CHAPTER VII
FELLOW TRAVELERS
"Well! this is a pretty pickle!" groaned Tom, at last as much disturbedas Helen had been. "It's no use, girls. We'll have to stop here till thestorm is over. It is coming."
"Well, that will be fun!" cried Ruth, cheerfully. "Of course we ought tobe storm-bound in a deserted house. That is according to all romanticprecedent."
"Humph! you and your precedent!" grumbled her chum. "I'd rather it was anice roadside hotel, or tearoom. That would be something like."
"Come on! we'll take in the hamper, and make tea on the desertedhearthstone," said Ruth. "Tom can stay out here and repair his oldauto."
"Tom will find a shelter for the machine first, I reckon. There! hearthe thunder? We are going to get it, and I must raise the hood of thetonneau, too," proclaimed the lad. "Go on with your hamper and wraps. Isee sheds back there, and I'll try to coax the old Juggernaut into thatlane and so to the sheds."
He did as he proposed during the next few minutes, while the girlsapproached the deserted dwelling, with the hamper. The lower frontwindows were boarded, and the door closed. But the door giving entrancefrom the side porch was ajar.
"'Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,'" quoted Helen, peering intothe dusky interior. "It looks powerful ghostly, Ruthie."
"There are plenty of windows out, so we'll have light enough," returnedthe girl of the Red Mill. "Don't be a 'fraid cat,' Helen."
"That's all right," grumbled her chum. "You're only making a bluffyourself."
Ruth laughed. She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, nomatter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat mighthave made her shriek and run!
Into the house stepped Ruth Fielding, in her very bravest manner. Thehall was dark, but the door into a room at the left--toward the back ofthe house--was open and through this doorway she ventured, the old,rough boards of the floor creaking beneath her feet.
This apartment must have been the dining-room. There was a high, ornate,altogether ugly mantle and open fireplace at one end of the room. At theother, there stood, fastened to the wall, or built into it, a chinacloset, the doors of which had been removed. These ugly, shallowcaverns gaped at them and promised refuge to spiders and mice. On thehearth was a heap of crusted gray ashes.
"What a lonesome, eerie sort of a place," shivered Helen. "Wish the oldcar had kept running----"
"Through the rain?" suggested Ruth, pointing outside, where the air wasalready gray with approaching moisture.
Down from the higher hills the storm was sweeping. They could smell it,for the wind leaped in at the broken windows and rustled the shreds ofpaper still clinging to the walls of the dining-room.
"This isn't a fit place to eat in," grumbled Helen.
"Let's go above stairs. Carry that alcohol stove carefully, dear. We'llhave a nice cup of tea, even if it does----"
"Oh!" shrieked Helen, as a long streak of lightning flew across theirline of vision.
"Yes. Even in spite of _that_," repeated Ruth, smiling, and raising hervoice that she might be heard above the cannonade of thunder.
"I don't like it, I tell you!" declared her chum.
"I can't say that I do myself, but I do not see how we are to help it."
"I wish Tom was inside here, too."
Ruth had glanced through the window and seen that Master Tom had managedto get the auto under a shed at the back. He was industriously puttingup the curtains to the car, and making all snug against the rain, beforehe began to tinker with the machinery.
There was a faint drumming in the air--the sound of rain coming down themountain side, beating its "charge" upon the leaves as it came. Therewere no other sounds, for the birds and insects had sought shelterbefore the wrathful face of the storm.
Yes! there was one other. The girls had not heard it until they beganclimbing the stairs out of the side entry. Helen clutched Ruth suddenlyby the skirt.
"Hear that!" she whispered.
"Say it out loud, dear, do!" exclaimed the girl of the Red Mill. "Thereis never anything so nerve-shaking as a stage whisper."
"There! you heard it?"
"The wind rustling something," said Ruth, attempting to go on.
"No."
"Something squeaks--mice, I do believe."
"Mice would starve to death here," declared Helen.
"How smart of you! That is right," agreed Ruth. "Come on. Let us seewhat it is--if it's upstairs."
Helen clung close to her and trembled. There was the rustling, squeakingsound again. Ruth pushed on (secretly feeling rather staggered by thestrange noise), and they entered one of the larger upper chambers.
Immediately she saw an open stovepipe hole in the chimney. "The noisecomes from that," she declared, setting down the basket and pointing.
"But what is it?" wailed her frightened chum.
"The wind?"
"Never!"
The lightning flashed again, and the thunder rolled nearer. Helenscreamed, crouched down upon the floor, and covered her ears, squeezingher eyelids tight shut too.
"Dreadful! dreadful!" she gasped.
Still the silence outside between the reports of thunder; but therustling in the chimney continued. Ruth looked around, found a piece ofbroken window-sash on the floor, and approached the open pipe-hole.
"Here's for stirring up Mr. Ghost," she said, in a much braver tone thanshe secretly felt.
She always felt her responsibility with Helen. The latter was of anervous, imaginary temperament, and it was never well for her to getherself worked up in this way.
"Oh, Ruth! Don't! Suppose it bites you!" gasped Helen.
At that Ruth _did_ laugh. "Whoever heard of a ghost with teeth?" shedemanded, and instantly thrust the stick into the gaping hole.
There was a stir--a flutter--a squeaking--and out flopped a brown objectabout the size of a mouse. Helen shrieked again, and even Ruth dartedback.
"A mouse!" cried Helen.
"Right--_a flittermouse_!" agreed Ruth, suddenly bursting into a laugh."The chimney's full of them."
"Oh, let's get out!"
"In this rain?" and Ruth pointed to the window, where now the drops werefalling, big and fast--the vanguard of the storm.
"But if a bat gets into your hair!" moaned Helen, rocking herself on herknees.
Ruth opened the big hamper, seized a newspaper, and swooped down uponthe blind, fluttering brown bat. Seizing it as she would a spider, sheran to the window and flung it out, just as the water burst into theroom in a flood.
Then she ran to the pipe-hole and thrust the paper into it, making a"stopper" which would not easily fall out. She dragged Helen to theother side of the room, where the floor was dry and they were out of thedraught.
There the two girls cowered for some moments, hugged close together,Helen hiding her eyes from the intermittent lightning against Ruth'sjacket. The thunder roared overhead, and the rain dashed down intorrents. For ten minutes it was as hard a storm as the girl of the RedMill ever remembered seeing. Such tempests in the hills are notinfrequent.
When the thunder began to roll away into the distance, and the lightningwas less brilliant, the girls could take some notice of what else wenton. The fierce drumming of the rain continued, but there seemed to be anoise in the lower part of the building.
"Tom has come in," said Helen, with satisfaction.
"He must have gotten awfully wet, then, getting here from that shed,"Ruth returned. "Hush!"
Somebody sneezed heavily. Helen opened her mouth to cry out, but Ruthput her palm upon her lips, effectually smothing the cry.
"Sh!" the girl of the Red Mill admonished. "Let him find us."
"Oh! that will be fun," agreed Helen.
Ruth did not look at her. She listened intently. There was a heavy,scraping foot upon the floor below. To _her_ mind, it did not sound likeTom at all.
She held Helen warningly by the wrist and they continued to strain theirears for some minutes. Then an odor reached t
hem which Ruth was sure didnot denote Tom's presence in the room below. It was the smell of strongtobacco smoked in an ancient pipe!
"What's that?" sniffed Helen, whisperingly.
Uncle Jabez smoked a strong pipe and Ruth could not be mistaken as tothe nature of this one. She remembered the two men who had hidden in thebushes as the car rolled by, not many miles back on this road.
"Let's shout for Tom and bring him in here," Helen suggested.
"Perhaps get him into trouble? Let's try and find out, first, what sortof people they are," objected Ruth, for they now heard talking and knewthat there were at least two visitors below.
Rising quietly, Ruth crept on tiptoe to the head of the stair. Thedrumming rain helped smother any sound she might have made.
Slowly, stair by stair, Ruth Fielding let herself down until she couldsee into the open doorway of the dining room. Two men were squatting onthe hearth, both smoking assiduously.
They were rough looking, unlovely fellows, and the growl of their voicesdid not impress Ruth as being of a quality to inspire confidence.
Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies; Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace Page 7