“I don’t think,” said John, “that it is so much that Marjorie believes that herself as it is that she wants the others to believe it. Marjorie’s one thought is to remove suspicion from the tea-house.”
Jack, who was walking next to John, glanced hastily at him, surprised at this insight into the mind of his sister.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “Well, we’re here, fellows. Let’s get into the house as quietly and as quickly as possible. I’ll go first with the key.”
They paused in the road and looked over the hedge.
The tea-house lay silent in the moonlight, which emphasized the roof and chimneys and was reflected in the upper windows, but left the lower part in shadow.
They passed swiftly into the house, and without making a light, entered the rest-room and tossed their blankets into a corner. Their footsteps and subdued voices sounded strangely in the closed house. John turned on his pocket flash and examined the rooms downstairs. Apparently everything remained as the girls had left it. He tried all the windows and doors, and found them locked; then returned to the others.
“While you fellows make yourselves comfortable, I’ll step outside and take a look around,” he said. “If you hear me poking around, don’t take me for a ghost.”
Outside, he found the atmosphere hot and oppressive. He walked leisurely beneath the trees, looking about him. Around at the back, everything seemed right enough; the stable was a deep black shadow, barely distinguishable beneath the low-hanging branches of intervening trees. John strolled around to the rose arbor, where the air was heavy with an odor of sweetness from the blooms, and stood for a minute considering whether it would be advisable for him to sit there while he smoked a cigarette. The others would miss him, and would probably come searching for him. He decided against it, turned, and went in.
The boys had spread several of the army blankets upon the floor, and were lying flat on their backs side by side, telling each other the most harrowing tales they had ever read or heard of. This Jack discovered when he almost fell over them; for in the darkness he could not see the prostrate forms. They were so absorbed in a weird story Eugene Schofield was telling that they failed to take notice of his return, except to make room for him as he felt his way among them and stretched himself upon the blankets. John smiled to himself as he listened to the hushed, tense voice of the narrator, and realized that, boylike, they were working themselves up to a fine pitch of excitement for spending the night in such a place.
“That was a corker!” commented one, as Eugene finished his story amid murmurs of approval from the other boys. “Did they ever find out what became of him?”