The Corner House Girls' Odd Find

“Oh, my goodness me!” squealed Agnes. “Is it true? Can it be so? All – that – money?”

“I’m sure it isn’t ours,” Ruth said quietly. “Uncle Peter never hid away any such sum. He wasn’t as rich as all that. But we’ve got to give an account of it to somebody.”

“What for?” demanded her sister. “I found it.”

“But findings isn’t always keepings, Aggie – especially where so much money is concerned. A hundred thousand dollars!”

“A hundred thousand dollars!” repeated Agnes, in the same awed tone.

Neale pulled his cap tighter down over his ears. It was an angry gesture.

“Where are you going, Neale?” demanded Ruth, exasperated. “Do sit down and tell us what you have done. Don’t you see we are anxious? I never saw such a boy! Do tell us!”

“I don’t know why I should tell you anything,” returned the boy, grumpily enough. “You think I’m a thief. I won’t stay here.”

“Oh, Neale!” shrieked Agnes, seeing how serious this difference was. “Don’t get mad.”

“Let him return the book,” said Ruth, insistently. “This isn’t any foolish matter, I assure you. He has no right to keep it.”

“Did I say I was going to keep it?” flared out Neale O’Neil.

“Well, you have kept it. You carried it away to Tiverton, you say,” went on Ruth, accusingly.

“Well, so I did,” admitted Neale.

“What for, I’d like to know?” demanded the oldest Corner House girl in exasperation.

“I lugged it along to show to somebody.”

“What for – if you didn’t think it was good money?”

“Oh, Ruth!” begged Agnes again. “Don’t!”

“I want him to answer,” cried her elder sister, severely. “Why did he carry the album away? And where is it now?”

It must be confessed that Ruth Kenway had worked herself into a fever of excitement. It was the result of the repressed anxiety she had so long endured regarding this strange and wonderful find of Agnes’ in the old Corner House garret.

Neale was very pale now. He was usually slow to anger, and his friends, the Corner House girls, had never seen him moved so deeply before.

“I did think the bonds might be worth something,” Neale said, at last, and hoarsely. “I told Aggie so.”

“But the money?” cried Ruth.

“You say it’s good,” the boy returned. “You can believe that’s so if you want to. I didn’t think it was when I took the book.”

“I tell you Mr. Crouch, at the bank, said it was perfectly good. See here!” cried Ruth, desperately.

She ran for her purse that lay on the sewing-machine table. She opened it and drew forth the folded ten dollar bill. With it came the other bill she had put away.

“I showed him this!” Ruth began, when Agnes stooped to pick up the other.

“What’s this?” the second sister asked.

“Why – why that’s the one Mr. Howbridge gave me. I haven’t needed to break it.”

“And you had ’em both together?” demanded Agnes, shrewdly.

“Yes.”

“Which one did you show Mr. Crouch then?”

The question stunned Ruth for the moment. She unfolded the bill she had taken out of the purse. It was quite a new silver certificate. Agnes unfolded the other. It was an old-style United States banknote, dated long before the girls’ parents were born.

Neale, as well as the Kenway sisters, saw the significance of the discovery. The boy turned his face aside quickly and so hid the smile that automatically wreathed his lips.

“Why – why!” gasped Agnes, “if you showed Mr. Crouch that bill, of course he said it was a good one. But how about this?”

Ruth turned like a flash on Neale again. “What do you know about the money in the book? Isn’t it good?” she demanded. “I believe you’ve found out.”

“Well! what if I have?” and one would hardly recognize Neale O’Neil’s pleasant voice in the snarling tone that now answered the oldest Corner House girl.

“Oh, Neale! is it?” cried Agnes.

But Neale gave her no reply. He was still glaring at Ruth whose expression of her doubt of his honesty had rasped the boy’s temper till he fairly raged.

“If you want to find out anything about that stuff in the old book, you can do it yourself. I won’t tell you. I’m through with the whole business,” declared Neale.

“But – but where’s the book?” asked Ruth, in rather a weak voice now.

“Oh, I brought it back,” snapped Neale. “You’ll find it outside on the porch – in my bag. That’s all I carried in the old thing, anyway. You can have it.”

He marched to the door and jerked it open. Agnes tried to call after him, but could not.

Neale banged to the door behind him and tramped down the hall. They heard him open the outer door and slam that. Then he thumped down the steps and made for the Willow Street gate.

“Oh, Ruth! what have you done?” gasped Agnes, wringing her hands. “Poor Neale!”

“I want that album!” exclaimed Ruth, jumping up.

“It – it can’t be worth anything – that money,” murmured Agnes, but followed her sister.

“It is good money. I’m sure of it!” snapped Ruth.

She hurried to the porch. There was Neale’s old bag in the dark corner. Ruth pounced upon it.

“Oh, Ruth!” cried Agnes. “It’s never there.”

“Yes, it is. He didn’t stop when he went out. Of course it’s here!”

Ruth had brought the satchel into the lighted hall and opened it. She turned it upside down and shook it.

But nothing shook out – not a thing. The bag was empty. The old album Agnes had found in the garret, and which had caused all their worry and trouble, had disappeared from Neale’s satchel.

CHAPTER XVIII – WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT

The two youngest Corner House girls had heard nothing of this exciting discussion in the sitting room between Neale O’Neil and their two older sisters.

Tess and Dot had run to tell the rest of the family that Neale had arrived and that Sammy Pinkney was better. Mrs. MacCall, who had a soft spot in her heart for the white-haired boy, put down some supper to warm for him, sure that Neale would come into the kitchen before he went home.

Dot ran upstairs to Aunt Sarah Maltby’s room to tell her of the boy’s arrival, and Aunt Sarah actually expressed her satisfaction that he had reached home in safety. Neale was growing slowly in the brusk old lady’s good graces.

Coming downstairs and through the dining room, where the gas-logs blazed cheerfully on the hearth, Dot found Sandyface, the “grandmother” cat, crouching close before the blaze, her forepaws tucked in, and expressing her satisfaction at the warmth and comfort in a manner very plain to be heard.

“Mercy me!” ejaculated the smallest Corner House girl. “Sandyface! you sound just as though you were beginning to boil! Oh!”

For just then the door from the rear hall opened quickly and startled her. The strange girl – the circus girl – who had so interested Dot and Tess, to say nothing of the rest of the family, popped in.

“Oh!” repeated Dot. “How you frightened me.”

Barnabetta stood with her back against the door. One might have thought that the appearance of Dot, had been quite as unexpected and had frightened her.

She seemed breathless, too, as though she had been running. But of course she had not been running. Where should she have run to on such a cold night? And there was no snow on her shoes. Besides, she wore no wrap.

“Did – did I frighten you, little girl?” Barnabetta said. “I am sorry, I did not mean to.”

She had both hands behind her and stood against the door in a most awkward position.

“I was afraid you had gone to bed,” prattled on Dot, stroking Sandyface. “Ruthie said she s’posed you had. But I’m glad you hadn’t. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Did – did you?” returned Barnabetta. She seemed to be listening all the time – as though something was going on in the hall that frightened her.

“Yes,” Dot went on placidly. “You know, we’ve been to a circus once.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. And Tess and I was awful int’rested in it. We – we liked the ladies and gentlemans that rode on the horses around the ring, and was on the trapezers, too. And they looked beau-tiful in those spangles, and velvets, and all.

“I s’pose those were their best clo’es, weren’t they – their real, Sunday-go-to-meeting frocks?”

“I – I guess they were,” admitted Barnabetta.

“You wear your best clo’es when you go up on the trapezers, don’t you?”

“The fanciest I’ve got,” admitted the circus girl.

“Well! Mustn’t they look funny all going to church that way – the ladies in those short, fluffy skirts, and the gentlemans in such tight pants! My!” gasped Dot. “Couldn’t you tell us, please, what they do in circuses when they travel?”

“Why – yes,” said Barnabetta. “I’ll tell you.”

“Will you sit right down here and tell us?”

“Why – yes.”

“Oh, wait! I’ll run and fetch Tess!” exclaimed the generous Dot. “I know she will want to hear, too,” and she scampered out of the room so swiftly that she startled Sandyface, who flew through the door before her.

Barnabetta was left alone in the dining room. There was a closet with a small door right beside the fireplace. When Dot returned with Tess the circus girl was leaning her back against that closet door, instead of against the hall door.

“Oh, do come and sit down,” urged Dot, eagerly, drawing an armchair to the hearth.

Barnabetta did so. Tess and Dot each brought a hassock, one on either side of the older girl. Barnabetta had a softer side to her nature than the side she had displayed to Agnes Kenway. There were little folk at the circus, who traveled with their parents with the show, who loved Barnabetta Scruggs.

A little later Agnes, pale of face and with traces of tears, came into the room. She and Ruth had hunted high and low for the lost album Neale O’Neil had left in his satchel on the side porch.

Even Ruth admitted Neale had not halted there, when he went out so angrily, long enough to take the album away. And both girls had seen him drop the heavy bag in that dark corner when he came in with Tess.

Somebody had removed the album. Nor was it ridiculous to suppose that the “somebody” who had done this knew very well what the book contained.

“Oh, we’ve been robbed! robbed!” Ruth had cried, rocking herself back and forth in her chair in the sitting room. “What ever shall we do? What shall I say to Mr. Howbridge?”

“I don’t care a thing about him,” declared Agnes, recklessly. “But think of all that money – if it is money – ”

“I tell you it is.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” Agnes retorted. “Maybe you showed Mr. Crouch the wrong bill.”

“No. I’ve felt all the time,” Ruth said despairingly, “that we really had a great fortune in our hands. How it came to be hidden in our garret, I don’t know. Whom it really belongs to I don’t know.”

“Us! We found it!” sobbed Agnes.

“No. We cannot claim it. At least, not until we have searched for the rightful owners. But Mr. Howbridge will tell us.”

“Oh! mercy me, Ruthie Kenway!” cried Agnes. “What’s the use of talking? It’s go-o-one!”

“I don’t know who – ”

“You can’t blame Neale now!” flared up Agnes. “You’ve made him mad, too. He’ll never forgive us.”

“Well! What business had he to carry off that book?” demanded Ruth. “He can be mad if he wants to be. If he hadn’t carried it away there would have been no trouble at all.”

“Oh, Ruthie! It isn’t his fault that somebody has stolen it now,” repeated Agnes.

“Why isn’t it?”

“How could it be?”

“Like enough the foolish boy showed all that money to somebody, and he has been followed right here to the house by the robber.”

Agnes gasped. Then she sat back in her chair and stared at her sister. Suddenly, with an inarticulate cry, she arose and dashed upstairs.

Although she had not asked, Agnes supposed the circus girl had retired immediately after dinner. It was still early in the evening, and Agnes and Ruth had had no private conversation regarding Barnabetta and her father. Neale’s arrival had driven that out of both their minds.

But into Agnes’ brain now came the thought that Barnabetta had seen the old album full of money and bonds while Neale was at the winter quarters of the circus.

“Oh, dear me! Can she be so very, very wicked?” thought Agnes. “They are so desperately in need. And such an amount of money is an awful temptation – that is, it would be a temptation if it were money!”

For despite all that Ruth said, Agnes could not believe that the wonderful contents of the old album was bona fide money and bonds.

The thought, however, that Barnabetta might be tempted to steal from those who had been kind to her, troubled Agnes exceedingly. She did not want to say anything to Ruth about her suspicions of the circus girl yet. Why make her sister suspicious, too, unless she was sure of her evidence?

Agnes listened at the door of Barnabetta’s room. There was no sound in there and she finally turned the knob softly and pushed open the door a crack. The lighted room was revealed; but there was no sign of occupancy save the shabby boy’s clothing folded on a chair. The bed had not been touched.

Was the circus girl with her father? Or had she left the house on some errand?

Agnes crept to the other door and put her ear to the panel. At first she heard nothing. Then came a murmur, as of voices in low conversation. Were the circus people talking? Had Barnabetta really gained possession of the book, and were she and her father examining it?

Then Agnes suddenly fell to giggling; for what she actually heard was Mr. Asa Scruggs’ rhythmic snoring.

“She surely isn’t there,” decided Agnes, creeping away down the hall again. “He’s sound asleep. If Barnabetta’s up to any mischief – if she’s taken that album – she can’t be in there with it.”

It was immediately following this decision that Agnes, returning downstairs by the front way, heard voices in the dining room. She looked in to see Barnabetta sitting with Tess and Dot before the fire, telling the little girls stories of circus life.

Agnes dodged out of there. She had seen enough, she thought, to convince any one that the circus girl was not guilty.

“Where’d you go to?” demanded Ruth, when her sister returned to the sitting room.

“I went to see where that Barnabetta Scruggs was,” confessed Agnes.

“Oh, my! I did not think of them.” Ruth said.

“Well, she’s all right. She’s in the dining room telling Tess and Dot stories. It certainly could not be Barnabetta. Why! we’d have heard her go through the hall and out upon the porch.”

“Why! She doesn’t know anything about the album,” retorted Ruth. “I tell you it’s been stolen by somebody who followed Neale here to the house.”

“Well, surely that couldn’t be Barnabetta,” admitted Agnes; “for she got here first.”

“That is true,” Ruth agreed. “No. Somebody followed that foolish boy – perhaps away from Tiverton. And to think of his throwing down a satchel of money on the porch in that careless way!”

“Oh, but Ruthie! that proves Neale doesn’t believe it is good money,” Agnes said eagerly. “Else he wouldn’t have left it out there. Of course he has found out that it is all counterfeit.”

“You never can tell what a foolish boy will do,” retorted Ruth, tossing her head.

“Shall – shall we tell the police we’ve been robbed?” hesitated Agnes.

“Why should we tell them, I’d like to know?” demanded Ruth, shortly. “What should we tell them? That we’ve lost a hundred thousand dollars that doesn’t belong to us?”

“Oh, mercy!”

“I’d be afraid to,” confessed the troubled Ruth. “You don’t know what they might do to us for losing it.”

“Oh, dear, Ruthie! that sounds awful,” murmured Agnes.

The two girls were in much vexation of spirit, and quite uncertain what to do. The emergency called for wisdom beyond that which they possessed. Nor did they know anybody at hand with whom they might confer regarding the catastrophe.

Agnes wanted to run after Neale and ask his opinion. He might know, or at least suspect, who it was that had taken the album out of the satchel.

But Ruth would not hear of taking Neale into their affairs further. She was quite put out with their boy friend. And Agnes, from past experience, knew that when Ruth was in this present mood it was no use to argue with her.

They spent a very unhappy evening indeed. The two oldest Corner House girls, that is. As for Tess and Dot, they reveled till bedtime in a new and wonderful world – the circus world.

They listened to Barnabetta tell of long journeys through the country, when the big animals, like the camels and the elephants, marched by night, and the great cages and pole-wagons and tent-wagons, rumbled over the roads from one “stand” to another. Of adventures on the way. Of accidents when wagons broke down, or got into sloughs. Sometimes cages burst open when the accidents occurred, and some of the animals got out.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Tess, so excited that she could scarcely sit still. “To think of lions, and tigers, and panthers running loose!”

“What’s a ‘panther,’ sister?” queried Dot, puzzled. “Are panthers dangerous?”

“Very,” responded Tess, wisely. “Of course.”

“Why – why, I didn’t s’pose that was so,” murmured Dot.

“For pity’s sake!” Tess exclaimed, exasperated. “What do you s’pose a panther is, anyway, Dot Kenway?”

“Why – why,” stammered the smallest Corner House girl, “I – I thought a panther was a man who made pants.”

“Oh, goodness to gracious, Miss Barnabetta! Did you ever hear of such a child?” demanded Tess, hopelessly. “She never will learn the English language!”

Ruth came all too quickly to remind the little girls that it was bedtime. Although much troubled, the oldest Corner House girl did not forget their guests’ comfort.

Mr. Scruggs was settled for the night and Barnabetta was sure he would not need anything before morning. She accepted a cup of hot cocoa and a biscuit herself and took them up stairs with her. Agnes did not appear again, and Barnabetta did not know that she was being watched by a pair of troubled blue eyes from the darker end of the hall.

Agnes had Barnabetta very much in her mind. She and Ruth agreed to say nothing in their own room about the mysterious disappearance of the album. The door was open into the children’s room and it was notorious that “little pitchers have big ears.”

After they were in bed, Agnes still lay and thought about Barnabetta. Was it possible that the circus girl had obtained possession of the mysterious old album?

It seemed ridiculous to believe such a thing. Surely she had not removed it to her room, for Agnes had been there and had looked for it. Barnabetta had been quietly telling stories to Tess and Dot downstairs all the evening.

Yet, the very fact that the circus girl was downstairs troubled Agnes. Suppose she had come down while Neale and Ruth and she, Agnes, were talking so excitedly about the odd find that had been made in the garret? Suppose Barnabetta had heard most of their talk?

“Easy enough for her to have slipped out of the door and grabbed that old book,” murmured Agnes. “But then – what did she do with it? Oh, dear me! How awful of me to suspect her of such wickedness.”

In the midst of her ruminations she heard a doorlatch click. The house had long since become still. It was very near midnight.

Agnes sat up in bed and strained her ears to catch the next sound. But there seemed to be no further movement. Had somebody left one of the bedrooms, or was it a draught that had shaken the door?

The uncertainty of this got upon the girl’s nerves. Somebody might be creeping downstairs. Suppose it were Barnabetta?

“What would she go down again for?” Agnes asked herself.

Yet even as she thought this and how ridiculous it was, she crept out of bed. Ruth was sound asleep. Nobody heard Agnes as she felt around with her bare feet and got them into her fleece-lined bedroom slippers. Then, wrapping her robe about her, she tied the cord and found her bedroom candle.

She lit this and went out into the hall, the door being open. As she came noiselessly to the top of the main stairway she saw the reflection of another candle on the ceiling above the stairwell – a bobbing reflection that showed somebody was moving slowly down the lower flight.

Agnes, not daring to breathe audibly, shielded her own light with her free hand, and hastened to peer over the balustrade.

CHAPTER XIX – THE KEY TO THE CLOSET

Agnes was too late to see who it was at the foot of the front stairs. As she craned her head over the railing guarding the gallery above, the person with the candle went into the dining room.

This mysterious individual must have found the door open. There was no clicking of a latch down there. The figure had glided into the room with the candle, and was immediately out of sight.

“Just as silent as a ghost!” breathed Agnes. “Oh!”

She almost giggled aloud, for she remembered the time when – oh! so very long ago – the Corner House family had been troubled by a ghost in the garret – or, as Dot seemed determined to call it, “a goat.”

Ghost or no ghost, Agnes felt that she had to see this thing through. Even a disembodied spirit had no right to go wandering about the old Corner House at night with a lighted bedroom candle in its hand.

She ran lightly downstairs, still sheltering the flame of her own candle with her hand. The dining room door had been pushed quietly to; but it was not latched.

Hiding her candle so that it should not shine through the crack of the door, Agnes pushed the portal open again with her free hand. There was a glimmer of light ahead.

The dining room was a large apartment. The candle in the hand of the unknown made only a blur of light at the far end of the room.

What was the bearer of the candle about? At first Agnes could not discover. The candle was near the door which opened into the hall near the side porch door. Through that hall one could easily reach the dark corner where Neale O’Neil had thrown his satchel when he arrived at the old Corner House that evening.

A number of thoughts were buzzing in Agnes Kenway’s brain. In spite of herself she was unable to disconnect thought of Barnabetta Scruggs and the missing book of money and bonds. It might be that the circus girl had descended the stairs and, listening at the sitting room door while Neale was there, had heard what he said about the old book; and so slipped out and stolen the album either just before Neale flung himself out of the house, or just afterward. There would have been time to do so in either case.

If Barnabetta knew nothing about the missing album, why was she creeping about the house at this unearthly hour? The question seemed, to Agnes’ mind, to be unanswerable save as the answer fitted the above probabilities.

“But I don’t really know that this is Barnabetta,” Agnes’ excusing self objected.

She did not wish it to be the circus girl. As much as she desired to know what had become of the album, she did not wish to find it in Barnabetta Scruggs’ possession.

The candle in the hand of the figure Agnes followed was suddenly raised higher. The Corner House girl jumped and almost uttered a sharp exclamation aloud. Why! Barnabetta was not as tall as that!

This ghostly visitor to the dining room was an adult. She saw its flowing robe now. The candle, held so high, threw the shadow of the head on the wall in sharp relief.

“Her hair’s done up in a ‘pug’ behind,” gasped Agnes. “Who can it be? Mrs. MacCall, or – or Aunt Sarah?”

The mysterious person was at the closet built into the brickwork of the chimney-piece, not at the hall door. That closet was a catch-all for all manner of odds and ends. There were shelves up high, as well as a deep bin underneath.

Agnes felt she must know who the person was who was rummaging in the closet, and what she was about. She softly extinguished her own candle, and set it down on the floor in the hall. Then she pushed the door open wider and ventured into the dining room.

“Aunt Sarah!”

Agnes did not utter this ejaculation aloud; but she was completely surprised.

The grim looking old woman was fumbling on the top shelf of the cupboard, and she was muttering to herself in a most exasperated tone.

“Those dratted young ones are into everything!” was Aunt Sarah’s complaint. “A body can’t find a thing put away as it should be.”

She stepped back from the cupboard then. She closed the door with an angry snap, and then stood, meditating.