WITCH WINNIE’S MYSTERY

Witch Winnie’s Mystery
OR
THE OLD OAK CABINET
THE STORY OF A KING’S DAUGHTER

BY
ELIZABETH W. CHAMPNEY
AUTHOR OF “WITCH WINNIE,” “VASSAR GIRLS ABROAD,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. D. GIBSON AND
J. WELLS CHAMPNEY.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1891,
BY
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

For those who have not read the first volume of this series, “Witch Winnie, the Story of a King’s Daughter.”

We four girls,

• Adelaide Armstrong,
• Milly Roseveldt,
• Emma Jane Anton,
• Nellie Smith,

(Let it here be explained that although my name is Nellie, I am never called anything but Tib by my friends.)

We occupied a little suite of apartments in the tower, consisting of a small study parlor from which opened two double bedrooms and one single one. Our family was called the Amen Corner, because our initials, arranged as an acrostic, spelled the word Amen, and because we were a set of little Pharisees, prigs, and “digs,” not particularly admired by the rest of the school, but exceedingly virtuous and preternaturally perfect in our own estimation.

This was our status at the beginning of our first school year together, and the change that came over us, owing to the introduction into our circle of Witch Winnie, the greatest scape-grace in the most mischief-making set of the school, the “Queen of the Hornets,” has already been told. A quieting, earnest influence acted upon Winnie, and a natural, merry-hearted love of fun reacted on us, and we were all the better for the companionship.

The greatest practical result outside the change in our own characters was the formation, by the uniting of the “Amen Corner” and the “Hornets,” of a Ten of King’s Daughters, who founded the Home of the Elder Brother, for little children. This institution was adopted by our parents, who formed themselves into a board of managers, but left much of the working of the enterprise in our hands.[1] The Home prospered during the first year of its existence in a truly wonderful manner. It was undenominational and unendowed. No rich church or wealthy man stood behind it. It was entirely dependent on the efforts of a few young girls, and on the voluntary subscriptions of benevolent people. But it grew day by day. Little ripples of influence widened out from our circle to others. During the vacation our ten separated, and at each of their homes they formed other tens, who worked for the same object. Every one who visited the Home was interested in its plan of work, which was to help the poor without pauperizing them; to aid struggling women whose husbands had died, or were in hospitals or prisons, and who could have no homes of their own, by providing them with a substitute for the baby farming, so extensively carried on in the tenement districts, by offering them, on the same low terms, a sweet and wholesome shelter for their little ones. Some wondered why we charged these poor women anything; why the half charity was not made a free gift. But wiser philanthropists saw the superior kindness of this demand. The women whom we wished to aid were not beggars, but that worthy, struggling class who, overburdened, but still desperately striving, must sink in the conflict unless helped, but who still wished to do all in their power for their children, and brought the small sum asked for their board with a proud and happy self-respect.

One of our own members, Emma Jane Anton, on graduating at Madame’s, became matron of the Home, assisted by dear Miss Prillwitz, formerly our teacher of botany, from whose heart this beautiful thought had blossomed.

The Home was just across the park from the school building and we frequently visited it; but though we were all deeply interested in this sweet charity, it did not interfere with our studies or with a great deal of girlish, innocent fun. Since Winnie had become my room-mate we had lost much of the prestige which was formerly the boast of the Amen Corner, and after Emma Jane left the little single room, Madame, feeling that our influence had done much for Winnie, sent another of the “Hornets” into our midst.

We had accepted and adopted Winnie with all our hearts, for her many lovable qualities, and above all for her genuine good fellowship and affectionate nature, but Cynthia Vaughn was a very different character. There was nothing but enjoyable fun in any of Winnie’s tricks; Cynthia’s were mean and malicious. We never liked her, and she openly showed her scorn of Winnie and of me, while she fawned in a hypocritical manner, striving to ingratiate herself with aristocratic Adelaide and with gentle Milly, who was the wealthiest girl at Madame’s.

We were no longer the best behaved set in school, and an acrostic formed from our initials could not now be made to spell anything; but the name “Amen Corner” clung to the little apartment, and Madame still looked upon us with favor. She knew that Adelaide and Milly, Winnie and I, were all, beneath our mischief, true-hearted, earnest girls, and she charitably hoped for great improvement in Cynthia.

There was one person who did not believe in us—Miss Noakes, our corridor teacher. She believed that Winnie was filled with all iniquity and that Adelaide was far too attractive to be allowed the confidence which Madame reposed in her. It was Miss Noakes’s great grievance that she could never discover the least approach to a flirtation in Adelaide’s conduct. I believe that she fairly gloated with anticipated triumph when Madame engaged a handsome young artist to take charge of our art department, and that from this time she watched and peeped and listened with an industry which would have done credit to a better cause. She seemed to argue that as no lover of the beautiful could fail to appreciate Adelaide’s beauty, therefore our artist must admire Adelaide, and in this deduction she was not far from the truth, but she ought not to have taken it for granted that Adelaide must be equally pleased with her admirer. How her espionage tracked us through several innocent tricks and capers, and was finally foiled by our beloved Winnie; how the great mystery of the robbery for a time brought doubt and suspicion between four dear friends who would, and did, go through fire and water for one another; and how, in spite of doubt and jealousy and trouble, our love and devotion for one another: burned brightly and steadily on to the end of the school year, and into the life beyond—this little book will tell.

That the events which I am about to relate may be better understood, I subjoin a plan of the “Amen Corner.”

WITCH WINNIE’S MYSTERY.

CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST ESCAPADE OF THE SEASON.

Girls!” Winnie exclaimed excitedly as we entered our study parlor after recitation, “I am wild with curiosity to know what they are doing in the hospital. All the morning, while I have been trying to study, there has been the greatest thumping and bumping going on in there. I wonder whether they are chaining down an insane patient, or if the ghostly nurses are having a war dance.”

“Why didn’t you look and see?” Cynthia Vaughn asked, pointing to the transom over a locked door, which formerly opened from our parlor into the hospital ward.

Madame had made abundant provision for sickness in the original arrangement of the school building. A large sky-lighted room had been set apart as an infirmary, and a little suite of rooms in the great tower adjoining as the physician’s quarters. But it was rare indeed that any one was ill at Madame’s, and when a pupil was taken sick, her parents usually took her home at once. So the doctor, having nothing to do but to hear the recitations in physiology, preferred not to reside in the school building, and the pretty suite of rooms, consisting of a parlor and three bedrooms, was assigned to us, and the hospital proper was used as a trunk room. Winnie always maintained that ghosts of medical students experimented there in the night watches on imaginary cases of vivisection, that corpses were embalmed, and shrieks and howls were to be heard, in the wee small hours, while phantom lights fumed blue on the other side of the transom, and sickly odors of ether and other drugs penetrated through the keyhole. We all laughed at Winnie’s phantasms, but there were none of us so brave as to care to visit that room after nightfall. The trunks looked too much like coffins, and there were dresses of Madame’s sewed up in bags made of sheets, and suspended from the roof, which had the uncanny look of corpses of people who had hanged themselves.

It was broad daylight now, and we were not at all nervous, and Cynthia remarked scornfully, “Winnie has told us so many of her bug-a-boo stories that she has come to actually believe in them herself. She dare not for her life look through that transom to see what occasions the noise in the hospital.”

“You dare me to do it?” Winnie asked, confronting Cynthia with flashing eyes.

“Don’t, Winnie,” I pled. “We have no right to peep.”

Winnie hesitated.

“I told you so,” Cynthia said provokingly. “She dares not look. It is only a lumber room. The noise was probably made by some cat chasing a rat around.”

“It would take a whole army of cats to make the noises I have heard,” Winnie replied hotly, at the same time rolling Adelaide’s great Saratoga trunk in front of the door.

“There it goes again!” and as a loud hammering re-echoed through the adjoining room, she sprang upon the trunk. The transom was still too high for her to reach. “Quick, girls, something else,” she exclaimed, and Milly dragged the “Commissary Department” from its retirement under my bed.

The “commissary” was a small, old-fashioned trunk, which had belonged to my great-grandmother. It was covered with cow-skin, the hair only partially worn off, and studded with brass-headed nails which formed the initials of my ancestors. It was lined with newspapers bearing the date 1790, and was altogether a very quaint and curious relic. Its chief interest to us, however, lay in the fact that it had come to us from my home filled with all the good things that a farm can produce and a mistakenly soft-hearted mother send. There were mince pies and pickles, a great wedge of cheese, a box of honey, pounds of maple-sugar, tiny sausages, a great fruitcake, jars of pickled peaches, ginger snaps, walnuts and chestnuts, pop-corn and molasses candy, and what Milly called the interstixes were filled in with delicious doughnuts. It was a treasure house of richness upon which we revelled in the night after the gas was turned out and we all met in our nightgowns, and formed a semicircle sitting on the floor around the register, while Winnie told the most deliciously frightful ghost and robber stories.

Then, it was that the “commissary” yielded up its contraband stores and we ate, and shivered, partly with cold and partly with delightful terror inspired by the rehearsal of legends for which Winnie ransacked, during the day, the pages of the detective Vidocq and Poe’s prose tales.

Then if a mouse did but squeak in the deserted hospital ward, or the shuffle of Miss Noakes’s slippers was heard in the corridor outside, we all scuttled incontinently to our beds, and Winnie snored loudly, while Milly buried her head beneath the blankets. Miss Noakes occupied a large room opposite the hospital. She was a disagreeable, prowling teacher and we had nicknamed her Snooks.

The “commissary” being now carefully poised upon the curved top of Adelaide’s trunk, Winnie mounted upon it, and found that it was exactly what was needed, as it brought her face just on a level with the transom.

“O girls!” she exclaimed, “the trunks are all gone, and they are making the room over into a studio. And that handsome man that sat at Madame’s table yesterday at dinner is in there hanging pictures. I wonder if he is an artist and is going to teach us. My! he is looking this way,” and Winnie crouched suddenly. The movement was a careless one, and the commissary slid down the sloping cover of the trunk upon which it rested, striking the door with its end like a battering-ram, and with such force that the rusted lock yielded, and the commissary, with Winnie seated upon it, swept forward, like a toboggan, far into the center of the hospital.

It was strange that Winnie was not hurt, but she was not; and before the astonished artist could quite comprehend what had happened, she had picked herself up, scampered back into our room, and we had closed the door behind her, and were fastening it to the best of our ability by tying the knob to Adelaide’s trunk by means of a piece of clothes-line which had formerly served to cord the commissary.

At first we laughed long and merrily over the adventure, but by degrees its serious aspects were appreciated.

In the first place, Milly suggested dolorously that the commissary had fallen into the hands of the enemy, while Cynthia Vaughn drew attention to the fact of the broken lock.

“However you girls will explain that to Madame is more than I know,” she remarked maliciously.

“You girls!” Winnie repeated indignantly, “as if you were not as much concerned in it as any of us.”

“Indeed,” Cynthia exclaimed scornfully, “if I remember rightly, it was Milly who brought the commissary from its retirement, Tib who balanced it so judiciously, and Winnie who dawned so unceremoniously on that strange man in the other room. I had absolutely nothing to do with the affair.”

“You were the instigator of it all,” I retorted hotly. “If you had not dared Winnie to do it she would never have tried to look in.”

“That is like you, Tib,” Cynthia replied icily, “to get into a scrape and then lay the blame on some one else.”

“I take all the blame,” Winnie exclaimed loftily. “If inquisition is ever made into this affair, I and I alone am responsible,” and then she uttered a little shriek and scampered into her own bedroom, for some one was knocking at the door, which we had just attempted to fasten.

“Who is there?” I asked, with as much boldness as I could muster; “and what do you want?”

“I am Carrington Waite, the new Professor of Art, and I would like to return property which has been most unexpectedly introduced into my studio, unless it is possible that the articles to which I refer were intended as a donation.”

We all laughed at this sally, and made haste to unfasten the door, whereupon Professor Waite handed in the commissary. He had a pleasant face, and there was a merry twinkle in his eye as he said: “I tried to bundle everything in, but the trunk collided with my box of colors, and you may find rose madder in your jam, while the pickle jar actually seemed to explode, and showered pickles all over the studio. I have no doubt I shall find them along the cornice when I hang the pictures on that side of the room. The doughnuts, too, flew in every direction. Some rolled under the cabinets, and a mince pie applied itself like a plaster to the back of my neck. A bottle of tomato catsup was emptied on one of my canvases, and made a fine impressionistic study of a sunset. I am afraid I stepped on the cheese, but I believe everything else is all right.”

He looked about him with interest, and asked, “Where is the heroine who performed this astonishing acrobatic feat? I trust she was not hurt. It must have been a thrilling experience. Is it a customary form of exercise with you young ladies?”

We did not deign to reply to these questions, but I opened the commissary and offered the artist some of our choicest dainties. He accepted our largess, and retired with polite invitations for us to be “neighborly” and “to call again.”

“Not in just that way,” I replied, and I entreated him, if possible, to repair the broken lock. He examined it carefully.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that it will require a locksmith to do it thoroughly, but I can make it look all right, and you can screw a little bolt on your side which will fasten the door securely.”

We thanked him and he was about to close the door, when Adelaide, who was the only one of our circle who had not had a part in the escapade, entered the room hastily from the corridor. “O girls,” she exclaimed—but stopped suddenly as she caught sight of the open door and the young artist. At first her face showed only blank surprise, then, as she told herself that this must be a joke of Winnie’s, who was fond of masquerading in costume, she remarked with dignity.

“Really, this is quite too childish; where did you ever get that absurd costume? You look too ridiculous for anything——”

Cynthia Vaughn shrieked with laughter.

The artist bowed, but colored to the roots of his hair and closed the door, while Milly threw her arms around Adelaide, laughing hysterically, Winnie appeared from behind her door also laughing, and I vainly attempted to explain matters.

“What a mortifying situation,” Adelaide remarked, when she finally understood the case. “I must apologize for my rudeness, and I am sure I would rather put my hand in boiling water than speak to that man.”

“I am sure I only wish that I may never see him again,” said Winnie. “Nothing in this world could induce me to join the painting class, and if there is one thing that I am profoundly grateful for, it is that I have no talent for art.”

CHAPTER II.
THE CABINET.

Winnie’s queer toboggan ride was innocent enough in itself but it brought in its train many unforeseen circumstances, chief among which was the affair of the old oak cabinet.

This cabinet stood in our study parlor, in the corner diagonally opposite the door leading into the new studio, and was used as a depository of the funds of all the occupants of the Amen Corner.

The cabinet was always left locked and there was but one key to it, which was kept in the match-box, well covered with matches. Only we five knew its hiding place, or the fact that the cabinet was used as a bank. We had agreed that it was best to keep this a secret among ourselves—and it was so kept until the day after the robbery, weeks after Winnie’s escapade. We intended to follow Professor Waite’s advice and buy a bolt for the door, but what was everybody’s business was nobody’s business, and whenever we went shopping there were so many errands that we forgot it, or some other girl, or one of the teachers was with us, and it would have been embarrassing to explain why the bolt was needed.

The door, as has been explained, opened outward from our parlor into the studio. Professor Waite had placed a heavy carved chest against it on his side, so that there was no danger of its flying open, and we had uncorded the knob and rolled Adelaide’s trunk back to her bedroom. No one occupied the studio at night, and, though I spent several hours there during the day, I always entered the room by its corridor door, and we never thought when we locked our own corridor door at night how easily any one so minded could push aside the chest and enter our apartment from the studio.

That the contents of the old oak cabinet on the night of the robbery may be understood, an explanation of the finances of the different occupants of the Amen Corner is possibly now in order.

Adelaide’s father and mother had gone West for the winter. Mr. Armstrong was an able financier, and he wished to make Adelaide a thorough business woman. She was eighteen years old and she might be a great heiress some day, if his wealth continued to accumulate, and he wished to accustom her to the management of money.

He had given her the year before a model tenement house, built after the most approved principles, on the site of Richetts’ Court, previously occupied by one of the worst tenement houses in the city. The new building contained accommodations for ten families; the sanitation was perfect; there were no dark rooms, but bath rooms, fire escapes, and provision for every necessity. A good janitor, Stephen Trimble, occupied the lower apartment and looked after the order and comfort of the building, and every month Adelaide, attended by one of the teachers, went down and personally collected her rents, and listened to the complaints and requests of her tenants. There were few of either, and as a general rule the pay was prompt, for the rent was low, and Adelaide did all she could to oblige her tenants, having a small drying room built for the laundress, Mrs. McCarthy, who had contracted rheumatic fever from hanging out her wash on the roof and so exposing herself to the icy winds, when over-heated from the steaming tubs. Adelaide had no stringent rules against pets. She caused kennels to be built in the court for several pet dogs, and added some blossoming plants to Mrs. Blumenthal’s small conservatory in the sunny south window. Noticing that the Morettis were fond of art, and had pasted cigarette pictures on their walls and driven nails to suspend some gaudy prints of the virgin and saints, she had a narrow moulding with picture hooks placed just under the ceiling in every sitting-room. She patronized all their small industries as far as it was in her power, and interested her friends in them; having her boots made by the little shoemaker on the top floor, who was really a good workman, but had been turned away from a prominent firm, as they had cut down their list of employees. Her underclothing was made by the little seamstress on the third floor back. She gave each of her tenants a Thanksgiving dinner and a substantial present on Christmas Day, and only allowed those to be evicted whose flagrant misbehaviour showed that nothing could be done for them.

From the income of this building her father had insisted that Adelaide must pay all her expenses. As Madame’s boarding school was a fashionable one, the margin left, after the payment of tuition, to be divided between dress and charity, was not very large.

Mr. Armstrong knew that Adelaide’s weakness was a love for beautiful clothing; that she delighted in sumptuous velvets, in the sheen of satin, and the shimmer of gauze. Her regal beauty would not have been over-powered by a queen’s toilette, but she adorned the simplest costume, and set the fashion in hats for the school season.

Mr. Armstrong also knew that Adelaide was very tender of heart, and that if left entirely to herself she would gladly have opened the doors of her tenement house freely to unscrupulous and undeserving people; that she would have easily credited every woeful story, and have remitted rents when it would have been no real kindness to do so. He therefore pitted these two weaknesses against each other. “We will see what comes of it at the close of the year,” he said. “She may become a grinding, close-fisted proprietress, screwing the last possible dollar out of the poor to lavish it on her own personal adornment, but I hope better things of Adelaide than that. It would be more like her, I think, to go to the opposite extreme—dress like an Ursuline nun and take nothing from her tenants; but let us hope that she may be able to strike the golden mean.”

It was a hard thing to do, and Adelaide went without a new winter cloak until nearly Christmas time, waiting for the Morettis to pay up an arrearage; and only consented to the turning out of a shiftless family who occupied the best apartment, and were three months behind hand, because the tuition for the first term at Madame’s would be due in a few days, and a respectable wood engraver offered to pay two months in advance. It was hard, because she did not wish to spend all the money on herself. She was as interested as any of us in the Home of the Elder Brother, and longed to contribute more generously to it; but since these poor people were her tenants, they were in some sense her own family, and she felt that charity began at home. Often I know that Adelaide denied herself as really, in not being more lenient, as her tenants did to scrape together their monthly rental. She was a generous girl to her friends, and before her father had made this arrangement she deluged us all with her presents. Milly, who had unlimited credit at several stores, kept up this pernicious custom of lavishly giving presents of flowers and candies. It was hard for Winnie and me, who were in moderate circumstances, not to return them, but doubly so for Adelaide—who entreated her to desist, as we all did, but without avail. Milly was incorrigible. “You don’t seem to understand,” Winnie said to her at Christmas time, “that the receipt of a gift which one cannot return in kind is a bitter pill to a sensitive nature.”

“No,” replied Milly, “I don’t understand anything of the sort. Adelaide always translates my Cæsar for me. You help me with my algebra, and Tib as good as writes my compositions. I couldn’t return any of those favors ‘in kind,’ and they are pills that are not the least bit bitter to me——”

“It’s of no use, Adelaide,” laughed Winnie, “we must let Milly have her own way. It is such a pleasure to Milly to give that we will sacrifice our own feelings and bear the infliction.”

Mr. Armstrong had given Adelaide an old oak cabinet, beautifully carved in the style of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, with architectural columns, caryatides, scroll work, and arabesques. The upper cupboard of this cabinet was used as a strong box to hold the funds of our little circle. The interior was divided into pigeon holes and shelves, and the door was provided with a curious key with a delicate wrought-iron handle.

Adelaide had given each of us a compartment in this little safe, but when its entire contents were counted there was rarely much money kept here, for Adelaide had a bank account, and after collecting her rents usually deposited them at the bank before returning to school, paying all her debts by cheque. Milly, as before explained, had her running accounts charged to her father,—a book at Arnold’s, at the florist’s, the confectioner’s, the dressmaker’s, stationer’s, etc.,—but her supply of ready cash was never equal to demand, and though she could telephone for a messenger and order a coupé at any time, she was always in debt to the other girls, and I have frequently lent her postage stamps and paid her car fare.

Mr. Roseveldt had a horror of entrusting funds to young girls with no limitation of the way in which they were to be spent; he felt that in looking over the shop-keeper’s accounts he knew exactly how much Milly expended, and for what the money went. But his plan was a mistaken one; and the perfect freedom which Adelaide enjoyed was training her in a sense of responsibility, while Milly was becoming unscrupulous as to waste, where waste was encouraged, and frequently ordered a coupé when the street car would have done just as well, or rang for a messenger to save a postage stamp.

Winnie and I, the two poorer girls, were the ones who usually had money in the safe. Winnie received a moderate allowance from her father outside of her tuition, which he sent directly to Madame. As soon as the cheque arrived, she cashed it and placed the new, crisp bills in separate envelopes labelled, “Personal expenses,” “Charity.” She was very generous, but she had a horror of debt, and she never expended the funds in the latter envelope until she had received another remittance. As Winnie abhorred sweets, and would rather any day have gone to the dentist’s than the dressmaker’s, and as she had a supreme contempt for display of any kind, the charity envelope was always full, and she had usually a comfortable margin in personal expenditure to lend or bestow on others. Winnie had always been generous, but this quality of foresight had only come to her during the past year in her work as a member of the finance committee of the Home of the Elder Brother.

My own case was different from that of the others. My father was a Long Island farmer, and my allowance, though meagre as related to my necessities, was liberal when compared with his own income. Miss Sartoris, Madame’s former drawing teacher, had boarded with us one summer, during which I had sketched with her, and she had persuaded father that I possessed a talent for art and had taken me back with her to Madame’s. So far I had easily led all the art students, and my studies, although abounding in faults, presumptuous and immature, were considered by the school as something quite remarkable. During the past summer a young man of engaging address, and otherwise irreproachable honesty, had stolen our beloved teacher, and Miss Sartoris, now Mrs. Stillman, was known to Madame’s no more. When the school reorganized in the fall, Madame engaged me to take charge of the art department, temporarily, until she could provide herself with a more competent instructor. We had a small, crowded studio, with a poor light, but the class was large. I did the best I could, but we sorely needed ampler accommodations, and a head whose ability in his profession should be unquestioned. Both were now provided. Carrington Waite was a young artist fresh from the École des Beaux Arts at Paris, and he brought to us the training traditions of the schools, and the latest European ideas in art.

There were very few girls in the school sufficiently advanced to understand his instruction, but they flocked into the studio and listened with undisguised admiration to words that might as well have been uttered in an unknown tongue. Poor little Milly gazed at him in a rapt, adoring way, without ever comprehending what he said. The tears came to her eyes and rolled swiftly down her cheeks when he told her that it was manifestly absurd to draw a full face seen from the front with its nose in profile, but she smiled a brave little quiver of a smile while he reviled her work, and thanked him as though he had uttered the most fulsome compliments.

Even Winnie had felt the wave of influence and joined the class in spite of her assertion that she had no taste for art and never wished to see Professor Waite again. Only Adelaide held firmly out and would none of him. Winnie was not at all afraid of the Professor, and seemed to devote herself especially to making his life miserable. When he informed her that she must join the “preparatory antique” section and draw in charcoal, she calmly explained that she “perfectly loathed” casts, and she had purchased an outfit of oil paints and intended to devote herself at once to color. Strange to say, Professor Waite humored her and gave her some of his landscape studies to copy. She was never contented with reproducing these faithfully, but always “improved” upon them, as she audaciously expressed it.

It was a common thing for Professor Waite to remark, when he sat down before Winnie’s easel, “Well, this is about the worst atrocity you have yet committed.”

Winnie, standing behind him, would make eyes at the rest of the girls, and remark penitently, “I am very sorry.”

“You look sorry,” Professor Waite replied, on one occasion.

“I don’t see how you can tell how I look,” Winnie answered, “when you are sitting with your back to me.”

I do not know whether Milly’s denseness or Winnie’s impudence was the more irritating to Professor Waite. Winnie resented his severity to Milly and was always more provoking whenever he had grieved her pet and left her sobbing in a mire of charcoal and tears.

“You give me more trouble than a three-week’s-old baby,” Professor Waite had remarked to poor Milly, and Winnie had retorted spitefully, “I wish you had to take care of one—I guess you would find a difference.”

Winnie’s sauciness and Milly’s dulness, combined with that of many of his other pupils, drove the Professor to despair after a week’s trial. He told Madame, as I learned later, that he must give up the position, as her pupils were all “too hopelessly elementary.”

Madame was disappointed. Her art department had always been an attractive feature, and since the name of Professor Carrington Waite, late of the Académie des Beaux Arts, had appeared in her circulars, many had joined the school purely for the sake of the studio instruction. Madame explained this to the young artist.

He ran his fingers through his hair in despair. “Of what manner of use is it for me to remain?” he asked. “There is only one pupil sufficiently advanced to gain anything from my instruction, and that is Miss Smith. The others made as much advance, perhaps more, under her teaching as they have under mine.”

A happy thought came to Madame. “If I engage Miss Smith as your assistant, Professor Waite, perhaps she can translate your ideas into terms which will be intelligible by the students of lower intelligence or advancement, and possibly she can so enlighten some of them that they can profit later by your personal teaching.”

This plan struck Professor Waite as practicable. He now only visited the studio for an hour each morning, during which time he criticised the work which had been done under my supervision during the previous day. The new arrangement was an excellent one for me, for I profited by all his remarks, listening to them with the keenest attention, and thus received thirty lessons during the hour instead of one. As I had but three other studies, and these were in the senior class, it was possible for me to give the necessary time by preparing all of my lessons in the evening. It was unremitting, incessant work, but my health was excellent, and art was my supreme delight. Moreover, Madame had offered me a salary of three hundred dollars beyond my school expenses, and it was perfect joy to be able to relieve father of this burden. I had a high ambition to go abroad some day and study art in Paris, and I wished to save as much as possible of my salary toward this purpose. I had the lower compartment in the safe, and here I laid away every dollar that I could spare, limiting myself in everything but my subscription to the Home of the Elder Brother; but for this outlet I would have grown niggardly and avaricious. The same charity which made Winnie prudently retrench her propensity to lavish expenditure, and take thought carefully for the morrow, kept me from utter selfishness and penuriousness by keeping one channel of generous giving open and pulsing freely toward others.

Cynthia Vaughn’s affairs were kept closely to herself. We sometimes fancied that she pretended to greater wealth and consequence than she really possessed. Certainly, if the sums of which she frequently spoke of receiving were at her disposal she was a veritable miser; for her subscription to the Home was the smallest of any girl in the King’s Daughters’ Ten; the presents which she ostentatiously bestowed upon Adelaide and Milly were cheap though showy, as was her own clothing.

The treasures which she committed to the cabinet safe were carefully locked in a small japanned tin box, the key of which she kept in her pocket-book, and she was the only one of us whose belongings within the safe were so protected. We had perfect confidence in one another, and our funds lay open to the observation or handling of any one possessing the pass key in the match box. It is needless to say that up to the night of the robbery our security had been inviolate.

CHAPTER III.
THE ROBBERY.

Adelaide led the school in more respects than in the style of hats, and in the Amen Corner she reigned as absolute queen.

It may seem strange that this was so, for Winnie was the genius of our coterie. She was perhaps too active and restless. She seemed born to be a leader, but the leader of a revolt, while Adelaide had the calm assurance of a princess who had no need to assert her rights, but to whom allegiance came as a matter of course. Even Winnie was her loyal subject and delighted in being her prime minister.

I have spoken of Winnie’s fondness for reading and telling detective stories. It really seemed as if in so doing she was preparing us for the events which followed, and the time when every one of us felt that she was a special detective charged with the mission of finding a clue to a great and sorrowful mystery.

It all came about through the robbery.

On the eve of my birthday it so happened that there was an unusual amount of money in the little safe. Adelaide had returned from collecting her rents too late to deposit her funds in the bank. She looked very much relieved as she slipped a roll of bills, amounting to nearly one hundred dollars, into her pigeon-hole, and turning the key, deposited it in the match safe.

Winnie had that morning cashed a check just received from her father, and had brought back from the bank some crisp, new notes, with which she filled her envelopes for the coming month. Cynthia had ostentatiously and yet mysteriously dropped some silver dollars into her cash box, and even Milly had laid aside an unwonted sum, for her father had called at the school and contrary to his usual custom had given her five bright ten-dollar gold pieces. Milly seemed very happy as she slipped them into her snakeskin and tucked it into her own particular corner of the safe.

“Unlimited pocket money this month, eh! Milly?” I asked.

Milly laughed and shook her head.

“Don’t know that I am obliged to account to you for everything,” she said, saucily, but the sting was taken out of the speech by the kiss with which it was immediately followed, and I more than half suspected that Milly intended one of those gold pieces as a birthday present for me.

Late in the evening I counted over my own hoard. We were all in the study parlor, with the exception of Winnie, and as I counted I looked up and saw that Adelaide and Milly were regarding me with interest, though their glances instantly fell to the books which they had apparently been studying.

“How much have you, Tib?” Adelaide asked; “enough yet to buy the steamer ticket for the ocean passage?”

“No,” I replied, “only forty-seven dollars as yet, but I hope to make it before the close of school.”

“Of course you will,” Milly replied reassuringly.

Cynthia laughed raspingly. “You have almost enough now, if you go in the steerage,” she sneered.

Adelaide suddenly threw a bit of drawn linen work belonging to Cynthia over the money, which I had spread out in the chair before me.

“What are you doing with my embroidery?” Cynthia snapped. “Did you mistake it for a dust rag?”

“Natural mistake,” Milly giggled.

Adelaide lifted her finger warningly. “Hush!” she said, “I saw a face at the transom; some one was looking in from the studio.”

Milly turned pale and clutched my hand, and we all looked at the transom with straining eyes. It was almost dark in the studio and for a few moments we saw nothing but some one was moving about, for we heard cautious steps, and a creaking sound just the other side of the door. Presently a hat cautiously lifted itself into view through the transom. It was a broad-brimmed, soft felt hat of the Rembrandt style, which Professor Waite sometimes wore. It moved about silently from one side of the transom to the other, descended, and appeared again.

“I never thought that Professor Waite would peep or listen,” Cynthia whispered.

“He would not,” I replied aloud. “He must be at work there hanging pictures or doing something else of the sort.”

“Then he would make more noise,” Cynthia suggested, as the hat continued its stealthy movements.

“It may be some one else who has put on the Professor’s hat as a disguise,” Milly gasped.

“That was the reason I covered up the money,” Adelaide replied, in a low voice. “You had better put it away, Tib.”

I hastily bundled my money into the safe and locked the door, and we sat for some moments quietly watching the transom, but the spectre did not come again. Winnie entered a few moments later and seemed greatly interested by our accounts of the incident.

“Do you suppose that it could have been one of that band of Italian bravos who has climbed up on the fire-escape and who intends to murder us?” she asked with an assumption of terror.

“Hush,” I whispered, pulling her dress, and pointing to Milly whose eyes were staring with fright.

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Winnie; “can’t you tell when I’m joking? It was Professor Waite. Of course it was Professor Waite. He has been in love with Adelaide ever since she complimented him on his appearance at their first meeting. He is dying for a glimpse at her fair face, and as she won’t join his painting class he relieves his yearning heart by gazing over the transom.”

There was more joking, and Milly’s fears were as quickly quieted as they had been raised. Professor Waite had undoubtedly been at work in the studio, I insisted, and I knocked on the door and called his name.

No answer, and I tried to open the door, but the chest held it firmly in place. “Shall I look over the transom?” I asked.

“For pity’s sake do not repeat Winnie’s experience,” Adelaide begged.

“Then I will look in by the corridor door,” I said resolutely, and I stepped down the hall and into the studio. The door was open, so was Miss Noakes’s door just opposite, and that watchful lady sat rocking and reading beside her little centre table. She was not too much absorbed, however, to give me a keen questioning glance—but she said nothing, for as assistant teacher in art I had a perfect right to frequent the studio.

The moon was shining in clearly through the great window, and every object was distinctly visible, but there was no one in the room. I opened the door leading to the turret staircase and listened; all was silent, and I screwed up my courage and descended, finding the door at the foot safely locked. The great Rembrandt hat lay on the chest in front of our door, and the Professor’s mahl-stick, or long support on which he rested his arm when painting, leaned beside it. I could not see any change in the disposition of the pictures on the wall, or other indications of what the Professor had been doing, if indeed it was the Professor, and I did not know of his ever before visiting the studio at that hour. As I came out I noticed that Miss Noakes was still rocking before her open door, her slits of eyes glancing sharply up.

“Have you seen any one go into the studio lately?” I asked.

“No one has passed through the corridor since the beginning of study hour, with the exception of Miss Winifred De Witt.”

“Then this door must have been open all the time, and you have seen no one in the studio?”

“I have observed no one. Why do you ask?”

“We thought we saw the shadow of a man on the transom.”

“Nonsense—it is silly to be frightened at nothing. It was probably Professor Waite. If you young ladies would interest yourselves less in the movements of that young man it would be much more becoming in you.”

I turned away quickly, not relishing her tone, and looked at the corridor window, which opened on the balcony of the fire escape. It was securely fastened. I was puzzled, but did not wish to alarm Milly, and I now reported only what seemed to me the favorable aspects of the case.

No one there, all quiet and in order; lower turret door opening on the street, and the corridor window opening on the balcony, both locked, showing that no one could have come up the stairs or the fire escape. Miss Noakes, on guard, had seen no one enter the studio.

Of course it must have been Professor Waite.

“Of course,” Winnie echoed. “Tib knows him too well to be mistaken even when she only sees him through a glass darkly. But think what that devotion must be, which leads a man to keep guard before his lady’s door at night,” and Winnie shouldered an umbrella and paced back and forward, singing in a deep bass voice, “Thy Sentinel am I.”

Winnie was irresistible and we all laughed merrily at her pranks. But for all that I locked the cabinet with unusual care that night and Adelaide tried the door afterward to see that it was securely fastened. While doing so, she noticed something which we had not hitherto discovered—a little steel ornament like a nail head at the foot of one of the columns. Touching this, a small shelf shot forward. It had evidently been intended for a writing table, for it was ink-stained. Adelaide pushed it easily back into its place and its edge formed one of the three moldings which formed the base of the upper division of the cabinet.

“That is a very convenient little arrangement,” Adelaide said. “I wonder that I have never noticed it before.”

I soon fell asleep, and slept long and dreamlessly. I awoke at last with an uneasy feeling of cold. It was quite dark, and putting out my hand I found that Winnie’s place at my side was vacant. I started up alarmed, and called her name. There was a little pause, during which I stumbled out of bed and groped vainly for a candle, which usually stood on a stand at the head of the bed. Not finding it, I noticed a beam of light streaming from beneath the closed door leading into the study-parlor, and I remembered vividly that when I went to bed I had left that door open, as I always did, for more perfect ventilation. I stood hesitating, vaguely alarmed, when the door was opened from the parlor side and Winnie stood before me holding a lighted candle—her face white as that of a spirit.

“How you frightened me!” I exclaimed. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing, I merely went out to see whether the door into the corridor was locked. I was lying awake, and I could not remember seeing any one lock it.”

She spoke mechanically, and her voice sounded strange and hollow.

“Why, you did it yourself!” I exclaimed.

“Did I? Strange I should forget.”

“You found everything all right, didn’t you?”

“The door was not only locked but bolted,” Winnie replied; but her manner was constrained, and her hand, which I happened to touch, was cold as ice.

“Come right to bed,” I exclaimed, “you have taken cold.”

Winnie did not reply, but her teeth were chattering. She curled up in bed and buried her face in her pillow. I was sleepy and soon dozed off, but I was vaguely conscious in my slumbers that I had an uneasy bedfellow; that Winnie tossed and tumbled and even groaned. When I awoke she was sitting, dressed, on the window sill. It may have been the early light but her face looked gray, and there was a drawn, set expression about the mouth which I had never seen there before.

“What is the matter?” I asked again.

She replied, in that cold, unnatural voice, “Nothing.”

Just then there was a hard knocking at my door. Milly shouted joyfully, “Many happy returns of the day,” and swooping down upon me buried me with kisses. Adelaide followed, and in a more dignified manner congratulated me on my birthday. “No flowers, Tib,” Milly explained, “because you set your face against that sort of thing, and I was determined to let you have your own way on your birthday. Winnie, what makes you sit over there like a sphinx, with your nose touched with sunrise? Come here and help us give Tib her seventeen slaps and one to grow on.”

“Tib will find my present on the stand at the head of the bed,” Winnie replied, and turning, I discovered an envelope labelled, “For the European tour.” It contained a crisp new bill of twenty dollars.

Adelaide and Milly looked at each other significantly, and Milly exclaimed:

“You dear, generous thing! Why didn’t you tell us that you meant to do anything so lovely? Adelaide and I would have helped.”

Winnie did not reply to Milly, but answered my thanks with a close hug.

“Come,” said Milly, “and put your money in the safe, and see how much you have now toward the fund.”

“Oh! That’s easy to calculate,” I replied, as I slipped on my clothing, “twenty and forty-seven—sixty-seven dollars exactly.”

Adelaide coughed significantly. “Tib seems to be very confident that two and two makes four,” she remarked. A suspicion that both Adelaide and Milly intended to help me suggested itself to my mind, and I hastened my dressing and unlocked the safe. As I did so Cynthia opened her door. “Oh! it’s you,” she exclaimed; “whenever I hear any one at the safe I always look to see who it is.”

She did not retreat into her room, but stood in the door watching us with a singular expression on her disagreeable face. Adelaide and Milly were looking over my shoulder. Milly apparently vainly endeavoring to conceal a little flutter of excitement. We were all there but Winnie, who had not left her seat at the window, when I threw open the door of the safe and disclosed—nothing!

The space on the floor where I usually kept my money, where the night before I had placed a long blue envelope containing forty-seven dollars—was empty. The envelope and its contents gone.

Milly uttered a little shriek. Adelaide stepped forward and examined the space, passing her hand far in, and feeling carefully in every corner. Then she took out her own roll of bills from her little pigeon-hole. I counted them with her, just fifty dollars less than the sum which I saw her place there. She handed me a five dollar bill, saying, “Tib, my dear, my only disappointment is that I cannot give you as large a birthday present as I had planned.”

Milly threw her arms around me, “And I can’t give you anything, you darling old Tib. I am so sorry.”

“How do you know you can’t?” Cynthia asked. “You haven’t looked to see whether you have lost anything.”

Milly flushed. “If Tib has lost her money, of course I have mine.”

“Why, of course? The thief has obligingly left Adelaide a part of her money; perhaps yours is all there.”

Milly opened her purse. It was quite empty. She closed it with a snap.

“I don’t see how you knew it,” Cynthia remarked unpleasantly. “Now I am really too curious to see whether I have been as unfortunate as the rest of you.” In spite of this profession of eagerness she had seemed to me remarkably indifferent, and she unlocked her strong box with great deliberation, manifesting no surprise or pleasure as she reported “three dollars and fifty-three cents, precisely what I left there. This shows the wisdom of my double-lock; the thief evidently had no key which would fit my strong-box.”

“Winnie,” I called, “we have had a burglary; come right here and see whether you have lost anything.”

Winnie entered the room slowly, almost unwillingly, quite in contrast with her usual impulsive action, and opened her envelopes before us. “No one has touched my money,” she said; “here is exactly what I placed in the envelopes last night.”

“Did you go to the safe in the night to get that twenty dollar bill which you gave me this morning?” I asked.

Cynthia Vaughn turned and looked at Winnie eagerly.

“I kept it out last night,” Winnie replied, “when I put the rest away. You will remember that I sealed the envelopes then, and I find them now unopened.”

An expression of malice and triumph, such as I have never seen on the face of any human being, rested on Cynthia’s countenance.

“There is something very mysterious about this,” she remarked, in an eager way. “The thief has entirely spared Winnie and me, and has been obliging enough to take only half of Adelaide’s money. Tib and Milly lose all of theirs, but Tib’s was money for which she had no immediate use. So that she will not feel its loss as much as Winnie or I would have done, and Milly has no real need of money at all—I wonder whether the thief was acquainted with our circumstances; if so he or she was very considerate.”

“I don’t know what you mean about Tib’s not feeling the loss,” Winnie began indignantly, her glance resting not on Cynthia but on Milly. “It will be a cruel disappointment to her if she cannot go to Europe to study, after all.”

“Oh! that’s not to be thought of,” Milly replied, feeling herself addressed. “Of course Tib will go. Something will turn up. The money will be discovered. Perhaps the thief will return it.”

A light flamed up in Winnie’s face. It was the first pleasant look that I had seen there this morning. “It must be so,” she exclaimed eagerly, but very gravely; “let us hope that the person who took that money was actuated by dire necessity; that it was simply borrowed, and that it will be returned.”

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Cynthia impatiently. “I have no such excuses to make for a thief, and I am going right now to report the entire affair to Madame, who will of course put it in the hands of the police——”

“The police!” Winnie cried, in a tone of dismay. “Oh! no, no!”

“Wait,” said Adelaide commandingly; “that is not the way we do things in the Amen Corner. This is something in which we are all interested, and the majority shall rule. Now Winnie, will you please tell us why the police should not take this matter in charge? My explanation is that some thief entered this room last night through the studio door. Probably it was the very individual who was watching us last night through the transom.”

“Oh! Not Professor Waite,” Milly exclaimed, and Winnie started as though about to speak, but restrained the impulse.

“No, not Professor Waite, certainly,” Adelaide continued, “but some one disguised in his hat. This thief waited until we were all asleep, and then began to help himself to the contents of our safe, but was probably interrupted or frightened by some sound, after securing Milly’s and Tib’s money, and hurried away without taking as much as he wished. That is the simplest, most likely solution, and it seems to me that the police are the proper authorities to take the affair in hand.”

She paused for several moments. We all chattered together as fast and as loudly as we could. Then Adelaide rapped on the table with a nutcracker and said:

“I shall now put the question. Those in favor of reporting this matter at once to Madame, please say ‘Ay;’ those opposed, the contrary sign—but first, any remarks?”

Winnie hesitated. “I do not agree with you that it is a matter in which we are all equally interested,” she said slowly. “Tib is the principal loser. Tib should decide what she wishes to do. Adelaide’s theory looks plausible, but it may be wrong. Some member of this school may have entered through that door, and taken the money. Whatever is handed over to the police, goes into the papers. We do not want to bring on the school scandal and disgrace, which would follow the publishing of the fact that one of its pupils is a thief.”

“Winnie seems to be very certain that the thief is a pupil,” Cynthia remarked sneeringly. “If so, we can trust that Madame will ferret her out without outside assistance.”

“My chief reason, however,” continued Winnie, “for waiting a day or two before reporting this thing, is the hope that conscience will lead the unhappy person who has committed the crime to make restitution. Tib, you certainly look at the matter as I do. You are not vindictive; give the wrong-doer a chance.”

“Certainly,” I said.

“The question,” called Cynthia. “Adelaide, put the question.”

“Those in favor of reporting at once to Madame?” said Adelaide.

“Aye,” from Cynthia, loud enough for two.

“Aye,” more faintly, from Milly.

“Those opposed?”

“No,” from Winnie and from me.

“A tie,” announced Adelaide. “Then the chair gives the casting vote. I am in favor of reporting to Madame, and I think we had better make the report in a body. There is just time to see her before breakfast.”

“I do not see the necessity of our going en masse,” Winnie objected. “Tib, of course, as the individual who has suffered most, and who discovered the loss; Cynthia, who seems to enjoy telling unpleasant things; and Adelaide, who is strictly just, and the oldest and most dignified member of the Amen Corner. But I do not see why you should drag Milly along; the child has had enough excitement already. Let her lie down and rest her little head until the breakfast bell rings. As for me, I’m not going until I’m sent for. Not even a burglary shall make me miss my morning constitutional,” and Winnie quickly equipped herself for a walk in the grounds.

“Milly shall do as she pleases,” Adelaide said; “there is really no necessity, as you say, for her to go with us.”

“I think I would rather go,” Milly said hesitatingly.

An expression of keen disappointment swept across Winnie’s face.

“Come, Winnie,” I said, “you had better be with us; it looks better.”

“What do you mean?” she asked hotly.

“Only that the Amen Corner always yields to the wish of the majority, and we are in the habit of standing by one another, even when we do not quite agree.”

“Winnie need not trouble herself,” Cynthia remarked; “we can get on very well without her. Of course she knows no more about the affair than the rest of us.”

The words were innocent enough, but there was something very sarcastic in the way in which they were uttered.

“Evidently you would rather I would not go,” Winnie said, as though thinking aloud. “I am sorry to be disobliging, but if that is the case I believe I will.”

CHAPTER IV.
TROUBLE IN THE AMEN CORNER.

Doubt,
A soul-mist through whose rifts familiar stars
Beholding, we misname.
—Jean Ingelow

Milly had been unhappy for days.

And now a great trouble fell upon all of us. It was as though a dense fog of doubt and suspicion had drifted in upon the Amen Corner, separating dear friends, so that we could not recognize each other’s faces through its dense folds, and our voices sounded false and far away as we called and groped for one another.

Our interview with Madame was very brief. I simply stated the fact of the disappearance of the money, which the other girls corroborated.

Cynthia began to enlarge on the statement, but Madame stopped her.

“I have not time now to investigate this unhappy affair,” she said. “Indeed, it is something which will probably require the assistance of a detective. Do not look so alarmed,” she added to Milly; “I happen to be acquainted with a gentleman—in fact, he is my lawyer—who has all the qualifications of a very clever detective. I will write, asking him to call, and to take charge of the case. He will keep it all very quiet. I am glad that you have come to me first of all, and I particularly request that you mention the fact of the robbery to no one.”

With this she dismissed us, and we went to breakfast a little late, feeling very important in the possession of a mystery. Winnie was the only one whom this mystery did not seem to elate. Cynthia, who sat beside me at table, was overflowing with glee.

“It is better than the most exciting story which Winnie ever told us,” she whispered to me. “Won’t it be fun to follow the unravelling of the crime. Of course the detective will be led off by false clues, and all that sort of thing, and the real thief will suffer all the torture of alternate fear of detection and hope of escape; but the toils will close gradually about the doomed individual. I shall not disclose my suspicions till toward the last. Oh! what fun it will be to watch the development of the drama. I should think, Tib, that you would write it up.”

“Your suspicions?” I repeated. “Do you really suspect any one?”

“Why, yes; don’t you?”

“No indeed!”

“Then all I’ve got to say is that you are a lamb. You think every one as innocent as yourself. Because you have the innocence of a lamb, you have a corresponding muttony intelligence.”

I was very indignant, but I did not show it. “Whom do you suspect?” I asked.

“That’s telling,” she replied, “and I said that I would not tell at this stage of the game.”

Later in the day, as I left the studio to return to our study-parlor, I met Winnie coming out. She had on her hat and cloak and carried my own. “Come and walk with me,” she said, “I feel all mugged up, and I need a good tramp. Milly is in there trying to take a nap. Adelaide and Cynthia are at recitation, and if you will come with me the poor child can get a little rest.”

As we marched around the school building together, I told her of my conversation with Cynthia. Winnie started.

“I don’t believe she really knows anything more than we do,” I said. “Cynthia loves to be important and aggravating. If she really knew anything she couldn’t keep it in.”

“Find out whom she suspects,” Winnie replied. “Cynthia is a real snake in the grass, and can do a lot of mischief by fastening the crime on an innocent person. I do not mean that she would do this wilfully, unless she had a strong motive for revenge, but she is unscrupulous as to the results of her actions, and loves to imagine evil and set forth facts in their most damaging light. Find out, by all means, whether she really knows anything likely to implicate any one.”

“Cynthia is a hard orange to squeeze,” I replied. “If she thinks I want to know, she will delight in tantalizing me.”

Winnie was silent for a moment. “Find out whether Cynthia slept soundly all night, or whether she heard or saw any one in the parlor. She might have heard me, you know, when I went out to look at the door.”

“Sure enough,” I replied. “If that is all I will get it out of her right away.”

We returned to our rooms. There was no one in the parlor. Winnie looked into the bedrooms. Only Milly sleeping peacefully, and Winnie stepped to the match box, took the key, and opened the safe. I do not know what she expected to find, but she looked disappointed.

“Did you think the thief would help himself again in broad daylight?” I asked.

“No,” Winnie replied shortly.

At that instant Cynthia entered, flushed, and as it seemed to me triumphant. “Mr. Mudge wants to see you, Winnie, in Madame’s private library,” she announced importantly.

“Who is Mr. Mudge?” Winnie asked.

“He is Madame’s lawyer. The keenest, shrewdest man you ever saw, with little gimletty eyes that bore the truth right out of you; and such a cross-questioner! If you have a secret, he knows it the minute he looks at you, and makes you tell it, in spite of yourself, the first time that you open your mouth. You need not try to keep your suspicions to yourself, they will be out before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Winnie gave a little sigh. “And you say he wants to see me?” she asked, rising with a palpable effort.

“Yes, he wants to question us each separately, to see if our testimony agrees, I suppose. He asked Madame, as I went in, if she had kept us apart since the robbery to guard against any—collision—I think that was the word!”

“Collusion,” I corrected.

“No matter; he meant that we might have hatched up a story between us, but Madame assured him that we were all honorable girls and incapable of such a thing.”

“Of course,” he replied, “unless they happen to know or suspect the culprit, and wish to shield her. In such cases, I have known the most religious young persons to lie like a jockey.”

Winnie left the room, throwing me a look of piteous appeal as she did so, which I understood to beg me to find out all I could from Cynthia. I rocked silently for a few moments, to disclaim all eagerness, and then said casually: “I don’t believe you would ever lie to save a friend.” This in a propitiating tone, adding to myself, “you would be much more likely to tell a lie to get one into trouble.”

Cynthia could not hear the thought, and she stretched herself luxuriously on the divan.

“No,” she replied, “I don’t make any pretense of being good; but I wouldn’t do that. Whenever the Hornets got into scrapes, I always told. Madame could depend on me for that. It is sneaky not to be willing to take the consequences. Besides, you get off a great deal easier if you own up; and others will be sure to throw the blame on you if you are not smart enough to get ahead of them.”

How I despised her. “I wonder if she thinks she is in danger of being called in question for this crime,” I thought, “and has made haste to accuse some one else.”

“You said you meant to keep your testimony until the end, so I suppose you did not tell Mr. Mudge your suspicions,” I remarked.

“Didn’t I just say that I did tell him?”

“Well, as they are only suspicions I presume he paid no attention to them. Lawyers generally tell witnesses to confine their testimony to facts.”

“But I had facts, suspicious facts; not ideas of my own, but important circumstantial evidence.”

“Indeed!” I purposely threw as much incredulity as I could into the way in which I uttered the word.

Cynthia sprang from the lounge, her eyes flashing with anger. “Yes, indeed; very awkward facts for your precious friend Winnie to explain away.”

“Winnie!” I exclaimed, and then laughed outright.

Cynthia was furious. “What do you say to this Tib Smith? I saw Winnie, with my own eyes, come into this room in her nightgown, with a lighted candle in her hand, carefully close all the doors, and——”

“Pooh! that’s nothing,” I replied cheerfully. “I was awake; I saw her, too. She merely crossed the room to see whether the corridor-door was locked.”

“Yes, and after that?”

“Came back to bed again.”

“There you are telling a fib to save your friend. She did not go back immediately. I was awakened by her softly closing my door, I got up and peeked through the keyhole, and I saw her open the safe and rummage around in it for quite a while, undoubtedly possessing herself of the money. Then she locked it and hurried back to her room looking as frightened as the criminal she was.”

“It is not so! It is a wicked, cruel falsehood!” Milly cried, springing into the room. I had forgotten her presence in the bedroom and Cynthia of course did not know of it.

Cynthia was taken aback for a moment. “I will tell you why I know it was so,” she said at length. “After Winnie went back to the room, and before any one else could have entered the parlor, I examined the safe and the money was gone.”

“That proves nothing,” I said; “it was probably taken before Winnie opened the safe.”

“Then she knew of the robbery in the morning before the rest of you, and never told.”

“You knew and never told either,” said Milly.

“I was waiting for the proper time,” replied Cynthia. “If Winnie did not take that money then she suspects who did. If she does not tell Mr. Mudge her suspicions, she is trying to shield the guilty person, and the—the shielder is as bad as the thief.”

“There is no proverb that says so,” I replied; “beside, you have proved nothing. If all that you say is true—and I don’t mind telling you, Cynthia Vaughn, that I am not entirely sure of that—if what you say is true, you are as deep in the mud as Winnie is in the mire.”

“You think Winnie a saint!” Cynthia sneered. “You don’t half know her. Before she came to room in the Amen Corner, and we were both in the Hornets Nest up under the eaves, she was the Queen Hornet of all. There was nothing which she would not dare to do, from letting down bouquets in her scrap-basket to the cadet band when they serenaded us, to bribing the janitor to let her slip out at night and buy goodies at the corner grocery for our spreads. She was a regular case, and her pet name all over the school was:

‘The malicious, seditious, insubordinate,
Disreputable, sceptical Queen of the Hornets.’”

“We know all that,” I replied, “but there are some things which Winnie could not do. She could not tell a lie, and she could not steal.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cynthia continued coldly. “She comes from an uncertain sort of Bohemian ancestry. You know her mother was an actress and her father a playwright.”

Cynthia told this with great triumph, evidently thinking that we had never heard it.

“Madame told us,” I replied, “that Mrs. De Witt was a very lovely woman, who only acted in her husband’s plays; that she made it her life purpose to realize and explain her husband’s ideals: and that he wrote the part of the heroine especially to suit her, so that their creations were among the most charming that have ever been presented on the stage. They were devoted to one another, and when she died his heart was broken. He does not write plays any more, but articles for encyclopædias, which is an extremely respectable profession.”

“And you dared prejudice this Mr. Mudge against our own precious Winnie,” Milly continued. “You are just the meanest girl, Cynthia Vaughn, that ever lived! But you never can make any one believe anything against her. If, as Tib says, it lies between you two, we all know who is the more likely to have done it.”

Cynthia turned green. “Do you dare to accuse me?” she hissed.

“No, Milly; don’t do that,” I cried warningly, and the overwrought girl burst into a flood of tears and threw herself into my arms. “We accuse no one,” I said to Cynthia. “I trust that you have been equally cautious with Mr. Mudge.”

“What I may have said or may not have said is no business of yours,” Cynthia replied. “You have both of you insulted me beyond endurance, and from this time forth I shall never speak to any of you. I except Adelaide,” she added, after a moment’s consideration. “Adelaide is the only member of the Amen Corner who has treated me like a lady.”

“I think it would be pleasanter for you and for us if you would ask Madame to let you room somewhere else,” Milly suggested.

“I shall not go simply because you wish it,” Cynthia replied. “I shall stay to watch developments.”

“And, meantime, I believe you said we were to be deprived of the pleasure of any conversation with you,” I remarked, rather flippantly.

Cynthia turned her back upon me and from that time kept her word, maintaining a sullen silence with every one but Adelaide.

The bell rang for luncheon. The forenoon had seemed very long, and the afternoon was simply interminable. Milly left the room with me. Cynthia did not stir.

“Do you think she took it?” Milly asked, nodding back at the parlor.

“No,” I replied, “she is altogether too gay. She evidently enjoys the investigation. If she were the culprit she would be constrained, nervous, averse to having the affair examined.” I stopped suddenly, realizing how exactly this description fitted Winnie.

“Adelaide believes,” Milly said slowly, “that it was some sneak thief from outside the house. Have you looked about in the studio for any suspicious circumstances?”

I replied that I would do so after dinner, and then, as we passed into the dining-room together, the subject was dropped.