The Girl Scouts at Bellaire Part 9

"Call him professor. Everyone does," Mary managed to say as they alighted.

"Come in, welcome!" announced the man, turning to the foot path that outlined the drive leading to the house.

It was a queer party that left the auto and silently followed Mary and the professor up to the artistic cottage, that stood almost hidden in tall, heavy chestnut trees. In spite of the general loss of this sort of tree, those sheltering the terra cottage bungalow were especially healthy and majestic, as could be seen even in the fast descending nightfall.

Mary rushed on ahead and touched the electric light b.u.t.ton inside the door, then she threw open the portal, quite like an experienced little hostess.

"This is the Imlay studio," remarked Jennie, who was the only one in the party familiar with Bellaire. "I thought it was closed when he died so suddenly."

"Did he die here?" asked the man Mary called Grandie, a note of alarm in his voice.

"Oh no, he was abroad and did not return," replied Jennie. It was evident this information brought relief to the questioner, for under the light that shone from the spray of bra.s.s lanterns his face perceptibly softened.

Somehow all the mysterious influence which had seemed to surround Mary at their first meeting with her was now oppressively noticeable within that house. It was scantily furnished with what remained of artist Imlay's belongings, but the air of suspicion usually a.s.sociated with old, abandoned places seemed to fairly seethe through the air. Even Jennie felt it, and to the scout girls, more vividly conscious always of any antagonism, the surroundings were actually uncanny.

"Won't you sit down?" said Mary, observing the almost rigid att.i.tude of her callers. But each politely declined to share the seat offered on the handsome low divan. Grace noticed its carvings looked rather ferocious, while Madaline clung to Jennie, without any pretense of apology. Cleo was now peering at something behind the stained gla.s.s door that separated the long living room from that adjoining. It was not exactly a light, yet it pa.s.sed back and forth and threw weird shadows through the gla.s.s. She was wondering if the people kept any other servant than Reda, who was surely not in the house at the time.

Scuffling about aimlessly, the professor suddenly dropped wearily into a big oaken chair, and as Mary turned toward him she too caught sight of the shadows now flickering through the leaded gla.s.s, with sinister effect and creepy significance. It might be the shaded glow of a small flash light.

"Grandie!" Mary gasped. "Who are they? Did Janos bring--anyone? Oh, don't move! It may be a trap!"

"Mary, Mary!" he moaned, "must I leave you!" and choking sobs shook the man so convulsively that Jennie dashed across the room and put her hand on the trembling form.

"Sir!" she spoke almost in a whisper. "You must not fear any harm from those wild people. We know they are trying to injure you, but the little girls have found a way to help. We have a man and a car at the door," she said close to his ear. "Can't you and the child leave this horrible place at once?" She spoke quickly, in m.u.f.fled tones.

"Oh, if we only could!" Mary sobbed. "Grandie dear, you are falling ill! What have they done to you? I heard Janos threaten Reda!"

The figure in the chair was now sagging into a helpless heap. Cleo and Grace, quick to sense the necessity for prompt action, had both hurried to the door to call the driver from the car. Even Madaline forgot her own timidity, and seeing a switch b.u.t.ton for what she thought to be lights, she crossed to the corner and quickly pressed a tiny b.u.t.ton.

As she did so she felt something like a wire with a spool attached, and almost unconsciously she gave the spool a yank. Instantly a flood of light of marvelous brilliancy engulfed the room.

"Oh!" Madaline screamed, shocked by the glare and a queer sizzling noise that hissed through the room. Jennie covered her eyes and clung to a chair, but Mary jumped to her feet and stood staring silently at the leaded gla.s.s door.

"Don't move!" she ordered.

There was a sudden crash, the sound of splintering gla.s.s, and then the room fell again into the sullen light reflected only from the group of hanging bra.s.s lanterns, the artistic shades for the regulation electric lights.

"They are gone!" breathed Mary. "Oh, what a miracle that was! You touched the wire--that sent a current all about them! Grandie!" She threw her arms about the shaking form, "you and I would never have thought of that. Are you safe? Our friends have saved us!"

And Madaline in her fear had actually touched off that alarm!

"Why!" she stammered, recovering herself and springing over to the side of Cleo and Grace, who had reentered the room. "How did I do that?"

"You touched the secret spring," said Mary. "Even I would have been afraid to do it, for it is so highly charged. But you see our--enemies got the shock, and we only saw the light. How--merciful to think they have gone!"

CHAPTER X

NEW FRIENDS

The very last to recover her composure was Jennie. Woman-like, she had courage enough to face the possibility of caring temporarily for a sick man, but the sudden manifestation of light and the unexplained racket and noise that followed were too much for the good-natured Jennie's nerves. She was now "going to pieces," and the girls found more to do for her than they did to care for Mary and the professor.

"Come on, Jennie," begged Cleo, "just get in the car and we will all hurry out of here as fast as we can. You and Professor Benson take the back seat, and we will all pile in as best we can. I could ride on the tool box if I had to."

"Oh, yes, do come away," Jennie managed to say between gasps of "oh dear me" and "gracious sakes alive." But she was following advice, and was soon being a.s.sisted to the back seat by Tom, the driver, who never for a moment lost the set hack-man's look, in spite of all the excitement. "Whatever will Mrs. Dunbar say to all this," further wailed Jennie.

"Don't you worry! Aunt Audrey will be glad we were able to help, and that you were with us," declared Cleo. "Mary says it will be all right to take her grandfather to the private sanitarium, the one we pa.s.sed along the mountain. Tom knows all about it, and thinks it is almost like a hotel, specially for sick people. Then Mary is coming home with us," declared Cleo delightedly. "Isn't that too lovely?"

Everyone agreed it was, this being evinced by the display of alacrity with which the party were all hurried in the car. Mary had managed to put together somehow a grip filled with the most necessary things for her grandfather. This she directed Tom to take care of, while in her own hands she carried a deep, woven basket, heavy with some articles surely too weighty and compact to be clothing.

Finally "embarked," as Grace called it, they were just turning out into the roadway when Reda appeared alone. Seeing the car she stopped stock still in her tracks, so that Tom was obliged to jam on the brakes or run her down. He did not s.h.i.+ft his gears and execute the change of speed without uttering the usual man's grumble, and no one could blame him for this.

"Reda!" called Mary, "we are going out with some friends. You lock up and take care of things. Go on now," she told Tom. "We don't want to hear what she thinks about it."

It was well they did not hear, for a more surprised and excited old woman than the self-same Reda it would not have been difficult to imagine. She gurgled, choked, gulped and stuttered in the foreign dialect, which only the professor and Mary could have understood.

Last seen she was going toward the Imlay studio, that was, and the house of terrors, as it had that evening proved to be for the young visitors at Bellaire.

But the evening was now delightfully changed, and just as her a.s.sociation with the girls had noticeably stimulated and enlivened Mary, so the meeting with the very much alive party had an encouraging effect on Professor Benson. He was now sufficiently recovered to sit up and talk with Mary, and seemed very much relieved to be saved from a bad night in the studio. He insisted he could walk una.s.sisted when Tom drew up to Crow's Nest Retreat, and as he imparted a volume of mysterious instructions and warnings to Mary, besides offering the most profuse attestation of thanks to his rescuers, no one would have imagined him other than a man suffering from a slight nervous attack.

Mary went to the door of the sanitarium with him, and her friends discreetly allowed these two a few moments to themselves.

"Isn't it too wonderful!" breathed Grace as they pa.s.sed from hearing.

"To think we are going to have Mary with us to-night," added Cleo with a gust of antic.i.p.ation.

"Can she sleep with me?" asked Madaline. "My bed is the largest."

"Whatever Aunt Audrey says, of course," Cleo felt obliged to answer.

Tom and Mary were returning, and although it was fully dark now, as Mary stepped again in the car the girls realized she had been crying.

"I have never been away from him before since Loved One asked him to care for me," she explained, "but I feel somehow different now. I do believe I was going to grow black and suspicious, like Reda, when you met me."

"No wonder," Jennie almost snapped. "I'm not what could be called a nervous woman, but this evening has been more than I would like to run into again. Not that I am not very glad to have been along, though I didn't help much, with my own fussing," she felt obliged to add, for Cleo had pinched her arm and Grace unb.u.t.toned her sweater, in an attempt to give the cue not to hurt Mary's feelings.

"Will everything be all right at your cottage, Mary?" asked Cleo, kindly.

"It will have to be for to-night," she replied. "But granddaddy has such precious belongings I will have to attend to things early to-morrow morning. He is dreadfully worried about leaving things, of course, but Janos has gone, and those others----" Her hands went up in a gesture of consternation, and the girls withheld their questions as to who the others were, and what could have been the nature of the mysterious happening in the back room of Imlay Studio.

All this time Mary was guarding the hand-made basket with jealous care, keeping it on her lap, and steadying it with arms as the car rumbled down the mountain road.

They were now within sight of Cragsnook and Jennie s.h.i.+fted about in evident relief.

"Here comes Shep!" exclaimed Madaline, as the big, s.h.a.ggy dog rushed out from the heather-edged driveway.

"And there is Aunt Audrey," added Cleo. "I'm so glad she's home."