Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton

The Unknown had turned swiftly and disappeared into the passage. “Come on!” cried Helen. “Let’s see where he goes to.”

Ruth was nothing loath. Although she would not have told anybody of their discovery, she was very curious. If the disguised boy had left his first disguise in stateroom forty-eight, he had doubly misled his pursuers, for he was still in women’s clothing.

“Oh, dear me!” whispered Helen, as the two girls crowded into the doorway, each eager to be first. “I feel just like a regular detective.”

“How do you know how a regular detective feels?” demanded Ruth, giggling. “Those detectives who came aboard just now did not look as though they felt very comfortable. And one of them chewed tobacco!”

“Horrors!” cried Helen. “Then I feel like the detective of fiction. I am sure he never chews tobacco.”

“There! there she is!” breathed Ruth, stopping at the exit of the passage where they could see a good portion of the saloon.

“Come on! we mustn’t lose sight of her,” said Helen, with determination.

The awkward figure of the supposedly disguised boy was marching up the saloon and the girls almost ran to catch up with it.

“Do you suppose he will dare go to room forty-eight again?” whispered Ruth.

“And like enough they are watching that room.”

“Well – see there!”

The person they were following suddenly wheeled around and saw them. Ruth and Helen were so startled that they stopped, too, and stared in return. The face of the person in which they were so interested was a rather grim and unpleasant face. The cheeks were hollow, the short hair hung low on the forehead and reached only to the collar of the jacket behind. There were two deep wrinkles in the forehead over the high arched nose. Although the person had on no spectacles, the girls were positive that the eyes that peered at them were near-sighted.

“Why we should refer to her as she, when without doubt she is a he, I do not know,” said Helen, in a whisper, to Ruth.

The Unknown suddenly walked past them and sought a seat on one of the divans. The girls sat near, where they could keep watch of her, and they discussed quite seriously what they should do.

“I wish I could hear its voice,” whispered Ruth. “Then we might tell something more about it.”

“But we heard him speak on the dock – don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yes! when he almost knocked that poor colored man down.”

“Yes. And his voice was just a squeal then,” said Helen. “He tried to disguise it, of course.”

“While now,” added Ruth, chuckling, “he is as silent as the Sphinx.”

The stranger was busy, just the same. A shabby handbag had been opened and several pamphlets and folders brought forth. The near-sighted eyes were made to squint nervously into first one of these folders and then another, and finally there were several laid out upon the seat about the Unknown.

Suddenly the Unknown looked up and caught the two chums staring frankly in the direction of “his, her, or its” seat. Red flamed into the sallow cheeks, and gathering up the folders hastily, the person crammed them into the bag and then started up to make her way aft. But Ruth had already seen the impoliteness of their actions.

“Do let us go away, Helen,” she said. “We have no right to stare so.”

She drew Helen down the saloon on the starboard side; it seems that the Unknown stalked down the saloon on the other. The chums and the strange individual rounded the built-up stairwell of the saloon at the same moment and came face to face again.

“Well, I want to know!” exclaimed the Unknown suddenly, in a viperish voice. “What do you girls mean? Are you following me around this boat? And what for, I’d like to know?”

“There!” murmured Ruth, with a sigh. “The worm has turned. We’re in for it, Helen – and we deserve it!”

CHAPTER III – THE BOY IN THE MOONLIGHT

A mistake could scarcely be made in the sex of the comical looking individual at whom the chums had been led to stare so boldly, when once they heard the voice. That shrill, sharp tone could never have come from a male throat. Now, too, the Unknown drew a pair of spectacles from her bag, adjusted them, and glared at Ruth and Helen.

“I want to know,” repeated the woman sternly, “what you mean by following me around this boat?”

The chums were tongue-tied in their embarrassment for the moment, but Helen managed to blurt out: “We – we didn’t know – ”

She was on the verge of making a bad matter worse, by saying that they didn’t know the lady was a lady! But Ruth broke in with:

“Oh, I beg your pardon, I am sure. We did not mean to offend you. Won’t you forgive us, if you think we were rude? I am sure we did not intend to be.”

It would have been hard for most people to resist Ruth’s mildness and her pleading smile. This person with the spectacles and the short hair was not moved by the girl of the Red Mill at all. Later Ruth and Helen understood why not.

“I don’t want any more of your impudence!” the stern woman said. “Go away and leave me alone. I’d like to have the training of all such girls as you. I’d teach you what’s what!”

“And I believe she would,” gasped Helen, as she and Ruth almost ran back up to the saloon deck again. “Goodness! she is worse than Miss Brokaw ever thought of being – and we thought her pretty sharp at times.”

“I wonder what and who the woman is,” Ruth murmured. “I am glad she is nobody whom I have to know.”

“Hope we have seen the last of the hateful old thing!”

But they had not. As the girls walked forward through the saloon and approached the spot where they had sat watching the mysterious woman with the short hair and the shorter temper, a youth got up from one of the seats and strolled out upon the deck ahead of them. Ruth started, and turned to look at Helen.

“My dear!” she said. “Did you see that?”

“Don’t point out any other mysteries to me – please!” cried Helen. “We’ll get into a worse pickle.”

“But did you see that boy?” insisted Ruth.

“No. I’m not looking for boys.”

“Neither am I,” Ruth returned. “But I could not help seeing how much that one resembled Curly Smith.”

“Dear me! You certainly have Henry Smith on the brain,” cried Helen.

“Well, I can’t help thinking of the poor boy. I hope we shall hear from his grandmother again. I am going to write and mail the letter just as soon as we reach Old Point Comfort.”

The girls had walked slowly on, past the seat where the odd looking woman whom they had watched had sat down to examine the contents of her handbag. There were few other passengers about, for as the evening closed in almost everybody had sought the open deck.

Suddenly, from behind them, came a sound which seemed to be a cross between a steam whistle gone mad and the clucking of an excited hen. Ruth and Helen turned in amazement and saw the lank, mannish figure of the strange woman flying up the saloon.

“Stop them! Come back! My ticket!” were the words which finally became coherent as the strange individual reached the vicinity of the girl chums. An officer who was passing through happened to be right beside the two girls when the excited woman reached them.

She apparently had the intention of seizing hold upon Ruth and Helen, and the friends, startled, shrank back. The ship’s officer promptly stepped in between the girls and the excited person with the short hair.

“Wait a moment, madam,” he said sharply. “What is it all about?”

“My ticket!” cried the short-haired woman, glaring through her spectacles at Ruth and Helen.