The Corner House Girls' Odd Find

Agnes had darted around the big table and crouched down. Aunt Sarah half turned from the closet door; then she turned back again.

Was the old lady asleep or awake? Agnes did not know that Aunt Sarah ever walked in her sleep. But she knew that somnambulists did very strange things, and, of course, Aunt Sarah might be a sleep-walker.

Aunt Sarah Maltby proceeded to do a very strange thing now. There was a heavy brass key in the lock of the cupboard door. The old lady suddenly turned the key, locked the door, withdrew the key, and, clutching it tightly in her hand, marched back toward the front hall door.

It was just at this moment that Agnes Kenway was treated to a second surprise. She suddenly realized that there was a third person in the room!

It was because of no movement upon the part of the mysterious third person that Agnes made this exciting discovery. But she heard a quick sigh, or intake of breath, somewhere at the lower end of the room near the pantry door. She thought of Tom Jonah first of all; but then remembered that the old dog had gone out at bedtime and had not come in again.

Most exciting thoughts raced through Agnes Kenway’s brain. She had followed Aunt Sarah downstairs and into the dining room. But had Aunt Sarah followed somebody else here, at midnight?

“What under the sun is going on?” was Agnes’ muttered comment. “My goodness! I wish Ruth were here. Or Neale!”

The Corner House girl felt very much disturbed indeed. She did not believe in ghosts; but she did believe in burglars!

At that moment all thought of Barnabetta Scruggs went out of Agnes’ troubled mind. Aunt Sarah passed out of the dining room door into the front hall and closed the door carefully behind her. This left the great room in perfect darkness.

Agnes was actually trembling with excitement and fear. She had not thought to be afraid at all until she heard that mysterious sigh. The fact that she had no means of identifying the midnight marauder increased her fright.

There it was again – a short intake of breath! Somebody was surely hiding at the lower end of the room. Agnes must have come into the room so quietly that the unknown person did not apprehend her presence.

Fearful as she was, Agnes did not move. If her presence was not already discovered she had no intention whatever of revealing it to the unknown.

There was suddenly a faint sound, as of a clumsily shod foot striking against one of the heavy chairs. Agnes could see nothing at first; but she seemed actually to feel the moving presence at the lower end of the room.

There are degrees of darkness just as there are of light. Something darker – or more solid – than the atmosphere of the dining room, passed across the line of Agnes’ vision.

The moving figure approached the cupboard in the chimney-place. Agnes knew that the unknown person stood just where Aunt Sarah had stood shortly before.

A tentative hand shook the closet door gently. It rattled; but the old lock was a strong one. Nothing less than a crowbar or a burglar’s jimmy could have forced that door.

Evidently the mysterious marauder was not armed with either of these implements. Agnes heard a sigh that was almost a sob! Then she knew that the disappointed unknown had turned hopelessly from the closet door.

Whatever it was this person wanted, Aunt Sarah had locked it up in the cupboard and carried away the key.

Agnes, crouching beyond the table, realized that the visitor glided to the door leading into the back hall. The door was opened. For a single instant the figure was partially revealed in outline to the girl’s straining vision.

It was the figure of a man!

Then the door closed on its exit. Agnes sprang to her feet. Had the unknown one not closed the door, he must have heard her then, for Agnes was too excited by her last discovery to be at all careful.

“A man! A man in the house!” thought the terrified girl. And then, remarking a single peculiarity of the mysterious figure, she whispered: “Not a man, but a boy. Goodness! who can it be?”

Quick as a flash Agnes Kenway ran to the door leading into the front hall, by which she had entered. She opened it and slipped into the hall. Neglecting her candle which she had placed on the floor for safety, she crept back toward the darker end of the hall.

There was an “elbow” in the passage behind the front stairway and she could not see beyond this. But she heard a sound – the unmistakable sound of a bolt being drawn.

Was the mysterious visitor at the porch door? Was he leaving the house? And how had he got in?

Agnes waited breathlessly for some further noise. But there was none.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. The seconds were being ticked off in a ghostly fashion by the tall clock behind her.

Agnes crouched in the corner and trembled. Usually she was brave; but the experiences of the last half hour had gotten upon the girl’s nerves.

At last she could remain quiet no longer. She stole to the rear of the dark hall – past the sitting room door and beyond leading into the dining room, and through which the boy had passed.

This end of the passage was comparatively narrow. Agnes could be sure that nobody was hiding here, for some light filtered down the back stairway from the floor above.

Before her was the door of the porch. She fumbled for the knob, and found it. She opened the door easily. This was the bolt she had heard drawn.

Here Agnes suffered the very worst scare of the whole adventure. Something cold and wet was thrust against her hand!

She almost screamed aloud. She would have screamed, only the fright of it made her lose her voice. She swung there, clinging to the doorknob, about to fall fainting to the floor, when a bulky object pushed by her and she heard Tom Jonah’s whine.

“Oh! You dear, old, foolish, mean, silly thing!” gasped Agnes. “How you scared me. I’ll never forgive you, Tom Jonah! But I’m so glad it’s only you.”

This she whispered, while she hugged the shaggy dog. Tom Jonah had evidently found it too cold for comfort outside the house, and hearing her at the door had come to beg entrance for the night.

She let him into the kitchen and then, as she went back to the door, she was suddenly smitten with this thought:

“If that boy went out of that door, Tom Jonah must have known him!”

The old dog had known him so well that he made no objection to his being about the old Corner House. There was but one boy in the world whom Tom Jonah would allow to do such a thing. That was Neale O’Neil.

The thought gave Agnes Kenway a feeling of dire dismay. She could not understand it. She could not believe it.

Yet she was sure the boy had gone out by this door. But how he had first got into the house was a mystery beyond her divination.

At once she shot the bolt again. Once out, the youthful marauder, whoever he was, should stay out, as far as this particular means of entrance was concerned.

“It couldn’t be a real burglar,” murmured Agnes, quiveringly. “Oh, Neale! I wouldn’t have thought it of you!

“And Aunt Sarah must have scared him when he was at that closet. But, goodness me! what would Neale O’Neil want in that old closet? Nothing there much but medicines on the top shelf and old books and papers. I – don’t see —

“Could it be a really, truly burglar, after all? Not one like Dot’s plumber, but a real one? And why didn’t Tom Jonah bark? Oh, goodness! suppose he hasn’t gone out after all?

“Oh! I want to go to bed and cover my head up with blankets!” gasped Agnes. “I want to tell Ruth – but I daren’t! Maybe I ought to call everybody and make a search for the burglar. But suppose it should be Neale?”

So she stole up to bed, shaking with nervous dread, yet feeling as though she ought, somehow, to be congratulated. Yet when she had slipped off her robe and was in bed again, two separate and important thoughts assailed her:

Had Barnabetta Scruggs been out of her room? And what had Aunt Sarah Maltby done with the key to the dining room closet?

CHAPTER XX – LEMUEL ADEN’S DIARY

Agnes slept so late that Sunday morning that she had to “scrabble,” as she herself confessed, to get down to breakfast before everybody else was through.

As the members of the Corner House family who had risen earlier made no remarks about burglars in the night, Agnes decided she would better say nothing of her own experience.

It really seemed to Agnes now as though it had been a dream. Only she noticed when she sat down at the table that the big brass key was missing from the lock of the closet door.

Aunt Sarah said nothing at that time about her midnight rambling; nor about what she had locked up in the chimney-place cupboard. Ruth looked much worried and disturbed. Of course, the missing album had not come to light. Ruth truly believed that a great fortune had been within their grasp and it was now utterly gone.

“And gone beyond redemption. We shall never see it again,” she said to Agnes.

Agnes did not want to discuss this with her sister. She was quite as puzzled as was Ruth over the disappearance of the old album in which had been pasted the bonds and money; only she could not bring herself to believe, as Ruth did, that the bonds and money were good.

She wondered if Neale O’Neil had found the answer to this problem while he was in Tiverton. Then she winced when she thought of Neale. He did not appear at the old Corner House on this Sunday morning, as he usually did.

They must wait until Monday for Ruth to go to the bank again and have the right ten dollar bill examined. She admitted that she might have shown the new banknote instead of the old one to Mr. Crouch.

“Though lots of good it will do us to know for certain whether the money was good and legal tender or not, now that it has been stolen,” Ruth grieved.

Barnabetta appeared at breakfast and Agnes noticed that the circus girl’s eyes were red and her manner much subdued.

The Corner House family prepared for church much as usual. Aunt Sarah always made most of her preparations – even to the filling of her dress pocket with a handful of peppermint lozenges – the night before.

Time was when the Kenway sisters had to scrimp and save to find the five pennies weekly to purchase Aunt Sarah’s supply of peppermints; now they were bought in quantity and —

“I don’t see why you young ones can’t leave ’em alone,” said the old lady, severely, as she swept down into the hall in her best silk dress and popped the first lozenge of the day into her mouth.

“I forgot ’em last night till I’d got to bed, and when I come down here for ’em, I declare I couldn’t scurce find ’em in that cupboard. But I got ’em locked away now an’ I guess you won’t be so free with ’em.”

At this Agnes was attacked by “a fit of the giggles,” as Aunt Sarah expressed it. But the girl was not laughing at Aunt Sarah. Her thought was:

“My goodness me! was that what the burglar was after – Aunt Sarah’s peppermints?” But she missed seeing Barnabetta’s face at this juncture.

Dot cried: “Oh, my, Miss Barnabetta! don’t you feel well a-tall this morning?”

“Oh, yes, my dear, I am quite well,” said the circus girl, hastily.

Tess said doubtfully: “I – I hope we didn’t tire you last night asking for stories?”

“No, indeed.”

“But you just did look as though you were going to faint,” said Dot.

“There, there,” said Mrs. MacCall. “Appearances aren’t everything. The looks of a toad don’t tell how far he’s goin’ to hop.”

“No-o,” agreed Tess. “And, anyway, toads are very useful animals, even if they are so very ugly.”

Barnabetta had the two little girls again, one on either side of her, before the fire. She had plainly become their fast friend.

Barnabetta said, more cheerfully: “Toads are not always ugly. Didn’t you ever see a toad early in the mornin’ – when the grass and everything is all sparklin’ with dew? Oh! I must tell you a story about that.”

“Do, Miss Barnabetta,” breathed Tess, eagerly.

“Oh! that will be lovely!” murmured Dot.

“Once upon a time a little brown toad – a very warty toad – lived in a little house he had scooped for himself in the dirt right under a rose tree. He was a very sensible, hard-workin’ toad, only he grieved because he was so ugly.

“He never would have known he was so ugly, for he had no mirror in his house, if it hadn’t been for the rose. But lookin’ up at the buddin’ rose, he saw how beautiful she was and knew that in contrast he was the very ugliest beast that moved upon the earth.”

“The poor thing!” murmured Tess, the tender-hearted.

“He near about worshipped that rose,” pursued Barnabetta, her own eyes brighter as the children followed her story breathlessly. “Every day he watched her unfold her petals more and more. He caught all the bugs and flies and ugly grubs he could to keep them from comin’ at the rose and doin’ her harm.

“Then came the mornin’,” said Barnabetta, “when the rose was fully unfolded. The dew overnight had bejeweled each petal and when the first rays of the sun hurried to kiss her, the dewdrops sparkled like all manner of gems and precious stones.

“‘Oh, see!’ sighed the poor toad, ‘how beautiful is the rose and how ugly I am.’

“But the rose heard him and she looked kindly down upon the poor toad. She knew how faithfully he had guarded her from the creepin’ and flyin’ things that would have spoiled her beauty.

“‘Come here,’ she said to the toad, bendin’ down upon her stalk to see him better. And the toad hopped close beneath her. ‘Come here,’ said the rose, ‘and I will make you, too, beautiful.’

“And then she called to the mornin’ breeze, ‘Shake me!’ and the breeze did so – ever so gently – and all the sparklin’, twinklin’ precious gems of dewdrops shook off the rose and fell upon the toad in a shower.

“And at once,” laughed Barnabetta, “the toad was covered with diamonds, and spangles, and glistenin’ drops of dew in which the sun was reflected, till the toad appeared to be encased in an armor of silver, trimmed with jewels, and all the creatures in the garden cried:

“‘Oh! how beautiful is the toad!’”

Agnes listened with delight to this fantasy from the trapeze performer. This gentle girl, telling pretty tales to Tess and Dot, was quite another person from “Barney” Scruggs, who had been tramping in boy’s clothing with the old clown.

“She can’t be wicked enough to have stolen that scrap-book,” Agnes told herself, with increasing confidence. “Dear me! I wish I’d never found the old thing up garret.”

The four Corner House girls went to church with Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah. But Barnabetta would not go. She excused herself by saying that she did not wish to leave her father alone.

Sunday school followed the preaching service almost immediately; but as soon as this was over, Agnes hurried home. Ruth, with Tess and Dot, went around by the hospital to call on Mrs. Eland, the matron, and to enquire after Miss Pepperill.

They chanced to find the little gray lady sitting at her desk, and with certain yellowed old papers and letters, and several small books with ragged sheepskin covers, before her.

“These were Uncle Lemuel’s,” she explained to Ruth, touching the dog’s-eared books. “His diaries. It does seem as though he loved to put down on paper all his miserly thoughts and accounts of his very meanest acts. He must have been a strange combination of business acumen and simple-mindedness.”

“I wish for your sake, Mrs. Eland,” Ruth said, “that he had kept to the very day of his death the riches he once accumulated.”

“Oh! I wish so, too – for Teeny’s sake,” replied Mrs. Eland, referring to her unfortunate sister by the pet name she had called her in childhood.

“Are these the books and papers Mr. Bob Buckham brought you from the Quoharie poorhouse, where Mr. Aden died?”

“Yes. I have never read through the diaries. I only wanted to find an account of the five hundred dollars belonging to Mr. Buckham’s father that my father turned over to Uncle Lemuel.

“But here are notes of really vast sums. Uncle Lemuel must have really been quite beside himself long before he died. In one place he writes about drawing out of several banks sums aggregating over fifty thousand dollars.

“Think of it!” and Mrs. Eland sighed. “It was at the time of the panic. He speaks of being distrustful of banks. So he drew out all he had. But, of course, he did not have so much money as that. Fifty thousand dollars!”

“Perhaps he did have it,” said Ruth.

“Then what became of it? He writes in one place of losing a hundred dollars in some transaction, and he goes on about it, in a raving way, as though it was every cent of money he ever owned,” declared Mrs. Eland. “Oh, dear! What a terrible thing it must be to be a miser.”

“But – but suppose he did have so much money at one time?”

“He dreamed it,” laughed the hospital matron.

“You’re not sure,” ventured the Corner House girl.

“Then what became of it? I am sure he never gave it away,” Mrs. Eland said, shaking her head. “And here, where he speaks of coming to live with your Uncle Peter Stower, in the very last year of his life, Uncle Lemuel says:

“‘Peter Stower always was a fool. He’ll give me bite and sup as long as I need. Let him believe me rich or poor as he pleases.’”

“Oh, dear me,” sighed Ruth, “I always have felt bad because Uncle Peter turned him out and Mr. Aden wandered away to die at the Quoharie poorhouse. Your uncle couldn’t have been in his right mind.”

“Of course he wasn’t,” rejoined Mrs. Eland. “Why! it shows that here. On almost the last page of his diary – it was written after he left the old Corner House – he says:

“‘I don’t trust banks; but Peter Stower is too mean to be dishonest. My book is safe with him.’

“I suppose,” the little gray lady said, “Uncle Lemuel had an idea of sending these diaries to your Uncle Peter to keep for him. I can’t think of any other book he was referring to.”

“A book?” murmured Ruth, quaveringly.

“Yes. And once before he speaks here – where is it? – of his diary, I suppose, as his ‘beautiful book.’ Ah! here it is: ‘Have pasted all my Wash. & Pitts. R. R. B.‘s in my beautiful book.’ Now,” and Mrs. Eland laughed, “what do you suppose ‘Wash. & Pitts.’ means?”

Ruth sprang up, trembling, and with clasped hands.

“Oh, Mrs. Eland!” she cried, “‘Washington & Pittsburgh’ – and he meant railroad bonds, of course! It must be! it must be!”

“Well – but – my dear!” said Mrs. Eland, amazed by Ruth’s excitement. “Of course, Uncle Lemuel may have meant that. However, there are no bonds of any kind pasted into these books. I am sure of that,” and she laughed again, but rather ruefully.

Ruth Kenway could not join in her laughter. She had made a tremendous discovery – and one that filled her with actual terror. She scarcely knew how she managed to excuse herself from the hospital matron’s presence, and got out upon the street again with Tess and Dot.

CHAPTER XXI – “EVERYTHING AT SIXES AND SEVENS”

“I do declare,” said Agnes Kenway, that very evening. “We don’t seem like ourselves. The house doesn’t seem like our house. And we’re all at sixes and sevens! What ever is the matter with Ruthie?”

For the eldest Corner House girl had spoken crossly to Tess, and had fairly shaken Dot for leaving a chocolate-cream on a chair where she, Ruth, sat down upon it in her best dress, and finally she had flown out of the sitting room in tears and run up to bed.

“And Neale didn’t stay to eat supper last night, and he hasn’t been here to-day,” grieved Tess.

“Here’s all his Christmas presents,” said Dot. “Don’t you s’pose he wants them a-tall? Is Neale mad, too?”

“I’m afraid Ruthie is coming down with something – like Sammy Pinkney with the scarlet fever,” Tess said, in a worried tone.

Agnes knew that it must be worry over the lost album and money that had got upon her older sister’s nerves. But even she did not suspect the full measure of Ruth’s trouble, for the latter had said nothing about the discovery in Lemuel Aden’s old diary. But Agnes heartily wished she had never made that odd find in the garret.

She had not seen Barnabetta save at dinner time, and the clown had not left his room. Agnes was troubled about Barnabetta. The little girls found the trapeze artist a most delightful companion; but Barnabetta had scarcely a word to say to either of the older Corner House sisters.

As for Neale – Agnes Kenway could have cried about Neale. She and the white-haired boy had been the very best of friends.

“And I’m sure I didn’t say anything to anger him. He needn’t have got mad at me,” was Agnes’ thought. “Whatever he wanted in that closet last night —

“There! I won’t believe it was Neale at all. Why should he want to steal anything here, when he could have had it for the asking?

“But who else could have gotten out of that porch door, past Tom Jonah, without being eaten up?” murmured poor Agnes. “Oh, dear me! how can I believe it of him?”

Really, everything was at sixes and at sevens. The week began badly. The two smallest Corner House girls seemed afflicted with a measure of the unhappiness that cloaked Ruth, Agnes and their guest, Barnabetta Scruggs.

Dot actually quarreled with Mabel Creamer! It came about in this wise:

After school on Monday the smallest Corner House girl had been to the store for Mrs. MacCall. Coming home, as she came past the Creamer cottage she heard Mrs. Creamer scolding Mabel.

“You bad, bad girl!” the unwise mother was saying to the sullen Mabel. “I should think your little brother would cry whenever you come near him. You don’t deserve to have a dear, baby brother. Get out of my sight, you naughty child!”

When Mabel appeared at her gate to face the wondering Dot, she did not look heart-broken because Bubby had taken a sudden dislike to her.

“What ever is the matter, Mabel Creamer?” asked the smallest Corner House girl.

“Oh – nothin’. Only I just fixed that kid for once,” declared Mabel, with impish satisfaction. “I don’t believe they’ll leave me to watch him all the time while Lyddy and Peg go off to a movin’ pitcher show.”

“Oh, my!” said the awe-struck Dot. “What ever did you do?”

“I’ll tell you what I did, Dot Kenway,” said Mabel, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Bubby wants to be played with all the time. You don’t get a minute to call your soul your own,” she added, quoting some of her elders.

“So, if he wanted to be amused all so fine, I amused him. I smeared molasses on his fingers and then I gave him a feather out of the pillow. Oh, he was amused! He was trying to pick that feather off his fingers for half an hour, and was just as still as still! It might ha’ lasted longer, too, only he got mad with the feather, and bawled.”

Dot did not know whether to laugh at, or be horrified by, such depravity as this. But she was glad that Mabel was free to go home with her at this time, for Tess had been kept after school.

“We’ve got four of just the cunningest kittens,” Dot said, to her visitor. “Of course, they are really Almira’s. Santa Claus got them for her. But we call them ours.”

“My! isn’t that fine?” cried Mabel. “We’ve got two cats, but they’re lazy old things. They never have any kittens. We call them Paul and Timothy.”

Almira’s young family still nested upon Unc’ Rufus’ old coat in the woodshed. Dot put two in her apron to bring them out on the porch where the cunning little things could be seen. But when Mabel grabbed up the other two there was a good deal of noise attending the operation.

“Oh, Mabel! don’t hurt them,” cried Dot.

“I’m not hurting them,” responded Mabel, sharply. “I’m carrying them just as careful as I can by their stems.”

“Oh, dear —don’t!” shrieked Dot, quite horrified. “Them’s their tails, Mabel Creamer.”

“Huh! what else are they for, I’d like to know?” propounded the visitor. “A cat’s tail is made for it to be grabbed by.”

“You – you – You’re cruel, Mabel Creamer!” gasped Dot. “Put them down!”

She tumbled the two staggering kittens out of her own lap and ran to rescue the poor, squalling mites in Mabel’s hands. Mabel was not a child to be driven in any case. There was a struggle. Dot rescued the two little mites, but Mabel slapped the little Corner House girl’s cheek twice – and her hand left its mark.