Part 18 (1/2)
”Nonsense!” interrupted Bess. ”You had nothing to do with the accident. It was all the fault of that--disgraceful--man. He is no more a chauffeur--than----”
”I knew he would do something dreadful!” put in Belle, who was sobbing hysterically, while Walter tried to comfort her.
For some moments the scene was one of confusion, punctuated with such remarks as would spring from the frightened lips unbidden by brain or effort. Then the storm seemed to suddenly clear away, and with the pa.s.sing of the rain went the black blankets that had hidden the lights from the sky.
It seemed almost uncanny that the stars and moon should flash so suddenly over the heads of the party in the cemetery, and reveal to them the marble shafts, and granite headstones glaring in ghostly whiteness.
”Let's get out of here,” spoke Jack, giving his terrified sister a rea.s.suring hug. ”Cora, you are drenched through!” he exclaimed.
”Well, I tried to be on the lookout,” she stammered, ”and so I could not keep under shelter.”
”What on earth happened?” asked Ed, following Jack's example, and a.s.sisting Mrs. Robinson and Miss Steel over the rough mounds into the pathway.
”Suppose we delay investigations,” suggested Walter. ”The ladies have certainly had a most unpleasant experience.”
”Unpleasant!” repeated Bess. ”It was simply dreadful!”
”How long have you been here?” asked Jack.
”A life time!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Belle.
”And we were just approaching the re-incarnate state,” added Cora, with a desperate attempt at frivolity.
”Did you see any ghosts?” asked Ed, almost lifting the little Miss Steel over a rough spot.
”Did we!” mocked Belle.
”Oh, I mean the kind that--s.h.i.+ne,” explained Ed. ”Not the mental species.”
”Belle had a regular series of apparitions,” declared Bess, now running from the terror state into one of extreme hilarity, the natural reaction from her awful experience.
”But we have to wait for that--chauffeur,” wailed Mrs. Robinson.
”Why should we wait for him?” asked Jack.
”He has gone for something,--Cora knows,” concluded the woman helplessly.
”Why, when I found my starting system was out of commission he said it was best for him to go and get new batteries. So he hurried off in his car, to go to the shop we pa.s.sed out on the turnpike. It was then we discovered we were in the graveyard. He had turned in here by the merest accident. It was so dreadfully dark.”
”He mistook this road for the one to Wayside,” interrupted Belle.
”And ran off and left you in a cemetery,” said Ed with a sneer.
”But we couldn't go on without the _Whirlwind_,” argued Cora. ”Had it been one of the smaller cars that failed we might have managed.”
”And he didn't try to fix your batteries?” inquired Walter.
”Why, he said he--couldn't,” answered Cora in a tone of voice that betrayed her own suspicions.
”We really cannot go on without him,” declared Mrs. Robinson, feeling that it was due to her matronly reputation to stand firm for the chauffeur.