  Dozia insisted on carrying the "tin rompers" down stairs in her hands and donning them in a convenient place to avoid possible disaster. "Yours are shorter and jauntier than mine, Jane," she argued. "Besides, you have a better figure for tonlets. Come along, I'll stop at the landing and buckle into the things. Give me a couple of chains. Don't they chime beautifully?" "Wait a minute," Jane ordered. "I just discovered the usual slip of paper." She was extracting it from an armlet. "It's quite new and very modern, in fact regular typewriting kind—" "Oh, tuck it away and come along," Dozia moaned. "I hear the horde howling and the sooner I get this stuff off the better I'll feel. Pickles! but it's heavy." Jane folded the slip of paper and made it secure some place, then they proceeded to forge their way into the recreation room on the second floor, whither the students had been hastily summoned by the matron. "Now I know how the baby tanks felt in the big war," panted Jane, who was valiantly leading the way. "I mean those big human machines that rolled over the earth and ploughed things down, as they went." "Say, Janie, just wait a minute," begged Dozia at the first landing. "This looks a little like a joke but who is the joker? Who got up in that place and rattled these nightly? Also, who let out that wild scream we heard on that first night?" She was talking quickly and in a subdued voice. "We may be breaking the spell by raiding the secret chamber, but suppose the old spook breaks out in a new spot?" "I've thought of all that," confessed Jane, her smile threatening to unhinge the visor. "But we must give the youngsters their show first. The details will be lost in their joy of rescue." "They come! They come!" called out Miss Gifford in an uncertain treble. She had been waiting to give this signal. "Land, I'm losing the panties," groaned Dozia, trying to hold up the tonlets with one hand while she made wild grabs all over the outfit with the other. Dozia's artistic effect was surely in jeopardy. Majestically the two big, black walnut doors swung back, and the crusaders passed between them. "Behold the ghosts of Lenox Hall!" cried out Jane tragically. "Behold, behold!" echoed Dozia, raising her arm in its chained gusset and attempting to salute at the peak of her helmet. Shouts from the girls spoiled further efforts at the theatrical, and presently it was no longer a question of holding the old armor in place, but rather that of getting out of it safely, for what those freshmen didn't say and do to those ghosts! "Nothing but strung up dishrags," sneered Maud Leslie. "They must have looted every hardware store in town for these. Look!" She sacrilegiously yanked from their wire strings the metal dishcloths such as are used for scouring purposes, and truth to tell there was indeed a big collection in the string of armor. "Let's try the breastplate," begged Nellie Saunders. "I've always longed to be a Joan of Arc." And she got her pretty hair inside the head cage with the mouth trap under her chin, then she corseted on the breastplate. "And THAT'S the ghost?" scoffed Margie Winters, sitting far off in the corner safe from "spiritual" infection. "Disappointed?" asked Jane. "Of course I am," growled Margie. "I expected a holiday at least to fumigate, and here we have nothing but a lot of perfectly sanitary junk." "And I thought we would find a beautiful maniac walled up there," sighed Velma Sigsbee. "It's a perfect shame to have the thing end so unromantically." "Hard to suit you youngsters," commented Jane. She had fully divested herself of the trappings, and now stood aside while the freshmen surveyed the wreck. Someone suggested getting up surprise theatricals and bringing before the whole college the "ghosts of Lenox," This was a fuse to the bomb of excitement, and presently the roll was called, secrecy pledged, and a committee of arrangements appointed. Prompt freshmen! "Give Sally Howland a part," called out Ruth Lawrence. "She's just suited for something angelic." "We'll transpose Othello and sprinkle it with cherubs," said Nellie Saunders, who had been made chairman of the cast. "But the one thing to remember, girls, is secrecy," she announced loftily. "No one outside of Lenox must know what the ghosts are, or anything about the show." "You'll find tons of stuff up there to fit out the entire performance," Jane informed the excited students. "It seems to me the things have been stored there for ages, and perhaps were the remains of some very grand affair in the early history of Wellington. Now, girls, are you fully satisfied the ghost is annihilated?" "Perfectly," spoke up Nellie. "And we just don't know how to thank you juniors. Cheers, girls, for our rescuers." They cheered with the freshmen's dirge. "One, two, button my shoe; three, four, knock at the door" (they knocked at everything). "Five, six, pick up sticks" (wild grabs). "Sticks, sticks, freshies can's mix." "Rawr! rawr! freshies all sore" (moans and groans). "Gore, sore, r-o-a-r" (and they roared)! "Thanks," responded Jane when the roar died down, "and we're glad to be initiated in your sorority. Have a lovely time and be sure to let us know if you need help with the spook revue." Dozia chimed in feebly and slipped out after Jane. "They were actually disappointed," she remarked. "I believe they hoped for real gore." "To tell the truth," admitted Jane, "it did seem a bit commonplace after all the symptoms. But I almost forgot the little note. Did you ever yet meet a case in which the written word played no part? Where did I put that piece of paper?" "In your shoe?" suggested Dozia as Jane exhausted all other possibilities. "No, here it is in my sleeve. Sit down and we'll decipher it." They dropped to the nearest bench and smoothed out the paper. "It's part of a letter," said Dozia, "and written by a boy! Oh, joy, now we will have some fun—a love letter!" and she pored over the torn page. "Neither the beginning nor the end," said Jane, "but the climax." She read: "'You are a brick if not a wizard, and oh, boy! how that two hundred dollar check did look to me!'" "Two hundred!" Dozia repeated. "No girl around these diggings ever handled that tidy little sum. Read on, Jane, it may be a will or something, and we may come in for a share—reward, you know." "Here's our clue," announced Jane. "The name Shirley! Read that." She did so herself. "'Shirley, however did you do it, I know you neither stole nor borrowed, so it is all right and'—wait," interposed Jane, "that's torn." She lay the paper on her knees and fitted in the damaged parts. "Here it is. 'I'm back in college and in the big dorm, after the scare, and it's wonderful to have a little sis like you.'" "Sis!" groaned Dozia. "The lover's only a big brother!" She slumped in her seat dejectedly. "Shirley's brother," reasoned Jane, "and we have been blaming that girl! She helped her brother to get back to college!" The voice reeked with dismay and incredulity. "Can you imagine college running in her family?" questioned Dozia the incredulous. "I suppose we should hardly have read the letter—" "Why not? Should we have risked our precious lives up in that attic and then turned down this important clue? Indeed I'm all for asking Shirley to introduce me," and Dozia strutted off to show her height if not to display the "runs" in her hose and the "threadbares" in her sweater elbows. "But it does sort of take one down," mused Jane, following her companion toward Warburton Hall. "I hate to feel I have so misjudged Shirley." "Pure personal pride on your part, Jane. I have proof positive of the girl's perfidy. Every single day I must paste anew the paper decoration that hides her work. I mean that crack in my mirror. More than once it has done dreadful things to my poor face. If I move just one inch to the left the crack gashes my right cheek. You know how a glass reflects. But this brother. May I see the paper, Jane? His name might be between the lines." "Oh, it's Ted," said Jane innocently. "See the signature here, but no address, of course. And from that immature hand, Doze, I am sure Ted is a junior." |
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