The Orchard Secret Part 30

"I know all about it!" calmly replied Arden. "I am that girl!" she announced in her best stage manner. "I'll tell you all about it," and she did.

"Are you going to Tiddy?" Sim wanted to know.

"I think not--little one," drawled Arden, still calmly but with firm decision, as her friends could tell by the look in her eyes. When Arden made up her mind, it was made up. "It would be useless to explain," she continued. "Besides, I really didn't do anything."

"Well, if you're found out, it might just as well be murder--we'll all be sent home," Terry decided.

"You're right, Terry," Sim agreed. "We ought all to leave for home before we suffer the ignominy of being sent."

"Not tonight, at least," Arden temporized. "I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. I say let's wait until something really happens.

Besides, I think it will be lots of fun to raid the kitchen."

"Do you think Tiddy has any real evidence?" asked Sim.

"Let's try to guess what we shall find to eat in the raid," said Arden demurely.

"My dear roommate," laughed Terry, "you are, without doubt, a peer in the art of changing subjects. But I do agree with you about the raid. We must all wear tennis shoes and carry flashlights."

"Let's get our work done quickly, then," proposed Sim, "and wait, with what patience we may, for Jane," and she swept her chums a bow in her latest amateur dramatic role.

With unusual willingness, the three girls began to open their books, look for pencils and paper, and soon the room was in silence as they labored at their lessons for next day.

CHAPTER XXIII The Injured Chaplain

The three freshmen in 513 worked diligently and with a minimum of conversation. Now and then Arden inquired about the spelling of a word, or Terry put a question as to the correct ending of a Latin verb, but on the whole their time was well occupied.

At about nine o'clock the lights all over the dormitory building were dimmed for a moment, a warning that in five minutes more they would be extinguished in every room. Arden announced happily that she had finished her a.s.signments.

"I have, too!" cried Terry. But Sim sighed deeply as she said:

"I just made it. But I think my math is all wrong."

"Never mind," soothed Arden. "Perhaps you're a genius. Lots of them can't do math for a cent."

The lights went out suddenly, and the girls threw themselves on their beds to await Jane Randall's knock, summoning them to the pantry raid.

Arden and her chums must have fallen asleep, for they were startled when, some time later, Jane, afraid of knocking too loudly on their door pushed it open and tiptoed in. She groped her way to Terry's bed, shook her and hissed:

"Wake up! It's time to go!"

"Oh!" gasped the startled Terry, the other two echoing her surprise with their own. They had no idea that they had slumbered.

Silently they took their flashlights and crept down the darkened corridor. The kitchen was far below on the same floor with the dining room. The kitchen was bright enough by day, for there were windows on three sides, but it was as dark as a cave at night. A large long table-bench ran the length of one side of the room. On this the plates were served to be carried into the dining hall by waitresses. Above the bench were racks for holding dishes. Gleaming pots, pans, and kettles hung on the wall near the huge stove, its fire now banked for the night.

Shining copper tanks for hot water to make tea and boil the coffee caught and reflected the beams from flashlights carried by the marauders.

Unaccustomed to the strange place, the girls all stood still for a few moments to get their bearings. Arden gave a sudden frightened squeal as a startled mouse ran across her foot.

"Oh," she gasped. "The place is overrun with the little beasts!"

"Hush!" cautioned Jane Randall. "That watchman may hear us. He comes in here on his rounds."

"Where's the food, Jane?" whispered Terry, advancing farther into the room which, somehow, had a spooky atmosphere.

"It ought to be around here some place," Jane replied cautiously.

"Ah-a-a-ah! Pies!" suddenly exclaimed Terry as she opened the door of a large cupboard.

"Let's take a few. They are for tomorrow, I suppose, and must have been baked late this afternoon. What do they smell like, Terry?" asked Sim.

"They all smell pretty much alike to me. I'll take four, one off each shelf. We ought to get a variety that way," suggested Terry.

The other girls were silently exploring, by means of their electric torches, the dark corners of the kitchen. They decided against taking bread or rolls as being too unromantic for a midnight feast. Jane convinced them that milk would do nicely to wash down the food, and it was when Arden opened the door of the immense refrigerator that she made the prize discovery of the evening.

"Look what I've found!" she exclaimed. "Two roasted chickens!"

"Lovely!" breathed Sim. "Come over here, kids! Arden has struck a gold mine!"

Temporarily leaving their own investigations, the other girls crowded around the ice box and focused their lights on the innocent browned birds.

"The sight of them makes my mouth water!" announced Sim. "But we must have enough food, now, with these as a background. Milk, pie and roast chickens! Lovely! Let's take them and go quickly before we are caught."

Arden reached in and lifted out one of the doomed chickens. She turned half around to hand it to Sim, who was waiting to take it, when the whole party of girls was suddenly frozen into immobility with terror.

For through the silence of the night sounded mournfully:

Dong! Ding-dong! Dong! Dong!

It was the old alarm bell again sonorously clanging at the mystic hour of twelve--the hour when "witches, warlocks an' lang-nebbied things" are free to roam.

"Heavens! What's that?" gasped Jane Randall, though well she and the others knew.

"It's that bell again," said Arden unnecessarily. She stood holding firmly to a leg of the chicken while Sim dug her fingers into the soft browned flesh beneath a wing. They laughed over it later, of course. But just now terror gripped them.

Terry was holding the pies so tightly in her fright that her fingers punctured the crust and went messily into the fruit beneath. They all stood like children who had been playing "statues"; in just the positions they had a.s.sumed when that ghostly bell began to toll.

It stopped for a moment and then began to peal again, if anything more loudly than at first. Then the girls came back to life, and while it was still clanging the second time, Arden had presence of mind enough to close the refrigerator door, to stave off discovery as long as possible if the authorities entered the kitchen. Then, with the other girls, who were also holding to the food they had captured, Arden ran to the low windows on the north side of the kitchen. They all crowded close to the gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nt and peered out into the night. The bell sounded more clearly from this vantage point.

"Who can be ringing it?" murmured Jane. "I hate bells or whistles in the night. It always seems so--ghostly!"

"Stop it!" someone implored.

"I'd like to run around outside and find out about it," declared Terry.

"Of course, it must be _someone_ pulling the rope. Bells don't ring of themselves."