CHAPTER XV
A NOISY PARISIAN GHOST
“MAKES me feel like the greenest variety of green freshman,” said Billy, when he had shaken hands all around, “but still I do think he managed awfully well, and that he’d have taken in almost anybody with his smooth stories. Of course I haven’t traveled much, but still——”
“Do go ahead and tell us about his taking your money,” begged Babbie impatiently, “and then we can discuss him to our hearts’ content.”
Billy nodded assent. “Well,” he began, “you all know about our coming over to Paris together. Naturally, as I can’t speak French, Trevelyan chose the hotel—one he knew about on the Rue de Rivoli—and our rooms opened together.” Billy chuckled. “I thought of that when I gave him the money. Made me feel extra sure about getting it back.”
“Do go straight along,” commanded Babbie. “If you don’t you’ll never get to the robbery part.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a robbery,” laughed Billy. “It was something much smoother. I’ll get to it in a minute. You know already about our going sightseeing yesterday and then coming here. Well, when we got home there was a note from Trevelyan’s missing sister.” Billy paused. “Come to think of it, I didn’t see that note. But if I had, it might have been faked just the same. Anyhow Trevelyan said there was a note from his sister to say that the countess was prostrated by the heat, and they’d had to hurry home right after lunch. That sounded perfectly reasonable. It was a beastly hot day, and of course if the countess was sick, somebody had to go home with her. The sister said also that she was beginning to be in a hurry to get into her own house, and Trevelyan said that if I didn’t mind he guessed we’d better do a little shopping this morning. It seems that his sister had ordered different things for the house put aside for his approval, and he was to go to the shops and look at them and have them sent out.” Billy paused reflectively. “Sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it?”
The girls nodded. “Do go on,” urged Madeline.
“Well,” Billy took up the tale, “this morning we started out in a taximeter cab. First we went to two or three big stores and Trevelyan looked at rugs and curtains and one thing and another that his sister had selected and ordered them sent out to their house. At least he said so. My not speaking French made me an easy mark for any tale he wanted to tell me. Once or twice he counted his money to see if he had enough to do one more errand with before we went to the bank. It was too early to go when we started.”
“Did he actually pay for the curtains and things?” asked Babe.
Billy hesitated. “I—well, I guess I didn’t notice. Judging by the sequel I’m pretty sure he didn’t. But he pretended that he had, and finally he said we must go to the bank next. I waited in the carriage. When he came back he was awfully put out. It seems there is a rule in this town that you can’t draw money from a bank—from that one where he had his account anyway—until you’ve been here three days. Something to do with the police regulations about foreign visitors. His three days wouldn’t be up till to-morrow, so he couldn’t draw any money. He said he’d known the rule before but he’d forgotten about it.”
“Well, couldn’t his shopping wait a day?” asked Babe.
“All but one item,” answered Billy solemnly. “You see the ball to-night was to be in honor of his sister’s birthday, and he wanted to take her a birthday present. She’d chosen that, too, at his request, and we went to look at it. It was a beauty of a pearl pendant. Trevelyan told the shop-keeper how he was fixed, and ordered the pendant kept for him until to-morrow. Naturally I asked if I couldn’t accommodate him with a little loan, so we could take the pendant out with us to-night. But he thanked me and said he couldn’t think of borrowing of me, and we drove off. He was awfully cut up about the pendant, though he kept saying it didn’t matter at all, only, as he put it, ‘You know how women are about such things. They like a present at the time. If they’re going to have a birthday, they want their gifts on the day. By the next day they’ve forgotten all about it.’ But this time it couldn’t be helped, he said, and it didn’t really matter. And then he’d remark again that he was afraid his sister would be awfully disappointed, especially as he’d made a point of her picking out the pendant and all. But when I offered to lend him some money again, he seemed almost hurt and refused quick as a flash. Finally he changed the subject, said it was a shame to make me waste a morning in Paris over his private affairs, and asked me where we should go sightseeing. It made me feel awfully small to think how considerate and unselfish he was, and I pulled out all the money I had and fairly forced it into his hands. He seemed pleased and thanked me but said it wouldn’t be any use to him because it wasn’t enough. The pendant cost fifty pounds, and he needed forty to make up what he had. So I thought how we were to be together all the afternoon at the Louvre with you girls and at the ball in the evening, and then sleeping in adjoining rooms, and in the morning he could get his money all right. So I stuffed my beggarly thirty dollars into my pocket, and told him to tell the man to drive straight to the American Express, so I could get two hundred dollars’ worth of checks cashed.”
“And that time he didn’t object?” asked Betty.
Billy shook his head. “Told me I was a good fellow, wrung my hand till it ached, and assured me that it was only a day’s loan or he wouldn’t think of taking it. Then we got the money, had a gay little lunch, and stopped at our hotel on our way to meet you. I didn’t go in. Trevelyan wanted to change his coat for a lighter one, because it had turned so hot. He stopped for the mail to be distributed, so he was gone some minutes, and we were ten minutes late in meeting you.”
“And then you went to the wrong place,” said Babbie severely.
“You can’t blame me for that,” returned Billy. “I asked right away if there could be any mistake about the meeting-place and Trevelyan said no. Later he explained that there was another principal entrance, though he didn’t suppose any one would consider it the main one, and he suggested that I wait while he went to look for you at the other entrance and in some of the galleries. He’d been gone about five minutes when I remembered my two hundred dollars, saw through his little game, and started in hot pursuit.”
“And he got away?” demanded Madeline eagerly.
“Without trying. You see, he’d packed up his traps while he waited for the mail to be distributed, and he had probably kept the cab waiting to drive him back to our hotel whenever he managed to shake me off. It’s almost across from the Louvre and I didn’t see a cab, so I ran. But when I got there he was gone, bag and baggage—by a back way at that, so the hotel has lost a little to keep me company. It was a perfectly reliable hotel, you understand—one of the first few in Baedeker.”
“And have you been to the police?” asked Babe excitedly. “They ought to help you catch him.”
Billy smiled delightedly. “Then you don’t see the joke, either. The hotel people promised to inform the police, and I went to see the American consul. He put me on to the fact that I haven’t a thing against Trevelyan. I lent him the money voluntarily—pressed it upon him, in fact. The police can’t help me. I’ve ‘done’ myself.”
“You’re awfully cheerful about it,” said Madeline approvingly.
“I wasn’t at first,” laughed Billy, “but it’s such a good story—or it would be if we knew all the fine points, such as whether or not there is a sister or a countess.”
“But he telephoned the sister,” suggested Babe.
“May have telephoned thin air,” said Billy. “It was in a booth, so no one knows what he did.”
“But the countess sent the invitation,” put in Betty.
“And I saw Trevelyan mail the answer,” added Billy. “But he may have redirected it on the sly to some of his confederates. He must have at least one in Paris, I think, to manage getting the mail back and forth.”
“Do you still think it’s all right about his having two names?” asked Babbie. “Did you depend on what he told you about that, or did you make other inquiries?”
“About his having two names?” repeated Billy questioningly.
“The two that Betty wrote John about,” Babbie reminded him.
“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,” Billy persisted. When Betty had explained, he assured her that John never got her letter. “But Trevelyan must have counted on your letting us know,” he said. “Gee! but he had nerve to keep on when he knew he was suspected. I wonder—do you suppose that had anything to do with his not finding you sooner yesterday? My cab-man didn’t have the least trouble to-day, I noticed.”
“And he sat near you while you were here. I remember that,” contributed Babe. “But how about the dance? What was his object in planning that?”
Billy hesitated. “The consul gave me a good fatherly talk, and he had a pretty gruesome suggestion about that ball. He says Fontainebleau—that’s where the countess lives, you know—is on the edge of a great forest, and that you could get a stranger out there and drive him off somewhere and rob him without half trying.” He turned to Babbie. “Do you remember our guying him about your money and your ring? Well, I think that was undoubtedly his scheme. But when you hung back and he knew that you had probably heard Miss Wales’s story, why then he cooked up a substitute. My checks wouldn’t have been safe plunder, so there was no use in holding me up.”
Babbie shivered. “I guess on the edge of a real adventure is as near as I want to be. Think of being driven into a forest and robbed!”
Billy looked very solemn, too. “Please don’t think of it,” he advised her. “I’d have given a lot more than two hundred dollars to keep you out of a thing like that.”
“Have you got your passage home?” asked Betty, so seriously that every one burst out laughing.
“I have,” Billy assured her, “all nicely paid for. And I shan’t send home for more money, not if I have to pawn the beautiful garments that I had made on Bond Street, expressly for the countess’s ball. How Trevelyan must have enjoyed watching me order those clothes! Well, he deserved to get some fun out of it. Sight-seeing with me probably bored him awfully, if he wasn’t as new to London as he pretended to be, and all his clever little contrivances must have kept him working overtime. Lots of honest men earn two hundred a month without taking half the trouble.”
“I’m confirmed in my belief that he was French,” declared Madeline. “He certainly must have plenty of friends in Paris. He probably was in hiding in Australia while one of his bold, bad adventures was being forgotten over here.”
“Then he must have been there some little time,” said Billy, “for his stories certainly had local color all right. But I don’t think I should depend much on his advice if I were John Morton. John and he got quite chummy over the prospects for sheep-raising out there. By the way, John ought to be over here before long. Won’t it be fun springing all this on him?”
“The best of it is,” said Madeline, “that the more you think about it the nicer it gets. It’s all so clever and finished—and—well, typically adventurous, from the minute he inquired of you about that London Club until he vanished down the passage at the Louvre this afternoon. It’s so interesting to wonder what he thought and how he felt as he played his cool little game.”
“Only it wasn’t a game,” Babe objected. “It was business. Think of making friends with people just so you can rob them afterward! I always thought chewing gum was about the silliest kind of a business, but I’d rather have my father in chewing gum than in adventures.”
Mrs. Hildreth came into the garden just then and the girls pounced upon her with their exciting story, making Billy stay to dinner to help them tell it properly. At her plate Betty found a letter which had been sent direct to the pension instead of to the express office.
“I wonder who knows I’m here,” she said, tearing open the envelope, which was addressed in a strange hand.
“Probably an advertisement,” suggested Madeline.
THE GIRLS POUNCED UPON HER
But it wasn’t. It was Betty’s letter to John Morton, with “not found” written boldly across the address.
Billy inspected it eagerly. “That’s not his writing, but it’s his work. Nobody else could have sent it here. So he did scheme to keep us apart! That was why he took us to the wrong station to see you off.”
“And why he kept you out so late the night before,” put in Madeline. “We might have tried to telephone you about the name then. But I don’t see why he returned Betty’s letter. He might just as well have thrown it away.”
“Things you throw away leave tracks behind,” said Billy wisely. “But more likely he did it for the joke—timing it to get here to-night and all. Following all his moves is like going to a cobweb party. It will take us weeks, and then we shall miss some of the best points.”
As he was saying good-night Billy gave a sudden exclamation. “I’ve got to go back to London to-morrow to meet the crew, and I’d forgotten all about it. Well, I guess I’ve seen as much of some sides of Parisian life as most fellows could in three days, even if I didn’t get further than the front entrance of the Louvre.”
That night Babbie Hildreth slept lightly and dreamed strange dreams. About midnight she knocked the B’s knock on Babe’s door.
“No, I’m not sick, and I haven’t been robbed,” she said, in answer to Babe’s plaintive inquiries. “But there’s a ghost on my side of the house, and all the rooms around me are empty, so you couldn’t expect me to stay there all by myself.”
“Ghosts are your specialty,” murmured Babe, sleepily.
“Well, we’re not supposed to pursue our specialties alone,” objected Babbie. “I thought you’d be interested. Honestly it’s the funniest thing,” she went on earnestly. “Some one knocked on the gate, because he was locked out, I suppose, softly at first and then louder and louder. But now the gate has been opened, and still the person stands and knocks and knocks. It’s a man, I think.”
“Perhaps he’s drunk and doesn’t know enough to come in,” suggested Babe.
“No, he knocks as if he had a definite, sensible reason,” said Babbie decisively. “Hark! He’s actually pounding now. I hope Mademoiselle will turn him out in the morning, that is if he’s a boarder and not a ghost trying to wake up the person that it has come back to haunt.”
“Whatever he is, he’s stopped to rest,” said Babe. “If he doesn’t begin again you’d be willing to go back to bed, wouldn’t you? Or I’ll go back and you can stay here.”
“Listen.” Babbie clutched Babe’s arm. “There’s a noise on the stairs.”
There was, and presently it came nearer down the hallway to the door. It was a queer noise like a stealthy step with a dull thump accenting it sharply now and then. Presently it stopped, somewhere out in Babbie’s hallway, there was the click of a key in a lock, and then the steps began again, coming slowly back through the hall and down the stairs.
“Does sound ghostly,” admitted Babe, “and it doesn’t sound a bit drunk. And it can’t be a boarder because it’s going out again.”
“Well, as long as it’s gone, I guess I dare to go back,” said Babbie presently. “You watch me down the hall, Babe.”
“Stay here, if you’d rather,” Babe offered again, but Babbie insisted that she wasn’t afraid and went off, her candle flickering in the draughty passageway. The next thing Babe knew the sunshine was sifting through the branches of the magnolia tree and her watch said half-past eight o’clock. So, forgetting that it had been half an hour fast the night before, she dressed in a tremendous hurry and was astonished when she peeped out from behind her curtains as usual to see who was down, to find only a solitary gentleman breakfasting in the farthest corner of the garden.
“Why it looks like—it is John Morton,” she said to herself. “Now what in the world is he doing here, I should like to know?” And she sat down on the edge of her bed in a fashion that seemed to say, “If any one thinks I’m going down to breakfast now, he’s much mistaken.” But the very next minute she jumped up again, surveyed herself anxiously in the glass, and, without stopping to get Madeline and Betty, as the first one to be ready always did, marched down-stairs and out into the court. Her start of surprise when she came into sight of John would have secured her a part in the senior play at Harding, but John was so surprised himself that any bungler could have taken him in.
“You here?” he gasped.
“Yes,” said Babe, coolly. “Didn’t you know it?”
“Of course not. Some friend of Dwight’s gave us the address. It’s very near to the big library where he’s got to bone.”
“I see,” said Babe. Then there was a long and dreadful pause. At last Babe broke it. “I presume he won’t care to move. Don’t let’s act like sillies. Let’s be perfectly nice and friendly, so no one will know how you—how we feel. For instance, if I go off now into another corner of the garden every one will want to laugh at us.”
“Do sit down here by all means,” said John politely, springing to draw up a chair for her.
There was another pause.
“I suppose we’ve got to talk,” said John doggedly at last. “How are the—what do you call them?—oh, yes, the dominant interests? How are they coming on?”
“We had a ghost last night,” said Babe primly. “It was trying to haunt some one in the house apparently. It banged and banged——”
“Why that was me,” said John with an ungrammatical suddenness that broke the ice. “You see Dwight and I got here about eight and after we’d settled our traps we went for a walk. Dwight got sleepy and came back, but I tramped pretty nearly all over Paris, I should say. And when I got here at last, I happened to think that I didn’t know the way to my room well enough to risk finding it alone. So I called up the porter. He thought I only wanted the gate opened, and it seems he has it fixed so he can do that without getting out of bed. But I pounded and pounded until he decided I was crazy, and came to put me out. And I finally made him understand the fix I was in.”
“You made the queerest noise coming up-stairs,” said Babe. “It sounded too ghostly for anything.”
“The porter has a wooden leg,” explained John, “so he can’t go quietly. He made all the noise that was made inside the house. I’m very sorry I woke you all up and frightened you.”
“Oh, we aren’t so nervous as all that,” Babe assured him gaily, and was frightened to see how friendly her words sounded. “Babbie,” she called hastily, as Babbie appeared in the doorway, “come and see the noisy Parisian ghost and tell him about the ghostly disappearance of his dear friend Mr. Trevelyan.”
Under cover of the story, Babe disappeared.
“You silly, silly thing,” she whispered, in the seclusion of her nun’s cell, “you’re glad to see him when you’re not sure he’s glad to see you. Don’t try to deny it, because it’s true. But don’t you dare to let him know it. When he says he’s sorry he was so horrid you can decide what to say, but not before. I hope you’ve got pride enough to be a man-hater as long as he is a woman-hater.”
Having relieved her mind to this extent, Babe went to find Betty and told her about John.
“I rely on you to stick by me,” she said. “The others will all try to leave us alone together, and that’s just what I don’t want. It’s queer how easy it is to tell you things, Betty. I suppose that’s one reason why Mr. Morton calls you Miss B. A.”
