Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Evening was falling when Adelaide returned from her interview with Mr.

Mudge.

"Has not Milly returned yet?" she asked, as she entered the door.

"No," replied Winnie. "Has Mr. Mudge gone to interview Celeste?"

"No, he is off on another scent. He has gone to interview Professor Waite."

"What does Professor Waite know about the matter?" I asked in surprise.

"Nothing. It only shows the imbecility of these detectives who insist on pursuing every impossible as well as every possible clew."

"Tell us all about it," I entreated. "I should like to know how it was possible to drag Professor Waite into the business."

"Why, through the transom, of course," Adelaide replied, and we all laughed at the absurd suggestion. "The first question that Mr. Mudge asked was, 'Have you any theory or suspicions in regard to this affair, Miss Armstrong?' I answered that I had determined from the first that it was the act of some sneak-thief, who had watched us, through the transom, put the money into the safe."

Again Winnie made an involuntary movement as though about to speak, but restrained herself, and Adelaide continued:

"I told him about the face at the transom in the Rembrandt hat, and he asked me if it was Professor Waite. I told him that I thought not. The head looked smaller and the hat came lower down over the eyes and at the back than it would have done on the professor. Besides, the professor has that little pointed Paris beard, and this face had a smooth chin. I saw it plainly for a moment in profile. Mr. Mudge did not seem to be satisfied and made me admit that I might have been mistaken. Professor Waite's beard is such a very immature affair. Then he asked me how an outsider could have introduced himself into the studio without coming in at the front door, which is guarded by the janitor, and coming up the grand staircase past Madame's room and twenty other rooms, all occupied, and likely to have their doors open in the evening. I told him that there were two other ways: the fire escape----"

"Both the corridor window and our own were locked on the inside," I interrupted.

"He said he found it so--and agreed with me that the turret staircase was the more likely entrance. I explained that the spiral staircase in the turret was built especially for the use of the physician when this part of the building was the infirmary, and that in order to quarantine it from the rest of the school, there were no entrances to the turret on any of the other floors--that it led directly from the studio to the street, and that no one used it but Professor Waite, who kept the key of the outer door; that he might have negligently left this door unlocked, and in that case a tramp could easily have slipped in, and as there was no communication with any other room he would have found himself, on reaching the end of the staircase, in the studio and in front of our door. Mr. Mudge then questioned me as to Professor Waite's habits. Did he usually spend his evenings in the studio, and were we in the habit of visiting back and forward in a friendly manner through the door with the broken lock? This made me very indignant. Such a thing, I a.s.sured Mr. Mudge, would be contrary to the rules of the school, and to the instincts of any self-respecting girl. The door had never been opened since the lock was first broken, and even Tib, whose duties required her to be in the studio during half of the day, always entered it by the corridor door. As to Professor Waite, he did not board in the house. I believed he belonged to several artist clubs--the Salmagundi, the Kit Kat, and others--and that he probably spent his evenings there, or in society, or at his boarding house around the corner; at all events, he never painted in the studio in the evening, for I had heard Tib say that the lighting was not sufficient for night work. There was a rumor, too, that Professor Waite was very popular in society; but that Tib could inform Mr. Mudge much more explicitly than I on all matters relative to the professor's habits, as I had never interested myself in him, and what he did or did not do was of no manner of consequence to me. This seemed to amuse Mr. Mudge very much, but he replied politely enough that he had never for an instant imagined that a young artist, like the professor, could be anything else than an object of supreme indifference to any right-minded young lady, and then he proceeded to question me more closely than ever. Though Professor Waite did not usually spend his evenings in the studio, did he not occasionally drop in on his way home?

Had we ever heard him ascending or descending the turret stairs at about midnight, for instance. I was obliged to confess that I knew of one instance when he had visited the studio at that hour, for I had met him on the staircase; that he was returning from an evening spent in sketching at the life-cla.s.s of the Kit Kat Club, and he had run up to the studio to leave his drawings and materials before returning to his room at the boarding house. That it was very possible that he did this frequently. Then, of course, he asked me how it happened that I was going down that staircase at such an unseemly hour on the occasion when I met Professor Waite, and I had to confess all that maddening Halloween business."

We all shouted, for this was a particularly painful subject with Adelaide. It was the one practical joke which we had ever had the heart to play on our queen.

Such grave consequences attended this Halloween trick that it is possibly worth while for me to turn aside from the direct record of the robbery and devote a chapter or two to a confession of one of our most serious sc.r.a.pes.

It had been suggested by Cynthia and approved and carried out by Winnie before the days of the breaking off of their friendship. Cynthia had a way of suggesting plots for less cautious people to carry out, whereby they burned their fingers like the cat in the fable of the chestnuts.

The Amen Corner had conducted itself with praiseworthy propriety after the opening escapade of the season--that of the roller-coaster trunk--for the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks. But when Halloween came we all felt the need of what Winnie called an explosion. We had been too preternaturally goody-goody, and the escape valve must be opened. We decided to celebrate the eve of "antics and of fooleries" befittingly, and we arranged to bob for apples, to s.n.a.t.c.h raisins from burning alcohol, thereby ascertaining the number of our future lovers.

We tied our garters around our feet And crossed our stockings under our head; We turned our shoes toward the street And dreamed of the ones we were going to wed.

We poured molten lead into water, striving to ascertain the occupation of our future husbands from the forms which it took. Adelaide's emblem was something like a letter A, and we all declared that it was a perfect easel and quite wonderful; but when we threw apple peelings over our heads, Milly's broke into two sections, remotely resembling a scrawling C and a W. Milly herself was the first to recognize the letters and to blushingly declare that of course it was too absurd, it could not mean Carrington Waite.

Adelaide's younger brother Jim was attending the cadet school in the city. He admired Milly exceedingly, as did many of the cadets who had met her at a fair given at Madame's, the previous year, for the benefit of the Home of the Elder Brother. Stacey Fitz Simmons, drum major of the cadet band, and the best dodger and runner of the school foot-ball team, was also her devoted admirer. The b.u.t.ton which Mr. Mudge had discovered in Milly's bureau drawer was not from a West Point uniform but from Stacey's; and the foot-ball team was not the Harvard--but the Cadet Eleven. We all tried to find emblems in the molten lead, or initials in the apple parings, suggesting the cadets, but Milly would none of them.

There was a Mr. Van Silver, much favored by Milly's family, a caller at their cottage at Narragansett Pier, whom Adelaide had met while visiting Milly the previous summer. He was princ.i.p.ally remarkable for owning a coach and four-in-hand, and as he had on one occasion invited Adelaide to a seat on the box, it was a little fiction of Milly's that Mr. Van Silver was her humble slave. But we were all innocent in the ways of flirtations and, with the exception of Milly, heart whole and fancy free, and it was really a difficult thing to conjure up imaginary lovers--for the occasion.

The _piece de resistance_ of the evening was the trick played upon Adelaide. We planned on our programme that just as the clock struck the hour of midnight we would all try the experiment of walking downstairs backward with a lighted candle in one hand and a looking-gla.s.s in the other. Of course it would never do for the procession to file down the grand staircase in front of Madame's rooms, but the spiral staircase, secluded in the turret, offered peculiar advantages for the scheme. It communicated with no other floor, only Professor Waite had the key to the door at the foot, and he was never in the studio at night. So the girls believed, until I informed them that he always came in for a few moments on Wednesday nights to leave his sketches made at the Kit Kat--and Halloween that year happened to fall upon a Wednesday.

"So much the better," said Cynthia. "We will make Adelaide head the procession, and she will see Professor Waite's face in her mirror. It will be too good a joke for anything, for she can't bear the sight of him since she made that unfortunate speech when she saw him standing in the open door and thought it was Winnie _en masquerade_."

"I am afraid it will be twitting on facts," I said; "for I more than half suspect that Professor Waite admires Adelaide as much as she detests him. He has asked me more than once why she does not join the drawing cla.s.s--and even suggested that I should induce her to pose for the portrait cla.s.s. He said her profile was purely cla.s.sical, and that she took naturally the most superb poses of any girl that he had ever met."

"So much the better," Cynthia declared. "It will be the best joke of the season. What time does he usually arrive?"

"He said, in telling one of the cla.s.s, that he always leaves the Kit Kat at half past eleven, and reaches the street door of the turret on the stroke of twelve."

"Delightful!" exclaimed Winnie. "Fortune favors our plans. What fun it will be!"

It was thought best not to admit Milly into our confidence, for fear that she could not keep the secret. All went well. We played our tricks and Winnie told ghost stories, but it seemed as if midnight would never come. At one time we fancied we heard a noise in the turret and we looked at each other apprehensively. Had anything happened to bring Professor Waite back earlier than usual, and would our plans miscarry, after all? At ten minutes before twelve we organized the procession.

Milly was timid and persisted in being in the middle. To our disgust Adelaide refused to lead. "Winnie proposes it; let Winnie go first,"

she said resolutely.

"All right," Winnie a.s.sented, after a thoughtful pause. "I will if Adelaide will come next."

Cynthia and I looked at her inquiringly. We did not quite see how this would answer.

"Tib, let's go and see if Snooks is in bed and the coast is clear,"

Winnie suggested. "It's a pity that we can't get into the studio through this door, but that chest is too heavy for us to push aside."

Winnie and I reconnoitered, and as we opened the door into the turret she told me her plan.

"I will lead rapidly and when I get to the bottom will scud into that little closet under the stairs where they keep the lawn mower, so that Adelaide will be virtually at the head. We must start right away, so as to give me a chance to get into my haven of refuge before Professor Waite arrives."

We all tiptoed into the studio and lighted our candles there, after we had closed the corridor door. We had had quite a time collecting mirrors. Adelaide and Milly possessed handsome silver-backed hand-gla.s.ses. Winnie carried a pretty toilet mirror with three folding leaves. I had a work box with looking-gla.s.s inside the lid, and Cynthia had unscrewed the large mirror from her bureau. We were all giggling and shivering when Winnie, our marshal, gave the signal for the start in the following order: Winnie, Adelaide, Milly, myself, and Cynthia bringing up the rear.

The steps winding around the central pillar were narrower at one end than the other and it was rather difficult to tread them backward. The fall wind blew through the slits of unglazed windows and extinguished my candle. Winnie, in her haste to get to the bottom, fell, extinguished hers also, and hurt herself quite severely, but she had determination enough to pick herself up again and limp on. Suddenly there came a strong draught of air and there was a halt in our march. Milly whispered that she could hear voices, then Adelaide, who was a little way in advance, shrieked and came running up the stairs. We were all huddled together in a jam. Cynthia was shouting with laughter, Milly crying with fright, Adelaide choking and incoherent with indignation.

"Hurry, hurry!" she cried, pushing us back; "he is coming; he is just behind me."

We were only a few steps from the studio and we all bundled in--but in the confusion Milly had dropped her candle, and the light Mother Hubbard wrapper was all in a blaze.

Cynthia rushed wildly out of the room. I have no recollection of what I did, but Adelaide fought the flames with her hands; but she would never have conquered them, and our darling might have died a cruel death in torturing flames, if Professor Waite had not dashed into the room, wrapped her in a Persian rug, and extinguished the fire. Strange to say, she was entirely unhurt. Only her beautiful blond hair was singed, and that was afterward attributed by her friends to an injudicious use of the curling irons. Adelaide's hands were badly burned and Professor Waite bathed them in oil, while an older, serious looking man, who had followed Professor Waite, whom we only noticed at this stage of the proceedings, wrapped them in his white silk m.u.f.fler. Then Cynthia appeared at the door with a white face and a small water pitcher, and we were able for the first time to laugh in a hysterical way. Fortunately, no one had heard us, and we slipped back to the Amen Corner.

Milly was awe-stricken by the peril through which she had pa.s.sed, but there was a strange, happy look upon her face which I did not understand until, as I tucked her away in bed, she pulled me down to her and whispered in my ear:

"He held me in his arms, Tib; for one heavenly minute he held me close, close in his arms. I felt the hot breath of the flames, but I did not care. I was willing to die, I was so happy----"

"My poor little girl," I said, as I kissed her, "you must not let yourself care for Professor Waite, for he does not----"

"I know," she replied, "he loves Adelaide; he can't help it any more than I can help----"

"Hush," I said, "this is all foolishness; put it right out of your little head. You are only sixteen; you are not old enough to care for any one. You will laugh at this by and by."

She shook her head solemnly. "I shall always remember, Tib--that for one heavenly minute he held me tight--so." And she embraced her pillow with all her small might, nestling her hot cheek against it in a way which would have been absurd if it had not been so unspeakably pathetic.

Adelaide strode into the room at this juncture with the air of a tragedy queen.

"Thank Heaven, you are safe, Milly dear!" she said, pausing beside the bed, but her look was not one of pious thanksgiving. Her voice had a sharp sound, and a crimson spot flamed on her dark cheeks. "He dared to hold my hands in his," she murmured, "and, worse still, to call me 'n.o.ble girl,' and his 'poor child'; and he will think that I went down those stairs on purpose to see his face in my mirror. Oh, how I hate him, how I hate him!"