The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross Part 32

"Who is it?"

"Can it be Margit Salgo?"

"How very, very wonderful!"

These were some of the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of the girls behind the scenes.

At just the right moment the figure of the dark lady had glided from the dressing-rooms to the wings and gone on at the cue. Her acting gave just the needed touch to the pretty scene. Her appearance had been most charming. And, above all, the surprise had been "such a relief!"

"I'm so glad Hester got mad with us and refused to act," sighed Bessie Yeager. "Whoever this girl is, she is fine."

"Is it a professional Mr. Mann has engaged?" somebody wanted to know.

"Laura Belding! Laura Belding!" cried Dora. "What do you know about it?"

"I warrant Laura knows all about it," said Jess, recovered from her amazement. "It is just like Mother Wit to have saved us. And I believe I recognize that very charming Lady Mystery--do I not?"

"Isn't she splendid?" cried Laura, enthusiastically, "I knew she could do it. And Mr. Mann has been giving her an hour's training every day for a week."

"Goodness!" drawled Lily Pendleton, "how did you know Hester would cut up so mean?"

"Doesn't she always do something to queer us if she can?" snapped Bobby.

"Laura, you are a wonder!"

"It is Janet Steele," declared Jess. "Of course! I should have thought of her myself. She is all right--just the one we needed."

And it took some courage on Jess' part for her to say this, for she knew that Chet Belding had expressed very warm admiration indeed of Janet Steele.

The rehearsal went off splendidly after that. Everybody was encouraged. The rotund little Mr. Mann beamed--"more than ever like a cherub," Bobby declared. They came to the final curtain with tremendous applause from the back benches where some of the faculty sat in the dark.

"And I do believe," said Nellie Agnew, in almost a scared voice, "that Gee Gee applauded! Can it be possible, girls? Do you suppose that for once she gives us credit for knowing a little something?"

"If she applauded, her hands slipped by mistake!" grumbled Bobby. "You know very well that nothing would change Gee Gee's opinion. Not even an earthquake."

It was late when the rehearsal was over, and Laura knew that Chet would be waiting outside with their car. She hurried Jess and Bobby, and even Janet, into their outer wraps as quickly as possible.

"For you might as well go along with us, Janet," Laura said to the new girl "We're going to the hospital first, but we'll drop you at your home coming back."

Just what they were to do at the hospital n.o.body knew save Laura and Chet, and they refused to explain. When they arrived at the inst.i.tution they went directly to the private room now occupied by Mr. Nemo of Nowhere.

Billy Long, up in a chair for the first time, was present to greet the girls of Central High. And the man from Alaska seemed particularly glad to see them.

"Here is the money, Miss Laura," he said, producing a packet of crisp bank-notes. "I'd give it all to know just who I am. I seem to be right on the verge of discovering it to-day; yet something balks me."

"Oh, look at all that money!" crowed Billy, as Laura accepted the bills, while Chet, with the help of the interested nurse, arranged the bed-table and gave the man a pad and a fountain pen.

The head surgeon, who had taken a great interest in the case and with whom Laura had already conferred, tiptoed into the room and stood to look on.

"You bankers," said Laura, laughing, and speaking to the patient, "are always so much better off than ordinary folks. You pa.s.s out any old kind of money to your customers; but you never see a banker with anything but new bank-notes in his pocket."

The man listened to her sharply. A sudden quickened interest appeared in his countenance. The others heard Mother Wit's speech with growing excitement.

"See," said the girl of Central High, extracting one of the bank-notes from the packet "Here is another bill on the Drovers' Levee Bank, of Osage, Ohio. Did you notice that? Doesn't it sound familiar to you?"

She repeated the name of the bank and its locality slowly. "You have more bills of that same bank. But none like the one you gave Chet when you bought that lavalliere for 'the nice little girl' you told him you expected to give it to."

The man stared at her. He seemed enthralled by what she said. Laura proceeded in her quiet way:

"Just write this name, please: 'Bedford Knox.' Thanks. Now write it again.

He is cashier of your bank in Osage, Ohio."

Jess barely stifled a cry with her handkerchief. But everybody else was silent, watching the man laboriously writing the name as requested by Laura.

It was a disappointment. No doubt of that The man did not write the name as though he were familiar with it at all. But Laura was still smiling when he looked up at her, almost childishly, for further directions.

"Now try this other, please," said the girl firmly. "Two men always sign bank-notes to make them legal tender. The cashier and the president The president of the Drovers' Levee Bank, of Osage, Ohio, is----"

She hesitated. The man poised his pen over the paper expectantly. Said Laura, briskly:

"Write 'Peyton J. Weld.'"

At her words Janet Steele uttered a startled exclamation. The man did not notice this. He wrote the name as Laura requested. Chet, looking over his shoulder and with one of the Osage bank-notes in his hand for comparison, watched the signature dashed off in almost perfect imitation of that upon the bank-note.

"You guessed it, Mother Wit!" the big boy cried. "Write it again, Mr. Weld.

That is your name as sure as you live!"

The surgeon stepped quickly to the bedside and his sharp eyes darted from the bank-note in the boy's hand to the signature his patient had written.

The man looked wonderingly about the room, his puzzled gaze drifting from one to another of his visitors until it finally fastened upon the pale countenance of Janet Steele.

Catching his eye, the girl stepped forward impulsively, her hands clasped.

"Uncle Jack!" she breathed.

"You--you look quite like your mother used to, my dear," the man in bed said in rather a strange voice.

The surgeon eased him back upon the pillows, and at a nod the nurse sent the visitors out of the room. In the corridor they all stood amazed, staring at Janet.

CHAPTER XXV

IT IS ALL ROUNDED UP

"Of course," Lily Pendleton confessed, "I was at Hester's party,"