Billie Bradley and the School Mystery: or, The Girl From Oklahoma

CHAPTER XX
THE ACCUSATION

“The money’s gone!” repeated Edina Tooker.

Billie Bradley would not believe it.

“You must be crazy, Edina – or you haven’t half looked!”

She seized the hand bag from the girl’s nerveless grasp and began to ransack it with eager fingers.

“It’s no use,” said Edina in a dazed voice. “I wrapped the money up in a paper and put it there last night. To-day it’s gone!”

Aware that they were attracting the attention of others in the bank, Billie pulled Edina over to a seat against the wall.

“Here,” she said. “We’ll pull this thing inside out. We have to find the money, Edina.”

The girl nodded dumbly. Tears overflowed from her eyes and ran down her face. Absent-mindedly she wiped them away with the corner of a new silk pocket handkerchief.

Billie dumped the contents of Edina’s hand bag into her lap, scrambling them with eager fingers.

There was a vanity case – a newly acquired luxury, to the buying of which Edina had been egged on by Billie herself. There was a tiny blue-enameled pocket comb, a small purse containing a few pieces of silver, a shopping list, and a roll of bills amounting to ten dollars.

“That’s all mine,” said Edina dully. “The gift money is gone.”

“If you say that once more, I’ll scream,” cried Billie. “Stop crying, Edina, do. You have got to pull yourself together if we are going to work this thing out. Let me think! You say you wrapped the money in a paper late yesterday afternoon?”

Edina nodded, twisting the silk handkerchief nervously between her fingers.

“You say that was the last time you saw it?”

Again Edina nodded.

“What did you do with it last night?”

“I put it in my trunk and locked it. It has a queer lock with a key that looks like a humped-backed old man. No ordinary key could open that lock!” She looked pleadingly at Billie.

“What did you do with the key?”

“Slept with it on a string around my neck. I sleep light, too. Nobody could possibly ’a’ got that key off my neck without me knowin’ it.”

Billie nodded and was thoughtful for some time.

“How about to-day?”

“All day long my pocketbook has been in the locked trunk and the key was around my neck,” said Edina doggedly. “No one could ’a’ touched it without first knockin’ me dead, Billie.”

“Well, then – I don’t see – ” The amateur sleuth paused, temporarily at a loss. “It couldn’t have been somebody in the street car, coming out, Edina? A pickpocket, you know. I’ve heard they are very quick with their hands.”

“There ain’t none of ’em quick enough to have got this pocketbook away from me,” Edina retorted grimly. “Anyway, I was holdin’ my hand over the top of it all the way – just for fear someone would get a hold of it.”

Billie jumped to her feet. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were almost feverishly flushed.

“Then if you are quite sure of this, the money must be up at Three Towers. You have dropped the money out of your pocketbook – perhaps when you picked it up.”

Edina started to say that she could not possibly have done any such thing; but Billie was beyond listening to her.

“Come along,” she cried, with feverish impatience. “We’ve got to get back right away – before any one finds that packet and makes off with it!”

Billie’s impatience infected Edina. The two girls rushed for the street car, caught it by the barest margin, and sat twiddling their fingers in desperate suspense during the seemingly interminable ride back to Three Towers Hall.

Released by the trolley, they rushed to Edina’s dormitory. As luck would have it, the long room was empty and they at once began a feverish search of everything in it, beginning with Edina’s trunk and winding up by peering under mattresses and into pillow slips.

“Nothing!” panted Billie. She sat down on the edge of Edina’s bed to rest “Edina! Edina! Where has that money gone?”

“I’d just about give ten years of my life to know,” returned Edina.

She sat down on the bed beside Billie. Her hands felt cold but her head was throbbing feverishly.

“Billie,” she said dully, “it’s the end of everything for me here.”

“Nonsense!” said Billie, and took one of the cold hands and held it tight.

“It is,” said Edina. “They’ll say I took that money, Billie. What’s worse, they’ll think I took it.”

“I won’t,” said Billie.

“I know you won’t. I think you’re the only one here who really knows me. It’s been a long hard fight with the rest. Now they will think I took the money and it will be the end of everything for me. I – I was beginning to be so happy here.”

Before Billie could say a word of comfort or reassurance the door opened and several of the younger girls flocked in. Their talk and laughter died at sight of Billie and Edina.

“Well!” said a dark-haired, dark-eyed, pert little thing. “You two look as if you’d been talking secrets. What’s up?”

Before Billie could stop her or could even be sure what she was going to do, Edina got to her feet and faced the curious girls.

Her eyes were red with crying, her fingers clasped and unclasped nervously, but her voice was steady as she said:

“I suppose you might as well know now as any time. That money the girls trusted me with, the money to buy the present for Miss Gay, I – I’ve lost it. Or it has been stolen!”

The news spread like wildfire.

Billie dragged Edina to her dormitory, hoping to protect the girl, only to find her own friends lying in wait for her.

There was a crowd already gathered there, a crowd that increased in numbers rapidly. At sight of it, Edina shrank within herself and would have fled cravenly had it not been for Billie’s grip upon her hand.

“No use running away,” Billie whispered fiercely. “It’s far better to stay and face the music.”

Ray Carew pushed her way to Billie’s side. She eyed Edina coldly.

“I’ve heard so many rumors that I don’t know what to believe and what not to,” she said. “What is all this about the Gift Club money being lost, Billie?”

“I’m afraid it’s true,” said Billie gravely. “Only in my opinion it has been stolen – not lost.”

Briefly but graphically, she gave an account of her and Edina’s trip to the bank in Molata, of their surprise and consternation when Edina discovered the loss of the money.

Laura, who had taken a firm stand at Billie’s side, turned to Edina.

“Didn’t you look inside your pocketbook before you started downtown?” she asked.

Edina crimsoned.

“No,” she admitted. “I was so sure the money was there I – I – didn’t bother to look.”

“A fine treasurer!” came shrilly from the fringe of the crowd.

“I should ’a’ looked,” confessed Edina miserably. “I’ll never forgive myself for – for not lookin’.”

Billie’s grip tightened reassuringly upon her fingers.

“Hold fast,” she whispered.

“Let’s get this straight,” said Ray Carew. “Your story is that you took your purse from your locked trunk about two o’clock this afternoon. You don’t know that the money was there then, because you didn’t bother to look,” there was the faintest sarcasm in Ray’s drawling tones.

“I’m sure the money was there then,” Edina persisted doggedly. “Nobody could get into my trunk without breaking the lock – and the lock wasn’t broken.”

“Well, let’s say that the money was in your purse when you took it from the trunk,” Ray conceded. “You took the purse in your hand then. Was there anyone in the room with you?”

“No one except Billie,” said Edina.

“Well, now, think hard. This may be quite important. Did you hold the pocketbook in your hand every moment from the time you took it from the trunk to the moment you opened it in the Molata bank?”

Edina pondered the question, brows knitted.

“I – I think so.”

“Thinking won’t do,” said Ray inexorably. “Don’t you know?”

Edina thought again and finally shook her head in miserable bewilderment.

“I can’t be absolutely sure – I don’t seem to remember very well. I’m practically sure I didn’t lay down that there pocketbook for a minute, but – ”

“Yes you did, Edina!” Billie cried triumphantly.

“Where – when – ” stuttered Edina.

“You put it down on the table for a minute while you went to the bathroom at the last moment to wash your hands. Don’t you remember?”

“I can’t seem to think,” replied Edina hesitatingly. “If I only could be sure – ”

Ray Carew turned a serious face to Billie.

“Are you sure of that, Billie?”

Someone in the group snickered and a voice not hard to identify as Amanda Peabody’s said meaningly:

“If Billie Bradley was in the room alone with that money, what was to prevent her making off with it herself?”

CHAPTER XXI
EVIDENCE PILES UP

For a moment there was such dead silence in the room that one could easily have heard a pin drop.

Then Billie said in a clear, hard voice:

“Are you suggesting that I stole the Gift Club money, Amanda Peabody?”

“Because if you are,” cried Laura fiercely, “I’ll settle with you now, you miserable sneak, once and for all!”

“Girls! Girls!” pleaded Ray Carew. “Don’t let’s fight among ourselves. What Amanda just said is too silly to notice. I think you had better apologize, Amanda. You won’t be very popular until you do.”

A murmur of assent rose from the girls, a murmur so fierce and insistent, that Amanda was temporarily cowed.

“Oh, all right,” she muttered surlily. “Maybe I didn’t mean that Billie Bradley did it. But the thing looks very queer to me, just the same.”

The thing looked very queer to everybody. As the dreary days dragged by things looked queerer and queerer. The mystery grew blacker and blacker and the general interest and indignation aroused over the mysterious disappearance of that two hundred and sixty dollars amounted to a school revolution.

Many at first stood for Edina, partly for Billie’s sake, partly because they could not bring themselves to believe that the girl from the West would deliberately misappropriate funds entrusted to her by her comrades.

However, little by little bits of evidence piled up against the treasurer of the Gift Club.

Nellie Bane came back to the Hall one day from a trip into town with information that blanched Billie’s face and for a moment shook even her staunch belief in Edina.

“I barged into this shop to buy a pair of shoes,” so went Nellie’s breathless story, “and when the salesman reached into his till for change, he pulled out a five dollar gold piece.” She paused and regarded the intent ring of faces for a long, impressive moment. “It was the very same gold piece that I handed over to Edina Tooker as my contribution to the Gift Club fund!”

A deep sigh burst from the group. Billie sat back and passed her hand over her forehead.

“But I don’t see – That is, how did you know – ”

“That it was my gold piece?” Nellie finished eagerly. “Well, here’s how I knew! I said some idiotic things to the shoe clerk about how pretty gold money is – because, you see, I was suddenly anxious, very anxious, to know where that particular gold piece had come from.

“The clerk seemed willing enough to talk, and he said it had been paid to him just two days before by a stunning-looking girl who said she came from Three Towers Hall. You can imagine how I felt then!”

“Did you ask the clerk to describe this girl?” asked Billie faintly.

“Of course. And, girls, the description fitted Edina Tooker like a glove. It just couldn’t have been any one else! Edina spent my five dollar gold piece for a pair of shoes!”

Billie got to her feet.

“I don’t believe it, Nellie,” she said quietly. “No matter how strong the evidence is against Edina Tooker, I never will – I never can– believe that she is a thief!”

She hesitated, started off, and then came back to them again.

“Let’s put the thing reasonably. What possible motive would Edina Tooker have for stealing our poor little Gift Club fund? She doesn’t need it. Her father is a rich man.”

“So she says!”

Billie shrugged.

“It’s the truth, just the same. You can look it up if you like!”

How little did Billie guess that in giving that permission or in making that suggestion she was lighting the fuse to a stick of dynamite!

One of the girls who had listened with interest to Nellie Bane’s story went directly to her room and began to write a letter.

It was some days later that the same girl, bursting with news and importance, dashed into the midst of an “agitation meeting” that was being held in the school gymnasium.

Billie had been addressing the meeting, urging moderation in their treatment of Edina, trying to sound hopeful in her prophecy that the money would “turn up yet.”

Into this atmosphere, already surcharged with conflicting emotions, dashed the girl who had written the letter on the memorable day of Nellie Bane’s story. Her name was Nancy Cutter and she carried another letter which she waved about her head as though it had been a flag and this the occasion of a celebration.

Billie’s heart sank as she recognized, or thought she recognized, fresh trouble for Edina. She gave a hasty look around to make sure that the girl from Oklahoma was not present. With relief, she realized that Edina had decided not to brave the meeting. It was just as well. Billie herself had urged her to stay away.

“What is it, Nancy?” asked Billie quietly.

The excited girl shoved the letter into her hand.

“It’s something about Edina Tooker. I thought you might like to read it, Billie!”

Billie shook her head.

“If it’s anything against Edina, I don’t want to read it, Nancy.”

A chorus of voices rose in protest.

“Read it, Nancy!”

“Tell us what’s in the letter!”

“Read it aloud!”

Happy to be in the limelight, Nancy faced the crowd, waving the letter over her head again as though it had been a flag.

“It’s from my aunt and uncle in Oklahoma. I wrote them to find out what I could about Paw Tooker and his million dollar oil well.”

There was a titter among the crowd. Billie clenched her hands.

“Meddler!” she cried, under her breath.

Nancy Cutter read slowly and distinctly from the letter.

“‘I was surprised by your inquiries in regard to Peter Tooker, my dear Nancy. Tooker is quite a character in these parts, a visionary, a dreamer, a seeker after the impossible. I was still more surprised to hear that he had a daughter at Three Towers Hall. It was the first mention I have ever heard of a daughter.’

“Now listen to this!” Nancy adjusted her attentive audience. “The best is still to come!

“‘I believe there was some excitement for a while about a report of the discovery of oil on the old fellow’s property. There was immense activity there for a time. But it is over now. Just yesterday I met a man who said Tooker’s wells had gone dry.’

“There!” cried Nancy triumphantly. “I told you all that talk about Edina being rich was a fake.”

Billie was on her feet, fighting desperately for her friend.

“I don’t believe it. That letter is all a mis – ”

She stopped suddenly, her eyes on someone who had just entered the gymnasium.

“No,” a voice said, clearly and distinctly. “Everything that Nancy Cutter read is true!”

CHAPTER XXII
A RIOT

The girls, chattering like a group of magpies and flinging curious, unfriendly glances toward Edina, had gone. Billie was alone with her in the big, silent, echoing gymnasium.

Edina sat on a bench, her hands clasped before her, a wooden, miserable figure.

Billie paced restlessly up and down, up and down – suddenly she paused in front of Edina.

“Why didn’t you tell me, if you knew? You should have told me, Edina. It wasn’t fair to leave me in the dark.”

Edina nodded.

“I know that. I meant to tell you as soon as I heard from home that Paw’s wells had gone dry. But, somehow, after tellin’ such wonderful tales about him, seems like I couldn’t bear to take them back. The truth,” with a bitter grimace, “wasn’t half so pretty!”

“When did you get the bad news from home?” Billie queried. She paused before Edina and regarded her intently, while proceeding to answer her own question. “It was the day we had the picnic over on the island, wasn’t it? The day you read the letter I handed you and you turned so white I thought you were going to faint?”

Edina nodded miserably.

“Yes, I knew then that Paw’s luck had gone back on him like it always had before. But I didn’t say anything. I guess – I was holdin’ on to the hope that it wasn’t so; that mebbe if I waited and said nothin’ for a few days I’d wake up and find that that news was only a bad dream.”

Billie paused in her restless pacing. She appeared to have come to a decision.

“Everything appears to be just as bad for us as it possibly can be, Edina. But since you know and I know that you didn’t steal that money there’s just one thing to be done.”

Edina asked without interest:

“What?”

Billie stiffened her back and a purposeful glint came into her eye.

“Find the real thief!”

Billie wasted no time putting her decision to work. She had never fancied herself particularly as a detective, yet now she set herself to the task with a will.

In regard to the stolen money, her thoughts returned again and again to that few minutes when Edina had abandoned her hand bag and its precious contents to wash her hands before going downtown to place the money in the bank.

Billie herself, busy with her own thoughts and still smarting over the fact that she had been tricked into leaving the tennis court without finishing that set with Amanda, had stood with her back to the room, looking from the window.

Billie was willing to admit that someone might have entered the room during that interval, opened Edina’s bag, seized the precious roll of money, and disappeared without being seen by either her or Edina.

If this reasoning were taken from the realm of sheer surmise, if it had in it some elements of fact, then who could it be who had entered that room during the few moments when Billie’s back was turned?

“That certainly is my problem,” thought Billie. “A hard one to solve, I’ll admit; harder than any I’ve ever helped Vi with! But I’ll find the answer. I must!”

Of course, there was always the possibility that one of the students in the school might be the thief, but as Billie reviewed the list of her acquaintances, this possibility became increasingly far-fetched.

Amanda Peabody might have done it for spite, in the hope of discrediting both Edina and Billie. However, Billie knew the unpleasant girl too well to entertain any serious belief of her guilt. Amanda was a coward and while she delighted in small meannesses, would hesitate, Billie felt sure, before an act involving such serious consequences.

“Why, we could put her in jail for stealing two hundred and sixty dollars,” thought Billie. She shuddered with dread at the realization that this same punishment might be meted out to Edina, provided the real thief were not caught!

“The real thief must be caught,” she told herself, for perhaps the hundredth time, and went on with her cogitations.

The elimination of the students and the teachers narrowed the list of suspects to the servants at the Hall.

Clarice, the cook? Perhaps – though Billie was loath to suspect anyone who made such excellent chocolate cake. There were three maids and a scrubwoman who attended to the general cleaning of the dormitories and the study halls. Anyone of them might —

Billie swung her feet to the floor and stood up. For some time there had been the sound of voices beneath the window. The voices had steadily increased in volume until now they broke with rude force into her meditations.

“Sounds like a riot,” thought Billie.

A voice, raised above the rest, cried shrilly:

“Arrest her! That’s the thing to do! Maybe then she’ll tell what she did with our money!”

Other voices joined in the cry.

“Arrest her! Arrest her! She’s nothing but a thief!”

Billie lingered to hear no more, but, turning, fled from the dormitory. When she emerged into the grounds she found a large group of students gathered there. In the midst of them, badgered, desperate, stood Edina Tooker!

Billie set her lips grimly and thrust her way through the crowd.

The girls gave way reluctantly and pressed more closely about her as Billie took up her position beside the tormented girl.

“Get away, Billie!” one of them cried. “This isn’t your business any more!”

Billie faced them furiously.

“I’ll show you that it’s my business!”

Her voice was drowned in a chorus of angry cries.

“We want Edina!”

“Billie can’t stop us any more. Get out of the way, Billie!”

“We’ll have her arrested! Then maybe she’ll give us our money back!”

Billie was helpless. Although she flung an arm about Edina and tried by main force to push the girls away, they only surged the closer.

Hands reached out. They touched Edina, caught her! She was being dragged away!

Billie felt that she was in a nightmare where every sense was impotent. She spoke, but could not make her voice heard. She used her strength, and was powerless. They were dragging Edina away!

Suddenly a voice spoke sharply, authoritatively, from the school steps. Instantly the crowd about Billie and Edina gave back. The girls lapsed into sullen silence.

“I am amazed! I am shocked!” said Miss Sara Walters in cool, clipped tones. “Never before has it been my doubtful privilege to witness such a demonstration from these school steps. I trust that it will never be necessary for me to witness such a disgraceful exhibition again. Go to your dormitories and remain there until the supper bell rings!”

The crowd dispersed rapidly and faded away. Miss Walters disappeared within doors. Billie and Edina were left alone.

“You see!” said Edina drearily. “They are all against me, Billie. I don’t believe there is a girl at Three Towers – except you – who doesn’t think I’m a thief.”

“It was dreadful – disgraceful!” Billie was trembling with reaction from her fury. “It seems impossible to believe girls could be so wicked, so cruel!”

Edina shook her head.

“They think I’ve lied to them. They think I’ve cheated them. They want their money, and you can’t rightly blame them. I guess I’d best be gettin’ back to Paw and Maw.”

“No!” cried Billie. “You will stay here and fight it out!”

Many times in the days that followed Billie Bradley was to doubt the wisdom of this decision. Edina was acutely miserable; she was subject to constant snubs, slights, insults, at the hands of her fellow students. She became pitifully pale and thin and kept to her room whenever possible.

Billie herself was scarcely less miserable. Her fellow students made it quite clear that she was alone in her championship of Edina. The fact that she persisted in her stubborn course irritated them and made her something of a pariah, too.

Meanwhile Billie kept close watch upon the comings and goings of the servants at the Hall, hoping for some clue that would lead her to the real thief and thus exonerate Edina.

Billie found it necessary to replenish her wardrobe by a day’s shopping in town. Having asked for and received the necessary permission from Miss Walters, she set off early on Saturday morning, determined to dispose of her shopping as soon as possible and return in time to help Vi with her always-difficult mathematics.

Having arrived in town, she went at once to a small drygoods store where she bought a dozen handkerchiefs and one or two inexpensive articles of underwear.

When she tendered the storekeeper a ten dollar bill he returned her a five dollar bill and some odd pieces of silver.

Billie was about to stuff the change into her pocketbook when something about the five dollar bill arrested her attention.

She looked at it more closely and a stifled exclamation escaped her.

“Anything wrong, Miss?” asked the storekeeper anxiously.

“No, no,” Billie answered hastily. “There’s nothing wrong. Only – would you mind very much telling me where you got this five dollar bill?”

The storekeeper took the bill, turned it over, screwed up his features in a grimace evidently meant to intimate deep thought and scratched his head doubtfully.

Billie held her breath and watched him. Everything – simply everything – depended upon this man’s memory!

“Well, you know, Miss, it’s not so easy to remember who gave you a certain bill when you’re busy waiting on customers and making change all day long,” he drawled. “Now, there’s been quite a lot of customers in here to-day, and how could I know who gave me that particular five dollar bill?”

“Oh, certainly,” Billie breathed, “you must remember who gave you that bill!”

The dull face of the storekeeper brightened.

“That’s right! Come to think of it, I do remember. That cracked peddler, Dan Larkin, give it to me. I recollect because I noticed that big black blot on it at the time.”

Billie’s heart pounded so loudly she was afraid the storekeeper must hear it. She controlled her excitement sufficiently to ask in a quiet voice:

“Who, if you please, is Dan Larkin?”

“I just told you,” said the man peering at her over his spectacles. “Dan Larkin’s a queer old chap who keeps a store on wheels. He goes about, stopping at various places and selling things on the way.”

“A traveling store,” echoed Billie, fighting against disappointment. “Then he isn’t here any more?”

“Reckon he is,” said the storekeeper carelessly. He had evidently lost interest in the subject. “Dan give me that bill only this morning. He’ll probably stick around town all the rest of to-day, anyway.”

Billie’s hopes soared again.

“I’d consider it a great favor,” she said, with her very best smile, “if you could tell me where I am likely to find this – this Dan Larkin.”

“He generally parks his van right outside the town limits near the Derry farm. Folks generally know when he’s there and go to buy of him.”

Billie thanked the storekeeper for this precious information and fairly ran out to the street.

The bent old fellow peered after her and thoughtfully scratched his head.

“Girls are queer creatures,” he philosophized. “Now, what in the world does she want to go seeing Dan Larkin for? The way she rushed out into the street, you’d think her life depended on it. It does beat all.”

Billie had heard of the Derry farm. It was situated on the outskirts of town. It had long been deserted and the rambling old homestead was said by some to be haunted.

Billie might have walked, but, such was her impatience, she hailed the nearest street car. No time was to be lost! She opened her purse to make sure the five dollar bill with the dark irregular blot across its face was still there.

“The clue!” she murmured, a strange gleam in her eye. “If it only turns out to be the right one!”

Billie left the street car on the edge of town and walked down a country lane. At the end of it was a queer contraption on wheels, a covered motor truck with windows cut in it and a door at the back. This was, undoubtedly, Dan Larkin’s traveling store.

Billie hurried forward. Before the rude, ladder-like steps of the “store” she hesitated, but voices from within reassured her.

Dan Larkin was dealing with a customer. He was wrapping up a large parcel when Billie Bradley entered.

The customer lingered, exchanging reminiscences with the grizzled old fellow behind the counter. She went at last, however, and Billie fumbled in her purse for the stained five dollar bill.

She thrust this across the counter toward Dan Larkin.

“Please!” she cried eagerly, “can you tell me where you got that bill?”