
“Gentleman Gus is the best player I ever saw tackle a game,” Phil
praised. “That’s all. ’Scuse me for interrupting.” She cast a comical
glance at Robin, who returned it with a reproving one, then continued:
“When the game was over I went outside the gym wondering if Signor
Baretti really had been able to reduce those provoking Italians to
reason. He was waiting just outside the double doors. I know by the way
he smiled that he had found some way of helping us. He told me he had
managed to make Mariani let him have four taxies and that he had his own
large car and a smaller one he used when making hurried business trips.
I still had Vera’s car. We had come over from Silverton Hall in it. His
big car would easily hold ten passengers, by having the taxies make a
second trip all the off-campus girls would be taken care of.”
“Mariani himself was driving one of the taxies. You should have seen the
expression on his fat face! He was so peeved at Baretti he didn’t know
which way to look!” Phil interposed, laughing at the memory of the
miffed Italian’s grouchy face.
“Baretti had the machines lined up on the branch drive east of the gym.
I asked him if the men could be depended to bring the girls back to the
campus after supper and come for them after the dance. He said: ‘Yes-s,
I tell again. Then sure.’” Robin imitated the inn-keeper briefly. “He
marched up to the first, then the others, and said about six words to
each; except Mariani. He and Guiseppe had quite an argument. I could
tell by the way they wagged their heads and shrugged their shoulders and
made gestures to go with almost every word they said. Finally Signor
Baretti came over to me and said very proudly that it was all right; to
tell the ‘dorm’ girls to get into the machines. Just about that time——”
“We came along with our little chug wagons,” broke in Gussie
mischievously. “That’s all. Don’t forget to give us credit.”
“Don’t worry. I never forget,” recklessly boasted Robin. “Yes; Gentleman
Gus, Calista, Norma and Laura came along again with their cars and the
taxies didn’t have to make a second trip. Lillian couldn’t come. Their
dinner was so late. Besides they were entertaining at her home in the
evening. Mariani furnished the same four taxies out to the campus in the
evening at the usual rate. After the dance he only sent two, and the
drivers said they couldn’t come back. I was positively green with rage.
I tried to catch Mariani on the ’phone, but he wouldn’t answer. The
girls helped out again and we managed to land the last ‘dorm’ on her own
doorstep a little after midnight.”
“Did you tell Guiseppe of Mariani’s second flivver?” Vera asked. “If you
haven’t, you’d better. He will wish to know it. He’ll think you haven’t
much confidence in him if you don’t let him know.”
“It was too late to bother him that night, and I was so busy Friday and
Saturday I didn’t have time to go and see him. I intend to tell him.”
“Did the busses run again on Friday? Are they running now?” were
Marjorie’s questions, uttered in quick succession.
“No, _sir_; they aren’t running yet. And Mariani isn’t giving good
service. I know of a number of different girls who have since then
’phoned for taxies, and have had no service. Whenever they’ve called on
the ’phone about it, no one at Mariani’s garage has seemed to know
anything,” Barbara finished disgustedly.
“What did Signor Baretti say about the busses not running? Did he find
out what the trouble was?” Again it was Marjorie who questioned.
“He hadn’t found out the reason when he came to the gym after the game
on Thursday. He said he would, though. I know he will. He is the
never-give-up kind. When he does find out we’ll hear from him.” Robin
said this with the utmost confidence.
“And now, may a poor, timid Irish woman ask a question?” Leila had been
listening to Robin, an inscrutable smile touching her red lips. Her
bright blue eyes were alive with a cold sparkle which Jerry had once
declared looked like fire behind ice.
“Do ask it.” Jerry had instantly marked the expression. She straightened
in her chair, the picture of expectation. Leila was about to say
something startling.
“That I will.” Leila flashed Jerry a knowing smile. “What has Leslie
Cairns to do with the second act of the Tragedy of Page minus Dean?”
“Now you have asked a question.” Ronny’s gray eyes gleamed shrewdly as
she brought out the crisp commendation. “When we fit an answer to that
very leading question we’ll probably know why the busses stopped
running.”
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