“Well, there’s you with the traps and Red with the sax—as Fatty has just suggested,” began Ned. “Dick is pretty fair on the banjo and Jim can play the piano with the best of ’em. Dave can do his stuff on the clarinet—if he’s not too exhausted—and I would make a bluff with the trumpet. Fatty could take tickets and act as a general utility man. That makes seven, all we need for a start.”
“That’s about half of the high school orchestra,” remarked Dick. “I guess with a little practice we might get by as far as music is concerned, but where would we run the dances?”
Several possibilities were suggested, only to be turned down as impracticable for one reason or another.
“What we want is a place just out of town which auto parties can reach handily,” declared Jim Tapley, who was taking a lively interest in the scheme. “We could serve refreshments and make something that way.”
“There’s one place we might do something with,” began Ned, a bit doubtfully. “I’m thinking of the Coleson house,” he continued. “Of course it’s a good ten miles out and quite a distance off the main road.”
“Yes, and that’s not the whole story either,” objected Rogers. “The house was going to wrack and ruin even while Coleson lived in it, and lying shut up so long can’t have improved it a whole lot.”
“Guess it’s in bad shape all right,” agreed Tommy Beals. “Haunted, too—if you can believe all you hear about it. There’s talk of some mighty queer things going on out there.”
“What kind of things?” asked Wat Sanford, quickly.
“Can’t say exactly,” admitted Beals. “Some folks claim to have seen and heard things that couldn’t be explained. Last fall a darky went past the house after dark and was scared pretty near dippy.”
“That’s the bunk,” drawled Dave Wilbur. “D’j’ever see a darky that wasn’t nuts on ghosts?”