“Come with us this instant, Patsy. You have already run more than enough risks to-night.”
Miss Martha’s intonation was such as to indicate that she, too, was yet to be reckoned with.
“We’re in for it,” breathed Bee to Patsy as the two girls followed Miss Carroll, and the Perry girls out of the gallery and into the corridor which led to Miss Martha’s room. Emily, however, had declared herself as “daid sleepy” and asked permission to return to her own room instead of accepting the refuge of Miss Carroll’s.
“I don’t care,” Patsy returned in a defiant whisper. “Our plan worked. We caught the ghost. And that’s not all. What about Dolores? Did you ever bump up against anything so amazing? Now we know who the mysterious ‘she’ is. No wonder poor Dolores was afraid of her.”
Now arrived at Miss Carroll’s door, the chums had no time for further confidences. Miss Martha hustled them inside the room, hastily closed the door and turned the key.
That worthy but highly displeased woman’s next act was to sink into an easy chair and in the voice of a stern judge order Bee and Patsy to take chairs opposite her own.
“Now, Patsy, will you kindly tell me why I was not taken into your confidence regarding yours and Beatrice’s presumptuous plans? Do you realize that both of you might have been killed? What possessed you to do such a thing? I know that you are far more to blame than Beatrice, even though she insisted to me that she was equally concerned in your scheme. She merely followed your lead.”
“I’m to blame. I planned the whole thing,” Patsy frankly confessed. “I don’t know how much Bee has told you, but this is the story from beginning to end.”
Without endeavoring to spare herself in the least, Patsy began with an account of the fearsome apparition she had seen on the previous night and went bravely on to the moment when she had seen old Rosita disappear behind the picture.
“I shall never trust either of you again,” was Miss Carroll’s succinct condemnation when Patsy had finished.