CHAPTER XVII
A SECRET CLUB
"As long as you don't bite us, Jessie!" said Nan pacifically. "Here!" pushing a box of candy toward the irate one, "have a bon-bon and see if you can't calm down."
"I don't want to calm down!" cried Jessie Robinson, sinking into a chair and wrathfully pounding the arms of it with her fists. "I won't ever calm down again and neither will you when you hear what I have to say!"
"I bet it's about Kate or Lottie," guessed Jo.
Jessie stared at her.
"How did you know?"
Jo chuckled mirthlessly.
"Everything horrid comes from them," she explained.
"Well, this is horrid! It's the worst I ever heard——"
"Stop stammering and shoot," commanded Nan slangily, helping herself calmly to a bon-bon. "You might as well break the awful news and have it over with."
Jessie leaned forward and fixed the girls with her flashing eyes.
"It is about Kate and that awful Lottie," she said. "They are going around telling everybody that you girls are at the bottom of this second 'practical joke'!"
The three chums were on their feet at once, staring incredulously at Jessie.
"But how do you know they are saying that?" demanded Sadie.
"Doris heard of it first," answered Jessie. "And just now two of the younger girls came to me with the story. Where are you going?" she demanded suddenly as Jo started for the door.
"To Miss Romaine!" returned Jo, her lips set. "I'm going to ask her to make them stop it!"
As she turned to the door again, about to put her purpose into action, there came a timid knock.
"Some one's calling," said Nan.
"Maybe Lottie or Kate," Sadie suggested, her eyes flashing.
Jo pulled the door open quickly and disclosed a timid, shrinking figure in the hall. Almost before she had identified this figure as Lily Darrow the girl slipped within the room and pulled the door shut behind her.
Amazed, the girls stared at their unexpected visitor.
Lily was trembling. Her face was white. Yet she spoke with a feverish haste that was at odd variance with her frail appearance.
"I have only a minute to stay. I suppose I should not have come at all," she began, while the girls mutely regarded her. "I have just heard what Kate and Lottie are saying about you girls." She took a step forward and held out her hand to them appealingly.
"You can believe me or not——"
"Of course we believe you, Lily," said Nan in pity for the girl's intense agitation.
Lily sent her a glance of gratitude and hurried on feverishly.
"I want you to know that I have no part in that awful story they are spreading," she said. "I don't believe it, and I—I'd stop it if I could. That's all—I just wanted you to know—and please—please—" She spread out her hands again appealingly. "Please don't let them know that I have been here!"
She turned then and before any one of the others could recover sufficiently from their astonishment to stop her, had run swiftly from the room.
"How she hates those two girls!" cried Sadie.
"And yet she stays with them and lets them bully her," added Nan. "It's beyond me!"
"I wish we could help her," said Jo thoughtfully. "I've a notion she needs help very badly."
"Why in the world do Kate Speed and Lottie pick on us? Why should they say that we're playing silly practical jokes?" demanded Sadie. "It gets me!"
"Goosie!" snapped Jessie. "Don't you know they've never forgiven you for getting this room that they thought they'd already cabbaged?"
Jo would still have put her plan into action. By going to Miss Romaine she would probably stop the contemptible rumor set afoot by Kate and her friends. But this would not be a final victory, as Jessie succeeded in pointing out to the impulsive girl.
"They would say you were hiding behind the skirts of authority, or some such thing," she said. "No, I have a better plan."
When questioned she thus divulged it.
"We'll scare them. That's what we'll do!" she said. "A bunch of us girls will 'wait upon' Kate and Lottie as the old saying goes. We'll tell them that if they don't keep still we'll blind-fold them and make them walk the plank. If there are enough of us we ought to turn the trick."
Such methods were risky, as none knew better than the conspirators.
"Still, if we choose the right time and place we ought to get by with it all right," Nan decided, after some talk on the subject.
"And if we don't, then will be time enough to go to Miss Jane," added Jo.
The secret club called itself the "Knights of Darkness" and giggled a great deal in private over the title.
Rumors of this club—to which only a special few were admitted—came to the ears of Kate and Lottie, who were hurt because they had not been invited to join. So when two notes reached them mysteriously one day they joyfully prepared to obey the summons contained therein.
So ran the nonsensical contents:
"At fifteen minutes to twelve on Friday night next meet the gathering of ghosts in the haunted cellar beneath the house. Be prompt and make no noise lest ghosts shall take to heel and naught remain."
"At fifteen minutes to twelve on Friday night next meet the gathering of ghosts in the haunted cellar beneath the house. Be prompt and make no noise lest ghosts shall take to heel and naught remain."
The signature was a drawing of an irregular figure attired as far as could be ascertained in something resembling a pillow slip.
The "haunted cellar" was, of course, the gymnasium, and in this promptly at quarter to twelve on Friday night a ghostly company assembled. The figures were arrayed in sheets that persisted in getting under their feet and tripping them, much to the giggling delight of the wearers.
"Sh-h!" cried one of them in a muffled whisper. "Here they come! Make a circle around them now and don't let either of them out!"
So Kate Speed and Lottie Sparks were surrounded by as ghostly a company as ever haunted a school gymnasium on a Friday night.
The speaker for the ghosts, who was none other than Jessie Robinson, well disguised, said in a deep voice:
"We are here assembled to bid you welcome and farewell!"
An unghostlike giggle came from the circle of white-enshrouded figures.
But Lottie and Kate did not giggle. They were palpably nervous. The gymnasium beyond the light provided by matter-of-fact electric torches in the muffled hands of the ghosts was filled with disturbing shadows. They thought of the thieves who had twice robbed the gymnasium and began to wish themselves safe back in bed.
The deep voice of the speaker continued.
"You are hereby warned, oh you livers upon earth—" Another giggle. "Livers" sounded funny "like something a chicken has," Sadie afterward explained—"that ghostly eyes are watching you. In other words," with a sudden fierce vindictiveness one does not usually associate with ghosts, "we have heard the horrid tales you have been spreading about the chums from Woodford, Kate Speed and Lottie Sparks. We like those girls, you two miserable sneaks——"
"Hear! Hear!" from the circle of "ghosts" while the captives, realizing the trap they had fallen into, made a break for liberty.
"Hold 'em, ghosts!" said the deep voice of the speaker, and the ghostly ring pressed tighter about the now thoroughly frightened Kate and Lottie.
"We are not going to hurt you now!" Jessie's voice was once more menacing as she advanced upon the cowering girls. "But we're watching you, and the next time you say anything mean or sneaky, the least you'll get will be a ducking in the lake. Now, just remember that!"
There was a cry from two of the "ghosts" as the captives again made a dash for liberty.
"Let 'em go," said the speaker, in sepulchral tones. "And we, too, will vanish into those mysterious realms of ether from which we came. Farewell!"
When Lottie and Kate had finally disappeared, the ghosts disrobed amid a chorus of giggles.
"Well, that ought to fix 'em," Sadie said.
"But it won't make them love us any more," prophesied Jo.
"We'll have to look out for trouble from that quarter," Nan agreed, and added stoutly: "But you may be sure we'll be ready for it when it comes!"
By a miracle of good luck the conspirators managed to get up to their rooms undetected. They fell asleep chuckling at the thought of Kate Speed and Lottie Sparks and their chagrin.
The Knights of Darkness, once formed, was not disbanded. The girls enjoyed their secret club and their secret watchword, and more than anything else they enjoyed the curiosity their organization aroused in the girls who were not members of it.
They even took up a collection and sent away for club pins, an emblem of skull and cross bones over which they giggled delightedly in the privacy of their rooms.
The club so far was limited to the three girls from Woodford, Jessie Robinson, Doris Maybel, Gladys Holt and four other chums of Jessie's, who remained its leader.
The midnight scare had the desired effect upon Lottie and Kate. They no longer circulated scandalous rumors about the three chums from Woodford. But those same girls suspected that this signified, not peace, but an armed neutrality, and that they would, in all probability, hear from these two unpleasant girls again.
Meanwhile, beyond saying that they might set a guard at the school, the local police, represented by Sheriff Crabb, accomplished nothing whatever toward the apprehension of the rascals who had twice plundered Laurel Hall.
As days went by and still there was no news of the thieves or their stolen property, the girls accepted the inevitable and settled down to studies and play much the same as usual.
As soon as the weather definitely cleared Sadie declared her intention of taking out a rowboat on the lake.
"But you don't know a thing about rowing!" protested Jo.
"What has that got to do with it? I can learn, can't I?"
"Well, for that matter, so can I," retorted Jo, and the two girls ran blithely up to the Hall to gain the consent of Miss Talley to take one of the boats on the lake.
Since the young teacher happened to be disengaged at the moment, she offered to go out with them.
"Oh, would you?" cried Sadie. "That will be fine! I do so want to know how to row."
Miss Talley, warmed by her enthusiasm, smiled.
"You shall," she promised.
So while Nan improved her service on the tennis courts in company with another first-year girl who thought Nan's game "simply marvelous," Jo and Sadie took their first rowing lesson.
The lake was beautiful in the glare of the afternoon sun. As the girls pushed off from the dock, Sadie holding one pair of oars, the young teacher the other, it seemed to them that they were embarking upon a lake of gold.
Sadie blissfully followed the instructions of Miss Talley, her face radiant with happiness.
"I could do this all my life!" she said.
Miss Talley smiled.
"You may feel differently when your hands are blistered," she said prosaically. "You may take my oars in a few moments," she added to Jo, "and I'll show you how to row together."
After an hour or so of practice that was undiluted joy to the two girls the teacher was pleased to praise her pupils and to predict that they would make rapid progress.
"We always have a rowing match sometime around the middle of October—before winter drives us indoors," she said, as they touched the dock again. "If you girls work hard, perhaps you may qualify to enter the race. Would you like that?"
"Would we!" they cried together, and again Miss Talley smiled at their enthusiasm.