“What frightened you?” demanded the Head.
“While I was sitting at work, and the place was very still, I had suddenly the sensation of some one, or something, creeping along outside the door; I saw the handle turn, and the door creaked open for half an inch; I cried out, but there was no answer, and I just got up and bolted.”
“There was not much to frighten you in the fact of some one coming along the passage and softly opening the door?”
The voice of the Head was questioning, and under the compelling quality of her gaze Dorothy had to own up to the real cause of her fear.
“The girls have said that the rooms up there are haunted—that a certain something comes along at night opening the doors, sighing heavily, and moaning as if in pain.”
“Did you hear sighs and moans?” asked the Head, her lips giving an involuntary twitch.
“I did not stay to listen; I bolted as fast as I could go,” admitted Dorothy. “That was why my books were not put away, or any of my things cleared up.”
“Do you know why the girls say the rooms are haunted?” asked the Head, and this time she smiled so kindly that Dorothy found the courage to reply.
“I was told that a girl, Amelia Herschstein, was killed on that landing.” Her voice was very low, and her gaze dropped to the carpet. Standing there in the daylight it seemed so perfectly absurd to admit that she had been nearly scared out of her senses on the previous evening by her remembrance of a ghost story.
“You don’t seem to have got the details quite right,” said the Head in a matter-of-fact tone. “About twenty years ago, I have been told, the landing where the studies are was given up to the Sixth for bedrooms; girls were not supposed to need studies then—at least they did not have them here. There was no second staircase then; the place where the stairs go down by the prep room of the Upper Fifth was a small box-room which had a window with a balcony. Amelia Herschstein was leaning over this balcony one night to talk to a soldier from Beckworth Camp who had contrived to scrape an acquaintance with her, when she fell, and was so injured that she died a week later. I suppose that the idea of the haunting comes from the fact of the Governors making such drastic alterations in that part of the house immediately afterwards. I am sorry you were frightened by the story, and I can understand how you would rush away, forgetting all about your books. But your fright is a small matter compared with this business of the torn book.” As she spoke the Head pointed in distaste at the ragged, dirty book in front of her, and paused, looking at Dorothy as if expecting her to speak.