“Wake up! It’s time to go!”
“Oh!” gasped the startled Terry, the other two echoing her surprise with their own. They had no idea that they had slumbered.
Silently they took their flashlights and crept down the darkened corridor. The kitchen was far below on the same floor with the dining room. The kitchen was bright enough by day, for there were windows on three sides, but it was as dark as a cave at night. A large long table-bench ran the length of one side of the room. On this the plates were served to be carried into the dining hall by waitresses. Above the bench were racks for holding dishes. Gleaming pots, pans, and kettles hung on the wall near the huge stove, its fire now banked for the night. Shining copper tanks for hot water to make tea and boil the coffee caught and reflected the beams from flashlights carried by the marauders.
Unaccustomed to the strange place, the girls all stood still for a few moments to get their bearings. Arden gave a sudden frightened squeal as a startled mouse ran across her foot.
“Oh,” she gasped. “The place is overrun with the little beasts!”
“Hush!” cautioned Jane Randall. “That watchman may hear us. He comes in here on his rounds.”
“Where’s the food, Jane?” whispered Terry, advancing farther into the room which, somehow, had a spooky atmosphere.
“It ought to be around here some place,” Jane replied cautiously.
“Ah-a-a-ah! Pies!” suddenly exclaimed Terry as she opened the door of a large cupboard.
“Let’s take a few. They are for tomorrow, I suppose, and must have been baked late this afternoon. What do they smell like, Terry?” asked Sim.
“They all smell pretty much alike to me. I’ll take four, one off each shelf. We ought to get a variety that way,” suggested Terry.
The other girls were silently exploring, by means of their electric torches, the dark corners of the kitchen. They decided against taking bread or rolls as being too unromantic for a midnight feast. Jane convinced them that milk would do nicely to wash down the food, and it was when Arden opened the door of the immense refrigerator that she made the prize discovery of the evening.
“Look what I’ve found!” she exclaimed. “Two roasted chickens!”
“Lovely!” breathed Sim. “Come over here, kids! Arden has struck a gold mine!”
Temporarily leaving their own investigations, the other girls crowded around the ice box and focused their lights on the innocent browned birds.
“The sight of them makes my mouth water!” announced Sim. “But we must have enough food, now, with these as a background. Milk, pie and roast chickens! Lovely! Let’s take them and go quickly before we are caught.”
Arden reached in and lifted out one of the doomed chickens. She turned half around to hand it to Sim, who was waiting to take it, when the whole party of girls was suddenly frozen into immobility with terror.
For through the silence of the night sounded mournfully:
Dong! Ding-dong! Dong! Dong!
It was the old alarm bell again sonorously clanging at the mystic hour of twelve—the hour when “witches, warlocks an’ lang-nebbied things” are free to roam.
“Heavens! What’s that?” gasped Jane Randall, though well she and the others knew.
“It’s that bell again,” said Arden unnecessarily. She stood holding firmly to a leg of the chicken while Sim dug her fingers into the soft browned flesh beneath a wing. They laughed over it later, of course. But just now terror gripped them.
Terry was holding the pies so tightly in her fright that her fingers punctured the crust and went messily into the fruit beneath. They all stood like children who had been playing “statues”; in just the positions they had assumed when that ghostly bell began to toll.
It stopped for a moment and then began to peal again, if anything more loudly than at first. Then the girls came back to life, and while it was still clanging the second time, Arden had presence of mind enough to close the refrigerator door, to stave off discovery as long as possible if the authorities entered the kitchen. Then, with the other girls, who were also holding to the food they had captured, Arden ran to the low windows on the north side of the kitchen. They all crowded close to the glass casement and peered out into the night. The bell sounded more clearly from this vantage point.
“Who can be ringing it?” murmured Jane. “I hate bells or whistles in the night. It always seems so—ghostly!”
“Stop it!” someone implored.
“I’d like to run around outside and find out about it,” declared Terry. “Of course, it must be someone pulling the rope. Bells don’t ring of themselves.”
“Maybe the wind,” suggested Mary Todd.
“The wind couldn’t ring that old bell,” declared Arden. “It’s too heavy to be swayed by what little breeze there is tonight. And it’s high up on the wall, under a sort of canopy. No, someone pulled that rope.”
“But the rope is high up, out of reach from the ground,” said Sim who had noticed that fact.
Puzzled, alarmed, and in momentary fear of being discovered in the midnight raid, the girls stood at the window. It was in a sort of extension of the building and faced the north, so that from it a view could be had of the rear college grounds leading down to the orchard.
It was at this scene the girls were now gazing, some illumination being furnished by a pale and watery moon now and then hidden by scudding clouds.
Suddenly Ethel Anderson clutched Arden by the arm, so violently as almost to cause the dropping of the chicken, and Ethel exclaimed:
“What’s that dark thing on the lawn near the orchard?”
“Where?” asked several, crowding closer.
“There!” Ethel pointed at a moment when the moon came out of the clouds.
“Looks like a black dog, to me,” Terry said. “Or perhaps—”
Terry’s sentence was never finished, for Arden broke in with:
“It’s a man! A man crawling on his hands and knees! It is! Look!”
The last wisp of cloud was wiped from the face of the moon. The form of the crawling man was seen plainly.
“Oh, heavens!”
“We must tell someone!”
“What’ll we do?”
“We must wake Tiddy!”
“Oh, let’s get out of here!”
“Who is it?”
Questions, exclamations, fearsome gasps and excited advice all tripped pell-mell from the girls.
Then, quickly, Arden took control of the situation.
“Hush, girls!” she calmly advised. “All of you keep quiet. Now, just a moment, please.”
Her calm voice had its effect, and they all grew quiet, though there was not one whose breathing came naturally. Arden managed to raise the lower sash a little way.
And then, through this opening, as the girls watched the black, crawling figure, came a voice feebly calling:
“Help! Help! Help!”
“It’s Henny!” exclaimed Terry as she and the others recognized the squeaky voice of the aged chaplain. “Dr. Bordmust; and he’s hurt!”
CHAPTER XXIV
The Dean Explains
The mysteriously tolled bell had ceased ringing now. Fascinated, the girls remained at the window looking at the prone black figure of Rev. Dr. Bordmust lying on the edge of the sinister orchard. That the orchard was sinister at least Arden, Sim, and Terry were ready to testify.
The last cry for help from the aged chaplain and the final echo of the tolling bell came together.
“What shall we do, Arden?” murmured Terry.
“We must do something!” insisted Jane.
“Yes, it’s sort of up to us, since we’re here on the scene,” agreed Sim.
“The dean will have to know about this,” suggested Terry.
“But there’s something else to do first,” spoke Arden.
“What?” chorused her chums.
“That poor man is hurt,” went on Arden. “He needs help, and we must hurry to get it. I’ll tell you what. We three,” she mot
ioned to herself and her roommates, “are already campused. Whatever happens can’t make much difference to us, even if we’re caught now. We’ll go out and see what we can do to help poor Henny, and you others go tell Tiddy.”
“A good idea!” assented Sim. “Jane, you and the others can take the food with you when you go to tell Tiddy. It’s a wonder she or some of the others haven’t been aroused already by the bell. But when you go to her, hide the food, somehow. No use wasting it after all the trouble we had getting it.”
“No, indeed,” said Ethel Anderson.
Quickly the two groups separated. Arden, Sim, and Terry hurried out of a rear door, which they unlocked, while Jane and the others, stuffing the pies, chickens, and bottles of milk under their big sweaters, hastened to take word to the dean.
Arden, Sim, and Terry ran with all the frightened speed they could summon across the damp grass of the rear campus toward the edge of the orchard. By another gleam of moonlight they had a glimpse of the chaplain resuming his painful crawling after a period of rest following his cries for help.
When he saw the girls running toward him, Dr. Bordmust, as if giving up the fight, now that assistance was at hand, collapsed on the leaf-strewn ground.
Terry was the first to reach him.
“Are you hurt, Dr. Bordmust?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Do tell us! Tell us how we can help you,” appealed Sim.
“Are you badly injured?” faltered Arden.
“My leg—I think my right leg is broken,” he faltered. “It is very painful. I cannot bear my weight on it. That is why I had to crawl along.”
“Did you fall?” asked Arden.
“Not exactly. I was struck by something—something attacked me as I was walking through the orchard. It was some great, black, rushing shape that threw itself upon me. I went down heavily—I could feel the bones of my leg snap. I—I must have lost consciousness—for a time, at least. When I came to, I found myself lying beneath a tree. I managed to get this far, and then the pain—”
“We heard you call for help,” said Sim.
“You heard me—up in your room?” His voice was querulous.
The girls did not care to go into particulars.
“We have sent someone to bring help,” said Arden, kneeling down beside the aged chaplain. “But can we do anything to ease you until help comes?”
“Rest yourself, Dr. Bordmust,” Sim begged. She sat down in the wet grass and lifted the tired white head into her lap.
“You—you are very kind, young ladies,” the chaplain murmured. “I shall see that—”
“What’s the matter?” suddenly cried Arden as she saw his head sag queerly to one side.
“He’s fainted, I guess,” answered Sim.
“Oh, dear!” wailed Terry. “The poor man! But here come the girls and the dean, I think, and two men. Now we’ll be all right.”
“At least he will, though as for us—” Arden did not finish.
An excited throng of students and others hurried toward the three alarmed freshmen surrounding the chaplain. The dean, rather neatly dressed in spite of the hurry under which she had donned her garments, was in the lead.
Behind her was Miss Lucant, the college infirmarian. Then came Jane and her chums with the gardener, Anson Yaeger, and his helper, Tom Scott, bringing up in the rear.
“You certainly got a lot of help in a short time, Jane,” whispered Arden as the girls mingled.
“Oh, the dean was quick enough once she was awake. She sent me for Miss Lucant and had one of the girls telephone to the gardener’s house to rouse him. Tiddy certainly got organized quickly!”
Miss Anklon, who even had the forethought to bring a flashlight with her, focused it on the pale face of the chaplain, who still was stretched on the ground, his head in Sim’s lap.
“Take him to the infirmary at once!” the dean ordered. “Anson—Tom—you’ll have to get some sort of a stretcher to carry him. That leg, to me, looks to be broken.”
“It is,” said Arden.
The dean flashed a look and a gleam of light on her but said nothing, nor did she ask how Arden knew.
“I’ll have to run back and get a board—or something,” said Anson. “A stretcher is what we need, but—”
“We can pull a door off the old tool-shed!” suggested Tom Scott.
“Do that,” advised the dean. “Lose no time.”
Tom Scott hurried off in the darkness, before Anson could make up his mind what to do, and soon came back with a light door. On this Dr. Bordmust was carefully rolled, Sim pulling off her sweater to make a pillow for his head, and then the gardener and his assistant started on the melancholy journey to the college hospital.
Having seen this procession on its way, the dean spoke sharply to the nervous girls.
“Go at once to your rooms,” she ordered. “We shall have something to say about this in the morning.”
Realizing that they could do nothing more, and feeling that they must have excited the dean’s curiosity by all being dressed at that hour of the night, Arden and the others hurried into the dormitory and dispersed to their various rooms.
Meanwhile Dr. Bordmust, who had recovered consciousness, was taken to the infirmary, where Anson and Tom carefully undressed him and put him in bed, with an elderly teacher, who was also a nurse, to look after him. A physician was hurriedly summoned from town and set the broken leg. This much the girls guessed from observation and rumors that floated along the corridor’s grapevine route. For none of those engaged in the raid felt like going to bed at once.
And as the food had escaped the watchful eyes of the dean, it having been successfully hidden under sweaters, it was available for the post-midnight feast which was soon under way. Nor was the usual caution necessary, with the excitement over the chaplain’s strange adventure still seething.
As the girls ate they talked, naturally, each of the two groups telling the other their parts in the affair. They all admitted it was a queer mystery.
“Do you think the bell had anything to do with it?” Sim wanted to know.
“It might have been rung to draw our attention away from the orchard,” suggested Arden.
“But no one was paying the least bit of attention to the orchard in the first place,” objected Terry.
“But why was Henny there in the orchard at midnight?” Jane Randall propounded. “He had no business there.”
“No more than we had in the kitchen,” suggested Arden.
“But he was there,” declared Mary Todd.
“And something attacked him,” said Sim.
“And if you ask me,” said Arden positively, “I think that whatever it was that came at us, the night we had to get apples for the sophs, attacked our chaplain.”
“Well, what was that?” demanded Ethel.
“I don’t know,” Arden had to admit.
The girls were silent a moment, and then Sim asked:
“Did you have much trouble rousing Tiddy?”
“Yes,” Jane answered, “she sleeps like a horse. We couldn’t make her understand for the longest time. She never even noticed how we all bulged with food, and I think she didn’t hear the bell at all.”
So they talked until there was nothing left to eat though there was still much to wonder at. Arden hid the milk bottles in a closet. Jane Randall opened the door and was followed out by the other visitors to 513, who stole silently down the dark corridors and to their own rooms.
In spite of all the excitement, Arden and her roommates were soon sound asleep.
The next day the very walls of Cedar Ridge must have vibrated, so great was the talk. Rumors of the wildest sort were passed from girl to girl. Arden and her friends were a little afraid to tell of their part in the night’s adventure and so listened to the various stories and volunteered nothing.
At lunch, when the whole college was assembled, Tiddy rang her little bell, and immediately a deep hush followed the talk, laughter, and clatter of dishes.
“Young ladies,” began the dean, “so ridiculous are the rumors that are rife here today that I feel I must do a little explaining. Rev. Dr. Bordmust, while strolling through our orchard last night, was attacked by a huge black ram which knocked him down, and in the fall our chaplain’s right leg was broken below the knee. The ram, which it is learned is a savage beast, broke loose from a near-by farm.”
There were uneasy twistings and turnings on the part of the girls, and many whispered comments, despite the frowning warnings of various teachers scattered about the room.
“But you need have no further fears,” the dean went on. “The beast has been caught and penned up securely. It will be kept under restraint from this time on. So no one need have any fears of going into our orchard—if she has occasion to go there.”
“So this is what the taxi-man must have been hinting at,” thought Arden. “Though why he didn’t dare speak of it I can’t imagine. And I suppose it was the ram that knocked me down. I was lucky!”
“This is the explanation of the greater part of the night’s alarm, young ladies,” continued the dean. “It is all very simple. It is unfortunate that Dr. Bordmust was injured, but he is now resting comfortably, and another clergyman has been temporarily engaged, so there will be chapel service—as usual.” The dean smiled with dry humor, having noted flashes of joy on the faces of several students at the idea of escaping from morning devotions.
“Dr. Bordmust has asked me, as a favor to him,” stated the dean, “not to punish the girls who were out of their rooms against rules after hours. They kindly went to his assistance and summoned much-needed help. I am happy to accede to our chaplain’s request, for I know the whole undergraduate body is extremely fond of him. I will ask no questions of those girls. In fact, I hereby publicly thank them for their great presence of mind. There is only one thing I must insist on.”
There was a portentous pause, and the dean ended the silence by saying:
“If the ringing of the alarm bell was done as a joke—please don’t repeat it.” She smiled benignly. “Now you may go on with your lunch.”
CHAPTER XXV
Arden Is Convinced
Silence—a somewhat stunned and portentous silence—followed the dean’s explanation and remarks. Then a buzz of talk began. It spread all through the room, for the orchard mystery had grown to greater proportions than the faculty of Cedar Ridge had believed.
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