CHAPTER XVII
CONSTERNATION
The other girls and Mrs. Mackson stood spellbound for the moment, andthen their senses came back to them, and they realized the need ofacting at once.
"Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty. "Where are you? What happened?"
She started back down the hall, but Grace caught her.
"Don't--don't!" Grace pleaded.
"But I must--I shall--Mollie--some one Has taken her--thrust her intothat room!"
"Yes--it was the ghost--I saw it!" Grace fairly screamed, "and they'llget you!"
"I don't care if they do! We must go to Mollie. Come, girls, to therescue!" cried Betty, resolutely.
"But let us get some one to help us first!" insisted Amy. "We ought notto face that--that thing alone!" and she gasped, so rapidly was herheart beating.
"We're not alone!" insisted Betty. "There are four of us, to one--oneman."
"How do you know he was a man?" demanded Grace.
"Didn't I hear him speak? It was a man's voice. Some man, for purposesof his own, is masquerading as a ghost, and he probably tried tofrighten Mollie and the rest of us to keep up the reputation of themansion for being haunted. If none of you are going back, I'll goalone!"
Betty started down the hallway, and her example was one of the thingsneeded to infuse courage into the others. Not that Cousin Janeespecially needed it, for she had already made up her mind, as hadBetty, that something must be done, and that soon.
"Of course we must rescue Mollie!" the chaperone declared, emphatically."Anyhow, that fellow ran away, after locking her in the room. Come backthere."
Rather timidly, it must be confessed, they advanced until they stoodbefore a door. There were several along the hall, opening into variousrooms, apparently.
"It was here," said Betty.
"No, this one," declared Mrs. Mackson, indicating another opposite.
Betty turned to Grace and Amy.
"I was too frightened to look," admitted Grace.
"And I didn't see," confessed Amy.
"Well, there's one way to prove it--we'll call," spoke Betty. She raisedher voice and cried:
"Mollie! Mollie! Don't be frightened. We haven't deserted you! In whichroom are you?"
They paused, waiting for what they expected would be a tear-chokedanswer, but none came.
"Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty again, her tones trembling now.
Anxiously they waited, but there was no response.
"She isn't there!" gasped Amy. "Oh, Betty!" and she began to cry.
"Hush!" cautioned Mrs. Mackson. "Probably the poor child has fainted,and can't hear us. It's enough to make any one faint. But I'm sure thisis the room," and she indicated the one she had pointed out. "We mustbreak down the door and get her."
Not expecting the door to open, she turned the knob, but, to hersurprise, the portal swung back, creaking on rusty hinges.
"The light--quick!" the chaperone called to Betty.
The remaining lantern from the auto--one being with Mollie--was flashedinto the apartment. It took but a glance to show that it was empty.
"I thought it was this one," said Betty, trying to keep her voice fromtrembling, as she moved to the door she had insisted was the right one.
She tried half a dozen times. The door was locked.
"She's in--there!" gasped Grace.
Again Betty called aloud, repeating Mollie's name over and over again,but there was no answer.
"Oh--oh, what can have happened?" faltered Amy. "Poor Mollie!"
"At least we know that it was perfectly natural what happened--howevermean and unjust it was," declared Betty. "We have to do with naturalforces, and----"
Through the old house there once more sounded that mournful groan,chilling the very blood of the girls, and causing them to clingtogether. Several times were the groans repeated, and then there shone,as if from a distance, a bluish light, and there came the clank ofmetal.
"Oh--oh!" cried Grace.
"Quiet!" commanded Betty. "Mollie, are you in there?"
The storm had, in a measure, ceased now, and the only sounds fromwithout was the falling of the rain.
"That--that couldn't have been thunder or lightning," said Betty, with apuzzled air.
"It was the wind--that is still blowing," insisted Mrs. Mackson. "Don'tbe frightened, girls. We must get Mollie out of that room. She hascertainly fainted, and when she comes to she will be horribly frightenedif we are not with her. Try the door again, Betty."
Betty did so, but it would not give.
"We must break it down!" decided the chaperone, resolutely. "Is thereanything we can use?"
"There's a chair in that other room," said Amy, indicating the apartmentthey had looked in, only to find it untenanted. "We might use that."
"The very thing!" declared Mrs. Mackson. "We'll get it!"
She started for the other room, followed by the others, when Gracecried:
"Hark!"
They listened.
"What is it?" asked Betty.
"The sound of carriage wheels out in the road. And I heard a man's voicespeak to his horse."
"Maybe it's the--one who caught Mollie, and he's taking her away,"faltered Grace, who seemed to have a faculty of suggesting unpleasantpossibilities at the wrong time.
"Then we must stop him!" cried Betty. She turned toward the front door,but a short distance away. The others hurried on after her and saw, outin the road, the dim outlines of a carriage. There was a driving-lighton the dashboard, and by its gleam the girls could make out the darkform of a man alighting.
"At least he's not--a ghost!" whispered Amy.
"Help! Oh, please help us!" screamed Grace.
"Hello, there! What's the trouble?" asked a pleasant voice. "I'll bewith you in a minute. Whoa there, Jack, old man! Don't get uneasy. Showyour light, please, so I can see where you are."
Betty flashed her lantern, and in its rays a man came up the weed-grownpath. The girls were almost crying for sheer relief.