They could hear the voices of the chaplain and the station agent just outside the baggage-room door. They were surely coming in, the girls thought, though whether to detect the culprits or for some other reason could not yet be determined.
Suddenly Sim reached up and pulled down the large, hinged cover of the packing case. It was light but strongly made.
“Oh, we’ll smother!” protested Arden in a whisper.
“No, we won’t! There are plenty of cracks for air,” said Sim.
Hardly was the cover down, shutting the girls inside the now very dark case, than the door of the baggage room was pushed open and, through cracks in the packing case the girls could see Rev. Dr. Henry Bordmust, dressed neatly in black, step in ahead of the agent in his blue coat with brass buttons. With the two men wisps of fog drifted into the room.
In the closeness of the box, Arden tried vainly to push Sim’s left elbow away from her ribs. Terry was slowly settling down, half on Arden, with her legs twisted around Sim’s neck. Sim had the best position, as she was the smallest. Her eyes were on a level with a crack between the lid and the top edge of the box. She squinted to accustom her eyesight to the dimly lighted room. She saw the chaplain looking at a tag on a worn and dusty trunk.
The reason for his visit now seemed obvious. He wasn’t after the girls.
“Have you any trace of that trunk of mine yet?” asked the chaplain.
“No, sir, I haven’t,” the agent answered, following the example of the clergyman and looking at several labels on various pieces of baggage. “But that there trunk ought to be around some place, if it was shipped when you say it was.”
“Of course it was shipped when I say it was!” testily replied the Rev. Henry. “Why would I say it was if it wasn’t, my good man? This is the third or fourth time I’ve been over here looking for it. I’ve been expecting it over a week now. Come, be a little quicker! You ought to be able to find it for me!”
“Yes, sir, I am looking. It might have got over in behind this here packing case. Lots of things get behind these cases. They are shipped up here filled with raw silk for the factory over at Tumeville. But sometimes the drivers take the silk out here and leave the empty cases to be shipped back. I’ll have a look back of this case.”
With hearts that beat faster than ever, the girls could look through the cracks in their prison and see the agent approaching their hiding place.
“Somebody musta left this case unfastened when they emptied it,” muttered the agent. “It’s dangerous, with the nails sticking out of the cover like the way they do. I’ll tap ’em in.”
With an iron weight from the platform scale near him, the man hammered down the nails projecting from the lower side of the lid into the front rim of the box.
He had nailed the girls in! With just a couple of whacks!
Hardly daring to breathe, lest they betray their presence, Arden, Terry, and Sim listened speechless.
“Nope, nothing behind this case ’ceptin’ some old valises nobody ever called for,” reported the agent, peering behind the big box after his nailing work.
“How about this pile of trunks?” asked the chaplain, his voice, this time, coming from a distant corner of the room.
“I’ll help you look there, sir, but I don’t believe what you want’s there,” the agent replied, as he shuffled away.
The girls breathed more freely, and Sim hoarsely whispered:
“Heavens! We’re nailed in!”
“Oh, Arden! What a pickle you got us into!” gasped Terry.
“Hush! They’ll hear us! Wait until Henry goes out,” counseled Arden. “Then we’ll try to force the cover up with our shoulders.”
There was a sudden silence as the agent and the clergyman peered at another pile of trunks. The girls could hear their hearts beating and Terry, interested in the phenomenon, inquired cautiously whether it was Sim’s heart she heard or her own.
“It’s your own, silly!” replied Sim. “I’m almost smothered! I wish they’d go out so we could breathe! Don’t hiss so; they’ll hear you.”
“That there trunk of your’n might have got over in th’ freight office by mistake,” said the agent. “S’posin’ we look there.”
“Suppose we do,” agreed the chaplain, who was fast losing what little patience he had.
Then the two men left the baggage room, and on his way out the agent pulled the switch controlling the dim and dirty ceiling light.
The imprisoned girls were left in darkness!
CHAPTER XIX
Strange Talk
“It seems to me,” remarked Terry disgustedly, as the agent pulled the door of the baggage room shut and his footsteps and those of the chaplain died away in faint echoes, “it seems to me that we just get into one scrape after another. This is a pretty kettle of fish!”
“Or something!” gloomily agreed Sim.
“Can you turn around so you can be sort of on your hands and knees?” asked Arden, ignoring Terry’s remark. “Try it. Sim and I will squeeze away over to one side.”
“Oooff!” grunted Terry as she attempted to change her position. “I’m almost over! Don’t mind if you get a black eye, Sim. It will only be from my elbow.”
“I shall mind, though, so you’d better fold up your arms. There! She’s over, Arden. Now I’ll do it!” said Sim.
Sim accomplished the feat more easily than had Terry, and then Arden did it. All kneeling, they braced with their legs and arms, arched up their backs, and tried to force off the nailed lid of the packing case.
“Heave!” exclaimed Arden, having heard this expression used by the foreman of a gang of section men on the railroad near the college grounds. “Heave hard!”
All together they raised their backs.
“Ouch! That doesn’t do any good! We’re in here for the night unless someone comes back to release us!” groaned Terry.
“Rest a minute,” advised Arden. “Then we’ll try it again. Once more—all heave!”
But the second try only made the box shift a little on its base.
“We must make some noise! Bang on the sides or yell or scream! We must get out of here!” Arden was getting desperate.
“Hey! Hey!” shouted Terry. “Come back! Let us out! We’re smothering! Hey!”
“Hurray! Hurray!” screamed Sim.
“What are you cheering for?” demanded Terry.
“That wasn’t a cheer. But I can make my voice carry farther that way than any other.”
“Help! Help! Help!” appealed Arden shrilly.
They listened, their hearts beating fast from fear and the exertion of shouting. They thought they heard footsteps approaching.
Then, by the rays of light streaming through the fog from the station platform, as they peered out of the cracks in the box, they could see the door of the baggage room flung open. Near it stood the agent.
“He’s alone, thank goodness!” said Sim.
“Help!” cried Arden again.
“Let us out!” shouted Terry.
“Fer th’ love of cats, who are you? Where are you?” exclaimed the agent, for the voices were muffled.
“In this packing case! You nailed us in!” answered Arden.
With a muttered expression of great surprise, the agent picked up the same scale weight he had used to drive the nails partly in, and by pounding on the lower edge of the cover he forced it up, flung it back, and let the rays of the overhead light, which he had switched on, flood upon the three disheveled girls in the big box.
“My sakes!” cried the man. “What are you girls doin’ in there?”
“You shut us in,” Sim answered, standing up and stretching, as did her chums. “We didn’t want Dr. Bordmust to see us, so we hid in this box.”
“Then,” continued Terry, “you nailed it shut.”
“How was I t’ know you was in there?” demanded the agent, with much justification. “It’s a lucky thing, after Dr. Bordmust left, not finding what he was after, that I come back here t
’ make sure I’d switched off the light for th’ night.”
“Very lucky,” agreed Sim.
“I never could of heard you yellin’ once I got back t’ my office,” went on the man.
“We’re awfully glad you came here. Thanks, so much!” murmured Terry, with much relief.
“Where you from—Cedar Ridge?” asked the agent.
“Yes,” Arden answered, “and we’re in an awful hurry to get back. Supper must have started,” she told her chums.
“I guess so,” sighed Sim. “I only hope there’s some left.”
“We’ll explain to you another time,” continued Arden. “Come on, girls!” she urged.
The girls, a trifle stiff from their cramped positions, climbed over the side of the box. This time there were no ripping or tearing accidents. The agent stared uncomprehendingly at the trio as they landed on the floor of the baggage room and shook their garments into some semblance of order. Then they hurried out, Sim flinging back a perfunctory but none the less sincere “thank you,” as they pushed past the agent and again went out into the cold, damp fog.
As they hurried along the platform they heard the agent muttering to himself:
“What’ll them girls do next?”
“Good old air!” breathed Terry as they ran along. “I never thought it could be so welcome, even all messed up with fog as it is.”
“We were very lucky to get out,” murmured Sim. “Suppose he hadn’t come back and no one ever found us until years later, when we’d be only skeletons! What a scandal for the college!”
“Very cheerful, Sim,” replied Arden. “Now we’re late again and we shall just have to dash back.”
“I never did so much dashing in my whole life. I’m always running to some place or hurrying away from it, by golly!” complained Terry. “Tomorrow I’m going to take time out and just sit!”
“Well, you can’t sit now. It’s almost supper time, if not already past it. One more last dash for dear old Cedar Ridge!” pleaded Arden. “Be a sport, Terry. I know it was all my fault. But I’ll translate your French to make up for it.”
So the girls dashed through the pea-soup fog toward the college. They went around to the rear door, where they would be less likely to be seen. A few yards ahead of them, as they reached the college grounds, as far as they could see through the swirling mist, were two dim figures. Arden and her chums slackened their pace.
“It’s Henny talking to someone!” gasped Sim. “Compose yourselves, girls. Be very demure!”
“I hope he doesn’t stop us,” Terry remarked. “Who is he talking to—or should I say ‘whom’?”
“You should say ‘whom,’” declared Arden.
“Well, anyhow, I said it,” countered Terry.
“I knew what you meant,” responded Arden. “But look!” she whispered. “Isn’t Henny talking to Tom Scott, the gardener?”
“Yes, he is,” said Sim.
Composing themselves, the three girls walked at an ordinary pace along the shrubbery-lined path that led to the rear door of the dining hall. The chaplain and the young gardener were in earnest conversation, somewhat off the path on the edge of a large round flower bed. Just as the three reached the two men, who did not seem aware of their approach, the girls could hear the Rev. Henry ask, somewhat crossly:
“How much longer are you going to keep this up? It’s dangerous! I don’t like it at all. I am almost resolved—”
“Just give me a little longer chance,” pleaded the other. “I have almost settled it. I’ll see you again.”
Then Tom Scott faded away in the fog and darkness, and the chaplain, muttering something the girls could not catch, turned back toward his own residence near the chapel.
Now he caught sight of the girls, and turning toward them, and by doing so disturbing more wisps of the swirling fog, he greeted them in his most benign manner with:
“Good-evening, young ladies! Walking in the fog?”
“Yes, Dr. Bordmust, we like it,” answered Arden, with a great assumption of innocence.
“Hum—er—yes,” mumbled Henny. “Though it isn’t good for old throats,” and coughing raspingly, he swung on his way.
“That’s lucky!” exclaimed Terry as they hurried on.
“What do you suppose they were talking about?” asked Arden.
“As if we could guess,” sighed Sim. “But I know one thing,” she added as they slipped in at the door, “if that agent at the station doesn’t tell anyone what happened, we’re all right.”
“Hello, freshies!” exclaimed a voice close to them. “Rather late to be coming back from the station, isn’t it? I was behind you all the way from the post office.”
The three whirled around. The speaker was Jessica Darglan, smiling sardonically.
“I thought,” she continued, “that you three were campused. But that’s your worry,” and she brushed past them and went into the dining hall.
CHAPTER XX
A Dire Threat
“If Jessica Darglan tells where she saw us,” said Terry, next morning, “we’re sunk!”
“She won’t. Nobody could be so mean,” remarked Arden as she combed her hair in front of the bureau.
“You never can tell, Arden,” supplemented Sim. “Some people take a positive delight in doing things like that.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it, even if she does. So we won’t worry until we get a notice to go see Tiddy,” decided Terry.
“I meant to ask you after supper last night,” began Arden, “did you two think any more about what Henny was saying to Tom Scott as we came along?”
“I didn’t pay much attention,” confessed Sim. “I was too busy being demure.”
“Well,” went on Arden, “he said something about it being dangerous and asked Tom Scott how long he was going to keep it up.”
“Sort of funny,” admitted Terry. “That’s the second time we have heard those two talking together. I wonder what it all means?”
“It doesn’t worry me much,” declared Sim as she pulled on her stockings. “Because I think I’ll go home the way I planned in a few days. I’ll leave before I’m expelled for going out while campused.”
“Oh, Sim! Do we have to go over all that again?” pleaded Arden. “Can’t you stick it out? If we have to be expelled, let’s all go home together.”
“Don’t go, Sim,” begged Terry. “We’re just beginning to enjoy it here. You know, deep down in your heart, that last night in the station was fun, even if it was uncomfortable.”
“I’ll talk about it later,” answered Sim. “I have an early class this morning. See you when I get back.” She gathered up her books, gave a last look in the glass, and hurried down to breakfast without waiting for her friends.
Back in 513, Arden and Terry went on with their dressing. If Sim felt like being alone, it was wise to let her go. They would see her at breakfast, anyhow.
But at the table Sim devoted herself to Jane Randall and seemed deliberately to be avoiding her roommates. For, as she finished her meal, Sim linked arms with Jane and started for Bordmust Hall, leaving Terry and Arden by themselves.
“Sim is in one of her moods,” remarked Arden as she swung along beside Terry. “But she’ll forget all about it by lunch time.”
“I think she’s awfully disappointed about the pool. And being campused, while it doesn’t make a great deal of difference, just rubs Sim the wrong way. She hates to feel that she is being persecuted,” observed Terry.
“It doesn’t bother me a bit,” declared Arden. “I’m keeping occupied by trying to straighten out this mystery and get the reward money.”
“You have an even disposition,” suggested Terry. “We are not all as lucky as you.”
Terry sighed deeply and shifted her books from her right arm to her left. Arden and she trudged silently along up the hill to Bordmust Hall.
The fog of the night before had blown away, and the distant hills shimmered in a soft blue light. The leaves were beginni
ng to fall, and at the steps of Bordmust the head gardener, Anson Yaeger, was raking the lawn with sullen viciousness.
As the girls reached him he stopped moving the rake and looked at them penetratingly. His little beady eyes narrowed into bright slits. Resting part of his weight on the rake he shook a grimy finger at the freshmen.
“You’re two of them girls I seen down in my orchard!” he snarled. “You’ve no right there! Mark my words, no good will come of it! And don’t concern yourselves with what’s none of your business. There’s things going on around here that nobody knows about but me. I wouldn’t like to see you hurt, foolish as you are!”
Terry and Arden stood dumbfounded. Completely taken by surprise, they moved on past the surly gardener and involuntarily looked back at him without attempting to answer him.
The heavy, thickset man in tattered overalls and an old-fashioned, gray coat-sweater looked over his shoulder with wild eyes, as though expecting someone to come along and stop his tirade.
“If I was to tell you all I know,” he went on, “what with alarm bells ringing and all, you’d pack up and take the next train home. Why, last night—”
Terry nudged Arden, murmuring:
“Don’t let’s stand here like a couple of ninnies and let him talk to us this way. Come on! I think he’s a little crazy!”
Arden pulled away from Terry. “But I want to hear what he’s saying.”
Anson heard them whispering.
“Heedless young things!” he scolded. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t do as I say.” Turning abruptly, he picked up the rake that had slipped to the ground and shuffled off through the rustling leaves in the direction of the orchard.
“There, you see!” exclaimed Arden. “I told you there was something weird down in that old orchard!”
“I’ve a good mind to follow him and see where he’s going,” said Terry. “What do you say, Arden, to a little more sleuthing?”
“I’m game,” Arden answered. But even as she spoke the electric bell in Bordmust Hall announced the beginning of the first classes.
“We can’t go now,” said Terry. “We’ll have to let it wait.”
“Yes,” agreed Arden reluctantly.
The two girls entered the building, having a last glimpse of the mysterious gardener still shuffling his way through the rustling leaves toward the orchard where so many strange things had happened.
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