“Are you game for a little ghost-walking?” he whispered to me, as Peter and the Dean passed to another part of the building.
I asked for details.
“It’s the chance of a lifetime if we have the nerve,” he declared. “Let’s sneak back into the building tonight, crawl on to a couple of slabs in the mortuary and cover ourselves with sheets. We’ll look enough like corpses to fool Peter if he looks in. Then, when Peter goes to bed and it gets good and lonely, we can come to life with a few gentle moans, get Peter aroused, and then do a little ghost dance for his benefit. After we have him frightened stiff we can take off the sheets and give him the laugh. The story will get around quick enough, and poor old Peter won’t be troubling us freshies any more.”
I could scent trouble in the wild scheme, and I hastily began to offer objections.
“Peter knows there aren’t any bodies in there now,” I said.
“That’s all right,” Chic replied. “I heard the dean tell him that a couple might arrive late today. In fact, I know there will be one there for certain. One of the inmates at the government hospital for the insane died today, a poor beggar who was so wild they had to keep him locked up tight all the time. He had no friends, so the body is to come here and the undertaker has already gone for it.”
I was still unconvinced, but I had no plausible excuses. I felt my eye, which was still sore from Peter’s bruising, and I assented to the crazy plan.
Chic was right about the body. The undertaker’s car drew up to the college just as we were leaving. We were the last students to go, and the dean was the only other person there.
He asked our aid in bringing the body to the mortuary, and we laid it on a cold marble slab. Peter arrived from supper, to begin his first night’s stay, just as the dean and we were leaving.