Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 3

"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 gla.s.s 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 ba.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce, pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances; 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."