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CHAPTER XV – A VERY REAL GHOST INDEED
For a moment or two Laura Belding held to some shreds of courage. Of course she did not believe in ghosts! It was no supernatural thing that had either appeared as light to them, or had attacked her.
Yet when she essayed a third attempt to rise, she was cast to the floor once more, seemingly by the same strong hand, and this time she turned her ankle sharply. Her terror and pain made her cry out, and she lay there for a moment, helpless, watching the moving reflection of the ghostly lantern on the wall!
Suddenly between her and this reflected light, appeared a figure in white. It seemed immensely tall. It glided out of the shadowy portion of the room and came toward her.
The figure of old Sarah Robinson!
Outside the running girls shrieked appallingly. And their cries were re-echoed by the larger number of their schoolmates down by the campfire.
Laura closed her eyes for a moment. Consciousness left her.
The white-clad figure moved nearer. It stooped above the prostrate girl. With swift hands it tied Laura’s hands together before her tightly. Then a thick veil, doubled many times, was passed across the helpless girl’s mouth and tied tightly so that her voice would be muffled should she attempt to cry out.
It took less than a minute for this very palpable ghost to do this. Then, as silently as it had appeared, it glided away and, a moment later, a door might have been heard to bang at the back of the old house.
But the girls without had been so terrified that none of them heard this sound. The bobbing lantern light across the brook had been seen by those around the campfire as well as by the girls who had entered the haunted house. Mary O’Rourke’s story had made a strong impression upon the minds of them all. Mary herself was startled by the appearance of the light.
Besides, panic is catching. And the three girls who ran from the house were certainly panic-stricken. Their screams of horror started many of the other girls off, and some of the waiting ones turned and ran from the plateau and down the steep path before Jess, and Dora, and Nellie reached the fire.
“The ghost! the ghost! It’s after us!” shrieked the doctor’s daughter, and kept right on, following the girls who had already decamped.
It was useless for any of the braver ones to try to stop the stampede. Nobody wanted to remain in the vicinity of the haunted house. They had all seen enough.
An early rising moon cast a ghostly light on the path through the wood, and the girls’ feet fairly flew over this way. Celia Prime and Mary O’Rourke were among the last to run; but they did run finally, and never had a hundred or more girls become so entirely panic-stricken as the members of the M. O. R.’s and their candidates for initiation. The ceremony was there and then, and without a dissenting voice, postponed to a more favorable time!
“Where is Laura?” gasped Jess, running hard behind the Lockwood twins.
“Oh, yes! she’s so brave!” panted Dora. “She ran first of all, I believe. I bet she’s ’way ahead of us.”
Jess knew that Laura could outrun most of the girls, whether they were frightened or not. So she took this statement for the truth.
But when they arrived at the inn and the regular picnic grounds, Laura was not there. But some of the girls who had started first had already passed through the gates and were on the road to the cars.
Of course, most of them had stopped running now. They were ashamed of their fright, and did not want to explain it to the people at the inn. But you couldn’t have hired one of them to return to the plateau before the haunted house just then.
“I think Laura is just too mean not to wait for us,” panted Nellie Agnew.
“She’s ashamed, I expect,” said one of the twins.
“It isn’t like her,” Jess said.
“She was scared, all right,” said Nellie.
“Well! who wouldn’t be?” demanded Jess.
They went on to the car tracks at a slower pace. Some of the first girls to arrive, however, had not waited for the two special cars that stood upon the side track, but took a regular one back to town.
“I believe I saw Hester Grimes get aboard that car that just passed,” said one of the twins. “I wonder what she was doing out here?”
“Lots of people ride out this way in the evening,” returned another girl. “I suppose Hessie has a right to come, too.”
“Wish she’d been up there in that house to get scared.” muttered Jess.
“And Laura seems to have taken a car back to town, likewise,” said Nellie.
Laura’s absence began to trouble Jess. She searched among the other girls, but could get no word of her chum.
“She beat us,” laughed Mary O’Rourke, when Jess approached her with the question. “She’s gone home.”
There was a deal of bustle and laughter as the girls climbed into the special cars. They had recovered from their fright now, and some laughed at it. But not a girl could say what the light was they had seen bobbing over the ground. And the three who had been in the house were half tempted to believe that they had seen something supernatural in that uncanny east room.
“At any rate, I felt there was something there the moment I went in,” declared Nellie.
“It was an awfully spooky place,” agreed Dora.
“And it smelled – just like a tomb,” said Jess.
“I wouldn’t go into the house again for a farm!” declared Nellie.
“Not after dark, at any rate,” Jess said, more bravely.
“Never again – dark or light,” declared Dora. “And I guess the seniors and juniors were scared just as much as we were. They can’t laugh at us.”
“My! I hope the rest of the initiation won’t be as bad as this,” said Nellie.
“If it is, I’ll want to renig,” said Dora. “It costs too much to be an M. O. R.”
“We certainly are a brave lot of ‘Mothers of the Republic,’” laughed Mary, who heard the sophomores conversing.
“That’s all right!” spoke up Jess. “But you didn’t go into that house yourself.”
“Quite true. It wasn’t my place. I was only sending you infants there,” returned Mary.
But when the girls all left the cars on Market Street and Jess finally separated from the others at the corner of Whiffle Street, she began to worry about Laura again. It seemed strange that her chum should have run right home.
There was the Belding house ahead. There were figures on the porch. Jess halted at the gate.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Chet Belding. “Where’s Laura, Jess?”
He and Lance came down the walk hastily. Jess leaned weakly on the gate, smitten now with the fear that something must have happened to her chum.
“Isn’t she here, Chet?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Didn’t she come home with you?” demanded Lance, hastily.
“No. Oh, oh! Something dreadful has happened. Tell me honest, boys – isn’t she here?”
“No, she’s not,” they both assured her, and Chet opened the gate.
“Tell us what’s happened,” he said. “But speak low. Mother’s gone to bed with a head-ache and father’s gone to the lodge. Why! Jess! you’re crying!”
And Jess was sobbing nervously. She could not help it. Her fear for Laura’s safety had taken form now, and for a minute she could not answer the boys’ excited question at all.
CHAPTER XVI – WHERE IS LAURA?
Launcelot Darby was rather impatient with Jess Morse. He would have shaken her had not Chet interfered.
“Hold on! hold on!” said Laura’s brother, yet quite as anxious as his chum. “You tell us your own way, Jess. But do hurry. We’re dreadfully anxious.”
“I – I mean to tell you,” sobbed Jess. “Something dreadful has happened – and I ran away and left her.”
“Ran away and left who – Laura?” gasped Lance.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Up in Robinson’s Woods.”
“At the picnic place?”
“No.”
“Back in the woods, then?” demanded Chet.
“Up on the side of the mountain. You – you know that – that old house – ”
“The haunted house!” exclaimed Lance.
“The old Robinson house?” cried Chet.
“Yes.”
“What under the sun were you doing there?”
“I – I can’t tell you. It – it was something about the initiation – ”
“Those blessed Mary O’Rourkes!” cried Lance, smiting his hands together.
“The M. O. R.’s,” said Chet. “You girls were all up there?”
“Ye – es.”
“In the dark?”
“We had a campfire.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, Laura and two other girls and I had to go into the house.”
“That old wreck!” ejaculated Lance again.
“Ye – es.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” demanded Chet.
“That – that’s the trouble. We were frightened.”
“Somebody played a trick on you,” declared Chet.
“No, they didn’t!” gasped Jess. “It was a real ghost.”
At that both boys chuckled, and Chet said:
“Aw, say, now, Jess. How could there be a real ghost?”
“Never mind. That’s not the point,” Lance interposed, eagerly. “We want to know what’s become of Laura.”
“So we do,” admitted Chet.
“Was she scared, too?” asked Lance.
“Of course she was. You’d have been – ”
“Wouldn’t either!” snapped Lance. “No ghost would ever scare me. Some of the other girls played a trick on you.”
“Of course, that’s it,” said Chet. “But that don’t explain why Laura – ”
“That’s it!” interrupted Lance. “Tell us where she is.”
“She must be there,” declared Jess, in an awestruck voice.
“Where?”
“In the house.”
“In Robinson’s old house?” gasped Chet.
“That’s where we left her. I thought she got out ahead of us. But she didn’t.”
“And none of you were brave enough to go back and look for her?” demanded Lance, with scorn.
“We thought she was ahead. All the girls ran – ”
“What made you run?” asked Chet, trying to soothe her.
“The light.”
“You saw a ghost light, eh?” demanded Chet. “I bet you’d been hearing that old story they tell about the Robinsons.”
Jess nodded.
“And the ghost lantern appeared?”
“Yes. It did. It was really there, Chetwood.”
“All right. I didn’t think Laura would fall for a thing like that,” scoffed the absent girl’s brother.
“Say!” demanded Lance, who admired Laura greatly and would not let even her brother laugh at her. “All those other girls ran, didn’t they? Jess ran. Why should Laura be any braver than the rest of the bunch?”
“Well! she ought to be,” grunted her brother. Then he turned again to Jess, who was fast recovering her composure now. “And you didn’t see Laura leave the house after your scare?”
“No.”
“How many of you girls were in the house?”
“Only four of us.”
“And three got away?”
“Yes.”
“Supposedly, then, the ghost got Laura?”
“She didn’t come out, Chet. You needn’t laugh. Something bad has happened to her.”
“Of course, if you are sure she didn’t come out of the house – ?”
“Just as sure as I stand here!” declared the girl, emphatically. “I didn’t think so until just now. It seemed as though she must have run ahead and taken one of the regular cars to town. But now I know that wouldn’t have been Laura’s way, whether she was scared or not.”
“I should say not,” said Lance, in disgust. “You girls are all alike – all but Laura! She wouldn’t have left you in such a mess.”
“Now, stop that!” commanded Chet. “Such talk won’t lead to anything but angry feelings. Jess thought Laura was ahead. Now we’ll go back and find her.”
“Oh, Chet! if you only would,” begged Jess, too miserable to even be offended at Lance.
“We’ll get out the car. Father won’t mind. And I got my license to run it only last month.”
“Bully!” ejaculated Lance.
“I’m going, too,” said Jess, wiping her eyes vigorously.
“Had you better?” returned Chet, doubtfully. “You’re all strung up yourself over this, you know.”
“I won’t cry any more, Chet – don’t you fear,” declared the girl. “Let me go.”
“Just as you say, only I thought you wouldn’t go back to that house again.”
“I’ll go with you boys.”
“Ghosts and all?”
“If it’s a ghost it’s gone by now.”
“All right,” said Chet. “But it’s half after nine already. What will your mother say?”
“She’s at the Academic Club, and won’t be home for ever so long,” declared Jess. “Let me go with you to the garage.”
She followed the two boys to the rear of the Belding premises. Chet unlocked and slid back the garage doors. The touring car which his father owned was ready at a moment’s notice to be taken out. They kept no chauffeur, for both Mr. Belding and Chet could manage the machine, and had she been old enough to take out a license Laura could herself have spun the car over the roads about Centerport.
“Hop in, Jess,” said Chet, kindly. “That is, if you are sure you won’t be frightened. I’m going to drive her some.”
“I’m never scared when you are driving, Chet,” returned the girl.
“I guess I’ll get you to the inn at the picnic grounds in safety, at least,” and the boy laughed. “You can wait there for us.”
“No!” cried Jess.
“No?”
“I’m not going to be left there to watch the car while you boys hunt for Laura.”
“But we may have to get a party of neighbors there and beat up the woods.”
“But I believe now she was left behind in the old house,” declared Jess.
“Not likely,” said Lance. “She ran out some other door. Got turned around in those woods. That’s what happened.”
“You may be right,” Jess admitted. “But I have a feeling that it isn’t so. Something happened to Laura right there in the haunted house.”
“You feel that way because you were so frightened there yourself,” said Chet.
“I don’t know why I feel so; but it is a fact,” said Jess, confidently.
“Come on!” cried Lance, who was already in the front seat.
Chet helped Jess into the tonneau and closed the door. Then he hopped in beside Lance, tried his various levers, and started the car. It slid quietly out of the garage and they left the door open. The big car began to purr almost at once, and running smoothly, soon left the hill section and raced out along Market Street, now quiet save for the electric cars and other automobiles at this hour of the evening.
It was not long after ten when the car turned into the quiet road, with its few electric lights, leading to Robinson’s Woods. There were a few other cars at the inn, and some people on the porch. Chet went at once to the manager and told him of the absence of his sister.
“I saw those girls all going to the car; but they never said anything about one of their number being lost,” said the gentleman.
“They didn’t know it then. They don’t all know it now, in fact. But when Laura didn’t come home her chum was sure that she was left behind. And she thinks she is in the old house up yonder,” explained Chet.
“In the haunted house?”
“Yes.”
“Nice place for girls to go!” exclaimed the man. “What did they want to go into that old ruin for?”
“Well, that isn’t just the point,” said Chet. “I’d like to get all the men you can raise to help us beat up the woods. She may have wandered into the wood at the back of the house – ”
“But she’d know she was going the wrong way then, wouldn’t she?” returned the manager of the hotel. “For it’s uphill, you know.”
“I suppose that’s so,” said Chet. “But something has happened to her and we’re worried.”
“Don’t blame you. I’ll go with you myself. And there are some other men here who will accompany us,” said the manager, and he bustled away.
In five minutes the party was ready, with lanterns and clubs – though why the clubs, Chet could not imagine. Ghosts were not to be laid with such carnal weapons!
Jess insisted upon going along. “I left her alone, and I am ashamed,” she told Chet. “I want to hunt for Laura, too.”
She and Chet walked straight up the path to the plateau, Chet carrying one of the car lanterns. The others, including Lance, beat up through the wood, halloaing to each other, and shouting Laura’s name. The lost girl’s brother and her chum came first to the haunted house, however.
“If you’re afraid to go in you stay here,” advised Chet, when they came to the place.
“I’m not afraid to go anywhere with you, Chet,” declared the girl, warmly.
That made Chet feel even more bold than before. He started right up the steps, with Jess clinging slily to his coat-tail.
They entered the house. The lamp light was flashed into the east room. It was empty!
Not quite empty, after all. On the floor was a three-cornered bit of cloth – a piece of Laura’s skirt – nailed to the boards.
CHAPTER XVII – THE MYSTERY
And where was Laura herself all this time?
She had returned to consciousness almost at once. Indeed, the pulling of the bonds upon her wrists and the veil tied so tightly across the lower part of her face would naturally have aroused her.
But for a moment she could neither rise nor move. It seemed as though she was paralyzed. Her ankle began to pain, then, and at the first throb the girl came fully to her senses.
“Oh! where am I?” she thought.
But she couldn’t have spoken the words aloud. The muffler was too tight across her lips.
The ghostly figure that had flitted out of the room had scarcely gone when Laura opened her eyes. The frightened girl looked all around for it. She remembered how awful it had looked. But nothing was in sight – nothing but the wavering reflection of the ghost-light on the wall.
To her ears, however, came the screaming of the frightened girls on the plateau before the house. It was not alone her three comrades screaming; but the chorus of the whole party of M. O. R.’s who had given voice to their terror. And the sounds were swiftly receding. The girls were leaving her alone, bound and helpless, in this awful house!
Never for a moment did Laura Belding believe that the thing was a trick, or joke. It could not be part of the M. O. R. initiation. Mary O’Rourke and Celia Prime and the other seniors governing the secret society were not the girls to make up any such plan as this with which to frighten new members of the order. Nor would the school authorities allow such action by the M. O. R.’s.
Nevertheless, Laura knew that something strange had happened to her. There had been no person in this big room when she and her three friends had entered to drive the nails. Yet, when the fright occurred and she had attempted to run, she was hauled back by the skirt.
Something seemed to have grabbed her. Was it a hand – the same hand that had lashed her wrists and gagged her with this veil?
Yet, any person beside the four girls would have betrayed his presence – for the room had never been wholly dark – only in the far corners. And no arm would be long enough to reach out of those shadows and seize the bottom of Laura’s skirt and pull her to the floor again when she started to run.
The girl was still frightened – desperately frightened, indeed. But the possibility of anything supernatural having happened to her had long since departed from her mind. Even the flickering reflection of the ghost-light did not trouble her.
No ghost could have bound her hands and gagged her.
The voices of the girls had died away into the distance ere this. With a groan of pain because of her ankle, Laura rolled over and tried again to rise. Something jerked her back!
She threw herself over and rolled away from the point of contact. There was a tearing sound – and she was free!
She scrambled to her feet. Then she saw what manner of “ghostly hand” had held her. In stooping to drive the first nail into the floor, she had driven it through the hem of her skirt – that was what had jerked her to the floor when she tried to run with her comrades.
“Well! I am silly!” mumbled the girl.
Instantly she heard somebody cry out, but outside of the house.
“What’s the matter mit you, Otto?” growled a deeper voice.
“I heard a voice, fader! Not nearer to dat house would I go – so hellup me! It iss de ha’nt!”
Laura’s muffled voice was audible a few yards away, but she could not tell them who she was, and how situated. She ran to the window. One sash was gone. Boys had used the windows as targets in times past.
“Ouch!” yelled the younger voice, in a long-drawn wail. “Dere iss oldt Sarah!”
“Be still! you are a fool!” commanded the gruffer voice.
Laura saw that a man and a boy were outside the fence. The man carried a lantern. It had been this light coming along the road that had so terrified the M. O. R.’s and the candidates for initiation.
The farmer raised his lantern so that the light fell full upon the face of the girl in the house. He saw the veil-bandage, and her tied wrists. In a moment he hopped over the broken-down fence and hurried to the casement.
“Come here, Otto!” he commanded. “See your ghost – fool! It is a harmless girl – and she is in trouble. What does this mean, eh?” he asked, in his queer English. “Somebody been fooling you, no?”
Then seeing that Laura could not answer him save by a murmur from behind the muffler, the farmer said:
“Run in there undt untie her, Otto! Do you hear?”
“But the ghost, fader!” gasped the fat boy, who had followed his parent to the house, and seemed much the more cowardly of the two.
“Bah! Ghost indeed! There iss no ghost here – ”
“But we know de house iss haunted. Are you sure dat iss not old Sarah?” demanded Otto, in much fear.
“It is a girl – a madchen– I tell you! A mere child – yes!” cried the father. “Go in there and unloose her hands – dolt!” and he boxed his son’s ear soundly.
“Oh! I can come out myself!” Laura tried to say.
She darted away from the window, found the open door, and so staggered out of the house to meet the farmer and his half-grown boy, with the lantern, on the porch of the haunted dwelling.
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed the man. “We heardt de oder girls screeching – yah? Undt dey tie you undt leave you here?”
He was fumbling with the knotted veil as he spoke, having passed the lantern to Otto, and now unfastened it so that Laura could reply.
“No, no!” she said. “Something frightened us all. First your lantern coming along the road. We thought it was the ghost light.”
“Ouch!” wailed Otto again. He was very much afraid of the ghost.
“And then – I nailed my skirt to the floor and could not get away quickly. I – I am afraid I have been a dreadful fool,” admitted Laura, with some chagrin.
“But you did not tie yourself – so,” growled the farmer, working on her wrist bonds.
“No. I fell and something —somebody, I should say – came and tied my wrists and put that veil over my face – give me the veil, please.”
“Some of your companions play a choke onto you – eh?” said the farmer.
“No. They would not be so cruel. And they were all as badly frightened by your lantern as I was.”
“Den you haf an enemy – eh?” queried the man.
“I do not know who. I don’t know what it means. Oh!”
“You are hurt, Miss?”
“I can scarcely hobble on my foot. I turned my ankle,” explained Laura.
“Then Otto and I will help you home – to our house yet,” said the farmer. “We were hunting a stray cow. My name iss Sitz. I lif’ back up de road – yonder. Two of your girls friendts bought milk at my house to-night.”
“Yes. I know who you are,” admitted Laura. “Do you suppose you could get me to your house and then send word to the city so that my father or brother will get it – without frightening mother?”
“Ach!” ejaculated the farmer. “We can carry you – Otto undt me; if he iss a fool-boy, he iss strong. Undt we haf de telephone. Sure we can carry you.”
They made a “chair” with their four hands, in which Laura sat, leaning back against their arms, and so maintaining her balance. She carried the lantern to light the way, and very soon after her girl friends had left the plateau in their stampede, she was being carried across the brook and up the country road to the Sitz farmhouse.
Laura had recovered from her fright ere this; but the mystery of what had happened to her continued to puzzle and amaze her.
Who had done this to her? What had been the object of the attack? And why should anybody desire to so maltreat and frighten her? These questions were repeated over and over in her mind, even while she was talking with Mr. Sitz and Otto. And there seemed to be no sane and sensible answer to them!
It surely was not any of the M. O. R.’s who had done this. They had all been just as frightened as they could be by the light of Mr. Sitz’s lantern. Of course, Mary’s foolish story of the ghost had started the girls off on the stampede when Jess and Nellie and Dora had run from the haunted house.
Laura remembered very vividly what she had seen in the room after her friends had left her. The figure in white had tied her hands and adjusted that veil across her mouth.
Surely, she must have some enemy – some person who really hated her. For nobody else, it seemed to Laura Belding, could have done so cruel a thing. She had no idea who this enemy could be, however.
Nevertheless, she had stuffed the veil into the front of her blouse and intended to hold on to it. That veil might prove to be a clue to the identity of the person who had bound and gagged her.
