“What did I tell you?” Natalie cried out in triumph.
“You were right, Nat. I give you credit for reading her correctly. I haven’t seen her since the first of the week. When I do——” Leslie nodded her head, looking thoroughly disagreeable. Elizabeth Walbert was in for a very stormy interview with her.
“When will you call the meeting, Les?” anxiously inquired Joan. “Don’t put it off. No telling how much more mischief Dulcie may do if she isn’t curbed promptly.”
“Tomorrow night,” Leslie named. “See as many of the Sans as you can between now and the ten-thirty bell. Don’t go near Loretta Kelly’s and Della Byron’s room. Dulcie goes there a good deal lately. Della is coming to see me this evening after dinner. I’ll tell her then. Let me know before the last bell tonight how many of the girls are on, Nat. Will you?”
“Surely, Leslie dear.” Natalie had simmered down to affability. She was very proud of Leslie’s confidence in her.
Left alone, Leslie settled back in her chair very much as her father might have done on the eve of a pitched battle on the stock exchange. Her eyes roved about her room as she planned where the culprit should stand, where she wished the Sans to group themselves, and where her place as conductor of the arraignment should be.
A half smile flitted across her face as she remembered the last high tribunal she had conducted. This time the culprit was a real one. It had been hard to trump up charges against “Bean.” There would be no masks worn save the mask of deceit which she would ruthlessly strip from Dulcie, showing her in her true colors. After she was “all through” with Dulcie she would read the riot act to Bess Walbert. She wished to wait, however, until the sophomore unsuspectingly came to her for a favor. Then she would be shown a side of Leslie she had not dreamed existed.
At twenty minutes after ten Natalie came to Leslie’s room with the welcome news that “every last Sans” except Loretta and Della had been told and would be on hand promptly at eight o’clock the next evening.
“I saw Loretta and Della,” Leslie informed her chum. “They are wild. They heard that Dulc told two juniors about my renting that house for six months so we could use it when we hazed Bean. That’s a nice report to have in circulation on the campus, now isn’t it? Does that sound like Dulc, or doesn’t it?”
“Dulcie told that, undoubtedly. There were not more than six or seven of us who knew the terms on which you rented that house. Dulc knew. You always let her into extra private matters because she was one of the old guard. You and she were not so edgeways toward each other until after the night of the masquerade.”