The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
CONSTERNATION
The other girls and Mrs. Mackson stood spellbound for the moment, and then their senses came back to them, and they realized the need of acting at once.
"Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty. "Where are you? What happened?"
She started back down the hall, but Grace caught her.
"Don't—don't!" Grace pleaded.
"But I must—I shall—Mollie—some one has taken her—thrust her into that room!"
"Yes—it was the ghost—I saw it!" Grace fairly screamed, "and they'll get you!"
"I don't care if they do! We must go to Mollie. Come, girls, to the rescue!" cried Betty, resolutely.
"But let us get some one to help us first!" insisted Amy. "We ought not to face that—that thing alone!" and she gasped, so rapidly was her heart beating.
"We're not alone!" insisted Betty. "There are four of us, to one—one man."
"How do you know he was a man?" demanded Grace.
"Didn't I hear him speak? It was a man's voice. Some man, for purposes of his own, is masquerading as a ghost, and he probably tried to frighten Mollie and the rest of us to keep up the reputation of the mansion for being haunted. If none of you are going back, I'll go alone!"
Betty started down the hallway, and her example was one of the things needed to infuse courage into the others. Not that Cousin Jane especially needed it, for she had already made up her mind, as had Betty, that something must be done, and that soon.
"Of course we must rescue Mollie!" the chaperone declared, emphatically. "Anyhow, that fellow ran away, after locking her in the room. Come back there."
Rather timidly, it must be confessed, they advanced until they stood before a door. There were several along the hall, opening into various rooms, apparently.
"It was here," said Betty.
"No, this one," declared Mrs. Mackson, indicating another opposite.
Betty turned to Grace and Amy.
"I was too frightened to look," admitted Grace.
"And I didn't see," confessed Amy.
"Well, there's one way to prove it—we'll call," spoke Betty. She raised her voice and cried:
"Mollie! Mollie! Don't be frightened. We haven't deserted you! In which room are you?"
They paused, waiting for what they expected would be a tear-choked answer, but none came.
"Mollie! Mollie!" cried Betty again, her tones trembling now.
Anxiously they waited, but there was no response.
"She isn't there!" gasped Amy. "Oh, Betty!" and she began to cry.
"Hush!" cautioned Mrs. Mackson. "Probably the poor child has fainted, and can't hear us. It's enough to make any one faint. But I'm sure this is the room," and she indicated the one she had pointed out. "We must break down the door and get her."
Not expecting the door to open, she turned the knob, but, to her surprise, the portal swung back, creaking on rusty hinges.
"The light—quick!" the chaperone called to Betty.
The remaining lantern from the auto—one being with Mollie—was flashed into the apartment. It took but a glance to show that it was empty.
"I thought it was this one," said Betty, trying to keep her voice from trembling, as she moved to the door she had insisted was the right one.
She tried half a dozen times. The door was locked.
"She's in—there!" gasped Grace.
Again Betty called aloud, repeating Mollie's name over and over again, but there was no answer.
"Oh—oh, what can have happened?" faltered Amy. "Poor Mollie!"
"At least we know that it was perfectly natural what happened—however mean and unjust it was," declared Betty. "We have to do with natural forces, and"
Through the old house there once more sounded that mournful groan, chilling the very blood of the girls, and causing them to cling together. Several times were the groans repeated, and then there shone, as if from a distance, a bluish light, and there came the clank of metal.
"Oh—oh!" cried Grace.
"Quiet!" commanded Betty. "Mollie, are you in there?"
The storm had, in a measure, ceased now, and the only sounds from without was the falling of the rain.
"That—that couldn't have been thunder or lightning," said Betty, with a puzzled air.
"It was the wind—that is still blowing," insisted Mrs. Mackson. "Don't be frightened, girls. We must get Mollie out of that room. She has certainly fainted, and when she comes to she will be horribly frightened if we are not with her. Try the door again, Betty."
Betty did so, but it would not give.
"We must break it down!" decided the chaperone, resolutely. "Is there anything we can use?"
"There's a chair in that other room," said Amy, indicating the apartment they had looked in, only to find it untenanted. "We might use that."
"The very thing!" declared Mrs. Mackson. "We'll get it!"
She started for the other room, followed the others, when Grace cried:
"Hark!"
They listened.
"What is it?" asked Betty.
"The sound of carriage wheels out in the road. And I heard a man's voice speak to his horse."
"Maybe it's the—one who caught Mollie, and he's taking her away," faltered Grace, who seemed to have a faculty of suggesting unpleasant possibilities at the wrong time.
"Then we must stop him!"' cried Betty. She turned toward the front door, but a short distance away. The others hurried on after her, and saw, out in the road, the dim outlines of a carriage. There was a driving-light on the dashboard, and by its gleam the girls could make out the dark form of a man alighting.
"At least he's not—a ghost!" whispered Amy.
"Help! Oh, please help us!" screamed Grace.
"Hello, there! What's the trouble?" asked a pleasant voice. "I'll be with you in a minute. Whoa there, Jack, old man! Don't get uneasy. Show your light, please, so I can see where you are."
Betty flashed her lantern, and in its rays a man came up the weed-grown path. The girls were almost crying for sheer relief.