Kitabı oku: «The Corner House Girls' Odd Find», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXIII – WHO WAS THE ROBBER?

That was a terrible moment in the lives of the two older Corner House girls.

Terrible for Ruth, because she saw crushed thus unexpectedly her desire to make Mrs. Eland and her sister happy and comfortable for life. Terrible for Agnes, because she could think of nobody but Neale O’Neil who could have got at the album and abstracted the money and bonds.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!” wailed Agnes, and threw herself into a chair, despairingly.

Ruth was pallid. Barnabetta Scruggs stared at the two Corner House girls with horrified, wide-open eyes.

“Now —now,” the circus girl muttered, “you girls won’t ever believe a word I say!”

“Why not, Barnabetta?” asked Agnes.

“I told your sister I put that album in the closet – and I did. But I didn’t take even one banknote out of the book!”

“I believe you, Barnabetta,” Ruth said faintly. “But – but who is the robber?”

“I was enough of a thief to take the book out of Neale’s bag,” said the circus girl. “But I didn’t even look into it. I didn’t have time.”

“How did you come to do it?” asked Agnes, curiously.

“I heard Neale when he came here Saturday night. Of course, I knew ’twas him by his voice and what you girls said. And I heard there was some kind of a row.”

“There was,” sighed Agnes.

“I came down and listened at the door of that other room where you girls and Neale were talkin’. I heard him say the book was in his bag on the porch, and I knew that bag didn’t have any lock to it.”

“Of course,” groaned Ruth.

“I was goin’ to get it before he came out; but he flung open the sittin’ room door so quick he pretty near caught me. I crouched down in the corner at the foot of the stairs and if he hadn’t been so mad,” said Barnabetta, “he must have seen me.

“But he didn’t, and when he was gone I went outside and got the book. You girls were still in the sittin’ room; but I heard somebody up in the back hall and I was afraid to go upstairs, either by the back or the front flight.

“So I slipped into the dinin’ room and there was little Dottie. I kept the book behind me and didn’t know what to do with it. But Dottie ran out of the room and I plumped it into that closet and shut the door quick,” finished Barnabetta.

“And is that all?” Ruth said, very much disappointed.

“I – I never saw the book again till just now.”

“Oh!” began Agnes, when the circus girl interrupted her, jerkily.

“I – I tried to see it. I was goin’ to steal the money – or, some of it, anyway. I know you’ll think me awful. But – but we were so hard up, and all – just the same, I couldn’t get into the closet again.

“I staid awake Saturday night, and when I thought everybody was abed and the house was still, I came down here in this boy’s suit – ”

“Oh!” cried Agnes again – and this time in a much relieved tone. But Barnabetta did not notice.

“Your aunt came down with her candle for those peppermints before I could get at the book.”

“But what did you do then?” asked the eager and curious Agnes.

“I was just about crazy,” admitted the circus girl. “I thought I’d done that sin of stealin’ the book and it had done us no good. I wanted to run away right then and there – I’d have left poor Pop behind.

“But when I got the porch door out there ready to open, I heard your old dog snuffin’ outside, and it scared me pretty near to death. I knew he wouldn’t let me out – and I was afraid he’d bite me if I let him in.

“So I ran upstairs and shut myself into that room again. And I didn’t dare come out till mornin’.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” gasped Agnes, under her breath. “It wasn’t Neale O’Neil!”

But this did not explain the mystery of the disappearance of the treasure trove that had been found in the Corner House garret. The Kenway girls were sure that Barnabetta Scruggs had told them the truth. She was not to blame for the actual robbery.

“And that must have occurred some time before you came down to look for the book Saturday night, Barnabetta,” Ruth said. “What time was it?”

“Oh, about midnight.”

“Then the robber got at the book some time in the hour between half past ten and half past eleven. Mrs. MacCall did not retire until half past ten, that is sure.”

“But how did he get in, and how did he get out, and who, for pity’s sake, is he?” cried Agnes.

Ruth shook her head. She might have said that her acquaintance among burglars was just as limited as Agnes’ own.

Only, this was no occasion for humor. The loss of a treasure amounting, possibly, to a hundred thousand dollars was no subject for raillery.

“What will Mr. Howbridge say!” groaned Ruth.

“Oh, dear me! Let’s not worry about what he says!” cried Agnes. “It’s nothing to him. Think of it! We are the losers of all that money.”

“No,” Ruth said quickly.

“Why not? What do you mean?” demanded her sister.

“It is a great loss, an irreparable loss, to the real owners of the fortune.”

“Well, who are they?” demanded Agnes. “We don’t know them. I suppose the courts would have to decide. But I guess a part of the money, anyway, would come to us. Enough to buy an automobile.”

“No,” repeated Ruth, shaking her head.

“Why not?” cried her sister. “Of course it’s ours!”

“That’s what I say. But your sister wants to give it all away,” said Barnabetta.

“Give it all away!” cried Agnes.

“It isn’t ours – or, it wasn’t ours – to give,” Ruth declared.

“I should say not!” ejaculated the puzzled Agnes.

“But I do know whom it belonged to,” said Ruth, quietly.

“Not Aunt Sarah?” gasped Agnes.

“No. Nobody at all here. It was hidden in our garret by Lemuel Aden when he was here the last time to see Uncle Peter.”

“Goodness me!” cried Agnes. “Lemuel Aden? That wicked old miser?”

“Yes.”

“But how do you know, Ruth Kenway? I thought he died in a poorhouse?”

“He did. That was like the miser he was.”

“But, if he’s dead – ?” But Agnes did not follow the idea to its conclusion.

“Why, don’t you see,” Ruth hastened to say. “The money belongs to Mr. Aden’s nieces – Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. And they need it so!”

“Oh, my goodness! so it does!”

“And we have lost it!” finished Ruth, in despair.

“Well! they can’t blame us,” Agnes said, swift to be upon the defensive.

“But I blame myself. I should have taken more care of the book, in the first place.”

“Then you don’t blame Neale?” demanded Agnes, quickly.

“He’s to blame for carrying the book off without saying anything about it to us,” said Ruth. “But I am mainly at fault.”

“No,” said Barnabetta suddenly. “I’m to blame. If I had left the book in the bag on the porch, you girls would have found it all right, and the money would not have been stolen.”

“I don’t see how you make that out,” Agnes said. “If the robber found the book in that closet where you hid it, why couldn’t he have found it anywhere else in the house?”

“Perhaps not if I had locked it in the silver safe in the pantry,” Ruth said slowly.

“Oh, well! what does it matter who’s at fault?” Agnes demanded, impatiently. “The money’s gone.”

“Yes, it’s gone,” repeated her sister. “And poor Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill, who need it so much, will never see it.”

“You girls worry a lot over other folks’ troubles,” said Barnabetta. “And those women you tell about don’t even know that their grandfather left the money, do they?”

“Their uncle,” corrected Ruth.

“Of course not,” said Agnes, in reply to Barnabetta, and quite subdued now by Ruth’s revelation regarding the probable owners of the fortune. “But, you see, Barnabetta, they are our friends; and we wanted very much to help them, anyway.”

“And it did seem as though Providence must have sent us to that corner of the garret that evening, just so Agnes should find the old album,” added Ruth.

“But I wish I hadn’t found it!” wailed Agnes, suddenly. “Just see the trouble we’re in.”

“Then I guess ’twasn’t providential your goin’ there, was it?” demanded Barnabetta.

“We can’t say that,” responded Ruth, thoughtfully.

“You Corner House girls are the greatest!” burst out the trapeze performer. “I never saw anybody like you! Do you spend all your time tryin’ to help other folks?”

“Why – we help when we can and where we can,” Ruth said.

“It’s lots of fun, too,” put in Agnes. “It’s nice to make friends.”

“Why – I believe it must be,” sighed Barnabetta. “But I never thought of it – just so. I never saw folks like you Corner House girls before. That’s what made me feel so mean when I had robbed you.”

“Oh, don’t let’s talk any more about that,” Ruth said, with her old kindness of tone and manner. “We’ll forget it.”

But Barnabetta said, seriously: “I never can. Don’t think it! I’m goin’ to remember it all the days of my life. And I know it’s my fault that you’ve lost all the money.”

Ruth returned the poker to its place, and Agnes swept up the chips of wood and the bits of the broken lock. Ruth carefully put away the big old book Agnes had found in the garret.

“Locking the barn after the horse is stolen,” commented Agnes.

Ruth felt that she could not finish that letter to Mr. Howbridge. There was no haste about it. She could wait to tell him all about the catastrophe when he returned to Milton. Advice now was of no value to her. The fortune was gone. Indeed, she shrank from talking about it any more. Talk would not bring the treasure back, that was sure.

She had not Agnes’ overpowering curiosity. There was a sort of dumb ache at Ruth’s heart, and she sighed whenever she remembered poor Mrs. Eland and her sister.

If Dr. Forsyth was to be believed, a long, long rest was Miss Pepperill’s only cure. News from the State Hospital had assured the friends of the unfortunate school teacher that she would soon be at liberty.

But she might then lapse into a morose and unfortunate state of mind, unless she could rest, have a surcease of worry, and a change of scene. How could poor Mrs. Eland leave her position to care for her sister? And how could either of them go away for a year or two to rest, with their small means?

It was, indeed, a very unfortunate condition of affairs. That the hospital matron knew nothing as yet about the fortune which should be her own and her sister’s, made it no better in Ruth’s opinion.

The more volatile Agnes could not be expected to feel so deeply the misfortune that had overtaken them. Besides, Agnes had one certain reason for being put in a happier frame of mind by the discovery they had just made.

The cloud of suspicion that had been raised in her thoughts by circumstantial evidence, no longer rested upon Neale O’Neil. If Neale would only “get over his mad fit,” as Agnes expressed it, she thought she would be quite happy once more.

For never having possessed a hundred thousand dollars in fact, Agnes Kenway was not likely to weep much over its loss. The vast sum of money had really been nothing tangible to her.

Only for an hour or so after Ruth had been to the bank the second time and made sure that the money in the old album was legal tender, had Agnes really been convinced of its value. Then her thought had flown immediately to the possibility of their buying the long-wished-for automobile.

But the tempting possibility had no more than risen above the horizon of her mind than it had been eclipsed by the horrid discovery that a robber had relieved them of the treasure trove.

“So, that’s all there is to that!” sighed Agnes to herself. “I guess the Corner House family won’t ride in a car yet awhile.”

When Ruth had spoken about Mrs. Eland and her sister, however, saying that the money really belonged to them, this thought finally gained a place in Agnes’ mind, too. She was not at all a selfish girl, and she began to think that perhaps an automobile would not have been forthcoming after all.

“Goodness! what a little beast I am,” she told herself in secret. “To think only of our own pleasure. Maybe, if the money hadn’t been lost, Mrs. Eland would have given us enough out of it to buy the car. But just see what good could have come to poor Miss Pepperill and Mrs. Eland if the money had reached their hands.

“Mercy me!” pursued the next-to-the-oldest Corner House girl. “If I ever find a battered ten cent piece again, I’ll believe it’s good until it’s proved to be lead. Just think! If I’d only had faith in that money in the old book being good, I’d have shouted loud enough to wake up the whole household, and surely somebody – Mrs. MacCall, or Ruth – would have kept me from letting poor Neale take the book away.

“Poor Neale!” she sighed again. “It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t believe that paper was any good – and those bonds. Of course he didn’t. I – I wonder if he showed the bonds and money to anybody at all?”

This thought was rather a startling one. Her boy friend had taken the old album away from the Corner House in the first place with the avowed purpose of showing the bonds to somebody who would know about such things.

Of course, he did not show them to Mr. Con Murphy, the cobbler. And it did not seem as though he had had time on Christmas morning to show the book to anybody else before he went to Tiverton.

Nor would he have taken the book away if he had been decided, one way or the other, about the bonds and money. Had he shown them to any person while in Tiverton?

If so, Agnes suddenly wished to know who that person was. If Barnabetta Scruggs could get into Neale’s room at the winter quarters of Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie, and could take a peep at the contents of the big book the boy carried in his bag, why could not some other – and some more evil-disposed person – have done the same?

Ruth had suggested it. She had said that a robber might have followed Neale O’Neil all the way from the circus and stolen the book off the porch of the old Corner House.

The same possibility held good regarding the removal of the money and the bonds from the book after Barnabetta had hidden it in the dining room closet. At that very moment the robber might have been in the house and seen what Barnabetta did with the book.

Of course, that was the explanation! Some hanger-on of the circus had followed Neale home to rob him – and had succeeded.

But, beyond that thought, and carrying the idea to its logical conclusion, Agnes pondered that Neale might have noticed that he was followed to Milton, and might know who the person was.

With Neale to suggest the identity of this robber, it might be possible to secure his person and recover the money. That idea no sooner took possession of Agnes Kenway’s mind than she started up, ready and eager to do something to prove the thought correct.

“And I’ll see Neale first of all. It all lies with him,” she said aloud. “He’s got to help us. I don’t care if he is mad. He’s just got to get over his mad and tell us how we shall go about finding the robber!”

CHAPTER XXIV – NEALE O’NEIL FLINGS A BOMB

Agnes came to her decision to interview Neale O’Neil just before the family dinner hour. She had to wait until after the meal before putting it into execution.

Ordinarily Neale would have been over at the old Corner House soon after seven o’clock with his books, ready to join the girls at their studies in the sitting room. He was not to be expected now, however. Only the little girls mentioned Neale’s absence.

“I guess something has happened since Neale came home from the circus,” Dot observed. “He don’t seem to like us any more.”

“I’m sure we’ve done nothing to him,” said Tess, quite troubled. “But, anyway, you can’t ever tell anything about boys – what they’ll do. Can you, Ruthie?”

“There spoke the oracle,” giggled Agnes.

“Tess is a budding suffragette,” commented Mrs. MacCall.

“Oh, my! You sure won’t be one of those awful suffering-etts when you grow up, will you, Tessie?” cried the horror-stricken Dot.

“Goodness! Suffragette, Dot!” admonished her sister. “But – but I guess I don’t want to be one. They say Miss Grimsby is one and I’m sure I don’t want to be anything she is.”

“Is she very – very awful?” asked Dot, pityingly, yet with curiosity.

“She is awfully hard to get along with,” admitted Tess. “Sometimes Miss Pepperill was cross; but Miss Grimsby is mad all the time.”

“I – I wish they’d take Mabel Creamer into your room and let you take her place in mine,” Dot said, feeling that her enemy next door should be put under the eye of just such a stern teacher as Miss Grimsby.

“I s’pose she’ll make faces at me to-morrow,” pursued Dot, with a sigh. “And she can make awful faces, you know she can, Tessie.”

“Well, faces won’t ever hurt you,” the other sister said, philosophically.

“No-o,” rejoined Dot. “Not really, of course. But,” she confessed, “it makes you want to make faces, too. And I can’t wriggle my face all up like Mabel Creamer can!”

Now, clothed in a proper frock again, Barnabetta Scruggs made one at the dinner table. She was subdued and rather silent; but as always she was kind to the children, beside whom she sat; and she was really grateful now to Ruth.

Despite her rough exterior, Barnabetta was kind at heart. She had only been hiding her good qualities from Ruth and Agnes because she knew in her heart that she meant to injure them. Now that she had confessed her wrong doing, her hardness of manner and foolish pride were all melted down. And nobody could long resist the sweetness of Ruth and the jollity of Agnes.

The latter slipped away right after dinner, leaving the little girls listening to one of Barnabetta’s fairy stories – this time about The Horse That Made a House for the Birds.

“That circus girl is a good deal like a singed cat,” remarked Mrs. MacCall in the kitchen. “I’m free to confess I didn’t think much of her at first. You and Ruth do pick up some crooked sticks.” She spoke to Agnes who was preparing to go out.

“But I watched her with the little ones and – bless her heart! – she’s a real little woman! Working in a circus all her life hasn’t spoiled her; but it isn’t a business that I’d want a daughter of mine to follow.

“And there isn’t a mite of harm in that Asa Scruggs,” added the housekeeper. “Only I never did see such a melancholy looking man. And he a clown!”

Agnes was thinking how strange it was she should have met Barnabetta and her father in the woods and brought them home, when they had come from the Twomley & Sorber Circus, and knew Neale O’Neil. And what would Neale say when he learned that the clown and his daughter were at the old Corner House?

Agnes remembered quite clearly that Neale had caught Barnabetta looking at the book of money while he had it in his possession at the winter quarters of the circus. At once the boy would connect the robbery of the Corner House with the circus girl’s presence there.

And that would never do. For Agnes was positive that Barnabetta was guiltless of the final disappearance of the treasure trove.

But suppose Neale was convinced otherwise? With sorrow the Corner House girl had to admit that her boy friend could be “awful stubborn” if he so chose.

“And he might come right over here and say something cross to Barnabetta and to poor Mr. Scruggs, and then everybody’d be unhappy,” Agnes told herself. “Barnabetta is repentant for all she did. It would be mean to accuse her of something she hadn’t done at all.”

So Agnes went rather soberly down the back yard paths to the end of the chicken run. She never contemplated for an instant going round by Willow Street and Willow Wythe to reach the cobbler’s front door.

Only a high board fence separated the Corner House premises from the little back yard of Mr. Con Murphy. There was the corner where Neale got over, and Agnes was enough of a tomboy to know the most approved fashion of mounting the barrier.

But she hesitated a moment before she did this. Maybe Neale was not there. Maybe he was still so angry that he would not see her if she went into Con’s little shop. She must cajole him.

Therefore she sent a tentative call over the back fence:

“Oh-ee! Oh-ee! Oh-ee!”

She waited half a minute and repeated it. But there was no answer.

“Oh, dear me!” thought Agnes. “Is he still huffy? Or isn’t he home?”

She ventured a third call, but to no avail. Agnes, however, had a determined spirit. She felt that Neale might help them in the emergency which had arisen, and she proposed to get his help in some fashion.

So she started to climb the fence. Just as she did so – spang! A snowball burst right beside her head. She was showered with snow and, screeching, let go her hold and fell back into the Corner House yard.

“Oh! oh! oh! Who was that?” sputtered Agnes.

She glanced around under the bare-limbed trees and tried to peer into the shadows cast by the hen house and Billy Bumps’ abode. Not a soul there, she was sure.

“Some boy going by on the street must have thrown it,” Agnes thought. “But how could he see me away in here?”

She essayed to climb the fence again, and a second snowball – not quite as hard as the first – struck her right between the shoulder blades.

“Oh! you horrid thing!” exclaimed Agnes, turning to run toward the street fence. “I’d like to get my hands on you! I bet if Neale were here you wouldn’t fling snowballs at a girl!”

“Don’t blow too much about what Neale O’Neil would do!” cried a voice; and a figure appeared at the corner of the hen house.

“Oh! you horrid thing! Neale O’Neil! You flung those snowballs yourself!” gasped Agnes.

She was plucky and she started for him instantly, grabbing a good-sized handful of snow as she did so. Neale uttered a shout and turned to run; but he caught his heel in something and went over backward into the drift he himself had piled up at the hen house door when he had shoveled the path.

“I’ve got you – you scamp!” declared the Corner House girl, and fell upon him with the snowball and rubbed his face well with it. Neale actually squealed for mercy.

“Lemme up!”

“Got enough?”

“Yep!”

“Say ‘enough,’ then,” ordered Agnes, cramming some more snow down the victim’s neck.

“Can’t – it tickles my tongue. Ouch! Look out! Your turn will come yet, miss.”

“Do anything I say if I let you up?” demanded Agnes, who had half buried Neale by her own weight in the soft snow.

“Yep! Ouch! Don’t! Play fair!”

“Then you’ll come right into the house and talk to me and Ruthie about that awful money?” demanded Agnes, getting up.

Neale started to rise, and then sat back in the snow.

“What money?” he demanded.

“The money and bonds that were stuck into the old album.”

“What about them?”

“Oh, Neale! Oh, Neale!” cried Agnes, on the verge of tears. “The money is gone.”

“Huh?”

“It isn’t in the book! We – we never looked till to-night, and – what do you think? Somebody got into the house and robbed us – of all that money! And it belonged to Mrs. Eland and her sister. Mr. Lemuel Aden hid it in our garret. Now! isn’t that awful?”

For a minute Neale made no reply. Agnes thought he must be struck actually dumb by the horror and surprise which the announcement caused him. Then he made a funny noise and got up out of the snow. His face was in the shadow.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Agnes.“Didn’t you hear?”

“Yes – I heard,” said Neale, in a peculiar tone. “What did you say about that stuff in the book?”

“Why, Neale! it is good. At least, the money is. Ruth went again to the bank and she is sure she had the right banknote examined this time. And, of course, if one was good the rest were!”

“Ye-es,” said Neale, still speaking oddly. “But what about Mrs. Eland?”

“It belonged to her – all that money – and her sister. You see, Lemuel Aden stayed here at the old Corner House just before he died and he left this book here because he believed it would be safe. He said Uncle Peter was a fool, but honest. Horrid old thing!”

“Who – Uncle Peter?” asked Neale.

“No – Lemuel Aden. And then he went and died and never said anything about the money only in his diary, and Mrs. Eland showed it to Ruth in the diary, and Ruth knew what it meant, but she didn’t tell Mrs. Eland. And now, Neale O’Neil, somebody’s followed you down from that Tiverton place, knowing you had that book, and got into our house and taken all that money – ”

“Gee, Aggie!” cried the boy, interrupting the stream of this monologue. “You’ll lose your breath talking so much. Let’s go in and see about this.”

“Oh, Neale! Will you?”

“Yes. I was coming to call you out anyway,” said the boy, gruffly. “You’re a good kid, Aggie. But Ruth can be too fresh – ”

“You don’t know how worried she’s been – how worried we’ve both been,” Agnes said.

“That’s all right. But I’m honest. I wouldn’t have stolen that money.”

“Of course not, Neale,” cried Agnes, but secretly condemned because there had been a time when, for a few hours, she herself had almost doubted the honesty of the white-haired boy.

“But somebody must have seen it in your possession, and come down with you and stolen it.”

“Huh! You think so?”

“How else can you explain it?” demanded the voluble Agnes, the pent up waters of her imagination overflowing now. “Of course it was very dangerous indeed for you to be carrying all that wealth around with you. Why, Neale! you might have been killed for it.

“The – the book was put in that old closet in the dining room chimney. And Aunt Sarah locked the door, not knowing there was anything of importance in the closet but her peppermints. And then we couldn’t unlock it because the lock was fouled.

“And so, we don’t know when the money was taken. But we broke the lock of the closet this afternoon and there it was – the book, I mean – empty!”

Neale was leading her toward the house. “Great Peter’s pipe!” he gasped. “You can talk nineteen to the dozen and no mistake, Aggie. Hush, will you, till we get inside?”

Agnes was rather offended at this. She went up the porch steps ahead and opened the door into the hall. Ruth was just going into the sitting room.

“Oh, Ruthie! are you alone?” whispered Agnes.

“Goodness! how you startled me,” said the older sister. “There’s nobody in the sitting room. What do you want? Oh!”

“It’s Neale,” said Agnes, dragging the boy in. “And you’ve got to tell him how sorry you are for what you said!”

“Well – I like that!” exclaimed Ruth.

“You know you’re sorry,” pleaded the peacemaker. “Say so!”

“Well, I am! Come in, Neale O’Neil. Between us, you and I have made an awful mess of this thing. Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill have lost all their fortune.”

“How’s that?” asked the boy, easily.

“Didn’t Agnes tell you that the money and bonds have been stolen?”

“Why – she said so,” admitted Neale.

“Well!” exclaimed Ruth.

“Well!” exclaimed Agnes.

“I guess you are worried about not much of anything,” said Neale O’Neil, lightly.

“What do you mean, you silly boy?” demanded Ruth, with rising asperity. “I tell you that money must have all been good money, whether the bonds were valuable or not.”

It was then Neale’s turn to say, “Well?”

“Neale O’Neil!” shouted Agnes, shaking him. “What are you trying to do – torment us to death? What do you know about this?”

“Why, I told you the old book was in my bag on the porch when I left here Saturday night,” drawled the boy. “But do you suppose I would have flung it down there so carelessly if the money and bonds had been in it?”