If there was a natural curiosity in the heart of the dark-eyed girl, she said nothing of it, and at once led the way through the neatly tiled halls and soon opened a door admitting them to a small flat of three rooms, which was clean and attractively furnished. The windows, flooded with sunlight, overlooked the East River.

"This is the apartment that we show," Miss Selenski explained. "The others are just like it, or were, before tenants moved in," she corrected.

"Say, this _is_ sure cosy! Who lives in this one?" Bobs inquired.

"I do," Miss Selenski replied, hurrying to add, "But I did not fit it up.

The ladies did that. It has all the modern appliances that help to make housekeeping easy, and once every week a teacher comes here to instruct the neighborhood women how to cook, clean and sew; in fact, how to live.

And the lessons and demonstrations are given in this apartment."

When the girls were again in the office, Gloria turned to their new acquaintance, saying, "Do you happen to know of any place around here that is vacant where we might like to live?"

At first Miss Selenski shook her head. Then she added, with a queer little smile, "Not unless you're willing to live in the old Pensinger mansion."

Then she went on to explain: "Long, long ago, when New York was little more than a village, and Seventy-eighth Street was country, all along the East River there were, here and there, handsome mansion-like homes and vast grounds. Oh, so different from what it is now! Every once in a while you find one of these old dwellings still standing.

"Some of them house many poor families, but the Pensinger mansion is seldom occupied. If a family is brave enough to move in, before many weeks the 'for rent' sign is again at the door. The rent is almost nothing, but--" the girl hesitated, then went on to say, "Maybe I ought not to tell you the story about the old place if you have any thought of living there."

"Oh, please tell it! Is it a ghost story?" Bobs begged, and Gloria added, "Yes, do tell it, Miss Selenski. We are none of us afraid of ghosts."

"Of course you aren't," Miss Selenski agreed, "and, for that matter, neither am I. But nearly all of our neighbors are superst.i.tious. Mr.

Tenowitz, the grocer at the corner of First and Seventy-ninth has the renting of the place, and he declares that the last tenant rushed into his store early one morning, paid his bill and departed without a word of explanation, but he looked, Mr. Tenowitz told me, as though he _had_ seen a ghost. I don't think there is anything the matter with the old house,"

their informant continued, "except just loneliness.

"Of course, big, barnlike rooms, when they are empty, echo every sound in a mournful manner without supernatural aid."

"But how did it all start?" Bobs inquired. "Did anything of an unusual nature ever happen there?"

Miss Selenski nodded, and then continued: "The story is that the only daughter of the last of the Pensingers who lived there disappeared one night and was never again seen. Her mother, so the tale goes, wished her to marry an elderly English n.o.bleman, but she loved a poor Hungarian violinist whom she was forbidden to see. Because of her grief, she did many strange things, and one of them was to walk at midnight, dressed all in white, along the brink of the dark swirling river which edged the wide lawn in front of her home. Her white silk shawl was found on the bank one morning and the lovely Marilyn Pensinger was never seen again.

"Her father, however, was convinced that his daughter was not drowned, but that she had married the man she loved and returned with him to his native land, Hungary. So great was his faith in his own theory that, in his will, he stated that the taxes on the old Pensinger mansion should be paid for one hundred years and that it should become the property of any descendant of his daughter, Marilyn, who could be found within that time.

"I believe that will was made about seventy-five years ago and so, you see, there are twenty-five years remaining for an heir to turn up."

"What will happen if no one claims the old place?" Gloria inquired.

"It is to be sold and the money devoted to charity," Miss Selenski told them.

"That certainly is an interesting yarn," Bobs declared; then added gleefully, "I suppose the people around here think that the fair Marilyn returns at midnight, prowling along the sh.o.r.es of the river looking for her white silk shawl."

Miss Selenski nodded. "That's about it, I believe." Then she added brightly, "I'll tell you what, I'm not busy at this hour and if you wish I'll take you over to see the old place. Mr. Tenowitz will give me the keys."

"Thank you, Miss Selenski," Gloria said. "We would be glad to have you show us the place. There seems to be nothing else around here to rent and we might remain in the Pensinger mansion until you have a model flat unoccupied."

"That will not be soon," they were told, "as there is a long waiting list."

Then, after hanging a sign on the door which stated that she would be gone for half an hour, Miss Selenski and the three interested young people went down Seventy-eighth Street and toward the East River.

Bobs was hilariously excited. Perhaps, after all, she was going to have an opportunity to really practice what she had, half in fun, called her chosen profession, for was there not a mystery to be solved and an heir to be found?

CHAPTER V.

A STRANGE NEW HOME

Lena May's clasp on the hand of her older sister grew unconsciously tighter as they pa.s.sed a noisy tobacco factory which faced the East River and loomed, smoke-blackened and huge.

The old Pensinger mansion was just beyond, set far back on what had once been a beautiful lawn, reaching to the river's edge, but which was now hard ground with here and there a half-dead tree struggling to live without care. A wide road now separated it from the river, which was lined as far up and down as one could see with wharves, to which coal and lumber barges were tied.

The house did indeed look as though it were a century old. The windows had never been boarded up, and many of the panes had been broken by stones thrown by the most daring of the street urchins, though, luckily, few dared go near enough to further molest the place for fear of stirring up the "haunt."

"A n.o.ble house gone to decay," Gloria said. She had to speak louder than usual because of the pounding and whirring of the machinery in the neighboring factory. Lena May wondered if anywhere in all the world there were still peaceful s.p.a.ces where birds sang, or where the only sound was the murmuring of the wind in the trees.

"Is it never still here?" she turned big inquiring eyes toward their guide.

"Never," Miss Selenski told her. "That is, not for more than a minute at a time, between shifts, for when the day work stops the night work begins."

"Many of the workers are women, are they not?" Gloria was looking at the windows of the factory where many foreign women could be seen standing at long tables.

"They leave their children at the Settlement House. They work on the day shift, and the men, if they can be made to work at all, go on at night."

"Oh, Gloria!" this appealingly from the youngest, "will we ever be able to sleep in the midst of such noise, when we have been used to such silent nights at home?"

"I don't much wonder that you ask," Bobs laughingly exclaimed, as she thrust her fingers in her ears, for at that moment a tug on the river, not a stone's throw away from them, rent the air with a shrill blast of its whistle, which was repeated time and again.

"You won't mind the noises when you get used to them," Miss Selenski told them cheerfully. "I lived on Seventy-sixth Street, right under the Third Avenue L, and the only time I woke up was when the trains stopped running. The sudden stillness startles one, I suppose."

Lena May said nothing, but she was remembering what Bobs had said when they had left the Third Avenue Elevated: "Now we are to see how the 'other half' lives."

"Poor other half!" the young girl thought. "I ought to be willing to live here for a time and bring a little of the brightness I have known into their lives, for they must be very drab."

"Just wait here a minute," Miss Selenski was saying, "and I'll run over to the grocery and get the key."

She was back in an incredibly short time and found the three girls examining with great interest the heavy front door, which had wide panels, a shapely fan light over them, with beautiful emerald gla.s.s panes on each side.

"I simply adore this knocker," Bobs declared, jubilantly. "Hark, let's hear the echoes."

The knocker was lifted and dropped again, but though they all listened intently, a sudden confusion on the river made it impossible to hear aught else.

"My private opinion is that Marilyn's ghost would much prefer some other spot for midnight prowls," Bobs remarked, as the old key was being fitted into the queerly designed lock. "Imagine a beautiful, sensitive girl of seventy-five years ago trying to prowl down there where barges are tied to soot-black docks and where derricks are emptying coal into waiting trucks. No really romantic ghost, such as I am sure Marilyn Pensinger must be, would care to prowl around here."

Miss Selenski smiled at Bobs' nonsense. "I'm glad you feel that way," she said, "for, of course, if you don't believe in the ghost, you won't mind renting the house."

At that moment the derrick of which Bobs had spoken emptied a great bucket of coal with a deafening roar, and a wind blowing from the river sent the cloud of black dust hurling toward them.

"Quick! Duck inside!" Bobs cautioned, as they all leaped within and closed the door with a bang.

"Jimminy-crickets!" she then e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, using her favorite tom-boy expression. "The man who has this place to rent can't advertise it as clean and quiet, a good place for nervous people to recuperate." Then with a wry face toward her older sister. "I can't imagine Gwen in this house, can you?"