Arden, suddenly occupied with guiding her horse, which evinced a desire to shy, did not pursue the subject with Dick. Through the trees she now caught a glimpse of the two-hundred-year-old mansion known as Sycamore Hall. There were many stories about it, one or two concerned with the more or less established fact that it still contained certain objects supposed to belong to the descendants of the original owners, whoever they were. No one now lived in the Hall, nor had it housed anyone for some time. In spite of its age, the old mansion, though woefully lacking paint, was well preserved. It was as strong and sturdy as some ancient oak tree.
Sim and Terry, in the lead, had approached Sycamore Hall and were waiting for Arden and Dick to reach them. The two girls gazed, not without interest, at the deserted mansion. There were evidences about it of some new and strange life. There were dump carts, but no horses, some piles of boards, and, near the drive, an old flivver that seemed impossible of being used.
From within the ancient mansion came dull blows, as of pounding, and out of some open windows floated a fine dust, like smoke.
“Is the place on fire?” asked Arden as she and Dick spurred their horses forward.
“No. But I guess they’ve already started to tear it down. A new road is going right through the old place.” Dick seemed to sigh a little.
“What a shame,” murmured Arden. “It’s too bad such a historic place can’t be preserved.”
“I guess it’s too old to preserve,” Dick said. “Though they are going to make a park of the Hollow and save some of the smaller houses that were used by Washington or Mad Anthony Wayne or some of the Revolutionary folks.”
“How interesting!” exclaimed Arden. “I wonder—”
But she never finished that sentence. Just at that moment something happened.
Two big workers, one carrying a crowbar and the other an ax, came fairly leaping out of the open front door of Sycamore Hall. They were mouthing something unintelligible and seemed to be rushing straight for Sim and Terry.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped Arden. “Oh, Dick, what is this?”
Straight for Sim ran the two men, their ragged clothes white with plaster dust. They were still mumbling and waving their hands in a terrified way. This was too much for the nervous horse on which Sim was mounted. He reared sharply, nearly throwing the girl off, though she had a good seat, and then, wheeling, the beast ran wildly up the road past Sycamore Hall.
Terry managed to control her animal, though he too showed a desire to bolt.
“Oh, Dick!” cried Arden again.
“I’ll get her!” shouted the young groom, and spurring his mount he dashed away after Sim. Left to themselves, Arden and Terry looked at each other with frightened eyes. The two colored men ran into the woods across from the Hall, still mumbling in a strange way and showing every evidence of terrible fright.
“Come on, Terry, we’ve got to follow!” called Arden.
They urged their steeds after those of Sim and Dick. When they reached the top of the hill they could see that Sim was safe. Dick had dismounted and was holding her still frightened animal. Sim was soothing the creature with neck-pattings and calming words.
“Heavens, Sim! What happened?” gasped Arden.
“Those men scared Teddy, rushing at him that way, though why, I don’t know. I wonder what the idea was, having them dash out in that wild way? If I had been standing a little nearer they would have run right into Teddy and me! They couldn’t seem to turn off. They were wild with fright. But why?” Sim was a little indignant.
Dick smiled up at her. “Haven’t you heard?” he asked.
“Heard what?”
The other girls listened with interest.
“Why, this old place is said to have become suddenly haunted. Something in Sycamore Hall has stirred up the spirits of the departed owners, and more than once the workers hired to tear it down have been scared away—frightened stiff. A lot have quit. I understand the contractor has continually to get new men. And it looked as if those two who ran out saw something—or thought they did,” Dick concluded. “They probably won’t come back.”
“Haunted!” murmured Terry.
“Ghosts—Revolutionary ghosts,” whispered Sim.
“How thrilling!” exclaimed Arden. “Tell us some more, Dick.”
“Well—” began the groom, but he got no further.
Back up the hill came running the same two men who had but a few minutes before rushed out of the mansion in such a terrified way. Their faces still bore signs of their fright.
CHAPTER II
The Ghost Mansion
Unable to understand what had caused the workmen to act as they had, and sensing the possibility of a further fright to the horses, Arden and her chums were about to wheel and ride away. But Dick called to them:
“Steady; I think it will be all right. These men don’t know what they’re doing. They are just frightened.”
“At what?” asked Arden.
“That’s what I’m going to try to discover,” said the young groom. Then, shouting to the running men, he inquired:
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t ask us, boss,” answered one, dubiously shaking his head. “We sho’ are finished on that job! I never could abide haunted houses!”
“That goes fo’ me, too!” echoed the other. “I don’t like ghosts!”
Then they both ran on, disappearing into the woods.
“Ghosts!” laughed Terry after a moment of silence. “They’re just what we need to brighten up our lives.”
“Let’s go in the old mansion and look around,” proposed Arden.
“Have we time?” suggested Sim.
They glanced at Dick for his verdict.
“We have about half an hour,” he said, looking at his watch. “Go on in if you want to.”
When they urged their horses through the overgrown tangle that had once been a front yard and came to a stop near the big broad porch, the pillars of which were tilting, Dick helped the three girls to dismount. Then, leading the horses to a tree with conveniently low branches, he looped the reins so the animals would not stray. Horses in the East are not trained like their Western cousins, to stand if the reins are left to dangle on the ground.
The girls held back a little before going up the four steps at the entrance of the house. It was a combination Georgian-Colonial style, squarely built, with a beautiful fanlight still intact over the center door.
“It is spooky, isn’t it?” asked Sim with a pleased little shiver.
“Did you ever see such a sorrowful house, though?” Arden wanted to know.
“What do you mean, sorrowful? To me it seems very proud and stern,” Terry decided.
“I don’t think so. Look at the way the door hangs on its hinges. Ready to fall off if it had a good push. And what lovely hinges they are, too. Hand forged, I’ll bet,” Arden said, going a little closer to inspect.
Sim, quickly sympathetic, fell under the spell of Arden’s imagining. “Poor old place,” she murmured, “I don’t blame it for haunting the workmen. I suppose this house has been the scene of many an exciting adventure. Do you know anything about it, Dick?” Sim turned to the boy, who stood aside waiting for them to enter.
He hesitated a moment before replying and then seemed reluctant to give much information.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I know a little bit about it. You see this place once belonged to my ancestors.” He looked down at his polished boots and appeared rather bashful.
“Really?” asked Sim. “Tell us, please,” and she smiled disarmingly at him.
Arden and Terry waited hopefully for Dick to continue.
“Suppose we go in and I’ll show you the place,” the young groom suggested.
“How about the ghosts?” Terry asked.
“These ghosts aren’t the common graveyard variety—that is, if the stories are true. They all seem to be spirits of soldiers, farmers, and sometimes there’s the ghost of a lovely girl,” Dick went
on. “You see this place was built during the Revolution. The Continental army ‘dug in’ at Jockey Hollow, here, for the winter of 1779.”
Terry, growing bolder, preceded the others into the hall. Rooms very much dilapidated were on either side. One room, probably a parlor, was dominated by an enormous fireplace with a faded picture above it.
“Oh, girls, come here!” Terry called. “Look at this! Is this your girl ghost, Dick?”
They hurried to Terry as she stood before the painting. Terry was in sharp contrast to the charming scene above. Feet planted a little apart, hands clasped behind her back, tall as she was, her head just came to the old, high mantel. The girl in the picture was also in riding clothes, but far different from Terry’s. They looked like a tableau: “The Past and Present.”
Terry wore smart riding trousers and a flaring coat. Her sandy hair was just showing beneath a well blocked hat.
The girl in the picture was dark-haired and tall. Her right arm was thrust through the reins of a black horse. The panniers of her dark-green riding costume seemed to melt into the leafy background of the painting.
The picture girl was staring straight at Terry and perhaps it was not entirely imagination that disclosed something akin in the two girls.
“What a charming picture you make!” Arden remarked, and then, as she saw that Terry was perhaps too delighted at the compliment, she added: “In this dim light we can’t see the freckles.”
Terry turned and, like a small boy, stuck a pink tongue out at Arden.
Dick, in the meanwhile, was looking thoughtfully at the girls. Sim went to him.
“Dick,” she said softly, “I can see that you somehow belong here. Won’t you tell us about it? We’ve been riding with you several seasons now, and we won’t repeat a thing if you don’t want us to.”
“Please,” begged Arden. “You look as sad as this house, Dick. What’s the matter?”
“This place,” Dick began with an including gesture, “once belonged in my grandmother’s family. But the deed, or some necessary paper, has been lost, and now the state claims the estate, and the old house is to be torn down to make way for a road. The march of progress, you know, must not be halted.”
“But has it no historic interest?” Terry asked. “Couldn’t it be preserved as a shrine of some sort? I mean the house, for you said Jockey Hollow is going to be a park.”
“I’m afraid not,” continued Dick. “I guess it’s about the only mansion that George Washington never visited. Besides, the original house has been added to so many times that now it is a combination of three or four periods.”
“What would your grandmother do with this property if she could find the deed?” asked Terry practically.
“Sell it,” answered Dick without any hesitation. “At least it would bring enough money for me to give up this stable job that any half-wit could hold and let me finish at college. Then Betty, she’s my sister, could go to New York and keep on with her work in costume design and interior decoration. She’s really talented,” he added earnestly.
“If this home were mine I should hate to part with it,” Arden announced. “I don’t see how your grandmother can bear to give it up. Isn’t there a chance that she could keep it, Dick?”
“Perhaps, if we could prove title. But even then we need the money its sale would bring. Granny ought to have little comforts, though really she’s been swell about it all. Never complains. And the stories she knows!”
“What does she say about the ghosts?” Sim asked.
“Just laughs. She says she’d sleep here on All Souls’ Eve or any other particularly ghostly time. I guess she likes ghosts.”
“I’d love to meet her sometime. Do you think we might? I wish we could help some way,” said Arden thoughtfully.
“I’ll ask her. I’m sure she would. She leads rather a lonely life,” Dick answered. “And she loves young folks.”
“Say, Dick, who is this girl in the picture? Isn’t it too valuable a painting to be left here?” Terry was studying the painting.
“It’s not worth much. It was probably painted by one of those traveling artists who could do family portraits or barns, whichever might be wanted. Granny has left a few things in here to sort of claim the place, though the claim isn’t recognized. And we live now in a little house behind this one. It used to be the servants’ quarters,” Dick finished bitterly.
The little group fell silent. The girls had stumbled, it seemed, upon something very private, and they felt embarrassed at learning of someone’s misfortune.
“Like finding somebody crying when they thought they were alone,” Terry later remarked.
No one knew what to say. Dick walked to a window that reached almost from the ceiling to the floor, and stood looking out. Terry, always the first to move, stepped over the fender around the fireplace and peered up the chimney. For no reason except to break the trying silence, as far as she knew.
Barely perceptible at first, gradually a sound impressed itself on the girls. Like footsteps on a stair, far away but coming nearer, the sound approached.
Terry pulled back her head from the dark corner of the fireplace and looked at her friends. They stood like statues staring back at each other, while Dick turned slowly from the window.
“What’s that?” Sim asked, cocking her head like a young puppy as if to hear better.
“Sounds like someone creeping down the stairs,” Arden ventured.
“Perhaps it’s one of the workmen coming back,” suggested Terry.
At this Dick shook his head. “No,” he said. “I happen to know that those two men we saw a while ago were the only ones on the job today, and they left in a hurry,” he finished, grinning.
“Well, then, there is only one explanation left.” Arden was glowing with excitement. “Ghosts!”
“Oh, gosh!” exclaimed Sim. “Let’s go! I like to read about ghosts but I don’t like to meet ’em. Come on!” Without waiting for the others, Sim ran from the room.
“Wait, Sim, wait!” Terry called. And when Sim did not return Terry added: “Arden, we’ll have to go too! I don’t like it, either.” Then she turned traitor to the cause and ran after Sim.
There was nothing left, then, for Arden and Dick to do but follow. But Arden lingered a moment in the hall on her way out and listened.
The measured sound above was slowly coming closer. Heavy steps, as though the feet making the noise were encased in thick boots.
“Thud! Thud! Thud!”
Above the first landing all was in darkness, and even Arden, ghost-loving as she was, decided to wait no longer to find out what might be coming down the long stairs.
With a last fearful look she also fled, calling to Dick for protection and stumbling over a loose floor board in her haste.
CHAPTER III
Arden Wonders
Communing with herself, Arden Blake, as she dashed out of the strange old mansion, was wondering just what it was all about and what, exactly, had happened.
Dick, anxious about the horses and doubtless believing there was no danger to Arden, who had been left to be the last out of the house, did not pause as she called to him.
“She’ll be in the open in another second,” reflected the young groom.
As she hastened out Arden had many conflicting thoughts.
“Another mystery,” she told herself, half whispering. “Can there be ghosts? If ever there was a place made for them, Sycamore Hall is. But ghosts in the daytime! Perhaps those men did it to annoy us for coming around while they are working. But what object could they have in doing that? Oh, if it’s another mystery, I hope it turns out as well as the one in the orchard did.”
At last she was away from the strange big house, and she fairly jumped down the broad steps. With a sigh of relief she saw the girls and Dick.
Outside, the horses were straining at their bridles. With ears laid back and eyes frightened, every now and then one gave a nervous little tap on the hard ground with dainty fore fee
t.
Sim tried to mount Teddy unassisted, but every time she put her foot in the stirrup the frisky animal wheeled about, leaving her hopping helplessly. At last Dick had to hold him while Sim climbed up. Then helping up Arden and Terry, Dick mounted his own horse with practiced ease, and they turned away from the ghost house.
So nervous were the animals that the girls did little talking. They were occupied in keeping them under control. Dick cautioned them about letting the horses bolt. Headed to the stables as they were, once they got going it would be difficult to stop them, and a dash across the heavy traffic streets of Pentville would be dangerous.
Arden did manage, when her horse settled down a bit and danced along beside Dick’s for a stretch, to ask him what had gotten into their usually well behaved mounts.
“They’re frightened at something,” he answered. “They were scared stiff when we came out.”
“So were we all,” Arden admitted. “Do you suppose the horses could feel our fright?”
“Some people claim that a horse feels his rider’s every mood,” Dick answered. “I really don’t know. But I surely believe these horses sensed something, perhaps more than we did. But—” Then Dick’s shining black mare broke into a sudden trot, and he could not finish what he started to say.
But Arden was persistent. She urged her steed forward and was again riding beside the groom while Terry and Sim pranced on ahead.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Dick?”
He hesitated a moment and then slowly answered: “I believe that people often see just what they expect to see in haunted houses, so called, and hear just what they want to hear.”
Arden was plainly disappointed at this matter-of-factness on Dick’s part. She had hoped for something more concrete than this. But remembering Dick’s, or, rather, his grandmother’s, connection with Sycamore Hall, she did not press her point.
“Let’s catch up to the others,” she proposed, and Dick assenting, they were soon close behind Terry and Sim, who were still talking soothingly to their mounts to quiet the restless animals. After a ride of several miles through woodland they reached a straight open stretch of road and broke into a smart canter. The girls were a little breathless when they dismounted at the stables.
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 163