The Orchard Secret Page 17

  CHAPTER XVII In Danger

  With startling suddenness, the night, aided by the dense fog, settleddown over Cedar Ridge. Arden was alarmed. She had not thought it was solate, though she was quite sure the supper bell had not yet rung. She ranfaster, her beating heart keeping time with her pattering feet.

  "Oh, I hope Terry and Sim will come back with me and see this forthemselves," she thought. "How wonderful that I have made this discovery!I need not wire Dad for that money after all. I'm sure," she tried toconvince herself, "that I am right. Quite sure!"

  There was no time to be lost. Supper would soon be served and the threefrom 513 dared not be absent from their places at the table very long.Nor would they want to be. Appetites were remarkably keen at the college,in spite of all the mystery and excitement and notwithstanding the eatingthat was done between meals.

  As Arden approached the main building which loomed up out of the fog likesome dream castle, she called on her childhood friend, the "good fairy."She murmured: "Good fairy, please don't let us get caught, and for awish, I wish that Terry and Sim will come back with me right away!"

  It seemed the good fairy did not entirely desert her child, for, as Ardenstarted up the stairs, she met her two chums coming down.

  "Terry! Sim! I've the most exciting thing to tell you!" Arden gulped andcontinued: "Come outside a moment."

  "Good heavens! You look as if you'd seen a ghost! Take a breath--orsomething--before you pass out!" advised Terry, a little incredulous.

  "Well, tell us, Arden!" Sim begged, wringing her hands in simulatedmelodramatic fashion. "This suspense is awful! It's making an old womanof me!"

  "I don't want anyone to hear," Arden confided. "Can't you step outsidefor a few seconds? You won't be cold. I want you to do something for me."

  Sim and Terry looked at each other.

  "Better humor her, Sim. She might turn violent. Come on," Terry said inan exaggerated attempt at soothing a patient.

  "If I get violent it will be because you two show such little naturalcuriosity, Bernice Westover," Arden retorted testily. "When you hear whatI saw----"

  "How can we _hear_ what you _saw_?" mocked Sim.

  "Oh--you----" began Arden, really provoked now.

  "All right, my dear." Terry held open the main entrance door and motionedthe other two out ahead of her. "If anyone wonders why we are going outwhen the supper bell has almost rung, we can say we want a breath offresh air for an appetite."

  "As if anyone who knows the feed here would believe that!" mocked Sim.

  But in spite of the banter, Arden finally herded her chums down to thecinder path in front of the dormitory building.

  "Come along a little farther," she urged. "No one must hear!"

  Terry and Sim followed, now really convinced that Arden had something ofmoment to impart to them. She looked around half in caution, half infear. When they were some distance from the main entrance and shrouded inthe fog, Arden said in a low voice:

  "I was just over to the station----"

  "You were!" interrupted Sim. "Why, Arden Blake! If you were seen, it'llbe just too bad! What if Tiddy finds out?"

  "Yes, I know. But there are times when rules have to be broken," admittedArden. "If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson or some historicpersonages like that hadn't drafted a new constitution in Philadelphiawhen they had no right to do so, I wouldn't be telling you all this."

  "All what? That you were over to the station? It's a grand night to breakrules but a better one for murders," declared Terry, sniffing the fogwith her head thrown back and her eyes half shut.

  "If you'd stop interrupting I could tell you." Arden was beginning tolose patience. "I was over at the station, as I said, and I saw someonethere: the night ticket agent, who is the very image of the missing manwhose picture we saw on the reward notice in the post office! There!"Arden paused to see what effect this statement had on her friends. Theyseemed to take it very calmly, and Terry said, most practically:

  "Nonsense, Arden. If he was the man you think he is, someone else wouldhave noticed him long ago and claimed the reward."

  "Besides," added Sim, "no young man, or old one either, who wanted tokeep his whereabouts secret would be so foolish as to appear in so publica place as a railroad ticket office, and near the place where there washanging a poster offering a thousand dollars for information about him."

  "Not necessarily," countered Arden calmly. "I have read somewhere thatthe cleverest criminals (not that Mr. Pangborn is one, though) alwaysstay right in the place where they have committed a crime or are supposedto have vanished from. The trick is, that no one ever thinks of lookingso near home for them. Poe has a story about a missing letter that wasall the while right in the open, stuck in a rack with a lot of others."

  "Oh, yes, we had to read that in English lit," admitted Terry.

  "Well, what do you want to do, Sherlock--go over and identify thecorpse?" asked Sim. "If you do, I'm afraid I can't come. I have to go toMary Todd for a notebook."

  "Please, Sim, it won't take a minute, or only two or three, anyhow. Youcan come right back and be in time for supper. Think how thrilling itwould be if----"

  "It most likely won't be," finished Terry. "But I'm game. I like fog.It's good for the complexion."

  "If you and Terry go, I'll come, too, of course. But I think you're on awild-goose chase," declared Sim.

  "But I tell you he looked exactly like the poster!" affirmed Arden. "Istood here looking at him, with my mouth open like a fish, while hewaited for me to speak. I was so surprised I just had to stammersomething about forgetting what I came for, say I'd be back later, andrun away. I don't know what he thought of me."

  "Maybe he can't think. Anyhow, come on, Sim. But make it snappy. I've gotsomething else to do more important than this," said Terry.

  Arm in arm the three girls, a little nervous when they realized whatwould happen if they were caught breaking the campus rule in effectagainst them, started for the station. Arden hurried them impatiently,but Terry was in one of her teasing moods and refused to be hastened,pausing now and then to remark on the beauty of the night and attemptingto point out, in the dense fog, places of interest on their briefjourney.

  At the station a quick look through an end window showed the waiting roomto be unoccupied except for a man standing near the big white pot-stove.

  "There he is--the agent!" whispered Arden. "He's come out of his coop."

  "You'd think he was a chicken!" chuckled Sim.

  "Oh, be quiet!" Arden begged. "Now you two go in and look at him."

  "Aren't you coming?" asked Terry.

  "No. I'll wait outside here. I don't want him to see me again. You two goin. Get a good look at him. Ask for--for time-tables. Oh, I'm soexcited!"

  "Don't be so nervous," Terry admonished. "You'll be so disappointed ifyou're wrong. However--come on, Sim!"

  Terry and Sim, with none of the reluctance Arden was sure she would haveexperienced, marched around to the door. Arden drew back into the shadowsof the fog and waited. She heard her chums enter, dimly heard the murmursof their voices as, presumably, they asked for time-tables and caught thesqueak of the door hinges again.

  "Where'd she go?" Terry murmured. Evidently she and Sim could not see thehidden Arden.

  "I hope this isn't her idea of a joke, to get us here and then run back,"grumbled Sim.

  "No! No! Here I am!" exclaimed Arden, coming forth out of the gloom. "Didyou--was he--is he----"

  "Arden, my pet," began Terry, flipping a damp time-table, "we fear foryour reason, we, your devoted friends. That agent looks no more like thepicture of Harry Pangborn than you do!"

  "No?" gasped Arden. "I thought he was the very image of the posterpicture."

  "Sorry, Arden," Sim continued. "But you'll have to do better than this toclaim the reward. That's that, and as I'm dripping with dampness, I'mgoing back where it's light and dry and warm and where I can eat."

&nb
sp; "Yes, let's go back!" agreed Terry, feeling a little sorry for Arden.

  Arden looked sadly at her chums. "And I was almost sure," she murmured."Don't you think there's a small, a tiny resemblance?"

  "Not the slightest!" chorused Terry and Sim.

  "Well, then, we must get back, I suppose. But I certainly feel like aballoon that has suddenly lost its gas." Arden sighed.

  Slowly the three started down the station platform to the walk that ledacross the tracks and on to the college. As they were about to leave theshadowy shelter of the overhanging roof, Arden, who was in the lead,reached back two cautioning and restraining hands toward Terry and Sim.

  "Wait!" she whispered.

  "What is it?" they asked.

  "Ye gods! Here comes Henny--our reverend chaplain! He mustn't see us hereat this hour! Oh, what shall we do?"

  Arden was in a panic of fear.