Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 27

Mr. Van Silver promised to do this, and soon after took his leave.

Adelaide had not intended to tell Jim anything of the suspicion which had fallen upon the trainer, but Jim had left his bedroom and come out upon the landing to listen to the music, and had overheard all of Mr.

Van Silver's account.

When Adelaide went in to kiss Jim goodnight, she found his cheeks hot and his eyes quite wild. "You will go to Mr. Mudge right away, will you not, sister?" he urged. And he was not at all satisfied when Adelaide a.s.sured him that this was not necessary, as Mr. Mudge had promised to call on Mr. Van Silver on the following day.

The next day Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong arrived, and Jim's delight threw him into a fever of excitement. Such alternations of happiness and worry were bad for the boy, who needed calm, and Mr. Armstrong wished to remove him to Old Point Comfort, but Jim begged that he might not be taken from the city until the closing exercises of the Cadet School. "I shall be well enough to attend them, I know," he pleaded, "and I want to see sister graduate, and to know how the mystery turns out, and whether Terwilliger is all right."

To gratify the boy Mr. Armstrong took furnished apartments fronting on Central Park, and Mrs. Armstrong devoted herself to the care of her little invalid, while Adelaide returned to school.

Commencement was near at hand, and Adelaide felt that she must work hard to pa.s.s the final examination creditably. Our life at Madame's was not all frolic, though I am conscious that my story would seem to indicate that such was the case. Naturally, a full report of the solid lessons which we learned would make a very stupid story, but the lessons formed our daily diet, and the sc.r.a.pes and good times that I have chronicled occurred only at intervals.

We had what Milly called a thousand miles of desert, without even the least little oasis of fun, between the Inter-scholastic Games and the examinations. Winnie had taken a fit of serious study, and when Winnie studied she did it, as she played, with all her might. Our only lark for quite a time was a house-warming which we gave the Terwilligers. Polo told us how she was fitting up the little flat of three rooms with the a.s.sistance of her brother, and it certainly seemed as if the cloud which had shadowed her had drifted away. The largest room was the kitchen, also used as a dining-room. Adelaide had provided a range, and many other things, with the rooms. The cadets clubbed together and made Terwilliger a handsome present in money, with which he purchased a lounge, which served for his own bed, and an easy chair for his mother; and our King's Daughters Ten provided all the tinware and crockery.

Madame sent down a nice bedstead and some bedding. Professor Waite contributed a neatly framed portrait of Polo, and Miss Noakes gave a box of soap. Polo purchased the table linen, towels, etc., with her own earnings, and Miss Billings hemmed them and the curtains, which were made of cheese cloth. Mrs. Roseveldt sent her carriage to take Mrs.

Terwilliger from the hospital to her new home and gave a carpet, and Mr.

Van Silver ordered a barrel of flour and a half ton of coal. Mrs.

Armstrong selected a lamp as Jim's present, and took the two children from the Home to one of the large stores and provided them well with clothing for the summer before delivering them to their mother. It was a very happy and united family that met together that evening in Adelaide's tenement, and Mrs. Terwilliger, who had not been credited by her acquaintances as being a religious woman, exclaimed reverently, "It seems to me we'd orter be grateful to Providence for all these mercies;"

and her son responded emphatically:

"Grateful to Providence? You bet your life, I am!"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CLOUDS PART.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Then suddenly, just as they were sitting down to the first meal in their new home, there was a knock at the door, and a policeman said: "I am sorry, Terwilliger, but you are wanted again."

"What for?" the trainer asked, thunderstruck.

"Mysterious robbery up at Madame ----'s boarding-school," replied the officer. "Mudge gave me the order for your arrest."

"Go and tell Mr. Van Silver," Terwilliger said to Polo. "He won't let me go to prison again." And Polo was off like the wind.

Mr. Van Silver came at once, and gave bail for Terwilliger's appearance at trial, so that he did not go to prison; but this action of Mr.

Mudge's showed that he felt sure that Terwilliger was the thief, and threw us all into consternation. Mr. Mudge had called on Mr. Van Silver, but had unfortunately not found him in, and while he had not received the explanation which had been given Adelaide, one of his detectives informed him that Terwilliger had made arrangements to leave the country soon in Mr. Van Silver's employ, and that he had lately been expending large sums in extravagantly fitting up an apartment for his family. It was the fear that his man might escape him, which had precipitated Mr.

Mudge's action. He felt that the case was a pretty clear one, and that the trial would develop more evidence.

Winnie was at her wits' end. She had promised to produce witnesses proving that Stacey and Terwilliger were on the river the night of the Catacomb party; and in her desperation she wrote directly to Stacey in regard to it. Unfortunately, Stacey could think of no one who had seen them just at the time when the boys were known to have been in the school building, and Stacey's own testimony would not be regarded as of sufficient weight to clear Terwilliger, as Mr. Mudge suspected Stacey of being the trainer's companion. This rendered Stacey very indignant.

It seemed to him that he had trouble enough before this, and he was desperate now. His father, Commodore Fitz Simmons, was a naval officer, a bluff old sea dog, who had married, late in life, a refined and beautiful woman. She was lonely in her husband's long absences, and her heart knit itself to her son. Her husband had planned that Stacey should follow his career, but when he understood how this would afflict his wife, he partly relinquished this idea.

"You can have the training of the boy till he is eighteen," he said to his wife. "If he does you credit up to that time, I shall feel sure of him for the rest of his life, and he may have a Harvard education and follow whatever profession he pleases. But if he takes advantage of petticoat government, and develops a tendency to go wrong, I'll put him on a school ship, and let the young scamp learn what discipline is."

Commodore Fitz Simmons had been away for a long cruise, but Stacey's mother now wrote from Washington that the ship was in, and that the commodore and she would take great pleasure in attending the closing exercises of his school. She hoped that her son would distinguish himself at them, and that there was no doubt about his pa.s.sing his Harvard examinations, for his father had referred to their agreement that Stacey must go to sea if he had not improved his opportunities.

"And you know," she added, "that I could never bear to have you both on that terrible ocean."

Stacey could not bear the thought, either, for he loathed the sea, and he suddenly faced the fact that he had not been distinguishing himself in his studies and had no certainty of pa.s.sing the examinations. This suspicion of being implicated in an escapade which had a possible crime connected with it, was more than he could bear. When he read, in Winnie's letter, "Mr. Mudge suspects you," he threw the letter upon the floor and uttered such a cry that b.u.t.tertub, who was studying in the room, sprang to him, thinking that he had hurt himself.

"I don't care who knows it," Stacey cried, beside himself with despair; "I am suspected of being a thief, and it will kill my mother, and my father will just about kill me."

b.u.t.tertub gave a low whistle. "It can't be so bad as that," he said; "what do you mean?"

"Some fellows sneaked into the girls' party, and they think I was one of them and Terwilliger the other."

"Well, what if they do?" b.u.t.tertub asked. "There is nothing so killing about a little thing like that."

"Perhaps not; but there was a robbery committed in the school that very night, and that's the milk of the cocoanut."

"They can't suspect a _cadet_ of being a burglar."

"Well, it looks like it," Stacey replied. "They've arrested Terwilliger, and I've just had warning that my turn may come next, unless I can prove that I was boating that night, and I can't."

"Ginger!" exclaimed b.u.t.tertub. "You are in a mess." He was on the point of confessing his own share in the escapade, when he reflected that it was not entirely his own secret, he must see Ricos first. b.u.t.tertub was naturally good-natured, and he had no idea that the frolic would take so serious a turn, but his brain worked slowly, and he did not quite see what he ought to do.

Stacey was nearly wild. He strode up and down the room. "I haven't seen father for two years, and mother has written him such glowing accounts of me that he expects great things. It would be bad enough, without this last trouble, to have him find out what a slump I am. I can never look him in the face--never."

"Fathers are pretty rough on us fellows, sometimes," said b.u.t.tertub. He was thinking of his own father, bombastic old Bishop b.u.t.tertub, and wondering, after all, whether he could quite bear to shoulder all the consequences of his frolic. When the Bishop was angry he had been compared to a wild bull of Bashan, and b.u.t.tertub, Jr., would rather have faced a locomotive on a single track bridge than his paternal parent on a rampage. He wished now that he had not yielded to the wiles of the entrancing Cynthia, and attended the party. "Hang that girl!" he growled aloud.

"Who?" asked Stacey.

"Miss Vaughn," b.u.t.tertub replied. "Some one was saying you meant to invite her to the declamations. You are welcome to for all me."

"Hang all girls," replied Stacey. "I shan't invite any one."

b.u.t.tertub rose awkwardly. "Don't be too blue, Stacey," he said kindly.

"Something's bound to turn up," and he ambled briskly off to find Ricos. "It's tough," he said to himself, "but I'm no sneak, so here goes."

But Ricos was not in the barracks, and b.u.t.tertub, thankful for a little postponement of the evil day, went into the great hall to practice his declamation. He had chosen a dignified oration, and he possessed a sonorous voice and a pompous manner. Colonel Grey smiled as he heard him.

"You remind me strikingly of your father," he said. "I am sure that I shall see you in sacred orders one of these days. Perhaps you too will become a bishop."

b.u.t.tertub hung his head. "Better be a decent, honorable man, first," he thought. The boys were cheering over in the gymnasium: "Hip! hip! hip!"

"Yes--hypocrite," he said to himself, "I'll punch Ricos until he consents to making a clean breast of it."

But there was no need for resorting to this means of grace. Deliverance was coming, and, strange to say, through Ricos himself. Ricos had more food for remorse than b.u.t.tertub. His sister had written him from time to time of Jim's condition, and this morning he had received a letter which woke the pangs of conscience. Mr. Armstrong had thoughtlessly told Jim of Terwilliger's arrest, and the news had affected him very seriously.

He could not sleep, and he could talk and think of nothing else. The physician feared that his reason would give way. He sent for Stacey, and his friend went to him immediately, but he could give him no encouragement, and his call only made Jim worse. As Stacey left the door he met Ricos.

"You had better not call on Armstrong to-day," Stacey said. "He is awfully sick. I shouldn't wonder if he died. He had an attack something like this last year, but the doctor pulled him through because there was nothing on his mind to worry him; but now everything seems to be in a snarl, and he isn't strong enough to bear it. You come back with me, seeing you ain't likely to do him any good."

"It is of needcessity," Ricos said. His face was white and scared.

"Rosario, she write me that he will die, and if I see him not before, and a.s.sure myself that he carry no ill-will of me to the Paradiso, then my life shall be one Purgatorio. Indeed, I must see him; it is of great needcessity."