"All right, love, I'll leave you with Dozia if you insist. She's big enough to take care of you at any rate. Do you imagine Miss Gifford has materialized some domestic enemy in her change of staff? And that this super-conscious fired janitor or furnace man is operating against her?"
"I don't know, Judy," sighed Jane. "Looks to me more loosely organized than that. Besides, even a fired furnace man would keep union hours at one fifty per. No, I think you'll find the eternal female back of that racket, it's too temperamental for masculine action."
CHAPTER XVI
THE HIDDEN CHAMBER
Was this Wellington and was Jane Allen, the darling of the gym and the record maker for basket-ball, now so prone on solving a perplexing noise mystery that her games were cancelled and even her riding hours filled in with mundane matters, while her companions flew away to gather mountain nuts and wonderful complexions?
Jane's defiant laugh answered this very personal question. She was proud and she was fiery, and someone had been trying to discredit her father's scholarship. Of course that "someone" was Dolorez Vincez, the expelled junior of the previous year. Every clue pointed its accusing finger at Dol Vin. She it was who brought those two freshmen, Shirley and Sarah, together at her beauty shop. It was she also who "took care" of Shirley's folks when they came in to see the "darter," and everyone who knew Dol knew, also, that these little attentions must have been rather costly to the country folks, for Dol always made things pay.
In the back of Jane's mind there was growing the germ of suspicion toward that same triangle in the spook alarms. Dol, Shirley and Sarah must be somewhere in that demonstration, but Jane had to admit the clues were not developing with such speed as she usually counted on in college mysteries.
But perhaps this one more day would unearth something tangible. At any rate, the parties and teas and sorority dances were getting into swing, and even a fascinating ghost would soon have to be turned over to the proper authorities, thought Jane, if he did not quickly become more co-operative with the juniors.
Work was serious and exacting. Every period had a record of its own, and while Jane was specializing in sociology she was also keeping up with the regular college course for her A. B. degree.
Promptly after logic dismissed, at two-thirty, she sought out Dozia. "Come along, Doze," begged Jane, "don't let us waste a moment. The girls are all busy now, and perhaps we can make a survey without having a ballet de follies dancing around." Dozia made her notebook safe and swung into Jane's trot for Lenox. Warburton Hall, one of the larger buildings, was just emptying a class from lecture but Jane and Dozia made a complete detour of it to escape attention.