Chapter XXIII: Who Was the Robber?

That was a terrible moment in the lives of the two older Corner House girls.

Terrible for Ruth, because she saw crushed thus unexpectedly her desire to make Mrs. Eland and her sister happy and comfortable for life. Terrible for Agnes, because she could think of nobody but Neale O'Neil who could have got at the album and abstracted the money and bonds.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!" wailed Agnes, and threw herself into a chair, despairingly.

Ruth was pallid. Barnabetta Scruggs stared at the two Corner House girls with horrified, wide-open eyes.

"Now--_now_," the circus girl muttered, "you girls won't ever believe a word I say!"

"Why not, Barnabetta?" asked Agnes.

"I told your sister I put that album in the closet--and I did. But I didn't take even one banknote out of the book!"

"I believe you, Barnabetta," Ruth said faintly. "But--but who is the robber?"

"I was enough of a thief to take the book out of Neale's bag," said the circus girl. "But I didn't even look into it. I didn't have time."

"How did you come to do it?" asked Agnes, curiously.

"I heard Neale when he came here Saturday night. Of course, I knew 'twas him by his voice and what you girls said. And I heard there was some kind of a row."

"There was," sighed Agnes.

"I came down and listened at the door of that other room where you girls and Neale were talkin'. I heard him say the book was in his bag on the porch, and I knew that bag didn't have any lock to it."

"Of course," groaned Ruth.

"I was goin' to get it before he came out; but he flung open the sittin' room door so quick he pretty near caught me. I crouched down in the corner at the foot of the stairs and if he hadn't been so mad," said Barnabetta, "he must have seen me.

"But he didn't, and when he was gone I went outside and got the book. You girls were still in the sittin' room; but I heard somebody up in the back hall and I was afraid to go upstairs, either by the back or the front flight.

"So I slipped into the dinin' room and there was little Dottie. I kept the book behind me and didn't know what to do with it. But Dottie ran out of the room and I plumped it into that closet and shut the door quick," finished Barnabetta.

"And is that all?" Ruth said, very much disappointed.

"I--I never saw the book again till just now."

"Oh!" began Agnes, when the circus girl interrupted her, jerkily.

"I--I tried to see it. I was goin' to steal the money--or, some of it, anyway. I know you'll think me awful. But--but we were so hard up, and all--just the same, I couldn't get into the closet again.

"I staid awake Saturday night, and when I thought everybody was abed and the house was still, I came down here in this boy's suit--"

"Oh!" cried Agnes again--and this time in a much relieved tone. But Barnabetta did not notice.

"Your aunt came down with her candle for those peppermints before I could get at the book."

"But what did you do _then_?" asked the eager and curious Agnes.

"I was just about crazy," admitted the circus girl. "I thought I'd done that sin of stealin' the book and it had done us no good. I wanted to run away right then and there--I'd have left poor Pop behind.

"But when I got the porch door out there ready to open, I heard your old dog snuffin' outside, and it scared me pretty near to death. I knew he wouldn't let me out--and I was afraid he'd bite me if I let him in.

"So I ran upstairs and shut myself into that room again. And I didn't dare come out till mornin'."

"Oh, thank goodness!" gasped Agnes, under her breath. "It wasn't Neale O'Neil!"

But this did not explain the mystery of the disappearance of the treasure trove that had been found in the Corner House garret. The Kenway girls were sure that Barnabetta Scruggs had told them the truth. She was not to blame for the actual robbery.

"And that must have occurred some time before you came down to look for the book Saturday night, Barnabetta," Ruth said. "What time was it?"

"Oh, about midnight."

"Then the robber got at the book some time in the hour between half past ten and half past eleven. Mrs. MacCall did not retire until half past ten, that is sure."

"But how did he get in, and how did he get out, and who, for pity's sake, _is_ he?" cried Agnes.

Ruth shook her head. She might have said that her acquaintance among burglars was just as limited as Agnes' own.

Only, this was no occasion for humor. The loss of a treasure amounting, possibly, to a hundred thousand dollars was no subject for raillery.

"What will Mr. Howbridge say!" groaned Ruth.

"Oh, dear me! Let's not worry about what he says!" cried Agnes. "It's nothing to him. Think of it! We are the losers of all that money."

"No," Ruth said quickly.

"Why not? What do you mean?" demanded her sister.

"It is a great loss, an irreparable loss, to the real owners of the fortune."

"Well, who are they?" demanded Agnes. "We don't know them. I suppose the courts would have to decide. But I guess a part of the money, anyway, would come to us. Enough to buy an automobile."

"No," repeated Ruth, shaking her head.

"Why not?" cried her sister. "Of course it's ours!"

"That's what I say. But your sister wants to give it all away," said Barnabetta.

"Give it all away!" cried Agnes.

"It isn't ours--or, it _wasn't_ ours--to give," Ruth declared.

"I should say not!" ejaculated the puzzled Agnes.

"But I do know whom it belonged to," said Ruth, quietly.

"Not Aunt Sarah?" gasped Agnes.

"No. Nobody at all here. It was hidden in our garret by Lemuel Aden when he was here the last time to see Uncle Peter."

"Goodness me!" cried Agnes. "Lemuel Aden? That wicked old miser?"

"Yes."

"But how do you know, Ruth Kenway? I thought he died in a poorhouse?"

"He did. That was like the miser he was."

"But, if he's dead--?" But Agnes did not follow the idea to its conclusion.

"Why, don't you see," Ruth hastened to say. "The money belongs to Mr. Aden's nieces--Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. And they need it so!"

"Oh, my goodness! so it does!"

"And we have lost it!" finished Ruth, in despair.

"Well! they can't blame us," Agnes said, swift to be upon the defensive.

"But I blame myself. I should have taken more care of the book, in the first place."

"Then you don't blame Neale?" demanded Agnes, quickly.

"He's to blame for carrying the book off without saying anything about it to us," said Ruth. "But I am mainly at fault."

"No," said Barnabetta suddenly. "I'm to blame. If I had left the book in the bag on the porch, you girls would have found it all right, and the money would not have been stolen."

"I don't see how you make that out," Agnes said. "If the robber found the book in that closet where you hid it, why couldn't he have found it anywhere else in the house?"

"Perhaps not if I had locked it in the silver safe in the pantry," Ruth said slowly.

"Oh, well! what does it matter who's at fault?" Agnes demanded, impatiently. "The money's gone."

"Yes, it's gone," repeated her sister. "And poor Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill, who need it so much, will never see it."

"You girls worry a lot over other folks' troubles," said Barnabetta. "And those women you tell about don't even know that their grandfather left the money, do they?"

"Their uncle," corrected Ruth.

"Of course not," said Agnes, in reply to Barnabetta, and quite subdued now by Ruth's revelation regarding the probable owners of the fortune. "But, you see, Barnabetta, they are our friends; and we wanted very much to help them, anyway."

"And it did seem as though Providence must have sent us to that corner of the garret that evening, just so Agnes should find the old album," added Ruth.

"But I wish I hadn't found it!" wailed Agnes, suddenly. "Just see the trouble we're in."

"Then I guess 'twasn't providential your goin' there, was it?" demanded Barnabetta.

"We can't say that," responded Ruth, thoughtfully.

"You Corner House girls are the greatest!" burst out the trapeze performer. "I never saw anybody like you! Do you spend all your time tryin' to help other folks?"

"Why--we help when we can and where we can," Ruth said.

"It's lots of fun, too," put in Agnes. "It's nice to make friends."

"Why--I believe it must be," sighed Barnabetta. "But I never thought of it--just so. I never saw folks like you Corner House girls before. That's what made me feel so mean when I had robbed you."

"Oh, don't let's talk any more about _that_," Ruth said, with her old kindness of tone and manner. "We'll forget it."

But Barnabetta said, seriously: "I never can. Don't think it! I'm goin' to remember it all the days of my life. And I _know_ it's my fault that you've lost all the money."

Ruth returned the poker to its place, and Agnes swept up the chips of wood and the bits of the broken lock. Ruth carefully put away the big old book Agnes had found in the garret.

"Locking the barn after the horse is stolen," commented Agnes.

Ruth felt that she could not finish that letter to Mr. Howbridge. There was no haste about it. She could wait to tell him all about the catastrophe when he returned to Milton. Advice now was of no value to her. The fortune was gone. Indeed, she shrank from talking about it any more. Talk would not bring the treasure back, that was sure.

She had not Agnes' overpowering curiosity. There was a sort of dumb ache at Ruth's heart, and she sighed whenever she remembered poor Mrs. Eland and her sister.

If Dr. Forsyth was to be believed, a long, long rest was Miss Pepperill's only cure. News from the State Hospital had assured the friends of the unfortunate school teacher that she would soon be at liberty.

But she might then lapse into a morose and unfortunate state of mind, unless she could rest, have a surcease of worry, and a change of scene. How could poor Mrs. Eland leave her position to care for her sister? And how could either of them go away for a year or two to rest, with their small means?

It was, indeed, a very unfortunate condition of affairs. That the hospital matron knew nothing as yet about the fortune which should be her own and her sister's, made it no better in Ruth's opinion.

The more volatile Agnes could not be expected to feel so deeply the misfortune that had overtaken them. Besides, Agnes had one certain reason for being put in a happier frame of mind by the discovery they had just made.

The cloud of suspicion that had been raised in her thoughts by circumstantial evidence, no longer rested upon Neale O'Neil. If Neale would only "get over his mad fit," as Agnes expressed it, she thought she would be quite happy once more.

For never having possessed a hundred thousand dollars in fact, Agnes Kenway was not likely to weep much over its loss. The vast sum of money had really been nothing tangible to her.

Only for an hour or so after Ruth had been to the bank the second time and made sure that the money in the old album was legal tender, had Agnes really been convinced of its value. Then her thought had flown immediately to the possibility of their buying the long-wished-for automobile.

But the tempting possibility had no more than risen above the horizon of her mind than it had been eclipsed by the horrid discovery that a robber had relieved them of the treasure trove.

"So, that's all there is to _that_!" sighed Agnes to herself. "I guess the Corner House family won't ride in a car yet awhile."

When Ruth had spoken about Mrs. Eland and her sister, however, saying that the money really belonged to them, this thought finally gained a place in Agnes' mind, too. She was not at all a selfish girl, and she began to think that perhaps an automobile would not have been forthcoming after all.

"Goodness! what a little beast I am," she told herself in secret. "To think only of our own pleasure. Maybe, if the money hadn't been lost, Mrs. Eland would have given us enough out of it to buy the car. But just see what good could have come to poor Miss Pepperill and Mrs. Eland if the money had reached their hands.

"Mercy me!" pursued the next-to-the-oldest Corner House girl. "If I ever find a battered ten cent piece again, I'll believe it's good until it's proved to be lead. Just think! If I'd only had faith in that money in the old book being good, I'd have shouted loud enough to wake up the whole household, and surely somebody--Mrs. MacCall, or Ruth--would have kept me from letting poor Neale take the book away.

"Poor Neale!" she sighed again. "It wasn't his fault. He didn't believe that paper was any good--and those bonds. Of course he didn't. I--I wonder if he showed the bonds and money to anybody at all?"

This thought was rather a startling one. Her boy friend had taken the old album away from the Corner House in the first place with the avowed purpose of showing the bonds to somebody who would know about such things.

Of course, he did not show them to Mr. Con Murphy, the cobbler. And it did not seem as though he had had time on Christmas morning to show the book to anybody else before he went to Tiverton.

Nor would he have taken the book away if he had been decided, one way or the other, about the bonds and money. Had he shown them to any person while in Tiverton?

If so, Agnes suddenly wished to know who that person was. If Barnabetta Scruggs could get into Neale's room at the winter quarters of Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie, and could take a peep at the contents of the big book the boy carried in his bag, why could not some other--and some more evil-disposed person--have done the same?

Ruth had suggested it. She had said that a robber might have followed Neale O'Neil all the way from the circus and stolen the book off the porch of the old Corner House.

The same possibility held good regarding the removal of the money and the bonds from the book after Barnabetta had hidden it in the dining room closet. At that very moment the robber might have been in the house and seen what Barnabetta did with the book.

Of course, that was the explanation! Some hanger-on of the circus had followed Neale home to rob him--and had succeeded.

But, beyond that thought, and carrying the idea to its logical conclusion, Agnes pondered that Neale might have noticed that he was followed to Milton, and might know who the person was.

With Neale to suggest the identity of this robber, it might be possible to secure his person and recover the money. That idea no sooner took possession of Agnes Kenway's mind than she started up, ready and eager to do something to prove the thought correct.

"And I'll see Neale first of all. It all lies with him," she said aloud. "He's got to help us. I don't care if he _is_ mad. He's just got to get over his mad and tell us how we shall go about finding the robber!"