Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 20

"Not so hasty, not so hasty," replied Mr. Mudge. "My dear young lady, if you will reflect a moment, you will perceive that nothing of this kind has been charged against you. The question does not concern you at all, but this athletic young lady--Lawn Tennis."

Mr. Mudge had become so firmly convinced in his own mind that Polo's name was Lawn Tennis that we saw the futility of correcting him and gave up the attempt.

"Mr. Mudge," Winnie exclaimed, "we protest! Cynthia, I call upon you to own up. It wasn't such a very bad frolic. You meant no particular harm.

We will all sign a pet.i.tion to Madame asking her to let you off. Don't let Polo be unjustly suspected. You know you did it; own up to it like a man."

But Cynthia was in no mood to own up to anything like a man, or like a decent girl. She simply turned her nose several degrees higher and remained silent.

"Your cowardly silence will not shield you," Adelaide exclaimed scornfully. "I have some letters from my brother which make me very positive that this is one of your sc.r.a.pes, and I will show them to Mr.

Mudge unless you confess instantly."

"I have nothing to confess," Cynthia replied in a low voice, but the words seemed to stick in her throat.

Mr. Mudge next asked us, in a thoughtful manner, whether "Lawn Tennis"

was connected with the inst.i.tution at the time of the robbery. I replied that she was, but that I could not see any relation between that crime and the present escapade.

"Perhaps not," Mr. Mudge replied; "and then again we never can tell what apparently trifling circ.u.mstance may lead up to the great discovery. As I have previously remarked, it is more than probable that the thief having been once successful will try the same game again. Then, too, if your thief happens to be a kleptomaniac, she could not refrain from pilfering. Have you lost anything since that eventful night?"

"Nothing whatever."

"And you have used the cabinet since as a depository for your funds?"

"Certainly," I replied. "We consider that we have used sufficient precaution in having the bolt put upon the door. The result seems to justify our confidence. To be sure, until night before last we have had no important sums to deposit."

"How about night before last?" Mr. Mudge asked.

"I had charge of the ticket money for the Home that we gained by the Catacomb Party," I replied, "and I placed it in my division of the cabinet. There is just sixty dollars of it, and it is there now."

"And was there during the night that Lawn Tennis slept in this apartment? And she knew it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then that is very good evidence that she was not the thief on the previous occasion."

So confident was I in our security and in Polo's honesty that I unlocked the cabinet to give Mr. Mudge convincing proof. What was our astonishment to find my compartment again empty. The floor of the cabinet was as clean as though swept by a brush. The sixty dollars which we held in trust for the Home were gone!

CHAPTER XII.

THE INTER-SCHOLASTIC GAMES.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mr. Mudge informed us that he did not intend to arrest Polo immediately, but merely to have her "shadowed," which meant that all her habits and those of her friends and relatives were to be ascertained and every movement watched.

"You will not hurt her feelings by letting her know that you suspect her?" Milly begged, and Mr. Mudge a.s.sured her that such a thing was furthest from his intention, and in his turn he urged us not to allow Polo to imagine that we suspected her.

"We can't let her see that," Winnie replied, "since we do not suspect her in the least."

Mr. Mudge coughed. "I hope your confidence will be proved to be not misplaced," he replied; "but Miss Noakes does not share it, and I deem Miss Noakes to be a very discriminating woman."

He bowed stiffly, and for that day the conference was ended. Cynthia retired to her room, and shut the door with a bang. Milly threw herself into Winnie's arms, and Winnie caressed her and cried over her in mingled happiness and remorse--joy that Milly had been proved innocent, and repentance that she had ever doubted her.

"Oh! my darling, my darling," she sobbed; "can you ever forgive me for believing you capable of so dreadful a thing? I could not blame you if you refused to ever speak to me again."

"Don't feel so badly," Milly pleaded. "Appearances were awfully against me, and if papa had not come and helped me out just in the nick of time, I don't know what I might have been tempted to do. I have been so bad, Winnie, that I am very humble. I shall never say I never could have done such a thing, for I cannot know what the temptation might have been. I am almost glad that you believed me so wicked, because it shows me that you would have stood by me even then. I am going to try to be a better girl for this experience, and worthier of your love."

Adelaide and I retired discretely, and talked over the new aspects of the second robbery. The trust funds must be made up between us. To help do this I subscribed the twenty dollars which Winnie had given me on my birthday, and which fortunately had been placed in my portfolio before we had regained our confidence in the cabinet, and had never been transferred to my compartment. As the other girls had not suffered this time, they made up the amount, though it necessitated considerable self-denial. It took some time for Milly to become accustomed to properly dividing her spending money, so that she need not come short before the date for receiving her allowance, but the practice was good for her and in the end she became an excellent manager.

One peculiar circ.u.mstance in regard to this robbery was remarked by Winnie--the fact that on both occasions money had only been taken from my shelf. It was true that Adelaide and Milly had each lost fifty dollars the first night, but not until it had been taken by Milly from their h.o.a.rds and placed with mine.

"It would seem," said Adelaide, "as if the thief had a special grudge against Tib; a determination that she shall not save up enough to go to Europe next year."

"It can't be that," Winnie replied, "for although the last sum stolen was taken from Tib's compartment, it was not her money. The whole thing is very peculiar, and seems to be the work of some unreasoning agent, for this time, as the last, Adelaide had some bills lying loosely in her pigeon hole in full sight, which were not touched at all. I have heard of things having been stolen by jackdaws and mice--and monkeys--and I believe there has been some monkey business here."

"I heard a story when I was in Boston," said Adelaide. "It was told me by a member of a prominent firm of jewellers. It is the custom at the close of the day for one of the clerks to lock up all the jewelry in the safe for the night. He had done so, and was just about to leave the store when a box containing a valuable pair of diamond sleeve b.u.t.tons was handed him. It was late, and as it would take some time to go over the combination which locked and unlocked the safe, he tucked the little box far under the safe and thrust some old newspapers in front of it. In the morning when he searched for it, what was his consternation to find that the sleeve b.u.t.tons were gone. The box was there, but some one had opened it and abstracted the sleeve b.u.t.tons. He reported the loss at once to one of the members of the firm, who reproved him for his carelessness in not unlocking the safe and placing the box where it would have been secure. Then the gentlemen put their heads together to track the thief; and some one suggested that he had seen mice in the store, and this might be their work. The safe was moved, and a small hole was discovered in the base-board of the room. A carpenter was sent for and the wall opened, and there, cozily established in a nest formed of twine and nibbled paper, and other odds and ends, a family of little pink mice was discovered, and in their nest were the missing sleeve b.u.t.tons. The mother mouse had evidently been attracted by the glitter of the gems, for she had taken great pains to convey them to her home. She had stored here many other curious articles: pieces of shiny tin foil, which she may have used as mirrors; bits of broken gla.s.s, and sc.r.a.ps of narrow, bright ribbon, intended for tying the boxes, all showing that she had an eye for decorative art. I am very sorry that it was considered best to kill her, for I believe that mouse could have been educated. Now, the reason that I have told this long story is that I half suspect that this is a case of mouse, and not, as Winnie says, of monkey business."

Winnie immediately examined the cabinet. The panelling was intact, not even worm-eaten; it fitted apparently as closely as the covering of a drum; not a crevice large enough for even a cricket to penetrate.

"It is very mysterious, all the same," Winnie remarked; "but I here and now vow, in the presence of these witnesses, to make this mystery mine, and to unravel it before the close of school, so surely as my name is Witch Winnie."

From that time we spoke of the affair of the cabinet as Witch Winnie's mystery, and we all had faith that some way or other Winnie would find the clue if Mr. Mudge did not.

One day in May she said: "I feel as if there was something uncanny about the cabinet itself. I wonder who was its first owner. Perhaps Lucrezia Borgia kept her poisons in it, and it is haunted by dreadful secrets of the middle ages. It may be that Lorenzo de Medici confided to its keeping a will, giving back to Florence the city's liberties, and that this will was stolen by the Magnificent's heir while the poor man lay dying. We can imagine that the ghost of the guilty man having, as Mr.

Mudge says, been once successful, has contracted a habit of stealing from the cabinet, and comes in the wee small hours with stealthy tread to take whatever occupies the spot where once Lorenzo's testament reposed."

"What a romantic idea!" Milly murmured. "You could make a lovely composition out of it, Winnie."

"Good idea!" Winnie exclaimed. "I will. I have got to have something for the closing exercises of school, and Madame advised me to write on Raphael. She said that Professor Waite's lectures on the Italian artists ought to inspire me. Some way they never have, but this old cabinet does. I shall pretend that I have found a package of letters in a secret compartment; and in this package I shall tell all the early history of Raphael--which is not known to the world--his love story with Maria Bibbiena, and all the criticism and envy which he must have undergone before he arrived at success. It will be great fun and I shall go to work at once. No, I shall not go to see the inter-scholastic games to-morrow. I shall have a solid quiet afternoon to myself while you girls are skylarking, and I shall have to work like a house on fire on every Sat.u.r.day I can get to make my essay the success which I mean it shall be."

From this decision we could not move her, though it greatly disappointed Milly, who desired that Mr. Van Silver should meet Winnie. Mrs.

Roseveldt had returned from the South, and had consented to chaperone the girls, Mr. Van Silver taking us out on his handsome coach.

It was a perfect day and the drive to the Berkeley Oval, where the games took place, was a delightful one.

Mr. Van Silver's Brewster coach was a glorious affair. It was painted canary yellow. The four horses were perfectly matched roans. The grooms were in liveries of bottle-green coats with white breeches and top boots faced with yellow. Mr. Van Silver wore a light-coloured overcoat, and the lap robe was of white broadcloth. All the bra.s.s about the harness had been burnished till it shone like gold. Mrs. Roseveldt and Milly sat beside him on the box. Mrs. Roseveldt wore a Paris costume of white cloth with Louis XVI jacket with velvet sleeves and vest heavily embroidered in gold. A little bonnet formed of gold beads fitted her aristocratic head like a coronet. Milly was bewitchingly pretty in a fawn coloured shoulder cape, and a pancake hat piled with yellow b.u.t.tercups. She seemed, as Adelaide said, cut out of a piece with her surroundings. Adelaide and I occupied the back seat, with Little Breeze beside us in the place which had been intended for Winnie. Little Breeze wore a simple spring suit and I had only one best gown--a gray cashmere; but Adelaide made up for our simplicity. Her dress was not very expensive, but Milly's exclamation that it was "too exasperatingly, excruciatingly becoming" will give an idea of its effect. It was a white foulard, sprigged in black and caught here and there with black velvet bows; there was a vest of fluffy white chiffon, and her hat was trimmed with white marabout pompons powdered with black. The costume was her own design, executed by Miss Billings. She carried a cheap white silk parasol, made to look elaborate by a cover constructed from an old black lace flounce.

"Papa has forbidden me ever to enter Celeste's rooms again," Milly said to Adelaide; "and I am sure if Miss Billings can make me look as _recherche_ as you do, she is good enough for me."

"I seem fated never to meet Miss Winnie," Mr. Van Silver said as he started.

"She is to visit us during the summer," said Mrs. Roseveldt, "and you must come out to the Pier and see her."

"You are very good, but I am going to take my coach over to the other side this summer. My mother is visiting at the castle of the Earl of Cairngorm and wants me to take a lot of people for a coaching trip through the Scottish Highlands."