Patty, who was popular, had been invited to all four of the functions. She had declined Nancy's spread, because Mae Van Arsdale, her particular enemy, was invited; but had accepted the other invitations, and was busily spending the evening as an itinerant guest.
She carried her potato, insecurely balanced on a teaspoon, over one table and under another, through a hoop suspended from the[275] ceiling, and deposited it in the wastebasket at the end of the corridor, in exactly two minutes and forty-seven seconds. (Kid McCoy had a stop-watch.) This was far ahead of anyone else's record, and Patty lingered hopefully a few minutes in the neighborhood of the bandbox; but a fresh inrush of entries postponed the bestowal of the prize, so she left the judges to settle the question at their leisure, and drifted on to Evalina's room.
She found it dark, except for the fitful blue flare of alcohol and salt burning in a fudge pan. The guests were squatting about on sofa cushions, looking decidedly spotty in the unbecoming light. Patty silently dropped down on a vacant cushion, and lent polite attention to Evalina, who at the moment held the floor.
"Well, you know, I had a very remarkable experience myself last summer. Happening to visit a spiritualist camp, I attended a materializing séance."
"What's that?" asked Rosalie Patton.
"A séance in which spirits appear to mediums in the material form they occupied dur[276]ing life," Evalina condescendingly explained. Rosalie was merely an invited guest. She did not belong to the inner cult.
"Oh!" said Rosalie, vaguely enlightened.
"I didn't really expect anything to happen," Evalina continued, "and I was just thinking how foolish I was to have wasted that dollar, when the medium shut her eyes and commenced to tremble. She said she saw the spirit of a beautiful young girl who had passed over five years before. The girl was dressed in white and her clothes were dripping wet, and she carried in her hand a monkey-wrench."
"A monkey-wrench!" cried Patty. "What on earth—"
"I don't know any more than you do," said Evalina impatiently. "I'm just telling what happened. The Medium couldn't get her full name, but she said her first name commenced with 'S.' And instantly, it came over me that it was my Cousin Susan who fell into a well and was drowned. I hadn't thought of her for years, but the description answered perfectly. And I asked the me[277]dium, and after a little, she said yes, it was Susan, and that she had come to send me a warning."
Evalina allowed an impressive pause to follow, while her auditors leaned forward in strained attention.
"A warning!" breathed Florence Hissop.
"Yes. She told me never to eat lemon pie."
Patty choked with sudden laughter. Evalina cast her a look and went on.
"The medium shivered again and came out of the trance, and she couldn't remember a thing she had said! When I told her about the monkey-wrench and the lemon pie, she was just as much puzzled as I was. She said that the messages that came from the spirit world were often inexplicable; though they might seem to deal with trivial things, yet in reality they contained a deep and hidden truth. Probably some day I would have an enemy who would try to poison me with lemon pie, and I must never, on any account, taste it again."
"And haven't you?" Patty asked.[278]
"Never," said Evalina sadly.
Patty composed her features into an expression of scientific inquiry.
"Do you think the medium told the truth?"
"I've never had any cause to doubt it."
"Then you really believe in ghosts?"
"In spirits?" Evalina amended gently. "Many strange things happen that cannot be explained in any other manner."
"What would you do if her spirit should appear to you? Would you be scared?"
"Certainly not!" said Evalina, with dignity. "I was very fond of Cousin Susan. I have no cause to fear her spirit."
The smell of boiling molasses penetrated from below; Patty excused herself and turned toward the kitchen. The spiritual heights on which Evalina dwelt, she found a trifle too rare for ordinary breathing.
The candy was on the point of being poured into pans.
"Here, Patty!" Priscilla ordered, "you haven't done any work. Run down to the[279] storeroom and get some butter to keep our hands from sticking."
Patty obligingly accompanied the cook to the cellar, with not a thought in the world beyond butter. On a shelf in the storeroom stood to-morrow's dessert—a row of fifteen lemon pies, with neatly decorated tops of white meringue. As Patty looked at them, she was suddenly assailed by a wicked temptation; she struggled with it for a moment of sanity, but in the end she fell. While Nora's head was bent over the butter tub, Patty opened the window and deftly plumped a pie through the iron grating onto the ledge without. By the time Nora raised her head, the window was shut again, and Patty was innocently translating the label on a bottle of olive oil.
As they pulled their candy in a secluded corner of the kitchen, Patty hilariously confided her plan to Conny and Priscilla. Conny was always game for whatever mischief was afoot, but Priscilla sometimes needed urging. She was—most inconveniently—beginning[280] to develop a moral nature, and the other two, who as yet were comfortably un-moral, occasionally found her difficult to coerce.
Priscilla finally lent a grudging consent, while Conny enthusiastically volunteered to acquire a monkey-wrench. Being captain of sports, she could manage the matter better than Patty. On a flying visit to the stables, ostensibly to consult with Martin as to a re-marking of the tennis courts, she singled out from his tool bench the monkey-wrench of her choice, casually covered it with her sweater, and safely bore it away. She and Patty conveyed their booty by devious secret ways to Paradise Alley. A great many alarms were given on the passage, a great deal of muffled giggling ensued, but finally the monkey-wrench and the pie—slightly damaged as to its meringue top, but still distinctly recognizable as lemon—were safely cached under Patty's bed to await their part in the night's adventure.
"Lights-out" as usual, rang at nine-thirty, but it rang to deaf ears. A spirit of restless festivity was abroad. The little girls in the[281] "Baby Ward" larked about the halls in a pillow fight, until they were sternly ordered to bed by the Dowager herself. It was close to ten o'clock when the candy-pullers washed their sticky hands and turned upstairs.
Patty found a delegation of potato racers waiting with the news that she had won the prize. An interested crowd gathered to watch her open the box; it contained a tin funeral wreath that had been displayed that winter in the window of the village undertaker—Kid had bought it cheap, owing to fly specks that would not rub off. The wreath was hoisted on the end of a shinny stick and marched through the corridor to the tune of "John Brown's Body," while Mademoiselle ineffectually wrung her hands and begged for quiet.
"Mes chères enfantes—it is ten o'clock. Soyez tranquilles. Patty—Mon Dieu—How you are bad! Margarite McCoy, you do not listen to me? Nous verrons! Go to your room, dis in-stant! You do not belong in my hall. Children! I implore. Go to bed—all—tout de suite!"[282]
The procession cheered and marched on, until Miss Lord descended from the East and commanded silence. Miss Lord when incensed was effectual. The peace of conquest settled for a time over Paradise Alley, and she returned to her own camp. But a fresh hub-bub broke out, when it was discovered that someone had sprinkled granulated sugar, in liberal quantities, through every bed in the Alley. Patty and Conny would have been suspected, had their own sheets not yielded a plentiful harvest. It was another half hour before the beds were remade, and the school finally composed to sleep.
When the teacher on duty had made her last rounds, and everything was quiet, Patty turned back the covers of her bed and cautiously stepped to the floor. She was still fully clothed, except that she had changed her shoes for softer soled bedroom slippers, better fitted for nocturnal adventures. Priscilla and Conny joined her. Fortunately a full moon shone high in the sky, and they needed no artificial light. Aided by her two assistants, Patty draped the sheets of her bed[283] about her into two voluminous wings, and fastened them securely with safety pins. A pillow slip was pulled over her head and the corners tied into ears. They hesitated a moment with scissors suspended.
"Hurry up and cut a nose," Patty whispered. "I'm smothering!"
"It seems sort of too bad to spoil a perfectly good pillow slip," said Priscilla, with a slight access of conscience.
"I'll drop some money in the missionary box," Patty promised.
The nose and eyes were cut; a grinning mouth and devilishly curved eyebrows were added with burnt cork. The pillow slip was tied firmly about her neck to allow no chance of slipping, the ears waved lopsidedly; she was the most amazing specter that ever left a respectable grave.
These preparations had occupied some time. It was already ten minutes of twelve.
"I'll wait till the stroke of midnight," said Patty. "Then I'll flutter into Evalina's room, and wave my wings, and whisper, 'Come!' The monkey-wrench and the[284] pie, I'll leave on the foot of her bed, so she'll know she wasn't dreaming."
"What if she screams?" asked Priscilla.
"She won't scream. She loves ghosts—especially Cousin Susan. She said to-night she'd be glad to meet her."
"But what if she does scream?" persisted Priscilla.
"Oh, that's easy! I'll dash back and pop into bed. Before anybody wakes, I'll be sound asleep."
They made a reconnoitering excursion into the empty corridors to make sure that all was quiet. Only regular breathing issued from open doors. Evalina fortunately lived in a single, but unfortunately, it was at the extreme end of the East Wing in the opposite corner of the building from Patty's own domicile. Conny and Priscilla, in bedroom slippers and kimonos, tiptoed after Patty as she took her flight down the length of the Alley. She sailed back and forth and waved her wings in the moonlight that streamed through the skylight in the central hall. The two spectators clung together and shiv[285]ered delightedly. In spite of having been behind the scenes and assisted at the make-up, they received a distinct sensation—what it would be to one suddenly wakened from sleep, to a believer in ghosts, they were a bit apprehensive to consider. At the entrance to the East Wing, they handed Patty her pie and monkey-wrench, and retreated to their own neighborhood. In case of an uproar, they did not wish to be discovered too far from home.
Patty flitted on down the corridor, past yawning doors, into Evalina's room, where she took up a central position in a patch of moonlight. A few sepulchral "Comes!" brought no response. Evalina was a sound sleeper.
Patty shook the foot of the bed. The sleeper stirred slightly but slept on. This was annoying. The ghost had no mind to make noise enough to disturb the neighbors. She laid the pie and the monkey-wrench on the counterpane, and shook the bed again, with the insistence of an earthquake. As she was endeavoring to resume her proper[286]ties, Evalina sat up and clutched the bed clothes about her neck with a frenzied jerk. Patty just had time to save the pie—the monkey-wrench went to the floor with a crash; and the crash, to Patty's startled senses, was echoed and intensified from far down the hall. She had no chance to wave her wings or murmur, "Come." Evalina did not wait for her cue. She opened her mouth as wide as it would open, and emitted shriek after shriek of such ear-splitting intensity, that Patty, for a moment, was too aghast to move. Then, still hugging the pie in her arms, she turned and ran.
To her consternation the cries were answered ahead. The whole house seemed to be awake and shrieking. She could hear doors banging and frightened voices demanding the cause of the tumult. She was making a quick dash for her own room, trusting to the confusion and darkness to make good her escape, when Miss Lord, gaily attired in a flowered bath-robe, appeared at the end of the corridor. Patty was headed straight[287] for her arms. With a gasp of terror, she turned back toward the shrieking Evalina.
She realized by now that she was in a trap.
A narrow passage led from the East Wing to the servants' quarters. She dived into this. If she could reach the back stairs it would mean safety. She pushed the door open a crack, and to her horror, was confronted by a worse uproar. The servants' quarters were in a state of panic. She saw Maggie dashing past, wrapped in a pink striped blanket, while above the general confusion rose Norah's rich brogue:
"Help! Murther! I seen a bur-r-gu-lar!"
She shut the door and shrank back into the passage. Behind her Evalina was still hysterically wailing:
"I saw a ghost! I saw a ghost!"
Before her the cry of "Burglars!" was growing louder.
Utterly bewildered at this double demonstration, Patty flattened herself against the[288] wall in the friendly darkness of the passage, while she soulfully thanked Heaven that the proposed electric lights had not yet been installed. A dozen voices were calling for matches, but no one seemed to find any. She pantingly tugged at the pillowcase fastened about her neck; but Conny had tied it firmly with a white hair ribbon, and the knot was behind. In any case, even if she could remove her masquerade, she was lost if they found her; for she was still wearing the white dress of the evening, and not even Patty's imagination could compass an excuse for that at twelve o'clock at night.
The search was growing nearer; she caught the glimmer of a light ahead. At any moment they might open the door of the passage. The linen closet was the only refuge at hand—and that was very temporary. She felt for the door handle and slipped inside. If she could find a pile of sheets, she might dive to the bottom and hope to escape notice, being mostly sheet herself. But it was Saturday, and all the linen had gone down. A long, slippery, inclined[289] chute connected the room with the laundry in the basement two floors below. Steps were already audible in the passage. She heard Miss Lord's voice say:
"Bring a light! We'll search the linen closet."
