The Third Girl Detective

by Margaret Sutton

  “She said she would wait for us after we get through with Mrs. Tellingham and introduce us to her friends.”

  “Well!” gasped Ruth, with a sigh. “We most certainly cannot go to both. What shall we do?”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE ENTERING WEDGE

  Since Ruth Fielding had first met Helen Cameron—and that was on the very day the former had come to the Red Mill—the two girls had never had a cross word or really differed much on any subject. Ruth was the more yielding of the two, perhaps, and it might be that that was why Helen seemed so to expect her to yield now.

  “Of course, Ruthie, we can’t disappoint Miss Cox,” she said, with finality. “And after she was so kind to us, too.”

  “Are you sure she did all that out of simple kindness, Helen?” asked the girl from the Red Mill, slowly.

  “Why! what do you mean?”

  “Aunt Alviry says one should never look a gift-horse in the mouth,” laughed Ruth.

  “What do you mean?” demanded her chum.

  “Why, Helen, doesn’t it seem to you that Mary Cox came out deliberately to meet us, and for the purpose of making us feel under obligation to her?”

  “For pity’s sake, what for?”

  “So that we would feel just as you do—that we ought if possible to attend the meeting of her society?”

  “I declare, Ruth Fielding! How suspicious you have become all of a sudden.”

  Ruth still laughed. But she said, too: “That is the way it has struck me, Helen. And I wondered if you did not see her attention in the same light, also.”

  “Why, she hasn’t asked us to join the Upedes,” said Helen.

  “I know. And neither has Miss Steele—”

  “You seem to have taken a great fancy to that Madge Steele,” interrupted Helen, sharply.

  “I think she is nice looking—and she was very polite,” said Ruth, quietly.

  “Well, I don’t care,” cried Helen. “Miss Cox has shown us much more kindness. And I promised for us, Ruth. I said we’d attend her club this evening.”

  “Well,” said her chum, slowly. “It does look as though we would have to go with Miss Cox, then. We’ll tell Miss Steele—”

  “I believe your head has been turned by that Madge Steele because she’s a Senior,” declared Helen, laughing, yet not at all pleased with her friend. “And the F. C.’s are probably a fussy crowd. All the teachers belonging to the club too. I’d rather belong to the Upedes—a real girls’ club without any of the teachers to boss it.”

  Ruth laughed again; but there was no sting in what she said: “I guess you have made up your mind already that the Up and Doing Club is the one Helen Cameron wants to join.”

  “And the one Ruth Fielding must join, too!” declared Helen, in her old winning way, slipping her arm through Ruth’s arm. “We mustn’t go separate ways, Ruthie.”

  “Oh, Helen!” cried Ruth. “Don’t talk like that. Of course we will not. But let us be careful about our friendships here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Ruth, smiling, “that we must be careful about joining any crowd of girls until we know just how things are.”

  “Well,” said Helen, dropping her arm and walking to the other end of the room for no reason whatsoever, for she walked back again, in a moment, “I don’t see why you are so suspicious of Mary Cox.”

  “I don’t know that I am,” laughed Ruth. “But we have no means of comparison yet—”

  A mellow bell began to ring from some other building—probably in the tower of the main building of Briarwood Hall.

  “There!” ejaculated Helen, in some relief. “That must be to announce supper.”

  “Are you ready, Helen?” asked Ruth.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let us go.”

  There was a card on which were printed several simple rules of conduct tacked to the door. The chums had read them. One was that rooms should be left unlocked in the absence of the occupants, and Ruth and Helen went out into the corridor, leaving their door open. There were other girls in the passage then, all moving toward the stairway. Some of them nodded kindly to the Infants. Others only stared.

  Ruth saw Miss Steele in advance, and whispered to Helen:

  “Come, dear; let us speak to her and tell her we cannot accept her Invitation for this evening.”

  But Helen held back. “You can tell her if you like,” she said, rather sullenly.

  “But, let us be nice about it,” urged Ruth. “I’ll tell her we overlooked the fact that we were already engaged for the meeting of the Up and Doing Club. I’ll explain.”

  Helen suddenly seized her chum’s arm more tightly. “You are a good little thing, Ruthie,” she declared. “Come on.”

  They hurried after the Senior and caught up with her at the foot of the stairs. She was not alone, but Ruth touched her arm and asked to speak with her.

  “What’s the matter, Infants?” demanded the Senior, but smiling at them.

  Helen flushed at the expression, but Ruth was too earnest in her intention to smooth over the difficulty to notice so small a thing.

  “Oh, Miss Steele,” she said, “I am sorry to beg off from the kind invitation you gave us. We cannot go with you this evening. It seems that it was already understood with Miss Cox that we should go with her.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Madge Steele, a little stiffly, “you are already pledged, then?”

  “Yes, we are pledged to attend the meeting of the Up and Doing Club this evening. It was very kind of Miss Cox to invite us,” said Ruth, calmly. “And it was kind of you to invite us to the F. C.’s, too. But we cannot attend both meetings—not in one evening.”

  Madge Steele was looking at her earnestly and found that Ruth neither dropped her gaze nor appeared confused by her scrutiny. Helen was the one who seemed confused.

  “It is not our usage to interfere with those who are pledged to other school clubs,” said Miss Steele, speaking distinctly. “I understand, then, that you are not pledged?”

  “Only to attend this meeting as visitors of Miss Cox,” said Ruth, simply.

  “Very well, then,” said Madge Steele, her pleasant face breaking into a smile again, “I shall hope to see you at some future meeting of the Forward Club. Here we are on the campus. It is cool and shady here, even in the hottest weather. We think it is a decidedly pleasant place.”

  She walked beside them, conversing pleasantly. Helen recovered her good temper and ventured a remark about the fountain which graced the center of the campus. It was a huge marble figure of a sitting female, in graceful draperies and with a harp, or lyre, on the figure’s knee. The clear water bubbled out all around the pedestal, and the statue and bowl were sunk a little below the level of the greensward, like a small Italian garden.

  “What is the figure supposed to represent, Miss Steele?” asked Helen.

  “You are allowed three guesses—and then you won’t know,” laughed the Senior. “You can see by the stains and moss on it that the fountain has been there a great many years. Long before Briarwood Hall was a school. But it is supposed to represent either Poesy, or Harmony. Nobody knows—not even Mrs. Tellingham.”

  The bell stopped tolling with three, sharp, jerky taps. Madge Steele quickened her pace along the path and the newcomers followed her. Other girls were pouring into the building nearest to the main structure of Briarwood. A broad stairway led up to assembly rooms; but out of the lower hall opened a large dining room, in which were ten or twelve long tables, and at which the girls were already being seated by some sort of system.

  “I don’t know where you will be seated,” said Madge Steele, hastily. “I am at the second Senior table. Here comes Miss Picolet. She will attend to you Infants.”

  “Oh, it’s the little French teacher,” said Helen.

  Ruth me
t the little lady with a smile. Miss Picolet nodded to them both and put out her tiny hand. She really was no taller than Helen.

  “I am glad, young ladies, to see you in such good company. Miss Steele is well worth cultivating,” she said. “Come this way. You will be seated in the Junior division. It is probable that you will be placed in that grade permanently. Mrs. Tellingham will see you in her office in the next building immediately after supper.”

  Ruth and Helen followed the doll-like teacher to their seats. The girl whom Mary Cox had called “Heavy” (and, indeed, it was a most appropriate name) was already seated, and was right at Ruth’s elbow.

  “Oh, I hope they’ll be seated soon,” Ruth heard this over-plump girl murmur. “This is cup-custard night, and I’m so-o hungry.”

  The tables were laid nicely. There were several waitresses, and besides Miss Picolet, there were at least four other ladies whom Ruth knew must be teachers. The hall was by no means filled. There were not more than a hundred and fifty girls present. The door at the far end opened and a handsome, white-haired, pink-cheeked lady entered. She mounted a slightly raised platform and stood for a moment overlooking the room.

  “It’s Mrs. Tellingham,” whispered the fat girl to Ruth, seeing the question in the latter’s face.

  The Preceptress was a really handsome lady—perhaps forty-five, perhaps ten years older. Her perfectly white hair, thick and well arranged, seemed to have been the result of something besides age. Here face was quite free from any age-marks. There was a kind look in her eyes; a humorous expression about her mouth. Helen leaned toward Ruth and whispered:

  “I know I shall just love her, Ruth—don’t you?”

  “And you won’t be alone in that, Infant,” said the girl on Helen’s other hand. “Now!”

  Mrs. Tellingham raised her hand. The school arose and stood quietly while she said grace. Another motion of the hand, and they sat down again. The bustle of supper then began, with the girls talking and laughing, the waitresses serving a plain, hot meal, and everybody in apparent good-nature, and happy. Ruth could scarcely pay attention to the food, however, she was so much more interested in these who were to be her school-fellows.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE UPEDES

  It was all so new and strange to Helen and Ruth that neither had considered the possibility of homesickness. Indeed, how could they be homesick? There was too much going on at Briarwood Hall for the newcomers to think much of themselves.

  The plump girl next to Ruth seemed of a friendly disposition, for when she had satisfied the first cravings of her appetite—oh, long before she came to the cup-custard!—she said:

  “Which are you—Cameron, or Fielding? I’m Stone—Jennie Stone.”

  Ruth told her their names and asked in return:

  “Are you on our corridor, too? I know you are rooming in the same building as Helen and I.”

  “Yes,” said the fat girl. “I’m in a quartette with Mary Cox, Lluella Fairfax and Belle Tingley. Oh, you’ll see plenty of us,” said Heavy. “And I say! you’re going to the Upede meeting to-night; aren’t you?”

  “Why—yes. Do you all belong?”

  “Our quartette? Sure,” said the plump girl in her off-hand way. “We’ll show you some fun. And I say!”

  “Well?” asked Ruth.

  “How often are they going to send you boxes from home?”

  “Boxes from home?” repeated the girl from the Red Mill.

  “Yes. You know, you can have ’em sent often if you keep up with your classes and don’t get too many demerits in deportment. I missed two boxes last half because of black marks. And in French and deportment, too. That was Picolet’s doing—mean thing!”

  “I had no idea that one would be allowed to receive goodies,” said Ruth, who of course expected nothing of the kind from home, but did not wish to say so.

  “Well, you want to write your folks that you can receive ’em right away. A girl who gets things from home can be very popular if she wants to be. Ah! here’s the custard.”

  Ruth had difficulty in keeping from laughing outright. She saw plainly that the nearest way to Miss Jennie Stone’s heart lay through her stomach.

  Meanwhile Helen had become acquainted with the girl on the other side who had called them “Infants.” But she was a good-natured girl, too, and now Helen introduced her to her chum as Miss Polk. She was a dark-haired, plain-faced girl and wore eye-glasses. She was a Junior and already Helen had found she belonged to the F. C.’s.

  “I guess most of the stiff and starched ones belong to that Forward Club,” whispered Helen to her chum. “But the jolly ones are Upedes.”

  “We’ll wait and see,” advised Ruth.

  Supper was over then and the girls all rose and strolled out of the room in parties. Ruth and Helen made their way quietly to the exit and looked for the office of the Preceptress. The large building with the tower—the original Briarwood Hall—was partly given up to recitations and lecture rooms and partly to the uses of the Tellinghams and the teachers. Besides this great building there were two dormitory buildings, the gymnasium, the library building, and a chapel which had been built only the year before by subscriptions of the graduates of the school and of the parents of the scholars then attending. But it was growing dusk now and the two friends could not see much of the buildings around the campus.

  Mrs. Grace Tellingham and her husband (the Doctor never by any chance came first in anybody’s mind!) had started the school some years before in a small way; but it had grown rapidly and was, as we have seen, very popular. Many girls were graduated from the institution to the big girls’ colleges, for it was, in fact, a preparatory school.

  The chums went in at the broad door and saw a library at the right hand into which a tidy maid motioned them, with a smile. It was a large room, the walls masked by bookshelves, all filled so tightly that it did seem as though room for another book could not be found. But Mrs. Tellingham was not there.

  Bending over the table, however, (and it was a large, leather-covered table with a great student lamp in the center, the shade of which threw a soft glow of light in a circle upon it) was a gentleman whose shoulders were very round and who seemed to be so near-sighted that his nose must have been within an inch or so of the book which he read. He was totally unconscious of the girls’ presence, and he read in a half whisper to himself, like a child conning a lesson.

  Ruth and Helen looked at each other, each thinking the same question. Could this be Doctor Tellingham, the great historian? They glanced again at the hoop-shouldered man and wondered what his countenance was like, for they could not see a feature of it as he read. But Ruth did notice one most surprising fact. The stooping gentleman wore a wig. It was a brown, rather curly wig, while the fringe of natural hair all around his head was quite white—of that yellowish-white that proclaims the fact that the hair was once light brown, or sandy in color. The brown wig matched the hair at one time, without doubt; but it now looked as though two gentlemen’s heads had been merged in one—the younger gentleman’s being the upper half of the present apparition.

  For several minutes the chums stood timidly in the room and the old gentleman went on whispering to himself, and occasionally nodding his head. But at length he looked up, and in doing this he saw the girls and revealed his own countenance.

  “Ah-ha!” he ejaculated, and stood upright. He was not a small man, but he was very bony. He had a big, long, smoothly-shaven face, on which his beard had sprouted in patches only, and these shaven patches were gray, whereas the rest of his face was smooth and dead-white. Indeed he had so much face, and it was so bald, that if the brown wig had chanced to tumble off Ruth thought that his appearance would have been actually terrifying.

  “Ah-ha!” he said again, and smiled not unkindly. The thick spectacles he wore hid his eyes, however, and to look into his big face was like looking at the white wa
ll of a house with the windows all shuttered. “You want something!”

  He said it as though he had made a most profound discovery. Indeed, they found afterward that Doctor Tellingham always spoke as though he were pronouncing a valedictory oration, or something quite as important as that. The doctor never could say anything lightly. His mind was given up entirely to deep subjects, and it seldom strayed from his work.

  “You want something,” he repeated. “Stop! never mind explaining. I shouldn’t be able to aid you. Mrs. Tellingham—my wife, my dears—will be here anon.”

  He at once bobbed down his head, revealing nothing to the eyes of the two girls but the brown wig and the hair that didn’t match, and went on whispering to himself. Helen and Ruth exchanged glances and Helen had difficulty in keeping from laughing outright.

  In a moment more Mrs. Tellingham came into the room. At close view Ruth saw that she was even more attractive than she had seemed at a distance. Her countenance was firm without being stern—the humor about the mouth relieved its set expression.

  “My dear! my dear!” ejaculated the Doctor, raising his head so that the long, bald expanse of his face came into view again for a moment, “somebody to see you—somebody wants something.”

  Mrs. Tellingham approached Helen first and took her hand. Her handclasp was firm, her manner one to put the girl at her ease.

  “You are Mr. Macy Cameron’s daughter?” she questioned. “We are glad to see you here. You have found your room?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Tellingham,” replied Helen.

  The Preceptress turned to Ruth and shook hands with her. “And you are Ruth Fielding? Do as well this first half as your last teacher tells me you did, and we shall be good friends. Now, girls, sit down. Let us talk a bit.”

  She had a quick, bright way of speaking; yet her words were not wasted—nor her time. She did not talk idly. Nor did the two chums have much to say but “Yes” and “No.” In the course of her remarks she said:

  “This is your first experience, I understand, away from home and in a school of this character? Yes? Ah, then, many things will be new and strange to you, as well as hard to bear at first. Among two hundred girls there are bound to be girls of a good many different kinds,” and she smiled. “You will find some thoughtless and careless—forgetting what they have been sent to the school for. Avoid that class. They will not aid you in your own intention to stand well in the classes.