V
The Elusive Kate Ferris
THE mysterious Kate Ferris, who kept Priscilla on the verge of nervous prostration for a whole semester, entered upon her college career in an entirely unpremeditated and impromptu manner. It began one day away back in November. Georgie Merriles and Patty had just strolled home from the athletic field, where they had been witnessing the start of a paper-chase cross country, in which Priscilla was impersonating a fox. As they entered the study, Georgie stopped to examine some loose sheets of paper which were impaled upon the door.
"What's this, Patty?"
"Oh, that's the registration-list for the German Club. Priscilla's secretary, you know, and every one who wants to join comes here. The study has been so full of freshmen all the time that I told her to hang it on the door and let them join outside; it works beautifully." Patty turned the leaves and ran her eyes down the list of sprawling signatures. "It's a popular organization, isn't it? The freshmen are simply scrambling to get in."
"They're trying to show Fräulein Scherin how much interest they take in the subject," Georgie laughed.
Patty picked up the pencil. "Would you like to join? I know Priscilla would be gratified."
"No, thank you; I pay club dues enough already."
"I'm afraid I'm not exactly eligible myself, as I don't know any German. It's such a beautifully sharp pencil, though, that I hate not to write with it." Patty poised the pencil a moment, and abstractedly traced the name "Kate Ferris."
Georgie laughed. "If there should happen to be a Kate Ferris in college, she would be surprised to find herself a member of the German Club," and the incident was forgotten.
A few days later the two came in from class, to find Priscilla and the president of the German Club sitting on the divan with their heads together, frantically turning the leaves of the catalogue.
"She isn't a sophomore," the president announced. "She
must
be a freshman, Priscilla. Look again."
"I've gone over this list three times, and there isn't a single Ferris down."
Georgie and Patty exchanged glances and inquired the trouble.
"A girl named Kate Ferris has registered for the German Club, and we've gone through all the classes, and there simply isn't any such girl in college."
"Possibly a special," Patty suggested.
"Of course! Why didn't we think of that?" And Priscilla turned to the list of special students. "No; she isn't here."
"Let me look"; and Patty ran her eyes down the column. "You've mistaken the name," she remarked, handing the book back with a shrug.
Priscilla produced the registration-list, and triumphantly exhibited an unmistakable Kate Ferris.
"They forgot to put her in the catalogue."
"I never knew them to make such a mistake before," said the president, dubiously. "I don't believe we'd better put her in the roll-book till we find out who she is."
"Then you'll hurt her feelings," said Georgie. "Freshmen are terribly sensitive about being slighted."
"Oh, very well; it doesn't matter." And Kate Ferris was accordingly enrolled in the club records.
Several weeks later Priscilla was engaged in laboriously turning the minutes of the last meeting into grammatical German, and as she closed the dictionary and grammar with a sigh of relief, she remarked to Patty: "Do you know, it's very queer about that Kate Ferris. She hasn't paid her dues, and, as far as I can make out, she hasn't attended a single meeting. Wouldn't you take her name off the roll? I don't believe she's in college any more."
"You might as well," said Patty, and she listlessly watched Priscilla as she scratched out the name with a penknife. Patty never made the mistake of over-acting.
The next morning, as Priscilla came in from a class, she found a note on her door-block, written in the perpendicular characters of Kate Ferris. It ran:
Dear Miss Pond: I came to pay my German Club dues, and as you are not in, I have left the money on the bookcase. Am sorry to have missed so many meetings, but have not been able to attend classes lately.
Kate Ferris.
Priscilla exhibited the note to the president as a tangible proof that Kate Ferris still existed, and reinscribed the name in the roll-book.
A few weeks later she found a second note on her door-block:
Dear Miss Pond: As I am very busy with my class work, I find that I have not time to attend the German Club meetings, and so have decided to resign. I left my letter of resignation on the bookcase.
Kate Ferris.
As Priscilla scratched the name out of the roll-book again she remarked to Patty: "I am glad this Kate Ferris has left the club at last. She has caused me more trouble than all the rest of the members put together."
The next morning a third note appeared on the block:
Dear Miss Pond: I happened to mention the fact of my having resigned from the German Club to Fräulein Scherin last night, and she said that the club would help me in my work, and advised me to stay in it. So I shall be much obliged if you will not present my letter at the meeting after all, as I have decided to follow her advice.
Kate Ferris.
Priscilla tossed the note to Patty with a groan, and getting out the roll-book, she turned to the F's and reënrolled Kate Ferris.
Patty sympathetically watched the process over her shoulder. "The book is getting so thin in that spot," she laughed, "that Kate Ferris is actually coming through on the other side. If she changes her mind many more times there won't be anything left."
"I'm going to ask Fräulein Scherin about her," Priscilla declared. "She's made me so much trouble that I'm curious to see what she looks like."
She did ask Fräulein Scherin, but Fräulein denied all knowledge of the girl. "I have so many freshmen," she apologized, "I cannot all of them with their queer names remember."
Priscilla inquired about Kate Ferris from the freshmen she knew, but though all of them thought that the name sounded familiar, none of them could exactly place her. She was variously described as tall and dark and small and light, but further inquiry always proved that the girl they had in mind was some one else.
Priscilla kept hearing about the girl on all sides, but could never catch a glimpse of her. Miss Ferris called several times on business, but Priscilla always happened to be out. Her name was posted on the bulletin-board for having library books that were overdue. She even wrote a paper for one of the German Club meetings (Georgie was not a facile German scholar, and it had required a whole Saturday); but owing to the fact that she was suddenly called out of town, she did not read it in person.
A month or two after Kate Ferris's advent, Priscilla had friends visiting her from New York, for whom she gave a tea in the study.
"I am going to invite Kate Ferris," she announced. "I
insist
upon finding out what she looks like."
"Do," said Patty. "I should like to find out myself."
The invitation was despatched, and on the next day Priscilla received a formal acceptance.
"It's strange that she should send an acceptance for a tea," she remarked as she read it, "but I'm glad to get it, anyway. I like to feel sure that I'm to see her at last."
On the evening of the tea, after the guests had gone and the furniture had been moved back, the weary hostesses, in somewhat rumpled evening dresses (a considerable crush results when fifty are entertained in a room whose utmost capacity is fifteen), were reëntertaining one or two friends on the lettuce sandwiches and cakes the obliging guests had failed to consume. The company and the clothes having passed in review, the conversation flagged a little, and Georgie suddenly asked: "Was Kate Ferris here? I was so busy passing cakes that I didn't look, and I wanted to see her especially!"
"That's so!" Patty exclaimed. "I didn't see her, either. She's the most abnormally inconspicuous person I ever heard of. What did she look like, Pris?"
Priscilla knit her brows. "She couldn't have come. I kept watching for her all the evening. It's strange, isn't it?—when she was so careful to send an acceptance. I'm growing positively morbid over the girl; I begin to think she's invisible."
"I begin to think so myself," said Patty.
The next morning's mail brought a bunch of violets and an apology from Kate Ferris. "She had been unavoidably detained."
"It's positively uncanny!" Priscilla declared. "I shall go to the registrar and tell her that this Kate Ferris is neither down in the catalogue nor the college directory, and find out where she lives."
"Don't do anything reckless," Georgie pleaded. "Take what the gods send and be grateful."
But Priscilla was as good as her word, and she returned from the registrar's office flushed and defiant. "She insists that there isn't any such person in college, and that I must have made a mistake in the name! Did you ever hear anything so absurd?"
"That seems to me the only reasonable explanation," Patty agreed amicably. "Perhaps it is Harris instead of Ferris."
Priscilla faced her ominously. "You read the name yourself. It was as plain as printing."
"We're all liable to make mistakes," Patty murmured soothingly.
"Do you know," said Georgie, "I begin to think it's all a hallucination, and that there really isn't any Kate Ferris. It's strange, of course, but not any stranger than some of those cases you read about in psychology."
"Hallucinations don't send flowers," said Priscilla, hotly; and she stalked out of the room, leaving Patty and Georgie to review the campaign.
"I'm afraid it's gone far enough," said Georgie. "If she bothers the office very much there'll be an official investigation."
"I'm afraid so," sighed Patty. "It's been very entertaining, but she is really getting sensitive on the subject, and I don't dare mention Kate Ferris's name when we're alone."
"Shall we tell her?"
Patty shook her head. "Not just now—I shouldn't dare. She believes in corporal punishment."
A few days later Priscilla received another note directed in the hand she had come to dread. She threw it into the waste-basket unopened; but, curiosity prevailing, she drew it out again and read it:
Dear Miss Pond: As I have been obliged to leave college on account of my health, I inclose my resignation to the German Club. I thank you very sincerely for your kindness to me this year, and shall always look back upon our friendship as one of the happiest memories of my college life.
Yours sincerely,
Kate Ferris.
When Patty came in she found Priscilla silently and grimly scratching a hole into the roll-book where Kate Ferris's name had been.
"Changed her mind again?" Patty asked pleasantly.
"She's left college," Priscilla snapped, "and don't you ever mention her name to me again."
Patty sighed sympathetically and remarked to the room in general: "It's sort of pathetic to have your whole college life summed up in a hole in the German Club archives. I can't help feeling sorry for her!"
VI
A Story with Four Sequels
IT was Saturday, and Patty had been working ever since breakfast, with a brief pause for luncheon, on a paper entitled "Shakspere, the Man." At four o'clock she laid down her pen, pushed her manuscript into the waste-basket, and faced her room-mate defiantly.
"What do I care about Shakspere, the man? He's been dead three hundred years."
Priscilla laughed unfeelingly. "What do I care about a frog's nervous system, for the matter of that? But I am writing an interesting monograph on it, just the same."
"Ah, I dare say you are making a valuable addition to the subject."
"It's quite as valuable as your addition to Shaksperiana."
Patty dropped a voluble sigh and turned to the window to note that it was raining dismally.
"Oh, hand it in," said Priscilla, comfortingly. "You've worked on it all day, and it's probably no worse than the most of your things."
"No sense to it," said Patty.
"They're used to that," laughed Priscilla.
"What are you laughing at, anyway?" Patty asked crossly. "I don't see anything to laugh at in this beastly place. Always having to do what you don't want to do when you most don't want to do it. Just the same, day after day: get up by bells, eat by bells, sleep by bells. I feel like some sort of a delinquent living in an asylum."
Priscilla treated this outburst with the silence it deserved, and Patty turned back to her perusal of the rain-soaked campus.
"I wish something would happen," she said discontentedly. "I think I'll put on a mackintosh and go out in search of adventure."
"Pneumonia will happen if you do."
"What business has it to be raining, anyway, when it ought to be snowing?"
As this was unanswerable, Priscilla returned to her frogs, and Patty drummed gloomily on the window-pane until a maid appeared with a card.
"A caller?" cried Patty. "A missionary! A rescuer! A deliverer! Heaven send it's for me!"
"Miss Pond," said Sadie, laying the card on the table.
Patty pounced upon it. "'Mr. Frederick K. Stanthrope.' Who's he, Pris?"
Priscilla wrinkled up her brows. "I don't know; I never heard of him. What do you suppose it can be?"
"An adventure—I know it's an adventure. Probably your uncle, that you never heard of, has just died in the South Sea Islands, and left you a fortune because you're his namesake; or else you're a countess by rights, and were stolen from your cradle in infancy, and he's the lawyer come to tell you about it. I think it might have happened to me, when I'm so bored to death! But hurry up and tell me about it, at least; a second-hand adventure's better than no adventure at all. Yes, your hair is all right; never mind looking in the glass." And Patty pushed her room-mate out of the door, and, sitting down at her desk again, quite cheerfully pulled her discarded paper out of the waste-basket and began re-reading it with evident approval.
Priscilla returned before she had finished. "He didn't ask for me at all," she announced. "He asked for Miss McKay."
"Miss McKay?"
"That junior with the hair," she explained a trifle vaguely.
"How disgusting!" cried Patty. "I had it all planned how I was going to live with you in your castle up in the Hartz Mountains, and now it turns out that Miss McKay is the countess, and I don't even know her. What did the man look like, and what did he do?"
"Well, he looked rather frightened, and didn't do anything but stammer. There were two men in the reception-room, and of course I picked out the wrong one and begged his pardon and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He said no; his name was Wiggins. So then the only thing left for me to do was to beg the other one's pardon.
"He was sitting in that high-backed green chair, with his eyes glued to his shoes, and holding his hat and cane in front of him like breastworks, as if he were preparing to repel an attack. He didn't look very approachable, but I boldly accosted him and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He stood up and stammered and blushed and looked as if he wanted to deny it, but finally acknowledged that he was, and then stood politely waiting for me to state my business! I explained, and he stammered some more, and finally got out that he had called to see Miss McKay, and that the maid must have made a mistake. He was quite cross about it, you know, and acted as if I had insulted him; and the other man—the horrible Wiggins one—laughed, and then looked out of the window and pretended he hadn't. I apologized,—though I couldn't for the life of me see what there was to apologize for,—and told him I would send the maid for Miss McKay, and backed out."
"Is that all?" Patty asked disappointedly. "If I couldn't have a better adventure than that, I shouldn't have any."
"But the funny thing is that when I told Sadie, she
insisted
that he had asked for me."
"Ha! The plot thickens, after all. What does it mean? Did he look like a detective, or merely a pickpocket?"
"He looked like a very ordinarily embarrassed young man."
Patty shook her head dejectedly. "There's a mystery somewhere, but I don't see that it affords much entertainment. I dare say that when Miss McKay came he told her he hadn't asked for her at all; he had asked for Miss Higginbotham. The only explanation I can think of is that he is insane, and there are so many insane people in the world that it isn't even interesting."
Patty recounted the story of Priscilla's caller at the dinner-table that night.
"I know the sequel," said Lucille Carter. "The other man, the Mr. Wiggins, is Bonnie Connaught's cousin; and he told her about some young man who came out in the car with him, and asked for Miss Pond at the door, and then all of a sudden seemed to change his mind, and went tearing down the corridor after the maid, yelling, "Hi, there! Hi, there!" at the top of his voice; but he couldn't catch her, and when Miss Pond came he pretended he had asked for some one else."
"Is that all?" asked Patty. "I don't think it is much of a sequel. It just proves that there's a plot against Priscilla's life, and I already knew that. I intend to ask Miss McKay about him. I don't know her, except by sight, but in a case of life and death like this, I don't think it's necessary to wait for an introduction."
The next evening Patty announced: "Sequel number two! Mr. Frederick K. Stanthrope lives in New York, and is Miss McKay's brother's best friend. She has only met him once before, and doesn't know any of his past affiliations. But the queer thing is that he never mentioned to her anything about Priscilla. Shouldn't you naturally think he would have told her about such a funny mistake?
"In my opinion," Patty continued solemnly, "it was plainly premeditated. He is undoubtedly a villain in disguise, and he used his acquaintance with Miss McKay as a cloak to elude detection. My theory is this: He got Priscilla's name out of the catalogue, and came here intending to murder her for her
jools
; but when he saw how big she was he was scared and so abandoned his dastardly intent. Now if he had chosen me, my body would, at this moment, have been concealed behind the sofa, and my class-pin reposing in the murderer's pocket."
Patty shuddered. "Think what I escaped. And all the time I was grumbling because nothing ever happens here!"
A few days later she appeared at the table with a further announcement: "I have the pleasure of offering for your perusal, young ladies, the third and last sequel in the great Stanthrope-Pond-McKay mystery. And I hereby take the opportunity of apologizing to Mr. Stanthrope for my unworthy suspicions. He is not a burglar, nor a detective, nor a murderer, nor even a lawyer, but just a poor young man with a buried romance."
"How did you find out?"—in a chorus of voices.
"I just met Miss McKay in the hall, and she has been in New York, where her brother told her the particulars. It seems that three or four years ago Mr. Frederick K. Stanthrope was engaged to a girl here in college na