Kitabı oku: «Billie Bradley and Her Classmates: or, The Secret of the Locked Tower», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XVIII – AMANDA’S REVENGE

Amanda’s jaw dropped and she sprang back while Eliza cowered behind her. The former held an ink bottle which she had been about to turn upside down in Miss Race’s desk.

With a quick movement Laura snatched it from the girl’s hand and held it aloft triumphantly.

“Look, Billie,” she said in a loud whisper. “Amanda was going to spill this in the desk and then blame it on you.”

Amanda made a quick dart for the door, but Billie ran after her and pulled her back.

“Not yet,” she said, grimly. “You’ll wait till we’re through with you or I’ll go to Miss Walters and report the whole thing. You had better not try to get funny.”

Amanda started to bluster, but on second thoughts decided not to. Billie and her chums had the argument all on their side this time, and the thought made her fume inwardly.

As for the “Shadow,” her homely face was pale with fright, and she stood motionless and scared on the spot where the girls had first discovered her.

The plan of the two conspirators had evidently been to upset the teacher’s desk and then blame the whole thing on Billie. But how could Amanda hope to prove that Billie had done it all?

Thus thought the girls as they rummaged through the desk in search of some further trick. And then, they found it.

“Look at this!” cried Billie, holding aloft a little square of linen at sight of which Amanda grew more sullen and Eliza quaked. “It’s my handkerchief with my initials and my laundry mark on it. Those – those – girls – were going to leave it here after spilling the ink, and when Miss Race found it she would of course think that I was the guilty one. Oh – what shall we do to them?”

She glared at the tricksters while Amanda tossed her head defiantly and Eliza shrank still farther back into the corner.

“But that would have been so silly,” cried Laura, who had snatched the handkerchief from Billie and was examining it eagerly. Vi, in her turn was trying to pull it from her. “Miss Race would know that you would have sense enough not to give yourself away by leaving your handkerchief. Their heads sure are made of bone,” and she favored the girls with a contemptuous glance that was harder to bear than Billie’s anger.

“I wouldn’t leave my handkerchief on purpose of course,” Billie pointed out. “I might have dropped it by accident, though.”

“But how did they get the hanky,” wondered Vi, wide-eyed at this example of depravity.

“Probably stole it out of my pocket when I wasn’t looking,” said Billie contemptuously, and at that Amanda made a show of defense.

“You needn’t call me a thief, Billie Bradley!” she exclaimed, but Laura cut her short with a flippant observation.

“Would you rather she would call Miss Walters?” she asked, which effectively closed the girl’s mouth.

“Let’s make ’em clean up,” suggested Billie. “I’d call Miss Walters, only they’re not worth spoiling her sleep for. Come on over here, you two, and get busy.”

“We won’t do it,” said Amanda, but as Billie started toward her she quite suddenly changed her mind.

“Oh, all right,” she said angrily, as she flounced over to the desk, pulling the limp “Shadow” after her. “We’ll do it this time. But you just look out, Billie Bradley. I’ll make you pay for this.”

Laura struck a dramatic attitude.

“Look out,” she cried. “The worm is turning. Let us nip it in the bud!”

It was all right for them to laugh at Amanda’s discomfiture then and treat the whole thing as a joke, but in the morning they were not quite sure that they had done the right thing.

“I think we ought to have reported her to Miss Walters,” worried Vi. “Then she and the Shadow would have been expelled, or suspended at least, and we would have had no more trouble with them. As it is – ”

“Oh, don’t be an old gloom hound,” commanded Billie, seizing her chum round the waist and whirling her about the room in a fantastic dance. “They’ve never been able to do anything to us yet, so what’s the use of worrying?”

“Sure,” agreed Laura, busy marking passages in her “Life of Washington.” “That’s what I say. We’re too many for ’em.”

But in spite of their optimism, in their hearts the girls decided to watch Amanda and her cowardly “Shadow” more closely than ever in the future.

And the girls would have been put even more on their guard if they could have peeped into the library one afternoon and overheard the curious conversation that took place between two girls seated in a far corner of the big room.

“I’ve got it at last!” gloated one of the girls, who was no other than the plotting Amanda herself. Eliza, of course, was her inevitable companion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the latter rather snappishly. For, since the fiasco in Miss Race’s room, she had not entered into Amanda’s schemes quite so whole-heartedly as she had before. “I don’t see why you should be so pleased about finding a musty old book.”

“Of course you don’t see,” said Amanda, patronizingly. “That’s what I’m going to explain to you.”

She paused a moment, regarding the “musty old book” in her hand lovingly. Eliza moved impatiently in the seat beside her and Amanda grinned at her.

“You remember I told you I was going to try for the composition prize?”

“Yes,” said Eliza crossly, adding with a frankness that might have been disconcerting to anybody but Amanda: “And I thought you were crazy even to think of it. You haven’t a chance in the world beside Billie Bradley or Rose Belser or any of those girls.”

“I know I wouldn’t as a rule,” admitted Amanda, her small eyes gleaming with triumph. “But with this book,” she caressed the little volume fondly, “they won’t have a chance against me!”

“And still I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” snapped Eliza. “I wish you’d stop grinning to yourself and get to the point – if there is one,” she added under her breath.

“All right,” said Amanda, too delighted with her own cleverness to notice her shadow’s bad temper. “Listen then, and I’ll tell you just how I came to think about it.

“I was rummaging through some books on the top shelf one day, trying to find one I needed, when down behind the rest of them I happened to come across this little old book of biographies of the great generals of the world. It was covered with dust, and so old and shabby-looking that I was sure it hadn’t been touched in an age.”

“Yes,” said Eliza impatiently, as Amanda paused for breath.

“Of course that was before the composition prize was offered, so I put the book back where I found it and forgot all about it. But now – ” she paused and the “Shadow” saw a gleam of light.

“And now,” Eliza finished, “you think you are going to get material enough out of this musty little old book to take the prize away from Billie Bradley. I see.”

“Oh no, you don’t see.” It was Amanda’s turn to be impatient. “I’m not going to try to write an original composition at all. Listen,” she lowered her voice to a whisper although they two were the only ones in the large room. “I’m going to copy it from this book – word for word!”

For a moment Eliza stared at the grinning girl, pop-eyed. Then as the daring of the thing sank into her muddled brain she sank back in her chair and shook her head slowly.

“Don’t do it,” she said. “If they should find out – ”

“But nobody’s going to find out,” cried Amanda, as gleeful as though the coveted prize were already in her hands. “This is an old book, and probably nobody in this place has even heard of it. Say, won’t that Bradley girl’s eyes stick out when she sees me walking off with the prize? Oh my, oh my! This is the time I’m going to settle her!”

It was just about this time that a furor was caused in the school by the disappearance of articles belonging to the students.

The articles were small and seldom valuable – so insignificant were some of them, in fact, that the owners never missed them until the report of numerous other losses spread through the school and woke them to the realization that they, too, were victims of the petty thief – whoever she was.

For that the guilty one was one of their schoolmates there seemed to be little doubt. For what outsider would care for such things as pencils and erasers and old jackknives?

It was true that one or two of the losses were valuable. A gold-mounted fountain pen for instance, which had been a Christmas present to one of the girls, who lamented her loss with “loud wailings and gnashings of teeth,” as Laura described it.

It was when the excitement over this strange series of events was at its height that Billie drew Laura and Vi aside one day and whispered a startling decision in their ears.

“Girls,” she said, “I’ve dreamed of that locked room in tower three two nights in succession, and I’ve found an old bunch of keys and one of them may fit. Are you willing to come with me? Or have I got to go alone?”

CHAPTER XIX – THE TOWER ROOM

For a moment the girls looked as though they thought Billie had gone mad. The proposal had been made to them so suddenly that it took their breath away.

“But, Billie, aren’t you afraid – after finding that blood-stained handkerchief and everything?” demanded Vi, round-eyed.

“Of course I’m afraid! But I’m going just the same,” said Billie stoutly. “I’ve wondered and wondered about what might be in that locked room till I’m nearly crazy. And if you won’t go with me, I’m going alone,” she repeated.

“Don’t be foolish,” commanded Laura. “If you go, of course we’ll go. But suppose none of your keys will fit?” she added, glancing at a half dozen rusty keys on a still more rusty key ring which Billie was jingling nervously. Billie had found the key ring on a nail in a dark corner of her locker the day before. She had been about to deliver it to the lost and found office when the inspiration had come to her. She would try the keys first to see if by any chance one of them could be used to unlock the little door in tower three. It would be time enough afterward to report her discovery.

Now at Laura’s question she looked somewhat provoked.

“Don’t you s’pose I’ve thought of that?” she said, adding, with a twinkling smile: “Somebody is always taking the joy out of life!”

“We can try ’em, anyway,” said Laura doubtfully, still speaking of the keys. “But they don’t look very promising.”

“But, girls,” Vi protested weakly, “suppose we should find something horrible up there – a skeleton or something?”

“Well, the poor old skeleton couldn’t hurt us,” returned Laura, adding with a giggle: “Probably it would be glad to see us after being up there alone so long.”

“But the blood-stained handkerchief” – Vi whispered.

“Oh, that!” said Laura, with a lofty wave of her hand. “That’s nothing. I told you before that probably somebody had a nose-bleed.”

Which made even Vi giggle and had the effect of stilling her fears for the time being, at least.

They had hard work getting away from their classmates without arousing their suspicion, but they succeeded at last. The three girls ran lightly up the three flights of stairs that led to the musty old attic.

Now that the moment was at hand they were more excited than nervous, and their hearts beat high with the hope that they might really find a mystery hidden behind that locked door. But what could it be?

The queer sounds and heavy musty smell of the attic that had seemed so dreadful to Billie on that never-to-be-forgotten night seemed natural and even funny in the revealing daylight.

The shadowy corners that had seemed so sinister when lighted only by one tiny flickering candle were only corners now, cobwebbed and dusty, to be sure, but harmless.

Mice scuttled across the floor squeaking angrily at being disturbed, but although Vi screamed and Laura side-stepped nervously, Billie only laughed. To-day they were only little mice more afraid of her than she was of them. That night they had been monsters waiting to devour her.

But just the same, some measure of her nervousness returned when they reached the stairway down which she had nearly tumbled in her wild flight.

Laura and Vi seemed to share her uneasiness, for they stopped at the foot of the stairs and held back a little.

“Who goes up first to meet the skeleton?” asked Laura, with an attempt at a laugh that sounded strained even to herself.

“You do,” said Vi, adding maliciously: “You were the one who said he wouldn’t hurt us.”

Seeing that Laura was about to argue the point, Billie pushed impatiently past them both and ran defiantly up the stairs. Laura, thus challenged, took the stairs two at a time after her and Vi followed reluctantly.

“Look! There’s the handkerchief,” said Billie, kicking the tiny square of blood-stained linen over toward Laura, who jumped nervously out of the way.

“Well, you needn’t wish it on me,” she said resentfully, picking up the handkerchief by the very tip of a corner and presenting it to Billie with a low bow. “Here, take back your gold – ”

“What are you two whispering about?” demanded Vi, petulantly, for by this time she was beginning to wish she had not come.

At her question Laura whirled suddenly about and poked the blood-stained handkerchief directly beneath Vi’s startled nose.

“There,” she said. “Want it?”

Vi gave one look, screamed, and fled down the stairs. She had gone only halfway, however, when Laura overtook her and dragged her back.

“None of that,” she cried. “You can’t back out now. Besides, we’re only beginning to have some fun.”

“Fun!” groaned Vi, keeping a wary eye on the handkerchief that Laura still held. “Well, I’m glad I know what to call it.”

“Come on,” said Billie, jingling her rusty keys and starting up the ladder. “Now we’ll see whether one of these keys will fit.”

“I hope it doesn’t,” said Vi, under her breath, but Laura caught her up sharply.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“Oh – nothing,” said Vi.

By this time Billie was on the top rung of the ladder and her fingers trembled as she tried to fit the first of the keys into the lock. She had more courage than Vi, yet almost she echoed the other girl’s wish – that she would not be able to find a key to fit.

She wanted to see what was on the other side of that locked door, yet for some reason – perhaps the blood-stained handkerchief – she was afraid to find out.

She had tried every key till she came to the next to the last, while Laura and Vi fidgeted at the foot of the ladder.

“Won’t they fit?” asked Laura, impatiently and in a high-strung tone.

“Yes,” said Billie unexpectedly, as the key slipped into the lock and turned easily under the pressure of her fingers. She hesitated and looked down at the two girls before swinging the door wide.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, and she could not, for the life of her, keep a little scared quality out of her voice.

“Of course,” cried Laura, recovering from her surprise – for she had really not expected that any of Billie’s keys would fit – and ascending the ladder hand over hand. “‘Lead on, Macduff, to victory or to death!’”

Vi groaned again and gingerly put a foot on the ladder. She did not know which was worse, to remain there by herself or to follow the girls to – goodness-knew-what. But the squeak of a mouse behind her made her decide in favor of company, and she scurried in a panic up the ladder.

Meanwhile Billie and Laura were experiencing rather severe pangs of something – they could not have told whether it was disappointment or relief.

They had braced themselves to find something horrible – or at least interesting – in the tower room, and they were rather taken aback at finding themselves confronted with a large amount of nothing at all.

There seemed to be a great deal of junk scattered about, but in the gloom of the place they could not even make that out very clearly.

There were windows all about the tiny room, but they were so encrusted with ancient dirt and cobwebs that the bright sunlight of the out-of-doors was reduced to a weird and spooky twilight, which seemed somehow to correspond to the forlorn aspect of the place.

“Well,” said Laura, drawing a deep breath, “we come up here expecting to find something interesting and we get – stung!”

“It does look that way,” admitted Billie ruefully. “Seems as if we might at least have met a good live ghost or two.”

“Live ghost!” sniffed Laura crossly, for she was really feeling very much injured. “All the ghosts that I ever heard about were as dead as a doornail.”

“For goodness’ sake, stop talking about dead people,” said Vi querulously from the doorway. “If there isn’t anything in here – and thank goodness there isn’t – let’s go back.”

“Not yet,” said Billie. Her eyes, become more accustomed to the dim light, had lighted upon something interesting among the junk. What had caught her attention was a large, clumsy-looking thing like a queerly shaped wooden box. The girls watched her curiously as she bent over to examine it.

“You haven’t found your ghost, have you?” asked Vi, in a voice that was meant to be sarcastic.

“No,” said Billie, a thrill of wonder and excitement creeping into her voice. “But I may have found something! Girls, come here and have a look at this!”

The girls picked their way over the rubbish that littered the floor. What had seemed like a peculiarly shaped box proved on closer inspection to be some cunningly fashioned wooden machinery.

The girls looked at each other in awed silence. To them all in an instant had come the same thrilling thought.

“The lost invention!” murmured Billie. “And we thought there was nothing here!”

CHAPTER XX – STOLEN

“Oh, but how do we know?” protested Laura. “It looks like machinery of some kind, but we have no way of proving that it is the stolen invention.” “No,” said Billie, still in a kind of daze. “It may be just some old worthless thing that has been put up here because it is of no use to anybody. But then again – ”

“Oh, I think Laura’s right,” put in Vi, to whom this new find of Billie’s was not very interesting. It seemed absurd to put any value on that queer-looking thing. And besides, she was anxious to get out of that musty, ill-smelling place. “I thought of Mrs. Haddon at first too, but – ”

“Hello! I wonder what this is,” Laura interrupted her. There had been some blue prints lying on the floor near the wooden machinery. In the poor light they had remained unnoticed until Laura had stumbled upon them quite by accident.

In her eagerness, Billie forgot to be polite. She snatched the papers from her chum and made her way to the nearest dust-begrimed window.

She scanned the prints eagerly and finally came to the thing she had so wildly hoped to find. It was only a name, but it told a great deal.

The blue prints were evidently the design of some sort of machinery, and down at the foot of one page the designer had put his name – Henry Haddon.

“Girls, girls, look!” cried Billie, almost beside herself with excitement at her discovery. “Now maybe you’ll dare to say I’m crazy and I don’t know what I’m talking about. I dreamed of it two nights in succession, and now my dream has come true – ”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, stop waving that thing around and tell us what you’re raving about,” commanded Laura, snatching the blue print from Billie in her turn, while Vi crowded close, looking curiously over her shoulder.

“Here! At the bottom of this page!” crowed Billie, pointing out the name. “See it? Henry Haddon!”

“Henry Haddon!” repeated Laura excitedly. “Then it looks as if that really were his invention.”

“It is the knitting machinery model!” cried Vi, forgetting that a moment ago she had scoffed at the idea.

“Of course it is, you gooses – I mean you geese,” cried Billie, incoherent in her happiness. “I told you so right along, didn’t I? Next time maybe you’ll believe your Uncle Billie.”

“I – guess – yes!” said Laura, still staring at the blue prints as though she could not believe they were real. “You surely did have the right idea that time, Billie.”

“Of course I did!” cried Billie impishly, bubbling over with excitement. “And now I’ve got an idea that’s righter yet. Let’s go to Mrs. Haddon and tell her about it.”

“Agreed!” cried Laura. Then she glanced uncertainly at the blue prints. “Shall we take these along?” she asked.

Billie hesitated, then shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I think we had better leave everything just as we found it.”

So Laura put the important papers back on the spot where she had found them, or as near to it as she could remember.

She then backed out of the room and felt her way down the ladder. Vi followed, treading on her fingers, so that she let go and very nearly tumbled to the floor.

Billie came last, for she was to lock the door.

But a strange thing happened. Either excitement had made Billie’s fingers clumsy or something had really happened to the rusty lock. At any rate, she could not get the door locked again and after a few minutes of nervous fumbling, interspersed with remarks from the girls that were anything but encouraging, she gave up the attempt.

“Oh, well, we’ll be back in a little while, anyway,” she said, as she came down swiftly hand over hand and dropped to the floor beside the girls. “Come on now, let’s hurry and find Mrs. Haddon.”

They scurried down the stairs and were hurrying to their dormitory to get on coats and hats when a voice hailed them and they stopped impatiently to find Rose Belser hurrying toward them.

“Have you heard the latest, girls?” asked the dark-haired girl excitedly, for once forgetting her sleepy drawl.

“No,” said Billie, trying not to sound as impatient as she felt, while Laura and Vi frowned openly.

“It’s up on the bulletin board,” Rose told them, too full of her own news to notice their annoyance. “Connie Danvers has lost a gold wrist watch and Miss Walters is very much upset about it. She says that the thief, whoever it is, must be found. And she has ordered that no girl leave the Hall until to-morrow morning.”

The girls looked at each other and groaned.

“Till to-morrow morning!” said Billie, her face as long as though a death sentence had just been pronounced upon her. “Oh, why couldn’t Connie have held on to her old watch!”

Rose’s look of surprise was so genuine that it put Billie instantly on her guard. The chums were not ready yet to take anybody into their confidence about the new discovery.

And so she covered her slip as well as she could, and they went on together to the dormitory, exclaiming sympathetically over Connie’s loss.

The next morning came at last, however, and as it was Sunday, the girls were free to go as soon as the morning chapel hour was over. But as Miss Walters would not allow any girl to leave the building without special permission from her, the classmates were forced to go to her and tell her about their invasion of the tower room and their discovery.

She was displeased that they had not asked her consent before taking such a step. But she was also very much interested in their story, and readily gave them her permission to go to Polly Haddon.

“Bring her back with you, if you can,” she said, “and we will all go together to the tower room.”

“Now for the fun!” cried Laura, as a few minutes later they stepped out into the crisp air. “Whew! I think we got off lots better than we expected. I thought Miss Walters would be awfully mad.”

“Probably she would have been if she hadn’t had so many other things to worry about,” said Vi.

“Poor Connie!” said Billie. “It surely is too bad about her watch. It was a beauty, and she was so proud of it.”

“I hope Miss Walters finds the thief pretty soon,” said Laura, frowning. “Everybody thinks it is one of the girls, and I’m even beginning to feel guilty myself.”

“Do you think – ” Vi began, then flushed as the girls looked at her and stopped.

“What?” asked Laura adding, as Vi still hesitated. “Come on – we won’t eat you.”

“Nothing – only – I was wondering if the thief might not be Amanda.”

“Oh, no,” cried Billie quickly. “I’m sure it couldn’t be, Vi.”

The suggestion from Vi startled her, and it troubled her too, for the very reason that the same idea had been in her own mind.

And suddenly Laura spoke up in support of Vi.

“I shouldn’t wonder if Vi is right,” she said. “Amanda is mean enough for anything.”

Billie had no answer for that, and so she said nothing. But she was more than ever troubled.

As they neared the little white cottage that had seen so much trouble, they forgot Amanda in anticipation of Polly Haddon’s joy at the good news they were bringing her.

They knocked on the door, and the moment it was opened pushed eagerly inside and turned to face the astonished widow.

Billie started to speak, but Laura, with her usual impulsiveness, was before her.

“We’ve got good news, Mrs. Haddon,” she blurted out. “We’ve found your lost invention.”

Billie gasped with dismay as Mrs. Haddon turned deathly white and grasped the back of a chair for support.

“Oh, Laura, you shouldn’t!” cried Billie, as she put an arm about the woman and helped her into a chair. “Get some water, quick! There’s a glass in the sink.”

But Mrs. Haddon brushed her impatiently aside.

“I’m not going to faint,” she said brusquely. “Tell me why you said that. Hurry!”

But Laura thought she had done enough speechmaking for one day, and it was Billie who answered the woman’s questions.

“It must be ours,” said the latter, at last. “I will go with you and make sure. Peter? Yes, he will be all right till I get back. He is much better. I will be ready in a moment.”

She returned in less than a minute, a hat perched carelessly on her head and a shawl around her shoulders. Her eyes burned bright in her thin face.

No one spoke on the way back. Mrs. Haddon, her lips set and her eyes fixed straight ahead, said not a word, and the girls were too awed by her emotion to break the silence.

Miss Walters met them in the hall, said a few words to Mrs. Haddon, then, seeing that the woman was keyed to the breaking point, led the way straight to the tower room.

The girls ran up the ladder ahead of the two older women. The latter followed more slowly. Billie pushed open the little door and entered the room.

Then she started, gasped, rubbed her hand across her eyes to make sure she was not dreaming. For the spot where the queer wooden machinery had stood was empty. The invention was gone; and the blue prints were gone, too!