“She must have had a nice wait if she missed him,” said Hilary.
“Mercy, Betty,” exclaimed Cathalina, “it might have been somebody to kidnap you, as you say. Where in the world was the night watchman?”
“O, smoking behind some tree, or asleep on the porch, I suppose,” replied Betty, forgetting that she had done her best to keep out of sight, while the prowling visitor had doubtless done the same.
Eloise then told of the ghost who had come without the “skull and crossbones pass”, and of the one that left shortly before Betty arrived. “I thought it was the same one coming back, you know. And when we all unmasked, everybody I had invited was there. So somebody planned to get Betty out of the way and come herself. Now do you suppose it was Louise?”
“Somebody else may have done it for a joke on Betty or all of us, you remember that sneeze around the corner!”
“The plot thickens,” laughed Cathalina. “Did the young man look like Louise?”
“Yes, very much. I think he really is her brother, or some near relative, but why couldn’t he come to see her at some decent hour, and inside of Greycliff?”
Nobody could answer that question.
CHAPTER XX
THE JUNIOR PICNIC
Sometimes a mystery remains one for weeks and months or is never solved, and many a girl at school has had to endure an unjust suspicion; but it was odd how bits of information came to the girls in the next few days, “links in the chain of evidence”, as Betty said. “I shall not say one word to Louise about the packet, or ask if she got it! If it was Louise, ‘Louise of Prussia’ and she was at the party, she’ll know it was I who brought it. If somebody else played the trick on me, she’ll have no means of knowing who it was, for her brother could only tell that it was a girl dressed up as a ghost, and there were about twenty of us. So let her betray herself!” and Betty struck an attitude, one hand waving to high heaven, the other upon her heart.