CHAPTER XVII
ONLY A BAT
The three girls sat quiet, every nerve tense, that same chilly sensation creeping up their spines, and their hair beginning to stand on end.
Out there in that wilderness, at three o'clock in the morning, a noise that sounded something like a motor car and yet was unlike anything they had ever heard before, might have frightened more experienced people than three fourteen-year-old girls.
"H-here it comes!" whispered Violet, clutching at Laura's arm, while Laura in her turn clutched at Billie's. "It's coming closer! Oh, girls—is it in the house?"
"Sh!" cried Billie. "It's a machine—it must be a machine—out on the road."
"But in this forsaken place, in the middle of the night?" cried Laura, beginning to shiver as though she were cold. "It—it can't be, Billie!"
"Sh-h," said Billie again. "Listen!"
The purring sound was coming closer, seemed almost in the house, it was so near—Then came an awful thought to Billie. Could it really be in the house? Was it possible that those awful stories about ghosts were true?
But no, the noise was passing on, getting softer, softer, dying off in the distance.
"It—it must have been a machine," said Laura, beginning to laugh hysterically. "Vi, what did you go and wake me up in the middle of the night for just to hear an automobile? I was having such a lovely sleep."
"But I'm not so sure it was a motor car," insisted Violet stubbornly, the spell of the dream still upon her. "It didn't sound like it."
"But it couldn't have been anything else," said Billie, trembling a little with the reaction. "We heard it coming down the road, heard it pass the house, and go on. It simply must have been a machine."
"Oh, all right," said Violet, adding with a little sigh: "Well, I guess none of us will sleep any more to-night. I'm not even going to try."
"Well, I am," said Billie, leaning back and closing her eyes, yet knowing that she was as wide awake as she had ever been in her life. "I don't see any use in lying here and listening for things. Good night once more, girls—I'm off."
"Meaning you're crazy?" asked Laura, to which Billie made no reply.
As a matter of fact, even while they were saying they could sleep no more that night, the girls did go to sleep, and, what is more, slept soundly until they were awakened by Mrs. Gilligan's voice calling to them from the connecting doorway.
"Do you expect to sleep all day?" she was asking them, her face rosy and herself very nice and trim in a light blue house dress. "This is the third time I've spoken to you, and I was beginning to get worried."
"Wh-what time is it?" demanded Laura sleepily.
"About eleven," Mrs. Gilligan answered calmly, and they gasped.
"Eleven!" repeated Billie, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes hard. "For goodness' sake, how did it get that way? I feel as if I hadn't had any sleep at all."
"Well, I've had the most awful dreams," complained Violet, turning over as if she intended to go to sleep again. "I've done nothing but dream of ghosts and motor cars all night."
At the mention of ghosts Mrs. Gilligan broke into hearty laughter.
"Ghosts?" she said, her eyes sparkling. "I shouldn't think you'd be talking of ghosts any more. Here you've spent a whole night in the house and no spirits have bothered you yet. I should think you'd be satisfied."
"Oh, but didn't you hear that noise in the night?" Violet asked her, turning over and forgetting the nap she had been about to take. "We girls were just about scared to death."
"Speak for yourself," said Laura, who, whether she had really been frightened or not, never liked to have anybody tell her about it.
"You were scared too, what's the use of denying it?" Violet demanded hotly, but Mrs. Gilligan interrupted them.
"Never mind about that," she said, with a smile. "Just tell me about this noise you thought you heard."
So the girls told her about their weird experience of the night before, all talking at once and making it as hard as possible for Mrs. Gilligan to understand what it was all about.
"A noise that sounded like a motor car," she said, when they had finished and had paused for lack of breath. "Well, I don't see what's so very queer about that. May have been some joy-riders or something."
"But who would be joy-riding in this part of the country?" Laura objected. "The country people hereabouts probably don't know what the word means."
"That particular sport does seem to belong to the idle rich," Mrs. Gilligan agreed, with a chuckle. "Well," she added, getting up and starting for the door, "whatever it is, or was, we needn't go without our breakfast because of it. How would you like some bacon and eggs and biscuits?"
The suggestion worked like a charm, and before Mrs. Gilligan had finished the girls were out of bed and feeling about for their clothes.
"You know the room doesn't look half bad by daylight," remarked Violet, as she was arranging her hair before an elaborately framed old mirror. "And it surely is quite clean."
"But it's horribly gloomy, just as mother said." Billie was regarding the dingy woodwork, now almost black with age, and the huge four-poster with its funereal canopied top, and the large pictures of dead and gone ancestors that adorned the walls. "The only really good things in the whole room are the tables and chairs. They look," she added hopefully, "as if they might bring in a little money. Perhaps I'll be able to pay for the statue after all."
"Oh, and I'm just crazy to see the rest of the house by daylight," said Laura, clapping her hands. "Come on, you slow pokes, aren't you ever going to be ready?"
"We're ready now," said Billie, putting an arm about Violet and hurrying her to the door. "Oh, is that bacon I smell—and coffee?" she asked as through the open door came a whiff of the good things below.
"You said it!" cried Laura, making a rush for lower floor with Billie and Violet not very far behind her. "And it isn't going to be more than about two minutes before I taste that same bacon and eggs."
When they reached the lower hall they were surprised to see that it looked almost as gloomy and forbidding as it had the night before, in spite of the fact that the front door was open and sunlight was streaming through.
"Ugh!" said Laura, with a shudder, "I don't wonder that they had gloomy dispositions in the old days if they had to live in houses like these. It's enough to give one the creeps."
"I'm glad you like my property so much," said Billie, with a demure little smile. "I haven't heard you say one nice thing about it yet."
"We have treated our hostess rather rudely, haven't we?" laughed Violet, putting an arm about Billie and drawing her out into the sunshine. "But really, Billie, we're quite sure that you don't like it any better than we do."
"And you are quite right," Billie assured her, then added, breaking away and running a little in front of them: "Girls, let's see if we can find any signs of that car we heard last night."
Eagerly they scanned the rocky road, but could see no traces of any vehicle that would be big enough to make the noise they had heard the night before.
"The plot thickens," said Laura, as they started back to the house to eat the bacon and eggs and biscuits. "We hear a car, but see no traces of it."
"It must have been a spirit car," said Violet, adding, with a plaintive little sigh that made the girls laugh: "In spite of all my perfectly good training, I'm beginning to believe in ghosts."
After breakfast the girls roamed around the big house, nosing into corners, calling each other's attention to this and that queer ornament or article of furniture—and there were plenty of them,—and otherwise thoroughly enjoying themselves. But as yet they did not venture into the gloomy cellar with its mysterious tunnels.
In the drawing-room they found a queer old piano which Violet declared must date back farther than Revolutionary days and which Billie, amid gibes and laughter from her chums, tried to play.
After she had tried and failed on half a dozen different compositions, she gave up the attempt, and they roamed upstairs, looking through one room after another until Billie accidentally opened the door that led to the attic.
"Here's where we want to go, girls," she cried. "Mother said this was the spookiest place in the whole house—except the cellar."
"Hadn't we better get Mrs. Gilligan to go with us?" asked Violet, holding back. "After last night I've had enough spooky experiences to last me a week."
"Oh, come on," cried Laura, running ahead of them up the stairs. "I'll show you two 'fraid cats—"
"Who's a 'fraid cat?" cried Billie, starting in hot pursuit. "I'll have you know that nobody dares call me such names and get away with it. Come on, Vi, let's murder her."
"Just try it," Laura hissed at them dramatically from the head of the stairs. "I'd turn into another ghost and haunt you!"
"Oh, for goodness' sake, leave her alone, Billie," Violet entreated.
"We've got enough ghosts around here without Laura. What's that?"
"If you're going to scare me again," began Laura, but it was Billie this time who commanded silence.
"Hush, I did hear something queer," she said, and all three listened intently.
It came again, a weird little noise like the brushing of wings against some hard object, and the girls scarcely dared to breathe. Then out into the hot open attic fluttered a tiny little object with webbed wings and the body of a mouse.
"A bat!" cried Laura, sinking down weakly and shaking with hysterical laughter. "Oh, girls, if I have to stay here another week I'll just die of heart failure—I know I will!"