Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER II-SUITE 22

It was right in the middle of Freshman Rains.

The faces of the new girls appeared white and mournful, pressed against the dormitory windows, or flushed and laughing from between rubber helmets and slickers out on the campus, according to their dispositions.

Up and down the second floor corridor of Ambler House trooped the usual forenoon procession, umbrella tips clicking on the polished boards: those who were going out to cla.s.ses making a flapping sound with their rubber garments, those returning giving out a slos.h.i.+ng noise that advertised the weather outside in an unfavorable manner.

Before several of the doors wet umbrellas were open on the floor to dry, while tiny rivulets trickled steadily from the steel p.r.o.ngs. They looked like big black bats which had flown in to seek shelter from the outer torrents and might be expected to take wing again at any minute.

It was not a hilarious atmosphere at best, but, to add to its dripping depression, two wails of a most long-drawn and lugubrious sort began to be wafted down the length of the hall over the tops of the wet umbrellas, drifting in heart-brokenly through the students' doors, and dying away in receding cadences whenever a disconsolate head lifted itself from a cus.h.i.+on to listen or a helmet strap was shoved back from a surprised and inquisitive ear.

”M-MMm-MO-O-Oh,” went the wail, and then ”Moo-oo-oo,” with a pastoral significance that was particularly mystifying.

No use for any girl to tell herself that this was the wind howling-or the rain dejectedly descending on a tin roof-for no wind ever howled so precisely up and down scales with such sobbingly human and barnyard notes, and no rain was ever known to be so surprisingly vocal, nor so loud and threatening one moment and so tremulously broken and far away the next.

”Go! Gug-gug-go! Gug-gug-GO-go-go!” screamed the dual wail, apparently expressive of the utmost suffering, and yet, through it all, maintaining a baffling rhythmical quality and a monotony of utterance that sent a shuddering wonder in its wake as it coursed down the hall.

But during such a disheartening season as Freshman Rains the spirit of investigation is not keen, and the residents on the second floor preferred to distract their attention by lessons that must be learned or by long and rambling letters home that ended with vague hints that somebody in their house was being killed down the hall.

It was not until the voices broke out into wild and mirthless laughter that their apathetic spirits were aroused to protest.

”Goodness, girls, what's that awful noise?” an indignant brown head poked itself out from one of the umbrella-guarded doors and sent its peevish remonstrance down the corridor. In an instant every door framed a face-or two faces-and a babble of questions was echoed back and forth.

But triumphantly right through the shrill notes of their eager queries rang the weird and displeasing sound that had so disturbed them.

”Ha-HA! Ho-HO! He-HEE! Haw-HAW!”

”It's too much!” averred the girl who had spoken first. ”_Where_ is that sound being made? And _what_ is it? Seems to me as if it were from Suite 22-do you think somebody is torturing those freshmen?” It was just what everybody did think, but they dreaded the admission. ”Let's go in there,” the girl continued, ”and-and find out.” She ended rather weakly, shrinking before the task of investigating so unearthly a sound as that.

The girls were flocking forth, some still in their damp slickers, the rain glistening on them; others all immaculate just as they were ready to start out to recitations: and still a lazy third contingent, who had not yet had any cla.s.ses or who were wantonly cutting them, as sweet as flowers in j.a.panese silk kimonos and little pattering slippers.

Together they made the charge on Door 22.

Crowding in at the breach as it swung open, they gasped in sudden bewilderment at the sight that met their eyes.

Standing rigidly side by side like two soldiers on parade, but with their hands solemnly placed upon their diaphragms while they emitted simultaneously the weird noises that had alarmed the house, were Peggy Parsons and Katherine Foster, the idols of Ambler House!

Their eyes widened at the wholesale intrusion and their hands fell limply to their sides, and then, as the indignant chorus broke out around them, they looked at each other in crimson confusion and burst out laughing.

”Why-c-could you h-h-hear us, g-girls?” cried Katherine incoherently through her shaking spasms of mirth.

”Hear you?” echoed Hazel Pilcher, who had led the charge upon them.

”Hear? Well, my _dears_, did you think you were exactly whispering? I never listened to so awful a concert in my life. It's a wonder I didn't call the house-matron. Oh, you incorrigible youngsters, what in the world was it?”

Peggy's face a.s.sumed an aggrieved expression immediately.

”It was only our lesson,” she responded somewhat sulkily.