Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - Janet D. Wheeler
"Oh, much worse!" cried Violet.
"We heard a ghost playing a piano!" said Laura.
"Listen," commanded Billie. "There it goes again. Oh, Mrs. Gilligan, I'm
f-frightened."
Mrs. Gilligan listened, and even she, matter-of-fact, humorous Irishwoman
that she was, felt that same strange tendency on the part of her hair to
stand up straight in the air.
"Well, here's the time for my rolling pin," she said, jumping out of bed
and wrapping a kimono hastily about her. "We'll call the boys and see
what that piano thinks it's doing anyway."
So they called the boys. The three lads were on tiptoe with excitement at
the thought of an actual encounter with a ghost.
"And a musical ghost, at that," crowed Ferd, as they started down the
stairs with the girls following cautiously and holding their candles over
their heads.
"Say, don't make so much noise," cried Chet in a stage whisper. "You'll
frighten his ghostship away. I wouldn't miss seeing a real ghost for
anything you could offer me."
"In here, fellows, here's the piano," Ferd directed, and, their hearts in
their mouths, the girls watched them go into the dark room.
"Ouch! hang that chair," they heard Ferd cry out. "Come on with those
lights, girls. I'm ruining all the furniture."
Nervously the girls followed them in, throwing the light of the candles
on the old piano, but, as far as they could see, nothing had been
disturbed.
The ancient instrument stood as dignified and aloof as ever, and in the
whole room not a chair was out of place.
"Nothing here," said Chet, looking disappointed. "Say, the girls promised
us a regular show, fellows, and they haven't come across."
"What shall we do to 'em?" asked Teddy, looking almost equally
disappointed.
"But we heard it," said Billie, shivering with excitement.
"It was just as if somebody had taken the back of his finger," Laura
added, "and run it all the way down the keyboard from the top note of the
treble to the last note of the bass."
"Oh, you must have been dreaming," said Ferd, opening the piano to
examine it inside.
"No, they weren't dreaming," said Mrs. Gilligan seriously. "Because I was
very much awake when I heard it."
"You heard it, too?" asked Chet, beginning to be interested again.
"I certainly did," said Mrs. Gilligan, with a grimness that left no room
for doubt. "And I'm not given to imagining things, either."
"Well, I move we look around a bit," suggested Ferd, who was always
eager for action. "The ghost may have retreated to the dining-room or
something--"
"No, siree!" said Violet decidedly. "If the rest of you want to go
roaming all over this gloomy old place at night you can do it, but you'll
have to leave me out."
"Vi's right," said Mrs. Gilligan, just as the boys were about to
protest. "There isn't any use going into this thing any further to-night
and getting the girls all upset. I'll stay down here awhile and see what
I can see."
"Let me stay with you," asked Chet eagerly.
"And me."
"And me."
Ferd and Teddy spoke almost in the same breath.
"No, I want you all to go up and get into bed," said Mrs. Gilligan
decidedly. "If I see anything," she added, with a grim smile, "anything
that looks like a ghost that is, I'll call you."
"That's a promise," said Chet, looking back over his shoulder as he
reluctantly followed the others upstairs. "Because if I should miss
getting a look at that ghost, I'd be disappointed for life."
"Well, I've had enough of spooks to last _me_ forever," said Laura, with
a shivery glance over her shoulder as the boys left the girls at their
door and started off down the hall. "If that piano begins to play itself
again to-night, I'll just die, that's all there is to it."
The girls crept into bed, careful to leave their candles burning.
"You know, Billie," said Violet in an awed little voice, "this thing is
really getting serious."
"I should say so," agreed Laura, drawing the bed clothes a little tighter
about her.
"Well, it isn't my fault, is it?" asked Billie. "I didn't ask Aunt
Beatrice to leave me a haunted house. And, anyway," she added very
truthfully, "it was you, Laura, who first suggested coming here."
"Yes," went on Violet accusingly, "and it was you who said you'd be
disappointed if you didn't see a ghost or two."
Laura groaned.
"What's the use of holding things up against me that I said when I was
young and foolish?" she asked. "Anyway, I didn't think we would really
see anything."
"Well, we haven't," said Billie. "All we've done is to hear things--"
"But we've heard plenty," sighed Violet. "There! What's that?"
The girls listened, feeling almost ready to scream, but could hear
nothing but the sighing of the wind in the tree tops.
"Only the wind, silly," said Laura, then added with an almost
comfortable feeling at the thought: "Mrs. Gilligan's on guard anyway."
"Yes," said Violet, adding with a sigh that seemed to come from her very
toes: "I only hope the piano doesn't swallow her up before morning. I've
come to expect almost anything!"
CHAPTER XX
THE MOTOR AGAIN
The piano did not swallow Mrs. Gilligan up, and, as a matter of fact, the
good woman did not stand guard until morning. Half an hour of sitting
alone in that gloomy room watching a piano that had played itself was
enough to ruin even her seasoned nerves.
Once back in her room she scolded herself for being such an idiot,
laughed at her fears, and, being a normal, healthy woman, fell almost
instantly to sleep.
In the morning the girls themselves felt somewhat inclined to laugh at
the fright they had had, and yet they knew that what had happened had
been no figment of their imaginations. The sound, though weird and eerie,
had been real--even Mrs. Gilligan would testify to that.
"Well, I tell you what we ought to do," said Ferd, as he sat down to a
huge plateful of breakfast. "We fellows ought to take turn and turn about
keeping watch. There must be some reason for the noise the girls heard,
and I won't be happy until we find out what it was."
"I think you have the right idea," replied Chet, decidedly. "The only
condition I make is that I be allowed to stand the first watch."
"You'll do nothing of the kind, any of you," broke in Mrs. Gilligan, with
that slight tightening of her upper lip that the girls and boys had come
to know--and respect. "That's a fine way to see all sorts of things that
ain't and hear all sorts of things that never happened. Sit up in the
dark, waiting for something to happen! I guess not!"
"But we can't just sit back and let the piano perform like that every
night, can we?" asked Ferd, in an argumentative tone. "I'd rather stay
awake part of the night than all of it."
"Don't you even want to solve the mystery?" asked Chet, in an
aggrieved voice.
"Mystery--humph," grunted Mrs. Gilligan, feeling very brave and
disdainful in the bright sunshine. "I don't believe there's a bit of
mystery in the whole thing."
"Then what made the piano play?" Teddy insisted. "You said yourself that
you heard it."
"Oh, I heard it all right," said Mrs. Gilligan, helping herself to more
jam. "There isn't any doubt about that. But I have an idea what caused
it, all right."
"Oh, tell us," they cried eagerly.
But their chaperone shook her head determinedly while her lip became
still tighter.
"No, indeed I won't tell you," she said, adding with a little chuckle: "I
want to try it out myself first. For I know that if I told you young ones
about it you'd only laugh. And I don't like being laughed at."
"But we wouldn't laugh," Billie assured her earnestly. "Really,
Mrs. Gilligan, we'll promise on our word of honor not to so much as
even smile."
"Get out with your promises," said Mrs. Gilligan, relapsing into her
brogue. "I do be knowing you better. I'll try it to-night," she
added graciously, "and if it doesn't work I'll tell you about it in
the morning."
"I suppose here's where I spend another sleepless night," said Violet
dolefully, helping herself to more biscuits. "Oh, well, I'm getting so I
can do without sleep now."
"Well, you don't look as if you'd ever lost a wink in your life," said
Chet, glancing at her admiringly, for it was an open secret with the
boys and girls of North Bend that Chet rather especially liked tall,
dark, peace-loving Violet Farrington--perhaps because she was so much
like himself.
Violet blushed prettily at this complimentary remark, and the girls
looked at her teasingly.
"Who was it that said something or other was blind?" asked Laura
wickedly, and Violet kicked her under the table.
"Peace, my children," said Billie. "We're having enough trouble with
ghosts and things without starting a war among ourselves. Who'll have
some more jelly?"
There was a simultaneous shout of approval, and the jelly dish began its
fourth round of the table.
However, they did at last get through eating and wandered out on the
front porch, where Mrs. Gilligan could not scoff at their ideas, to
discuss the doings of the night before.
But it was only a little while later that Mrs. Gilligan put another
damper on their fun by announcing that some one would have to go to town
for more provisions. The boy had failed to come that morning, and their
supply of canned goods was running dangerously low.
"Let's all go," Chet suggested. "We could walk down and ride back."
"But, oh, Chet, it's so frightfully hot," Billie objected. "I'm sure we'd
get sunstroke or something."
"Yes, it's a terribly long walk," added Violet.
"Well, we could wait till toward evening," said Ferd. "It wouldn't be so
scorching then. I admit," he added, taking a slanting squint at the sun,
"that even I am not eager to take a long hike just now."
"But toward evening we'll be preparing supper," objected Laura, and the
boys threw up their hands in despair.
"Well, then we'll just have to go without you," said Teddy. "But it would
be lots more fun if you'd come." This last was said to Billie and for her
ear alone.
That afternoon the girls watched the boys down the road till they
were out of sight, then turned back to the house with a strangely
lonesome feeling.
"You know," said Violet, pausing on the doorstep and looking back at the
girls with a rather sober face, "I have a sort of feeling that
something's going to happen."
"Well, you'd better get rid of it right away," retorted Laura. "We don't
want anything more to happen--especially when the boys are away."
This time Violet proved to be right. Something did happen. It was after
dark, the boys had not yet got back from the village, and the girls were
setting the table in the kitchen--they had never found the courage to eat
in the gloomy dining-room--when Violet set a dish down on the table with
a bang that made the girls start and look at her in surprise.
As for Violet, she was too scared to speak for a moment. Then she
stammered out:
"The strange motor car!" she said, while Billie and Laura stared at her.
"I thought I heard it before--"
"Sh-h," cried Billie, and they listened, hardly daring to breathe.
There was the same strange humming sound that had so startled them on
their first night in the house, only this time, instead of coming from a
distance and passing by, the noise seemed to get louder, then softer,
louder and softer, as if whatever it was were approaching and retreating
at regular intervals.
At that moment Mrs. Gilligan came into the room, and the girls called to
her to listen also.
"That?" she asked, with a little laugh. "Why that's an automobile of
course," and started for the front door. "Only I must say it's behaving
mighty queer."
But when they opened the door and looked out into the rocky road there
was no sign of an automobile, and yet the humming sound still kept on.
As they listened, wide-eyed, the noise grew softer and softer and
gradually died away in the distance.
The girls looked at each other wonderingly. Then it was Billie who
offered a solution.
"Mightn't it be an aeroplane?"
"An aeroplane in this part of the country?" Laura was inclined to scoff
at the idea, but Mrs. Gilligan and Violet both stood up for Billie.
They were about to enter into a heated argument when they saw the wagon
that had by this time become familiar to them coming down the road with
the boys seated in it or hanging to it in characteristic attitudes.
The girls ran out to them and deluged the lads with questions before they
had time to learn what it was all about.
"A motor car?" asked Chet. "No, we didn't pass a soul on the way up
here."
When the girls had poured into their interested ears the story of the
queer humming sound that had just repeated itself, they agreed to one man
to Billie's suggestion that it was very probably an aeroplane.
"I'll tell you what we'll do next time we hear it," said Teddy as the
boys picked up the provisions they had brought and started toward the
house. "We'll go up on the roof. Then we'll pretty soon see whether it's
a ghost or the real thing."
"And in the meantime," suggested Chet, sniffing the air hungrily, "how
about some supper?"
CHAPTER XXI
BOTH AT ONCE
It was not long before there came a recurrence of the strange humming
noise which had so disturbed the girls. It was only a few nights later
that Chet sat up in bed with the joyful feeling that here at last was a
chance to investigate at least one of the ghosts that haunted the
homestead at Cherry Corners.
"Ferd! Teddy! Wake up! What's the matter? Are you dead?" he called
to the boys.
The latter reluctantly opened their eyes and looked at him reproachfully.
"Can't you let a fellow sleep?" Teddy asked. But Chet, with no ceremony
whatever, hauled him bodily out of bed and set him on his feet.
"Don't talk," he ordered. "Run as fast as you can to the roof before
we miss it."
"What are you raving about?" asked Ferd, although both he and Teddy
started obediently toward the attic stairs.
"If you wouldn't talk so much, you could hear it," Chet answered, pushing
up a trap door that led to a small square platform on the roof. "It's
the motor sound the girls heard and that scared them so."
"It is, for a fact!" cried Teddy in a joyful whisper. "And it's coming
right near, fellows, too."
"It's an aeroplane all right," said Ferd, with conviction. "Nothing else
ever made a noise like that."
"Say, what are you doing up there?" a girl's voice hailed them from the
bottom of the steps, and Chet thought he recognized it as Billie's. "Are
you walking in your sleep or have you gone crazy? Come down here quick,
we need you."
"Keep still," Chet yelled back. "We're looking for your aeroplane ghost.
Can't you hear it?"
"Yes. But, oh, Chet," Billie's voice was tremulous, "the piano is playing
itself again. Won't you come down? We're afraid to stay here all alone."
"Great Scott! all the spirits are roaming at once," cried Teddy,
straining his eyes to see through the darkness as the humming of the
motor came nearer.
"There, isn't that it?" cried Ferd, pointing eagerly through the trees
toward a little patch of sky, palely illumined with stars.
"I think I saw it," said Chet, rubbing his eyes impatiently. "It's so
confoundedly dark--"
"Oh, won't you please come down?" wailed Billie's voice from the
spooky depths of the attic. "I'll die of fright if I have to stay here
another minute."
This appeal moved the boys, and they began reluctantly to descend the
ladder, keeping their eyes all the time on the pale patch of sky.
"Where are the others?" asked Teddy, as he reached Billie's side.
"They're down looking for the ghost," answered Billie, as she ran down
the stairs in front of them. "They sent me to get you boys, and I found
you gone. Mrs. Gilligan," she added, with a hysterical giggle, "has the
broom and Laura has the poker."
"Maybe we'd better stop on the way and gather up a few bedposts,"
suggested Ferd, as they took the last flight of stairs on a run and
landed in the lower hall.
"Hello, did you find anything?" sang out Chet, as the girls, looking
scared but valiant, came out to meet them. "Where's Mrs. Gilligan?"
"Inside," said Violet. "There isn't a thing to be seen any more than
there was the other night. I'm absolutely positive now that it must
be a ghost."
"Well, if it is, he's got a sense of humor," said Mrs. Gilligan, rising
from her knees where she had been peering into the corner behind the
piano. "I've heard of all sorts of spirits, but I never heard of one who
insisted upon playing the piano in the dead of night."
"He must have been a musician in his life time," suggested Chet. "That's
the reason he comes and haunts the piano."
"Well, I don't see why he doesn't choose a regular piano to haunt,"
said Billie, feeling irritable because she was very sleepy and had been
very much frightened. "It's bad enough for a live person to play, let
alone a ghost."
"And where could it have gone?" wondered Laura, her eyes big and dark
with excitement. "The minute we heard the noise--I guess we're sort of
listening for it even in our sleep--we jumped up and came down here while
Billie went to call you boys. It was playing almost up to the minute we
came into the room."
"And maybe we weren't afraid to go in!" said Violet, with a shudder. "I
don't know how we ever got the courage."
"Well, you only came because Mrs. Gilligan and I went ahead with the
broom and the poker," sniffed Laura.
"Was it playing when you came down the stairs?" asked Chet, interested.
"And did it stop as soon as you entered the room?"
"Yes," it was Mrs. Gilligan who answered this time. "And it was good for
him he did. I've lost enough sleep through the miserable rascal and I was
just ripe for a tussle."
"I don't blame him for running," said Teddy, with a chuckle.
"But where did he go?" asked Laura again. "We were sure that we'd see
something--goodness knows what--when we turned the corner of the room."
"And all we saw was a--a large amount of nothing at all," added Violet,
wide-eyed.
"Perhaps," suggested Ferd, with a chuckle, "the aeroplane we heard
belonged to him--"
"A ghost's aeroplane," murmured Billie, smothering another
hysterical chuckle.
"And when you girls came in he just soared skyward and went off in it."
"It's funny we never thought of that," said Teddy scornfully.
"Well, I wish we could find out what it is," sighed Billie, as they
started upstairs again. "This staying awake all night isn't very
much fun."
"But isn't it strange," asked Laura, stopping on the landing and looking
back at them, "that both the piano and the motor should start again on
the same night?"
"Yes, it is, rather," said Chet, adding seriously: "I wonder if there
could really be any connection between the two."
"There's no use wondering, that I can see," said Mrs. Gilligan, preparing
to send them off to their respective bedrooms. "I think the best thing we
can do is not to notice them any more. Perhaps the ghosts will get tired,
if they find they don't worry us," this last with a chuckle.
"Well, but they do worry us," said Violet plaintively. "Every time I hear
that piano, I just about die of fright."
"Listen," commanded Billie, and as they listened they heard it
again! The ghost, or whatever it was, was surely making a joke of
them that night!
As soon as the boys could recover from their surprise they tumbled down
the stairs, tripping over each other in their hurry, while the girls
followed more slowly.
But again the noise stopped abruptly, and when they entered the room
there was nothing to be seen or heard.
"Say, this thing is making me mad!" cried Ferd, glaring at the old piano
as though it were the offender. "I don't mind meeting an
honest-to-goodness ghost, but I'll be hanged if I'll let him laugh at
me!"
"I don't see how you're going to help it," said Teddy. "Come on, fellows,
it's pretty nearly morning, and we can decide then what we'll do to catch
Mr. Ghost. I'm so sleepy I'm apt to fall asleep on my feet."
So they went upstairs again, feeling rather miserable and dragged out
with excitement, and crawled into bed.
"If this thing keeps up much longer, I'll just be a wreck, that's all,"
groaned Laura, and almost immediately she fell asleep.
After a little while of staring into the dark, Billie and Violet followed
her example, and once more there was quiet in the old house.
Nothing more disturbed them, but they woke the next morning, tired and
cross and with a decidedly "morning after" feeling.
"I don't want to get up," complained Violet, turning restlessly in bed
and punching her pillow. "I can't get more than one eye open."
"Shall we send for the doctor?" asked Billie, regarding her sleepily.
"That sounds like a serious complaint."
"Humph, I don't need a doctor," grumbled Violet. "I can prescribe for my
case better than he could. What I need is a rest cure."
"So say we all of us," echoed Laura sleepily. "I'm going to take
another nap, girls, and if anybody dares to wake me up, I'll throw my
hair brush at them."
"I'm going to get up," decided Billie. "I'll only get a headache
lying here."
"Well, I hope you enjoy yourself," said Laura, and settled herself in a
still more comfortable position.
While Billie was dressing the two girls fell asleep again, and as
she turned to look at them she almost wished that she had followed
their example.
"But I knew I couldn't sleep," she said, turning away, "and, besides, I'm
getting very hungry."
But when she started down the broad staircase she found that she was the
only one stirring in the house, and a strange, lonesome feeling took
possession of her.
"Ugh," she cried, glancing about her distastefully, "it's the gloomiest
place I ever did see. I'll be glad when we leave it. That is, I would
be," she added wistfully, "if only Chet and I were going with the others
to boarding school."
She wandered into the room where the old piano stood and looked at it
musingly for a few minutes. Then suddenly a thought struck her, and she
clapped her hands gleefully.
"I wonder--" she said, then, remembering an old rat trap that she had
come across several days ago, ran into the pantry to get it. She baited
it with a fresh piece of cheese and set it carefully on the piano.
"Now," she said, standing back and regarding her work with satisfaction,
"we shall see what we shall see!"
CHAPTER XXII
A THRILLING DISCOVERY
It was ten o'clock before the girls finally came down, and it was still
later before the boys appeared. Mrs. Gilligan and Billie had had
breakfast together, and Billie had confided to the older woman her
suspicions in regard to the ghostly player of the old piano.
"But we won't tell the boys and girls," Billie had said, with a
delightful sense of conspiracy. "We'll wait and see if it works."
As the young people came in, looking famished, Mrs. Gilligan rose and put
some cold muffins in the oven to heat.
"You won't get very much to eat," she warned them. "Billie and I had our
breakfast at a respectable hour, and now you've got to take what's left."
"I don't care what you give us, as long as it's food," said Ferd, looking
about him anxiously. "I'm just about starved to death."
"It seems to me I've heard that remark somewhere before," said Billie,
laughing at him. "Hurry up and eat, you folks," she added, as she set a
dish of fried hominy before them. "We girls haven't really made a
thorough examination of the attic yet, and I'm just dying to poke into
all the corners."
"Yes, I always did like attics," said Laura, adding, as she swallowed a
delicious morsel: "But, I like fried hominy more!"
"Won't you come too?" Violet asked the boys, as, their breakfast over,
the girls started up to the attic. "We'd love to have you and you might
find it interesting."
"No, thanks," said Teddy decidedly. "I can think of lots better things
to do than go roaming about a hot old attic when the thermometer is
ninety-six in the shade. I'm going for a walk in the woods. How about
it, fellows?"
"Yes, and see if we can come across those old fellows with the beards
that told us the corn-fish story," chuckled Chet. "You know," he added, "I
have wondered several times since then what the old fellows were up to.
Somehow, I'm mighty sure they didn't tell the truth."
"I tell you what!" cried Ferd eagerly. "Let's push on in the direction we
were going the other day and see what's being pulled off in there."
"Yes, and get shot most likely," sniffed Laura. "I don't think much of
that idea."
"Well, we didn't ask you to come, did we?" Ferd asked.
"No, and I don't think it was very nice of you, after we invited you to
our party," Violet put in, trying to look aggrieved.
"Oh, please won't you come with us?" asked Ferd, bowing elaborately
before her.
Laura gave him a little push which precipitated him in a rather abrupt
manner into a chair and completely spoiled his gallantry.
"I'll get even with you," he threatened good-naturedly, during the laugh
that followed at his expense. "But say, fellows, you haven't answered my
question. Are you game?"
"Sure we're game," they answered, and Chet added, as he picked up a stick
he had found in the woods several days before and had modeled into an
excellent club: "If they start any funny business they'll find me ready
for them."