That evening, while Jerry was recounting to her chums what she and Helen had heard of the altercation between the cab driver and the two girls, Leslie was having a confidential talk with Natalie Weyman. She had gone straight from the garage to her room, eaten dinner at the Hall and asked Natalie to come to her room after dinner.
“Nat, you are right about Bess. She is no good,” Leslie began, dropping into a chair opposite that of her friend. Briefly narrating the happening of the afternoon, she repeated the remark Elizabeth had made to her at the garage. “What would you draw from that?” she asked.
“Someone has been talking.” Natalie compressed her lips in a tight line. “You are sure you never told her yourself?”
“Positively, no. I have never babbled my private affairs to Bess, or Lola either. Only the old crowd were told the facts of that trouble. We have a traitor in the camp and I know who it is.” Leslie’s eyes narrowed with sinister significance. “It’s Dulcie. I am going to find out quietly what all she has been saying about me and to whom she has been saying it. I’m sure she told Bess about the summons. That isn’t so serious. I could overlook that, although I don’t like it. It is the other things she may have told. That’s what worries me. She and I have been on the outs since that Valentine masquerade last year. She hardly ever comes to my room. I am not sorry. I never got along well with Dulcie. I never trusted her.”
“Dulcie ought to know better than tell all she knows to that Walbert creature,” Natalie made indignant return. “Why, Les, suppose she were foolish enough to tell her about that high tribunal stunt?” Natalie drew a sharp breath of consternation. “Dulcie knows the rights of the Remson mix-up, too.”
“Dulcie knows too much. So do some of the other girls. If I had it to do over again, I would not tell anyone but you how I put over a stunt. Why did we haze Bean? Simply because she reported me to Matthews after Langly had agreed to drop it. The girls were all in on the hazing, so not one of them would be safe if they told it.”
“The Remson affair would do you the most harm if it got out,” Natalie said decidedly. “It is contemptible in Dulcie to gossip about you after all the favors you have done her. You’ve lent her money over and over again. You know she never pays it back if she can slide out of it.”
Leslie made an indifferent gesture of assent. “She owes me over two hundred dollars now. I lent it to her during her freshie year. She paid up what she borrowed of me last year, but she never said a word about the other. Dulcie has nerve, Nat; pure, unadulterated nerve. She can’t bear me lately because I run the Sans to suit myself. I always ran the club and she knows that. Last year she decided that she would like to run it herself. I sat down on her every time she tried it. She deliberately left the back door of that house unlocked the night we hazed Bean. I told her to see to it. She was edgeways at me. She never went near the door. You know what happened.”
“Dulcie will have to be told a few plain truths.” Natalie frowned displeased anxiety. The news of Dulcie’s defection was rather alarming.
“She is going to hear them from me, but not yet. I shall catch her dead to rights before I have things out with her. I’ve made up my mind just how I am going to do it, provided the rest of the Sans stand by me. It will be to their interest to do so. I mean, with their support, I can give her precisely what she deserves.”