CHAPTER XXII--A DISMAYED PLOTTER

The author of the mischief, Elizabeth Walbert, was not concerning herself over what had occurred on Saturday afternoon on Hamilton Highway. She had not the remotest idea as to the identity of the elderly woman she had come so nearly injuring. She knew that Marjorie had been with the woman. Very scornfully she had derided Miss Everest's worried conjectures as to who the woman might be, or, if she had been badly injured.

"An old scrub woman or some sort of servant, very likely," she had airily said. "Don't be a silly. Those two had no business to be walking along the middle of the pike. The pike is for _autos_, not pedestrians." She had utterly flouted the suggestion that she go back and ascertain what had happened as the result of her reckless dash around a corner.

Afterward, when alone, she resolved not to bother again with Jane Everest. She was just another of those stupid freshies who had no daring or spirit in them. Elizabeth was at that very moment sulking because she could not persuade certain freshmen at Wayland Hall who had until recently been her allies to waylay Augusta Forbes some evening on the campus and give her the "good scare" she had fondly planned. Gussie often spent an evening at Acasia House with a freshman who recited Greek in her section. The two girls were wont to prepare the lesson together. Thus Gussie never started for Wayland Hall much before ten o'clock. Elizabeth had learned this fact from an Acasia House freshie. Her idea had been this: Half a dozen girls, headed by herself, were to dress in sheets and glide out upon Augusta from a huge clump of bushes which she must pass in taking the most direct route from the one campus house to the other. Gussie was then to be surrounded, hustled to a neighboring tree and tied to it. The industrious specters were then to leave her to free herself as best she could. The deed was to be done on a moonless night when the weather was not severely cold.

"Suppose she can't free herself?" one of the freshmen had put to Elizabeth on hearing her plan. "We wouldn't dare leave her there all night. You say you know she comes from Acasia House often at about ten. We'd not have time to come back and untie her before the ten-thirty bell."

"It wouldn't hurt her to stay out there awhile if it weren't cold," was the cruel response. "I would slip down and out of the Hall about midnight, creep up behind her and cut the rope with a very sharp knife."

"Until midnight!" had gasped one girl. "_No, sir_; not for me. Besides, you might cut her hand in the dark while trying to free her. You are crazy, Bess. Give up such daring schemes. They'll only get you into trouble."

"We might easily be seen, dressed in sheets," another had objected. "Remember it is winter and there aren't any leaves on those bushes."

"That wouldn't make any difference if the night were dark. I see plainly you girls aren't nervy enough for a little fun that wouldn't do the baby elephant any harm. In fact it would be the best thing that could happen to her. She has bragged a lot of not being afraid of anything. Never mind. I'll think of some nice little plan, all by myself."

This last icy assurance, delivered with a haughty crest of her empty head had not impressed her hearers. She had gone a step too far with them. From then on they began to drop away from her.

Disgusted with their lack of support, she undertook to interest certain juniors in her plan. She dared not come out frankly with it. Her vague allusions as to what might be done met with utter defeat. Her classmates, such as had even voted for her for the freshman presidency, knew her better now. They tolerated her but disliked her.

Finding no one interested in her schemes for revenge, she was none the less determined to haze Gussie. On the Sunday afternoon following the disaster to Miss Susanna, she called Leslie Cairns on the telephone and asked her to go for a ride. Leslie accepted the invitation cannily, stipulating that they should use her roadster. She was to meet Leslie in front of Baretti's.

Since the first day of their meeting in the Ivy, Elizabeth had not dared mention the subject of Leslie's expulsion from college. Leslie had talked of it a little herself that day. Then she had put up the bars. What Elizabeth burned to consult her on was what she might do to haze Augusta.

Anxious to keep Leslie in a good humor, she racked her brain for campus gossip that would interest the ex-senior.

"Go ahead. Let's hear the news from the knowledge shop," ordered Leslie as the roadster sped south under her practical hands. "Then I have a bit of news for you. Maybe you won't like it for a second or two. After you get used to it, you will."

"What is it? You tell me first. My scraps of news can wait." Eager curiosity animated the junior's vapid features.

"No; I'm anxious to hear what's happened over there." Leslie made a backward movement of the head in the direction of the college.

"All right." Elizabeth gave in, slightly sulky. Soon she forgot to sulk as she weirdly embellished truth for her companion's gratification.

Leslie listened, calmly sorting out in her own mind the proportion of truth contained in the other's narrations.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you about yesterday," Elizabeth declared, when her budget of gossip was exhausted. "I was out driving with a freshie who has an awful crush on me and I nearly ran over Bean and a scrub woman, or servant--anyway an old fossil she was with. They were marching along the middle of the pike near the Carden Estate. I came around the corner pretty fast. I was on my own side of the pike, though. I'm sure of that. I know----"

A sudden deep scowl corrugated Leslie's forehead. "You are positive you didn't hit either of them, are you?" she asked in an odd, sharp voice.

"Of course not. Everest, the freshie, said I knocked the old lady down. It scared the silly goose. She grew quite panicky over it. I knew I didn't come within six feet of either of them. She wanted me to go back. I was too wise to do that."

"What did this woman look like?" again came the tight, tense tones. "I suppose, though, you couldn't tell much about her."

"No, I couldn't. Evie said she was dressed in black and small."

"You should have gone back." Leslie's loose lips tightened in displeasure. It was easy enough to give advice which she herself had not followed on a similar occasion. "For all you know that woman may have been faculty. Bean's on very good terms with them."

"Oh, pshaw! This woman looked old, from the glimpse I caught of her--too old to be faculty. She'd have nothing to report anyway. They had no business on the pike in the very path of machines, coming and going."

"Bess, you don't seem to have good sense." Leslie had grown caustic. "You _know_ Matthews threatened to ban cars when I ran down Langly. If you are reported for this, you're _done_ with your buzz wagon at Hamilton. So are all the other students. Oh, this is too bad! And all because you are either too stubborn or else too stupid to learn to drive!"

"I don't understand you, Leslie, and you will kindly stop calling me stupid," sputtered Elizabeth, her face very red.

"You will understand in a minute. As it happens, your punk driving may have seriously interfered with a business venture of mine. Since I left college I have been looking about for a chance to go into business for myself. One of my ventures is to be a garage near Hamilton College." Leslie spoke rapidly and with displeased force. "Now I chose to even my score with Bean at the same time. That's why I wanted you to find out about those properties. I heard last year before I was fired from college about a wonderful dormitory the little prigs were going to try to build near the campus, for the benefit of plebeian beggars who want to go through college on nothing a year.

"I remembered it after I left Hamilton. That's why I came back and took up a residence here. I made up my mind I'd find out the site they were after and take it away from them. The woman I am with is my chaperon, not my aunt. I tried to get Alida and Lola interested in the affair, but couldn't. I knew you could help me, so I decided to forget the past and be friends with you again."

"Why didn't you explain all this to me in the beginning, instead of deceiving me so?" burst forth Elizabeth rancorously.

"It had to be kept a dead secret. You would have told it to someone, sure as fate. I'm telling you now. That's soon enough," returned Leslie coolly. "Now listen to the rest. I have bought those boarding-house properties west of the campus--the block that contains the seven houses. I paid sixty thousand dollars for them and I am going to have 'em torn down and a mammoth garage put up there. You see what will happen to my investment if cars are banned at Hamilton."

"Oh, bother your old investment!" Elizabeth had grown angrier as she listened to Leslie. "It will never amount to a string of glass beads. Am I to blame because people won't keep out of the path of my car?"

"The path of your car!" Leslie repeated with a sarcastic snicker. She was equally incensed at her companion's disparagement of her business venture. "Where is that wonderful path? All over the road, I'll say. The state ought to issue you a non-license instead of a license."

Thus began a quarrel which raged hotly for several minutes. Elizabeth was furious at having been deceived by Leslie. The latter was utterly out of temper over the seeds of catastrophe to her plans which the junior had sown. They were a long way from Hamilton when the altercation began. In the midst of it Leslie turned the roadster about and started back over the route they had come. By the time the campus wall appeared in sight a black silence had fallen between them. Nor was it broken until Leslie brought her car to an even stop at the eastern entrance.

"You may as well get out here," she sullenly dictated.

"Sorry I didn't have my own car. I needn't have troubled you then," vituperated Elizabeth, as she hastily bundled herself out of the roadster.

"A good thing for public safety you didn't have it," Leslie sneered. "If my investment turns out unprofitable, it will be _your_ fault."

With that she drove on, her brief connection with Elizabeth Walbert at an end. At the height of her anger, a cool ruthlessness behind it informed her that the time had come to drop the junior irrevocably. She no longer needed her services. If cars should be banned at Hamilton College, as a result of Elizabeth's reckless blundering, she would know it soon enough. Shrewd use of her eyes would quickly furnish her with the information. She laughed to herself as she recalled the junior's rage.

The serious side of the situation returning, all signs of mirth faded from her rugged face. The investment she had made had been planned with a view toward placating her father. Once she had the garage ready for business she intended writing him of what she had done. There was no large garage near the college. Students owning cars were obliged to place them wherever they could find a vacant space in the several garages between the college and the town of Hamilton. A few students even had been obliged that year, owing to lack of accommodations, to leave their automobiles in town.

Leslie's idea of building a large garage near the campus would not have appealed to a present-day business man. The expense for site, the outlay in tearing down, in order to rebuild, not to mention the cost of erecting the garage--these items would have made the day of large profits too far distant. Leslie, however, was not considering either expense or profits. Her double aim was to even her score with Marjorie Dean, at the same time impressing her unforgiving father with her great business ability.

Now disaster threatened, precipitated by the very pawn she had used to further her own ends. She could only hope that Elizabeth's blundering had not caused mishap. She was sure Marjorie would not report the matter. What her companion might do remained to be seen. It would depend entirely upon the identity of the elderly woman in black.

While Elizabeth Walbert and Leslie Cairns were engaged in altercation, Marjorie was trying to frame a letter to the offended mistress of Hamilton Arms. She was alone in her room, Jerry having wisely decided to leave her in absolute quiet while she composed the difficult message. She wrote and rewrote, tore into bits what she had written and began again. What she set down seemed a poor expression of her mind in the matter.

The shadows of late afternoon had begun to lengthen when she finally sealed the product of her painful industry and addressed the envelope to her offended friend. Though her heart was heavy, her mind was more at ease. Miss Susanna might ignore her written explanation so far as acknowledging it went. Nevertheless, Marjorie felt that she could not ignore the truth it contained.