"They say it"s a test of your character," said Bobby, with a shiver.
"Somehow, Betty, my character oozes out of my shoes when it knows it should be prancing up to the firing line."
"I guess you imagine that," smiled Betty. "Speak sternly to it, Bobby, and explain that funking is out of the question."
However, more girls than Bobby found it necessary to clutch at their oozing courage when, upon a.s.sembling in the large hall, the lights suddenly went out. In the shadows, four white veiled figures were seen slowly to mount the platform.
"To-night," said one of them, stretching out a long arm and pointing toward the fascinated and expectant audience, "we are your fates! You have come to the final tests. We have no choice in these tests, nor have you. You are to come forward, one at a time, and take a slip from this basket here on the table. Go directly to your room after drawing your slip, and there open it and follow the directions explicitly. Come to the platform in the order in which you are seated, please."
The lights did not come on, and one by one the girls stumbled up the steps to the platform, felt around in the basket, and drew a slip. Then they hurried away to their rooms to see what was to happen next.
Bobby and Betty could hardly wait to open their notes, and before they had them fairly digested, Frances and Libbie and Constance and Louise and the Guerin girls were crowding in to compare notes.
"I have to go and ask Miss Prettyman if I may telephone to Salsette Academy and ask for a lost-and-found notice on their bulletin board,"
wailed Bobby. "I"m supposed to have lost a pair of gloves at the last football game. I always have the worst luck! Can"t you imagine how Miss Prettyman will lecture me? She"ll say that at my age I ought to have something in my head besides excuses to talk to the boys!"
The girls laughed, recognizing the ring of prophecy in Bobby"s speech.
"That"s nothing--I"m to row Dora Estabrooke twice around the lake,"
mourned Louise. "She weighs two hundred, if she weighs a pound. Thank goodness, I don"t have to do it to-night."
Norma was instructed to walk three times around the cellar, chanting "Little Boy Blue" before ten o"clock that night. Frances Martin, to her horror, was enjoined to produce six live angle worms the following morning--"and you know I despise the wiggling things," she wailed. Alice Guerin, the silent member of the octette, was condemned to recite "The Children"s Hour" in the dining room "between cereal and eggs." And Constance Howard was told she must add up an unbelievably long column of figures and present the correct answer within half an hour. Constance"s _bete noir_ was figures, and already these long columns danced dizzily before her eyes.
"You needn"t tell me that chance made such canny selections," observed Betty. "One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands.
Libbie, what does yours say?"
Libbie handed her slip of paper to Betty without a word.
"Go to bed at once," the latter read aloud.
There was a gale of laughter. Libbie, the curious, who dearly loved to hear and see, to be sent off to bed in the middle of the most wildly exciting night they had known in weeks!
"Hurry," admonished Bobby. "You"re disobeying by staying up this long.
Where"s your character, Libbie?"
Libbie scowled, but departed, grumbling that she didn"t see why she couldn"t stay up and watch Norma walk down in the cellar.
"Mine is the most spooky," said Betty, when the door had closed behind Libbie. "Listen--I"m to climb the water tower at midnight and leave this card there to show I have complied."
She held out a little plain white card in a green envelope.
"Hark! was that somebody at the door?" asked Bobby, and she ran over to it lightly and jerked it open.
The corridor was empty.
"We"re all nervous," remarked Betty lightly. "I"ll set the alarm for eleven-forty-five and put the clock under my pillow so Miss Lacey won"t hear it. I"ll lie down all dressed, and then I won"t have to use a light.
She might see that through the transom."
"Don"t you want some of us to go with you?" asked Constance. "We needn"t go up into the tower, if you say not. But at least we could go that far with you; you might fall off the roof."
"No, please, I"d rather go alone," said Betty firmly. "It"s a test, you see, and the idea isn"t to make it easy. I"ll be all right, and in the morning the girls will find the card and know I didn"t flunk."
After the girls had gone away to their own rooms the clock was set for a quarter of twelve, but Betty and Bobby decided that they might as well stay awake till midnight. They would lie down on their beds--Betty insisted that Bobby should undress and go to bed "right"--and wait for the time to come. Within twenty minutes they were both sound asleep.
The m.u.f.fled whir of her alarm clock awakened Betty. For a moment she was dazed, then recollection cleared her mind. She slipped to the floor without waking Bobby and softly tiptoed from the room.
A dim light burned in the corridor, and Betty knew the way to the water tower. To reach it, one had to mount to the roof of the dormitory building. Betty experienced a little difficulty with the obstinate catch of the scuttle cover, but she finally mastered it and stepped out on the tarred graveled roof. The water tower, a huge tank on an iron framework, had a little enclosed room built directly under it reached by an iron ladder. Here the engineer kept various plumbing tools. It was in this room that Betty was to leave the card.
The night wind blew damp and keen, and the stars overhead seemed very far away. Betty had no sense of fear as she began to climb, mounting slowly and feeling for each step with her hands. The friendly dark shut in around her and somewhere in the distance a train whistle tooted shrilly.
She knew she had reached the last step when her hands encountered wood, and she felt about till she touched the k.n.o.b of the door. It opened at her touch and she pulled herself in over the sill.
"Now the card," she whispered, feeling in her pocket.
A gust of wind fanned her cheek and something clicked.
The door had blown shut!
CHAPTER XXI
DRAMATICS
There are pleasanter places to be at midnight than the dark room of a strange water tower, but Betty was not frightened. She tripped over some tool as she felt for the door and discovered that she had lost her sense of direction completely.
"I"m all turned around," was the way she expressed it. "I must start and go around the sides, feeling till I come to the door."
Following this plan, she did come to the door and confidently turned the k.n.o.b. The door stuck and she rattled the k.n.o.b sharply. Then the explanation dawned on her.
The door was locked!
Could it have a spring lock? she wondered. Then she remembered a day when, on exploration bent, a group of girls had made the trip to the roof and the kindly Dave McGuire had taken a key from his pocket and unlocked the door of the little room for the more adventurous ones who wanted to climb up and see the inside.
"It was a flat key, like a latch key," Betty reflected. "The girls must have had the door unlocked for me to-night, but I don"t think they would follow me and lock it. That would be mean!"
However, the door was locked and she was a prisoner. It was inky black and at every step she seemed to knock over something or stumble against cold iron. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, and she made out the outlines of something against the wall.
"Why, there is a window--I remember!" she said aloud. "I wonder if I can reach it."
Cautiously she felt her way around and stretched up tentative fingers.
She could barely touch the lower frame.
Then, for the first time, Betty felt a little shiver of fear and apprehension. It was close in the tower room, and the smell of oil and dead air began to be oppressive. She had no wish to shout, even if she could be heard, a doubtful probability, for she had no mind to be rescued before the curious eyes of the entire school.
"I"ll get out of it somehow, if I have to stay here all night," she told herself pluckily. "Oh, my goodness, what was that?"
A tiny sawing noise in one corner of the room sent Betty scurrying to the other side. She would have indignantly denied any fear of mice or rats, but the bravest girl might be excused from a too close acquaintance thrust upon her in the dark. Betty had no wish to put her fingers on a mouse.