"It is open! Let's go in and see what we can see."

"It is positively weird. I am afraid of ghosts in such a place even in broad daylight," I declared half in earnest, but Tweedles wanted to go in and I was never one to hang back when a possible adventure was on foot.

The creaking door swung in as if propelled by unseen hands and we found ourselves in a hall of rather fine proportions with a broad stairway leading up. Doors opening into this hall were also swinging in the wind, so we entered the room to the right, the parlor, of course, we thought.

The paper was hanging in shreds from the wall, adding to the dismal swishing sound that pervaded the whole building. From this room we entered another hall that had a peculiar looking counter built on one side.

"What do you fancy this thing is for?" demanded Dum.

"I've got it! I've got it!" exclaimed Dee. "This is an old inn or hotel or something and that is the clerk's desk. Look, here is a row of hooks for keys and here is a rusty key still hanging on the hook."

"It must have been a delightful place to stay with such a view of the harbor and those beautiful porches where one could sit and watch the ships come in. This room next must have been the dining room, and see where there is a little stage! That was for the musicians to sit on,"

enthused Dum.

"When they finished supper they put the tables against the wall and danced like this," and Dee pirouetted around the dusty, rotting floor.

"Isn't it awful to let a place like this go to pieces so? I don't believe there is a whole pane of gla.s.s in the house, and I am sure no door will stay shut. It's too gloomy for me; let's get out in the street again," I begged.

"You can go, but I am going upstairs before I leave. I should think a would-be author would want to see all the things she could, and if there are any ghosts meet them," and Dee started valiantly up the creaking stairs. Of course Dum and I followed.

A silence settled on us as we mounted. The wind that had been noisy enough below was simply deafening the higher we got. The paper that was hanging from the ceilings rattled ceaselessly and the wind was tugging at what was still sticking tenaciously to some of the side walls making a strange whistling sound.

"Gee whiz! I feel like Jane Eyre!" whispered Dum.

"No; 'The Fall of the House of Usher'!" I gasped. "Just think of such a place as this being right here in sight of all those grand houses!"

"I know it's haunted! I feel a presence!" and Dee stopped suddenly on the landing.

"Who's a 'fraid cat now?" I taunted. "Let the would-be author go in front. 'Infirm of purpose, give me the dagger!'"

At that Dee ran lightly on ahead of us and disappeared in a room to the right. We followed in time to see her skirts vanishing through a door beyond.

"This must have been the bridal chamber, it is so grand. Just look at the view of the harbor through this window," said Dum, still whispering, as there was something about the place, a kind of gruesomeness, that made one feel rather solemn. I thought of Poe's "Haunted Palace" and whispered some of the stanzas to Dum, for the moment both of us forgetting Dee, who had rushed off so precipitately.

"'In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace-- Radiant palace--reared its head.

In the monarch Thought's dominion, It stood there; Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair.

"'But evil things in robes of sorrow, a.s.sailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

"'And travelers now, within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While like a ghastly, rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh--but smile no more.'"

I had hardly finished the last stanza of what is to me the most ghastly poem in the English language, when a strange blood-curdling shriek was heard echoing through the rattle-trap old house.

"Dee!" we shouted together and started on a run through the door where we had last seen her new brown suit vanishing. It opened into a long corridor with doors all down the side, evidently bedrooms. Numbers were over the doors. All the doors were shut. Where was Dee? The wind had stopped as quickly as it had started and the old house was as quiet as the grave.

"Dee! Dee!" we called. "Where are you, Dee?"

Our voices sounded as though we had yelled down a well. No answer! My eye fastened on the door with No. 13 over it. All of us have some superst.i.tions, and anyone brought up by a colored mammy is certain to have many.

"No. 13 is sure to be right," I thought, and pushed open the door.

A strange sight met my gaze: Dee, with her arms thrown around a youth who crouched on the floor, his face buried in his hands while his whole frame was shaken with sobs! From the chandelier hung a rope with a noose tied in the dangling end, and under it a pile of bricks carefully placed as though some child had been building a house of blocks. The bricks had evidently been taken from among others that were scattered over the hearth near a chimney that had fallen in.

Our relief at finding Dee and finding her unharmed was so great that nothing mattered to us. Dee put her finger on her lips and we stopped stock-still. The slender figure of the young man was still convulsed with sobs, and Dee held him and soothed him as though he had been a baby and she some grandmother. Finally he spoke, with his face still covered:

"Claire must never know!" Claire? Then this was Louis Gaillard! Dee had said several times she would like to know him, but she had had no idea of her idle wish being granted so quickly and in such a manner. When the boy said "Claire must never know," Dee arose to the occasion as only Dee could and said in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone: "No, Louis, I promise you that Claire shall never know from me." This calling him by name at the time did not seem strange to him. He was under such stress of emotion that the use of his Christian name by an unknown young girl seemed perfectly natural to the stricken youth.

It seems that when Dee went on ahead of us while I was so grandiloquently spouting poetry, she had flitted from room to room. The doors had been open all along the corridor except in No. 13. She had had a fancy to close them after each exploration until she had come to 13.

On opening that door she had met a sight to freeze her young blood, but instead of freezing her young blood she had simply let out a most normal and healthy yell. Louis Gaillard was standing on the pile of bricks that he had placed with great precision under the chandelier, and as Dee entered he was in the act of fitting the noose around his poor young neck. His plan of course had been to slip the noose and then kick the pile of bricks from under him and there to hang until he should die.

The realization of what had occurred came to Dum and me without an explanation, which Dee gave us later when we could be alone with her.

Dee, in the meantime, continued to pat the boy's shoulder and hold him tight in her courageous arms until the sobs ceased and he finally looked up. Then he slowly rose to his feet. He was a tall, slender youth, every inch of him the aristocrat. His countenance was not weak, just despondent. I could well fancy him to be very handsome, but now his sombre eyes were red with weeping and his mouth trembling with emotion.

"I don't know what made me be so wicked," he finally stammered.

"I know. You are very despondent over your life. You are tired of idleness and see no way to be occupied because your father opposes the kind of thing you feel yourself fitted to do," and Dee, ordinarily the kind of girl who hated lollapalusing, as she called it, took the boy's nerveless hand in both of hers. She said afterwards she knew by instinct that he needed flesh and blood to hang to, something tangible to keep his reason from leaving him. He looked at her wonderingly and she continued: "Claire has been away on a trip and while she was gone your father has nagged you. He thinks working in flowers is not the work for a Gaillard and wants you to be a lawyer or preacher. You have no money to go to college, and he seems to think you can be a preacher without the education necessary to be a lawyer--which is news to me. You have offers to plant gardens right here in Charleston, but your father will not permit you to do it. You have become despondent and have lost appet.i.te and are now suffering from a nervousness that makes you not quite yourself."

"But you--how do you know all this?"

"I am ashamed to tell you how I know it. I am afraid you will never be able to trust me if you know."

"I not trust you! You seem like an angel from heaven to me."

"Well, first let me introduce my sister and friend to you."

Dee had a wonderful power of putting persons at their ease and now in these circ.u.mstances, to say the least unconventional, she turned and introduced us to Mr. Louis Gaillard with as much simplicity as she would have shown at a tennis game or in a ball-room. He, with the polished manners of his race, bowed low over our proffered hands. All of us ignored the pile of bricks and the sinister rope hanging from the chandelier.

"We are twins and this is our best friend, Page Allison. We have got some real long names, but Dum and Dee are the names we go by as a rule, Dum and Dee Tucker. We are down here in Charleston with our father Jeffry Tucker, Zebedee for short. And now I want you to do us a big favor----"

"Me? A favor for you?" Dee had proceeded rather rapidly and the dazed young man had some difficulty in following her.

"Yes, a favor! I want you, all of us want you, to come up to the hotel and have lunch with us and meet Zebedee. It is lunch time now almost, and we promised to be back in time,--you see, if you come with us, Zebedee can't row with us about being late. He will be awfully cut up over our being late--nothing makes him so cross. I know if you are with us he will be unable to rag us. Just as soon as he gets something to eat he will be all right."

What was Dee driving at? Zebedee cross! Had she caught the young man's malady and gone a little off her hooks? Dum and I looked at each other wonderingly--then a light dawned on us: she wanted to get the young man entirely away from this terrible room, and felt if she made him think that he was to go along to protect us from an irate father, he would do it from a sense of chivalry. Having more experience with an irate father than any other kind, Louis was easily persuaded.

"Certainly, if I can be of any a.s.sistance!"

"Well, you can! Now let's hurry!"

CHAPTER VIII

TUCKER TACT

It was quite a walk back to the hotel but we did it in an inconceivably short time. It was only 1.10 as we stepped into the lobby. We walked four abreast wherever the sidewalk permitted it and when we had to break ranks we kept close together and chatted as gaily as usual. Louis was very quiet but very courteous. The fresh air brought some color back to his pale cheeks and the redness left his eyes. He was indeed a very handsome youth. He seemed to be in a kind of daze and kept as close to Dee as he could, as though he feared if she left him, he might again find himself in the terrible dream from which she had awakened him.

What was Dee to say to her father? How account for this young man? I was constantly finding out things about the Tuckers that astonished me. The thing that was constantly impressing me was their casualness. On this occasion it was very marked. What father would simply accept a situation as Zebedee did this one? We three girls had gone out in the morning to his certain knowledge knowing not one single person in the whole city, and here we were coming back late to lunch and bringing with us a handsome, excited looking young man and introducing him as though we had known him all our lives.