Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 3 (1924-11).djvu/99

98 The door was still locked; the window was open, but it was a third-story window, as most of the dormitory windows in our building are, and there is no balcony under it.

Mysterious, wasn't it? Our floor monitor, Miss Poore, declared that Natalie must have dropped her ring on the floor, but Natalie has hunted and hunted. The ring certainly isn’t in her room. Who took it? How? It frightened Natalie so that she is afraid to be alone in her room without a light.

The odd thing about it is the way that Vida looked at me when the girls told us, about it. She actually wants me to believe that her "invisible guardian" stole the ring to punish Natalie for having been sarcastic to her. Did you ever?

I wonder if poor Vida is—well, just a bit flighty, mother?

How about that necklace?

The same to the same:

I'm so excited that I can't write coherently. All the school is in an uproar over what took place last night. I am more disturbed than the rest, for I am beginning to have a suspicion that Vida is right when she says that unpleasant things happen to people who cross her. It makes me nervous, for fear she may get provoked at me for something. I don't know whether or not I ought to report the whole thing to Miss Annette; I'm afraid she'll think I'm romancing. Won’t you please write me and tell me what to do?

Yesterday morning Vida's old colored mammy, Jinny, who is in Pine Valley in order to be near her charge, came up for Vida's laundry. Miss Poore came in while Vida was putting her soiled things together, and offered to help sort them over.

Mammy Jinny gave a kind of convulsive shiver. She looked up at Vida, staring hard at her for a moment. Vida stared back in a queer, fixed way. Then my room-mate's eyes flashed yellow fire. She told Miss Poore in a kind of fury that she'd better mind her own business and not stick her old-maid nose into other people's private concerns.

Miss Poore was wild. (You can't blame her. It was really nasty of Vida). She took Vida by the shoulders and shook her hard. Vida didn't resist, but she looked at the floor monitor with such an expression of malice that Miss Poore actually stepped back in dismay.

"I'm sorry for you, Miss Poore," said Vida to her. "I'm afraid you are going to suffer severely for laying your hands on me. I'd save you if I could—but I can't."

Miss Poore went out of the room without answering. Vida gave the laundry to Mammy Jinny, who insisted upon taking laundry-bag and all. After the old colored woman had gone, Vida flung herself on her bed and cried for an hour. She said she was crying because she was sorry for Miss Poore. I failed at the time to see any significance in her remark, until after last night—.

About two o'clock this morning, the whole floor was wakened by the most terrible screams coming from Miss Poore's room. I sprang out of bed and rushed into the hall, where I met the other girls, all pouring out of their rooms. We rushed to Miss Poore's room and she finally got her door open to let us in.

Mother, she was a sight! Face, hands, arms, were all covered with blood from bites and scratches. She was hysterical, and no wonder. She declared that some kind of wild animal had jumped in at her window and attacked her in the dark. The queer thing is, how did that creature—if there was one—get into her room and then out again before we opened the hall door? Her window was open, but it is a third-story one and there is no tree nearby from