Produced by Kevin Handy, Joshua Hutchinson, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross OR AMATEUR THEATRICALS FOR A WORTHY CAUSE BY GERTRUDE W. MORRISON CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED II THE RED CROSS GIRL III ODD! IV THE MYSTERY MAN V SAND IN THE GEARS VI THE BANK-NOTE VII SOMETHING EXCITING VIII THE FOREFRONT OF TROUBLE IX THE ICE CARNIVAL X BUT WHO IS HE? XI A REHEARSAL XII BUBBLE, BUBBLE XIII MOTHER WIT HAS AN IDEA XIV CHAINS ON HIS WHEELS XV PIE AND POETRY XVI EMBER NIGHT XVII A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT XVIII WHERE WAS PURT? XIX LAURA LISTENS XX TWO THINGS ABOUT HESTER XXI AND A THIRD THING XXII THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST PURT XXIII THE LAST REHEARSAL XXIV MR. NEMO, OF NOWHERE XXV IT IS ALL ROUNDED UP CHAPTER I THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED "Well, if that isn't the oddest thing that ever happened!" murmured Laura Belding, sitting straight up on the stool before the high desk in her father's glass-enclosed office, from which elevation she could look down the long aisles of his jewelry store and out into Market Street, Centerport's main business thoroughfare. But Laura was not looking down the vista of the electrically lighted shop and into the icy street. Instead, she gave her attention to that which lay right under her eyes upon the desk top. She looked first at the neat figures she had written upon the page of the day ledger, after carefully proving them, and thence at the packet of bills and piles of coin on the desk at her right hand. "It is the oddest thing that ever happened," she affirmed, as though in answer to her own first declaration. It was Saturday evening, and it was always Laura's duty to straighten out her father's books for him on that day, for although she was a high school girl, she was usually so well prepared in her studies that she could give the books proper attention weekly. Laura had taken a course in bookkeeping and she was quite familiar with the business of keeping a simple set of books like these. She never let the day ledger and the cash get far apart. It was her custom to strike a balance weekly, and this she was doing at this time. Or she was trying to! But there seemed to be something entirely wrong with the cash itself. She knew that the figures on the ledger were correct. She had asked her father, and even Chet, her brother, who was helping in the store this evening, if either of them had taken out any cash without setting the sum down in the proper record. "It is an even fifty dollars--neither more nor less," she had told them, with a puzzled little frown corrugating her pretty forehead. They had both denied any such act--Chet, of course, vigorously.