“Won’t you take off your things?” asked Katherine, beginning gently to break the news to Cora that she was to stay for the evening. Without demur Cora unfastened her coat and slid it off and then took off her hat and veil. The girls stood as if turned to stone. The person who stood before them was not Cora Burton. It was Miss Snively. _It was Miss Snively!_
She looked around her with a sneering smile and a snapping light in her eyes. “You may think it was a master stroke on your part to lure me here and lock me in so I could not join the conspirators and thus find out who they were,” she said with biting emphasis. “But you shall pay dearly for this, my young friends. I know who you all are—you needn’t try to hide behinds the others, Gladys Evans—and the information I shall be able to give Mr. Jackson tonight is what he has been trying to find out for a long time. Katherine Adams, you are the ringleader of this affair, as we might have expected. I know all about the plan to put the mice into the dance hall, and while the boys downstairs who are getting them ready are not the ones I should have expected to be doing it, it is just like you to get strange boys to do it for you, hoping to get away unsuspected. But it didn’t work, I am happy to say. You are very clever, Miss Adams, but not clever enough. I overheard you asking Cora Burton to meet you on the corner this evening. I took the liberty of being there first. I thought I had deceived you perfectly, not knowing that you were bringing me right into the mouse’s nest, so to speak.”
She paused for breath and looked around her with an expression of relish at the consternation visible on the faces before her. For Katherine was staring at her with startled, unbelieving eyes; Gladys was clutching her mother’s arm in a frightened manner; Hinpoha had sunk weakly down on the bearskin bed, and Sahwah stood with her mouth open and the perspiration running down her face in black streaks, and the others were dumb with astonishment. The boys, not knowing just what was going on, but guessing that something was the matter, stood by the ladder opening, silently taking in the scene. The girls looked helplessly into each other’s eyes. Somebody must speak and explain. They all looked at Katherine.