Chapter XVIII: What Happened in the Night

The two youngest Corner House girls had heard nothing of this exciting discussion in the sitting room between Neale O'Neil and their two older sisters.

Tess and Dot had run to tell the rest of the family that Neale had arrived and that Sammy Pinkney was better. Mrs. MacCall, who had a soft spot in her heart for the white-haired boy, put down some supper to warm for him, sure that Neale would come into the kitchen before he went home.

Dot ran upstairs to Aunt Sarah Maltby's room to tell her of the boy's arrival, and Aunt Sarah actually expressed her satisfaction that he had reached home in safety. Neale was growing slowly in the brusk old lady's good graces.

Coming downstairs and through the dining room, where the gas-logs blazed cheerfully on the hearth, Dot found Sandyface, the "grandmother" cat, crouching close before the blaze, her forepaws tucked in, and expressing her satisfaction at the warmth and comfort in a manner very plain to be heard.

"Mercy me!" ejaculated the smallest Corner House girl. "Sandyface! you sound just as though you were beginning to boil! Oh!"

For just then the door from the rear hall opened quickly and startled her. The strange girl--the circus girl--who had so interested Dot and Tess, to say nothing of the rest of the family, popped in.

"Oh!" repeated Dot. "How you frightened me."

Barnabetta stood with her back against the door. One might have thought that the appearance of Dot, had been quite as unexpected and had frightened her.

She seemed breathless, too, as though she had been running. But of course she had not been running. Where should she have run to on such a cold night? And there was no snow on her shoes. Besides, she wore no wrap.

"Did--did I frighten you, little girl?" Barnabetta said. "I am sorry, I did not mean to."

She had both hands behind her and stood against the door in a most awkward position.

"I was afraid you had gone to bed," prattled on Dot, stroking Sandyface. "Ruthie said she s'posed you had. But I'm glad you hadn't. I wanted to ask you something."

"Did--did you?" returned Barnabetta. She seemed to be listening all the time--as though something was going on in the hall that frightened her.

"Yes," Dot went on placidly. "You know, we've been to a circus once."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. And Tess and I was awful int'rested in it. We--we liked the ladies and gentlemans that rode on the horses around the ring, and was on the trapezers, too. And they looked _beau_-tiful in those spangles, and velvets, and all.

"I s'pose those were their best clo'es, weren't they--their real, Sunday-go-to-meeting frocks?"

"I--I guess they were," admitted Barnabetta.

"You wear _your_ best clo'es when you go up on the trapezers, don't you?"

"The fanciest I've got," admitted the circus girl.

"Well! Mustn't they look funny all going to church that way--the ladies in those short, fluffy skirts, and the gentlemans in such tight pants! My!" gasped Dot. "Couldn't you tell us, please, what they do in circuses when they travel?"

"Why--yes," said Barnabetta. "I'll tell you."

"Will you sit right down here and tell us?"

"Why--yes."

"Oh, wait! I'll run and fetch Tess!" exclaimed the generous Dot. "I know she will want to hear, too," and she scampered out of the room so swiftly that she startled Sandyface, who flew through the door before her.

Barnabetta was left alone in the dining room. There was a closet with a small door right beside the fireplace. When Dot returned with Tess the circus girl was leaning her back against that closet door, instead of against the hall door.

"Oh, _do_ come and sit down," urged Dot, eagerly, drawing an armchair to the hearth.

Barnabetta did so. Tess and Dot each brought a hassock, one on either side of the older girl. Barnabetta had a softer side to her nature than the side she had displayed to Agnes Kenway. There were little folk at the circus, who traveled with their parents with the show, who loved Barnabetta Scruggs.

A little later Agnes, pale of face and with traces of tears, came into the room. She and Ruth had hunted high and low for the lost album Neale O'Neil had left in his satchel on the side porch.

Even Ruth admitted Neale had not halted there, when he went out so angrily, long enough to take the album away. And both girls had seen him drop the heavy bag in that dark corner when he came in with Tess.

Somebody had removed the album. Nor was it ridiculous to suppose that the "somebody" who had done this knew very well what the book contained.

"Oh, we've been robbed! robbed!" Ruth had cried, rocking herself back and forth in her chair in the sitting room. "What ever shall we do? What shall I say to Mr. Howbridge?"

"I don't care a thing about _him_," declared Agnes, recklessly. "But think of all that money--if it is money--"

"I tell you it is."

"But you don't know for sure," Agnes retorted. "Maybe you showed Mr. Crouch the wrong bill."

"No. I've felt all the time," Ruth said despairingly, "that we really had a great fortune in our hands. How it came to be hidden in our garret, I don't know. Whom it really belongs to I don't know."

"Us! We found it!" sobbed Agnes.

"No. We cannot claim it. At least, not until we have searched for the rightful owners. But Mr. Howbridge will tell us."

"Oh! mercy me, Ruthie Kenway!" cried Agnes. "What's the use of talking? It's go-o-one!"

"I don't know who--"

"You can't blame Neale now!" flared up Agnes. "You've made him mad, too. He'll never forgive us."

"Well! What business had he to carry off that book?" demanded Ruth. "He can be mad if he wants to be. If he hadn't carried it away there would have been no trouble at all."

"Oh, Ruthie! It isn't his fault that somebody has stolen it now," repeated Agnes.

"Why isn't it?"

"How could it be?"

"Like enough the foolish boy showed all that money to somebody, and he has been followed right here to the house by the robber."

Agnes gasped. Then she sat back in her chair and stared at her sister. Suddenly, with an inarticulate cry, she arose and dashed upstairs.

Although she had not asked, Agnes supposed the circus girl had retired immediately after dinner. It was still early in the evening, and Agnes and Ruth had had no private conversation regarding Barnabetta and her father. Neale's arrival had driven that out of both their minds.

But into Agnes' brain now came the thought that Barnabetta had seen the old album full of money and bonds while Neale was at the winter quarters of the circus.

"Oh, dear me! Can she be so very, very wicked?" thought Agnes. "They are so desperately in need. And such an amount of money is an awful temptation--that is, it would be a temptation if it _were_ money!"

For despite all that Ruth said, Agnes could not believe that the wonderful contents of the old album was bona fide money and bonds.

The thought, however, that Barnabetta might be tempted to steal from those who had been kind to her, troubled Agnes exceedingly. She did not want to say anything to Ruth about her suspicions of the circus girl yet. Why make her sister suspicious, too, unless she was sure of her evidence?

Agnes listened at the door of Barnabetta's room. There was no sound in there and she finally turned the knob softly and pushed open the door a crack. The lighted room was revealed; but there was no sign of occupancy save the shabby boy's clothing folded on a chair. The bed had not been touched.

Was the circus girl with her father? Or had she left the house on some errand?

Agnes crept to the other door and put her ear to the panel. At first she heard nothing. Then came a murmur, as of voices in low conversation. Were the circus people talking? Had Barnabetta really gained possession of the book, and were she and her father examining it?

Then Agnes suddenly fell to giggling; for what she actually heard was Mr. Asa Scruggs' rhythmic snoring.

"She surely isn't there," decided Agnes, creeping away down the hall again. "He's sound asleep. If Barnabetta's up to any mischief--if she's taken that album--she can't be in there with it."

It was immediately following this decision that Agnes, returning downstairs by the front way, heard voices in the dining room. She looked in to see Barnabetta sitting with Tess and Dot before the fire, telling the little girls stories of circus life.

Agnes dodged out of there. She had seen enough, she thought, to convince any one that the circus girl was not guilty.

"Where'd you go to?" demanded Ruth, when her sister returned to the sitting room.

"I went to see where that Barnabetta Scruggs was," confessed Agnes.

"Oh, my! I did not think of _them_." Ruth said.

"Well, she's all right. She's in the dining room telling Tess and Dot stories. It certainly could not be Barnabetta. Why! we'd have heard her go through the hall and out upon the porch."

"Why! She doesn't know anything about the album," retorted Ruth. "I tell you it's been stolen by somebody who followed Neale here to the house."

"Well, surely that couldn't be Barnabetta," admitted Agnes; "for _she_ got here first."

"That is true," Ruth agreed. "No. Somebody followed that foolish boy--perhaps away from Tiverton. And to think of his throwing down a satchel of money on the porch in that careless way!"

"Oh, but Ruthie! that proves Neale doesn't believe it is good money," Agnes said eagerly. "Else he wouldn't have left it out there. Of course he has found out that it is all counterfeit."

"You never can tell what a foolish boy will do," retorted Ruth, tossing her head.

"Shall--shall we tell the police we've been robbed?" hesitated Agnes.

"Why should we tell them, I'd like to know?" demanded Ruth, shortly. "What should we tell them? That we've lost a hundred thousand dollars that doesn't belong to us?"

"Oh, mercy!"

"I'd be afraid to," confessed the troubled Ruth. "You don't know what they might do to us for losing it."

"Oh, dear, Ruthie! that sounds awful," murmured Agnes.

The two girls were in much vexation of spirit, and quite uncertain what to do. The emergency called for wisdom beyond that which they possessed. Nor did they know anybody at hand with whom they might confer regarding the catastrophe.

Agnes wanted to run after Neale and ask his opinion. He might know, or at least suspect, who it was that had taken the album out of the satchel.

But Ruth would not hear of taking Neale into their affairs further. She was quite put out with their boy friend. And Agnes, from past experience, knew that when Ruth was in this present mood it was no use to argue with her.

They spent a very unhappy evening indeed. The two oldest Corner House girls, that is. As for Tess and Dot, they reveled till bedtime in a new and wonderful world--the circus world.

They listened to Barnabetta tell of long journeys through the country, when the big animals, like the camels and the elephants, marched by night, and the great cages and pole-wagons and tent-wagons, rumbled over the roads from one "stand" to another. Of adventures on the way. Of accidents when wagons broke down, or got into sloughs. Sometimes cages burst open when the accidents occurred, and some of the animals got out.

"Oh, dear, me!" cried Tess, so excited that she could scarcely sit still. "To think of lions, and tigers, and panthers running loose!"

"What's a 'panther,' sister?" queried Dot, puzzled. "Are panthers dangerous?"

"Very," responded Tess, wisely. "Of course."

"Why--why, I didn't s'pose _that_ was so," murmured Dot.

"For pity's sake!" Tess exclaimed, exasperated. "What do you s'pose a panther is, anyway, Dot Kenway?"

"Why--why," stammered the smallest Corner House girl, "I--I thought a panther was a man who made pants."

"Oh, goodness to gracious, Miss Barnabetta! Did you ever hear of such a child?" demanded Tess, hopelessly. "She never will learn the English language!"

Ruth came all too quickly to remind the little girls that it was bedtime. Although much troubled, the oldest Corner House girl did not forget their guests' comfort.

Mr. Scruggs was settled for the night and Barnabetta was sure he would not need anything before morning. She accepted a cup of hot cocoa and a biscuit herself and took them up stairs with her. Agnes did not appear again, and Barnabetta did not know that she was being watched by a pair of troubled blue eyes from the darker end of the hall.

Agnes had Barnabetta very much in her mind. She and Ruth agreed to say nothing in their own room about the mysterious disappearance of the album. The door was open into the children's room and it was notorious that "little pitchers have big ears."

After they were in bed, Agnes still lay and thought about Barnabetta. Was it possible that the circus girl had obtained possession of the mysterious old album?

It seemed ridiculous to believe such a thing. Surely she had not removed it to her room, for Agnes had been there and had looked for it. Barnabetta had been quietly telling stories to Tess and Dot downstairs all the evening.

Yet, the very fact that the circus girl was downstairs troubled Agnes. Suppose she had come down while Neale and Ruth and she, Agnes, were talking so excitedly about the odd find that had been made in the garret? Suppose Barnabetta had heard most of their talk?

"Easy enough for her to have slipped out of the door and grabbed that old book," murmured Agnes. "But then--what did she do with it? Oh, dear me! How awful of me to suspect her of such wickedness."

In the midst of her ruminations she heard a doorlatch click. The house had long since become still. It was very near midnight.

Agnes sat up in bed and strained her ears to catch the next sound. But there seemed to be no further movement. Had somebody left one of the bedrooms, or was it a draught that had shaken the door?

The uncertainty of this got upon the girl's nerves. Somebody might be creeping downstairs. Suppose it were Barnabetta?

"What would she go down again for?" Agnes asked herself.

Yet even as she thought this and how ridiculous it was, she crept out of bed. Ruth was sound asleep. Nobody heard Agnes as she felt around with her bare feet and got them into her fleece-lined bedroom slippers. Then, wrapping her robe about her, she tied the cord and found her bedroom candle.

She lit this and went out into the hall, the door being open. As she came noiselessly to the top of the main stairway she saw the reflection of another candle on the ceiling above the stairwell--a bobbing reflection that showed somebody was moving slowly down the lower flight.

Agnes, not daring to breathe audibly, shielded her own light with her free hand, and hastened to peer over the balustrade.