The Orchard Secret Part 1

The Orchard Secret.

by Cleo Garis.

CHAPTER I

The Warning

For a few uncertain moments no one had spoken. The old flivver b.u.mped over a little hill, and the girls seemed suddenly to realize they were entering upon that much antic.i.p.ated new experience--college life.

"It's lovely, isn't it!" exclaimed Arden Blake, resting her hand on Terry's shoulder. "Such beautiful pines--so tall and----"

"Mysterious!" supplied Sim Westover, making a dive for her compact.

"Thank you. I was about to say--stately," remarked Arden with a.s.sumed superciliousness. "And see the deer behind the bush, a stone deer, I suppose. But it's all so lovely!"

"Lovely indeed," agreed Terry as she was apt to do with anything Arden said or did. "Don't you think so, Sim?"

Sim, occupying most of the back seat of the rickety station car, felt differently about it and said so. Sim was that way.

"It's all very well," she murmured, busy with her compact, "all very well, my good girls, but isn't it about time we got inside the college?

After a train trip like the one we have just endured, I'll be glad to get my feet off Arden's suitcase. Wherever did you get such a big one, Arden?"

"It was given to me when we all decided to come to Cedar Ridge. You'll wish it was yours when you see what's inside. Oh, look! That must be the swimming-pool building!" There could be no mistake about it as they could note when the hara.s.sed little flivver was slowly completing the half circle of the cinder drive which curved like a crescent moon in front of Cedar Ridge College, and was approaching a gla.s.s-roofed structure set somewhat apart from the other buildings.

The roof was dome-shaped, and its gla.s.s panes, set in frames of copper which glinted in the rays of the red autumn sun, were thick and green like petrified ocean waves.

As they rattled past the pool building they saw a wheelbarrow standing right in the pathway. Somehow that odd obstruction looked out of place near a natatorium, and Sim said so, adding:

"I wonder what's the idea?"

"Oh, they're probably just cleaning it out," suggested Arden.

The cultivated rustic setting for the big gray stone structures made the whole scene picturesquely perfect, just as the prospectus had stated. But to the girls the college was also a little forbidding. Certainly there was nothing cozy about it--nothing inviting--and not every girl can boast the artist's taste.

The buildings were solid and ma.s.sive, as solid and dependable as the women instructors within who guided the four student years of "their girls." Besides the swimming pool, only the chapel, with its tall spire, caught the warm sunset glow and displayed it more lavishly. But that, of course, thought Arden, was because there was so much more gla.s.s, beautifully tinted, in the chapel windows.

As the wheels of the car crunched the cinders, Arden hoped she hadn't been wrong in urging Terry and Sim to come to Cedar Ridge with her. They had come because of her urging. There was no doubt of this. Had it not been for the promise of swimming, implied by the beautiful picture of the pool in the college prospectus, Sim would, she said, have been content to stay at home in Pentville.

As for Terry--where Arden went, there went Terry. They had been inseparable since the "baby grade" in Vincent Prep.

The driver of the car, a typical country taxi-man, probably too well trained to talk unbidden to the students, pulled up suddenly as he neared a lane that curved around a big elm and wended its way toward a distant grove.

"Down below there's th' orchard," he said hesitantly. "Ef I was you, I wouldn't go prowlin' around in it." He indicated a part of the extensive farm ground that was an inheritance of Cedar Ridge College--long rows of old gnarled trees, many of them now heavy with russet, red, golden, and yellow fruit. The orchard was separated from the eastern end of the dormitory building by a tall and tangled hedge but could be seen from the hill on which the building stood. "No, don't go down there," advised the driver as he let in the clutch.

"Why?" came a surprised and gasping chorus.

"Waal, queer things are said to happen down in that orchard. But don't ask me what!" he quickly cautioned. "I'm only hired to drive this tin Lizzie, an' I da.s.sn't talk."

Terry, who sat beside Arden, evinced a desire to put a question but thought better of it.

The girls looked wonderingly at one another as the car speeded along.

They were puzzled over this mysterious introduction to Cedar Ridge. For here was the college. That was no mystery but a solid fact.

They were there!

The flivver chugged on to the main entrance, and the girls alighted. As they reached the top of the ma.s.sive stone steps, a young man, porter evidently, picked up their bags as the taxi-man slid them along to him and quickly led the way inside the portals.

The very sight of a young man there, at this college for girls, even clad, as he was, in blue overalls, prompted a giggle. But Arden pinched Sim's arm and Sim didn't.

Just inside the doorway, at a desk near which the young man set down the bags, sat a severe-looking woman in black with the judicious linen collar and cuffs. She waited with a pencil poised over a large sheet of paper.

"I suppose this is where we are expected to register," murmured Arden.

"Yes," agreed Terry, as usual.

They gave their names to the severe woman, who permitted herself a frosty smile as she remarked:

"Oh, yes, freshmen. You young ladies have all been a.s.signed to the same room. Let me see." She consulted a list. "It is number 513 on the fifth floor of the main building." She made a note on the paper, and then, turning, addressed a distant shadowy corner, saying:

"Miss Everett will show you where it is. You may go to your room now, and when you hear the bell you will come to the recreation hall, which you will pa.s.s on your way. Miss Everett!" she called sharply.

A tall blonde girl came forward from the shadows, a little reluctantly, it appeared. Just why, neither Arden nor her two chums could imagine.

They didn't even know, yet, who Miss Everett was. This stately blonde girl, however, took matters into her own hands with some show of authority.

"Come this way, please," she said, addressing the three freshmen. They were a little uncertain whether or not to pick up their bags, now that the luggage had been brought into the building for them. But Miss Everett knew what to do.

The young fellow in the clean suit of blue overalls could now be seen at the end of the corridor. He was apparently deeply interested in the outside view, for he stood squarely before a window and seemed oblivious of his humble duties.

"Tom!" sharply called Miss Everett. At that the blue-clad man turned quickly and hurried toward the desk. "These bags to the fifth floor, Tom!"

"Yes'm," he murmured. He kept his head bowed. Perhaps he still wanted to retain that vision of the apple orchard in which he had been so interested. For it was toward the orchard he had been looking, as Arden and her chums noted when they went down toward the window. They could see the strange gnarled trees over the top of the high dark hedge. "Fifth floor?" questioned Tom, the porter. He was also an a.s.sistant gardener, as the girls later learned.

"Room 513," added the woman at the desk.

"Yes'm."

Arden thought she saw a little smile playing over the face of the good-looking young man as he started off ahead of the three freshmen, led by the stately Miss Everett. The porter was evidently going to a service elevator, as he pa.s.sed out through a side door and was then lost to sight, with the bags he carried so efficiently, all three of them, and not small, either.

Arden, Terry, and Sim, following Miss Everett, started up the brown polished stairs that reared skyward at the back of the large entrance hall.

Up and up and up they walked. All the landings and halls looked exactly alike, and the freshmen wondered how their guide retained her sense of direction and maintained the count.

Halfway up Terry murmured to Arden:

"Do you think there was anything in what he said?"

"Who said?"