trace of the name. It seemed reasonable enough that a house with such an impressive address should have a telephone, anyway, so she dialled inquiry and asked for the number. Politely she was advised that “The Willows, Sundale, Essex,” was not listed.
“Extraordinary!” Maria muttered, “or is it?”
She turned next to her index of British schools, but she failed to trace the girl’s previous seat of learning—Elmington High School. Small the place might be, but every college and school in the country was included here, as she well knew.
“Maria, you are learning things,” she muttered. “Out of nowhere, literally, you’ve got a new pupil. Maybe Major Hasleigh handed to me what the films call a—ah—‘bum steer,’ so he could get out without evading my questions. However, there are other ways yet.”
Accordingly she sent a telegram to the sister-in-law over the phone, reading— Are you relative of Major Hasleigh? Reply to Black, Roseway College, near Langhorn, Sussex. Then, satisfied that she had done all she could for the moment, she hurried off to take the biology class.
The girls, however, found that their empress was right off her form. She even muffed that technical bit about the sub-clavicle artery, which was her favourite bit of bonework. They little knew that her eyes and mind were trained on the school gates, through the big classroom window, otherwise they might have understood.
When the telegraph boy did eventually appear Maria had moved on to the Fourth Form. She brought the lesson to a hurried close, then hastened to her study just as the porter was bringing the telegram in. She took it from him, dismissed him briefly. Then when she had the buff form in her hand, she frowned over it.
It had a blue ink rubber-stamp right across it—
UNDELIVERABLE. ADDRESS UNKNOWN.
“Extraordinary, even incredible,” she reflected. “A girl from nowhere, indeed, whose associations seem to have melted like her father’s sunburn. Definitely I must keep an eye on her—definitely!”
CHAPTER TWO
All unaware of the effect she had produced on her crime-sensitive Headmistress, Frances Hasleigh domiciled herself in Study F the moment she had freshened up and placed her belongings in the dormitory locker assigned to her by Miss Tanby. There were no studies for her until tomorrow, so until classes were ended for the afternoon she spent a little while tidying up the none too orderly study, a job she had just completed when Beryl Mather and Joan Dawson entered, their textbooks slung in leather straps over their shoulders.
“Well!” exclaimed the dark girl, throwing down the books. “A newcomer, eh? How are you? I’m Joan Dawson.”
Frances shook hands. “I’m Frances Hasleigh. Glad to know you both—”
Beryl Mather, thirteen stone of a girl, shook hands, too. “Call me Tiny,” she grinned. “Everybody else does. If you ever need my proper name, it’s Beryl Mather—”
Frances studied her big, round, grinning face—then she looked back at Joan Dawson. She was very different—slim, graceful, rather thin-featured, with expressive dark eyes and a general alertness of manner.
“I haven’t been here so long myself,” Joan sighed. “I’m not very struck on it, either. The nearest boys’ college is fifteen miles away and the cinemas all have ancient films. Buried alive, I call it.”
“Boys don’t interest me,” Frances said quietly. “If I have any male company at all I like intelligent men—full of brains.”
Joan raised her eyebrows. “Hmm.… Anyway, it’s time we had some tea. We can either have what we’ve collected for ourselves—no easy job in these rationing days—or else we can take what the dining-hall provides. It isn’t compulsory, like dinner. What’s your fancy?”
“Chicken and champagne,” Frances shrugged. “Otherwise I’ll share whatever you’ve got. I’ve had no time yet to do any shopping of my own.”
“Tiny does ours,” Joan smiled. “Food is about the only thing she lives for.”
“And a thin time I’m having!” Beryl objected, putting the kettle on. “Still, maybe I’ll keep body and soul together somehow—”
Joan laughed, but Frances Hasleigh did not even smile. Instead she turned and looked thoughtfully out of the window. Joan Dawson frowned. This new girl seemed to have precious little to say, and she was decidedly unemotional considering her surroundings were strange to her. There was rather an odd expression on her face, too, as though she were under some kind of strain. Pretty enough, however, with her clear grey eyes, fair hair, and straight features. Yet, somehow, there was something very mature about her. She had neither the poise nor the figure of a girl of sixteen—
“Where did you go to school before?” Beryl asked.
“Elmington High School,” Frances answered absently. “You probably never heard of it.”
“No, I never have,” Joan said. “Not that it matters—”
Frances looked from one girl to the other. “We three are more or less compelled to live together, so maybe I’d better make one or two things clear now. You won’t find me very good company. I talk very little and avoid contacts as much as possible. I do not like frothy young men, but I do like brainy ones. If you don’t pester me with silly questions, I shan’t pester you, and if you find I have odd habits and do odd things, that will be my own affair, for which I’ll take full responsibility. That understood?”
Joan frowned. “Yes, of course, but we aren’t the ones who can cause you much trouble. Don’t do anything to upset Miss Black or Tanny. They’re mustard—especially Black Maria.”
Frances said nothing. She had retired into that strange shell of reserve again. She resumed gazing through the window until a prod in the back reminded her that tea was ready.
“You’re a queer one,” Beryl remarked, taking her chair. “I never heard a new girl get things off her chest so quickly. Here, try the salmon-paste—or have a teacake?”
“Teacake,” Frances said absently. “And a drink of tea.”
Joan and Beryl exchanged glances, then presently it seemed to become too much for the sharper girl.
“Look here, Frances, if there is any sort of trouble you’re in, we’ll be only too glad to help out—if we can. We don’t mind you wrapping yourself up in yourself, but don’t do it too much, will you? It gets on one’s nerves a bit, and I’m a pretty nervy customer at the best of times.”
“I just want to think—and hard; and I can’t do it if you two insist on pestering me. Just leave me alone!”
“What’s to think about?” Joan asked, mystified. “In this place everything is done for you. We don’t think; we just obey—or Heaven help us!”
Frances ate silently for a while, then: “If I wanted to ask a pretty brainy man about the exact position of the star Sirius, whom would I approach?”
Joan set her teacup down and Beryl nearly choked over her sandwich.
“Why do you want to know that?” Beryl asked blankly. “Who cares, anyway?”
“I
