CHAPTER XVI.--A STRAY GHOST.
When the front door closed after the departing merry-makers and thesound of the last wheels died away down the avenue, the guests of thehouse party filed slowly up to bed. Mrs. St. Clair, at the head of thestairs, kissed each of the girls good-night and shook hands with theboys. And, as a final token of their regard, before turning in, the boystrooped from door to door, singing, "Good-night, ladies," with Charlieaccompanying on his mouth organ.
And now the house was still, and our four friends in their bathrobeswere seated on the hearth rug around the wood fire in one of thebedrooms, talking in whispers, as girls will do after a party.
"Do you suppose Belle Rogers has been converted, or reformed, orsomething?" observed Nancy. "What else could have induced her to be sounselfish as to wear Fannie's old dress and let Fannie wear her bestone?"
"It's the mystery of the age," said Elinor. "And how different sheseemed, too. How quiet and meek. Perhaps, after all, it was her clothesthat made her haughty. Who could be anything but lowly in a faded yellowmuslin?"
"She was angry at first," put in Mary. "I saw the danger signals atdinner. But I really believe she had as good a time as any of usafterwards. Perhaps she realized that without the blue satin, she wasjust on a par with the rest of us, and she forgot to be conscious."
"And how different Fannie was under the influence of the blue satin,"continued Elinor. "She talked and laughed quite loudly, and she wasreally rude to Belle several times. Girls, if we ever have blue satins,will they change our dispositions----"
A tap at the door interrupted the conversation, and Mrs. St. Clair, in along lavender dressing gown, tripped into the room.
"I hope our talking hasn't disturbed you, Mrs. St. Clair," said Billie.
"No, no, dear, I am glad you were talking, because I had hoped to findsome one of you still awake. I have come to ask a great favor. Will oneof you, or all of you, go with me up in the attic for a few minutes? Ishould have asked one of the servants, but their lights are all out. Isuppose they are sound asleep. Percy is asleep, too. I have just comefrom his room. He is tired out. You can't think how hard he has workedin the last few days."
"Let me go with you, Mrs. St. Clair," put in Elinor.
"Let us all go," suggested Billie.
"Very well, dear. The more of you the better. To tell the truth, I am alittle worried. It's nothing, of course; I am sure to find it, but Ishould like to take a look before I go to bed."
"Have you lost something, Mrs. St. Clair?" asked Mary.
"Yes, I have lost my pearl necklace. I really never missed it until afew moments ago. I have looked downstairs everywhere, but I feel surethat I dropped it in the attic when I was dancing that ridiculoustwirling waltz with Ben. It serves me right for trying to be a younggirl when I am really such an old lady."
"You are really the youngest of us all," protested the four young girls,following her on tiptoe up the stairs into the attic.
All the members of the searching party were sure that the necklace wouldbe found at once somewhere on the attic floor, or in the folds of thesheet or the pillow-case Mrs. St. Clair had been wearing. Yet Billie andMary had good reason to know that robbers were at large in the villageof West Haven, and the memory of the face Billie had seen in the mirrorsuddenly became painfully distinct.
Mrs. St. Clair lit a few gas jets in the attic and the great placeseemed ghastly enough in the half light with the grotesquejack-o-lanterns grinning at them from above; the black-curtained sideshows and an occasional sheet and pillow-case made a weird picture.
They searched the floor carefully, looked into the booths with candles,shook out sheets and pillow-cases, but there was no sign of the missingnecklace.
"If it had only been something else," said Mrs. St. Clair. "I shouldrather have lost almost anything in the world than my pearl necklace. Itwas a wedding present from Percival's father and I valued it more thanall my other jewelry together. I don't see how I could have dropped itso carelessly. When we went down to supper I threw a scarf around myshoulders and that is probably why I never noticed that my pearls weregone. You were standing near me, Mary, and Belle and her friend werethere, too. You don't remember to have noticed the necklace at thattime, do you? One of you helped me on with my scarf."
Mary shook her head.
"I must ask Belle and Miss Alta to-morrow. It is so important to knowwhether I lost the necklace up here or below."
"Perhaps you dropped it on the steps," suggested one of the girls.
"If I did, it must have been trod on by many pairs of feet, then. Oh,dear, I am so sorry. Only this evening I said to myself, I must have theclasp to the necklace repaired. I had intended to take it to town nextweek to the jeweller's.
"But I must not keep you up any longer. You were dear children to comeup with me. Now go to bed and don't think of it any more. I should nothave been so selfish. You are all dead tired, I know, for I am myself."
They turned and trooped downstairs again, and with softly spokengood-nights separated at their bedroom doors.
Billie and Mary were the last to enter the room they shared. They hadstopped for a drink of ice water from a big glass pitcher, which hadbeen placed with a tray of tumblers on a table at the far end of thehall. They were drinking their water silently, each absorbed in her ownthoughts, when suddenly Mary grasped Billie's hand and whispered:
"Look! On the steps!"
But Billie was looking with all her eyes before Mary had spoken.
A figure was gliding down the steps wrapped in a sheet. The stray ghosthad evidently seen the girls at the same moment they had caught sight ofit, for it finished the flight almost with a bound, and with a swift rundisappeared through a door leading to a passage back of the steps, withBillie and Mary running behind. But the sheeted figure was too swift forthem, and they heard one of the doors in the passage open and closesoftly just as they reached the entrance.
"It was this door," said Mary.
"Or this one," said Billie, pointing to the door of the room next theone Mary had chosen as the door the phantom had disappeared through.
"We'll settle it," said Billie. "I'll knock on this one and you knock onthat one."
"They are the small single rooms that Belle and Fannie and Roly Polyhave," whispered Mary, as she tapped on a door.
There was no answer and she went in. It was Belle's room and she wassleeping deeply. Mary smiled as she noticed that Belle now wore a nightcap over the rubber curlers. Her cheek was pillowed on her hand and herbreath came softly and regularly.
No answer came to Billie's tap, either, and when she turned the knob shefound that the door was locked. She tapped again and rattled the knob.
"Who is there?" came a sleepy voice.
"Open the door," called Billie.
"Tell me who you are first."
"Billie Campbell."
Presently the door was thrown open and Fannie, with her dark hairstanding out all over her head in a dishevelled mass, peered into thehall.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "The house is not on fire?"
"No, but Mary and I were in the hall and we saw some one come down fromthe attic and go into one of these rooms, and we thought we had betterwake you up."
"They could not have come in here," said Fannie. "My door was locked."
Billie looked at her curiously.
"What a little actress you are," she thought.
"It doesn't matter, only Mrs. St. Clair had lost something, and we wereafraid a thief might be in the house. You know there have been severalrobberies lately in West Haven."
Fannie gave her a long and scornful stare.
"At the High School, you mean?"
"Particularly at the High School," replied Billie gently. Somehow, shefelt a sort of contemptuous pity for this unfortunate little creaturewho had been taught, perhaps by poverty, to stoop to so much villainy.
"What's all this racket about?" demanded Rosomond McLane, opening herdoor which was the third one along the
passage and thrusting out hermerry, round face.
"You didn't hear anything did you?" asked Billie. "Mary and I thought wesaw some one in a ghost dress come down this passage and go into one ofthese doors."
"Good heavens! I am terrified out of my wits, I would rather it would bea burglar than a ghost. Did you really see something?"
"Forget it," said Billie. "Go back to bed and lock your door. It wasjust a shadow, I suppose."
Fannie had already locked her own door and the girls retreated to theirroom, somewhat crestfallen, feeling very much like two fighters who hadbeen worsted in battle.
When they had crawled into bed and settled themselves under the covers,Billie gave a deep sigh and whispered:
"Mary, dear, which one do you think it was?"
"There is only one thing that would make me think it was Belle," repliedMary. "If she had really been asleep, she would have waked and come outto find what was the matter. She is the most deadly curious soul alive."
"That's very slight evidence, Mary. She might have been specially tiredto-night. Now, I believe it was Fannie. She had such a wild, dishevelledlook and her door was locked. She is such a creeping, crawling littlething. Besides, I don't believe Belle would have had the courage to goup in the attic alone."
"Billie," observed Mary, after a short silence, "I don't know what it isall about, but something is going on around us. I believe that you andI, in some way, are mixed up in some kind of conspiracy. The box ofjewels is in it and Fannie and Belle are in it. It's like seeing a lotof figures moving about through a thick curtain. You know they arethere, but you don't know what they are all doing. I'm frightened,Billie, very frightened."
Mary gave that dry sob which was just as painful as crying and muchworse to hear.
Billie put her arms around her friend and tried to comfort her.
"Don't be scared, Mary, dear. It will all come right. I have made up mymind to one thing. That is, I will not leave that unlucky box at yourmother's house any longer. We shall have to find some new place to keepit."
Presently the two girls dropped off to slumber, and of all the sleepersin the big house, only one person heard the clock in the hall strike thepassing hours. She tossed and tumbled on her bed like a boat on arestless sea, and moaned to herself. Her lace-frilled night cap hadslipped, and one red rubber horn pointed upward, like an accusingfinger.