“What’s up?” asked Shirley tritely.
“An arrest,” answered a man pushing his
bicycle. “And I guess old Sandy ain’t
made no mistake this time. He’s caught the
banshee!”
“Yes, sir,” snapped an overgrown boy.
“That’s what she is. Keepin’
folks awake howlin’!”
Sally clutched Shirley’s arm. “See,
it’s Dol’s friend, the actress!”
“Sure enough, the foreign element with a name
like crocheting,” said Shirley. “I
always knew she would come to grief with that howling.
Girls!” to Jane and the others. “Could
we go to the Town Hall and find out what happens?
That’s the ghost of Lenox Hall, the woman who
screamed at midnight.”
Too astonished to offer comment the girls drifted
along with the crowd, and a break in the ranks afforded
just a glimpse of Officer Sandy with a very tall,
fancifully dressed, but very much disheveled prisoner.
She walked along with the officer as if he might have
been a creature of a lower order of creation, but
as the boys said, “Sandy did have her goin’.”
And she was the “foreign element,” the
obnoxious visitor at the beauty shop, who was so sorely
and fatally stage struck that she had seriously disturbed
the peace of decorous little Bingham!
“She would yell right out in the night, like
a hoot owl only fiercer!” insisted one of her
followers. “And she ain’t safe to
be loose with a habit like that.”
“Defyin’ the law and disturbin’
the peace,” growled Sandy. “I’ve
had a warrant for that noise ever since it scared
old Mrs. Miner into fits and she was took to the horspittal
on account of it.”
“City folks is all right in their place,”
squeaked a thin little woman, one of the very few
women in that crowd, “but if that kind is allowed
to run wild over our quiet home towns, I say what is
Bingham comin’ to?” Queer noises without
words gave answer.
The Wellingtons, with other followers, were now almost
in front of the Town Hall, when the victim of this
country prejudice espied Shirley.
“There is someone who knows me!” she cried
out. “Ask that young lady and she’ll
tell you I’m a legitimate actress, and that I
came out here to have room to practice!”
Shirley “ducked,” as Judith put it, but
Sally, more sympathetic, offered to interfere.
“Don’t,” begged Jane. “We
were at this court only a short time ago. We
don’t want to wear out our welcome. Come
along, girls; I, as junior, am responsible for getting
you back on time. Come along.”
“Yes,” said Shirley bitterly. “Do
come along, girls. That’s about the way
this lady left me when my horse threw me off on the
hill. She was not anxious about me then and I
guess she isn’t as much in danger now as I was
at that time,” and when Officer Sandy piloted
his charge in before the recorder, the doors were closed
and the hearing was made private.
STARTLING DISCLOSURES
