Billie Bradley and Her Classmates: or, The Secret of the Locked Tower

“Die but once is right,” said Billie grumpily. She was worried for fear she would not be able to find the path leading to the cave.

It would have been hard enough if the ground had been clear, but with the snow rapidly obliterating every landmark, it was well-nigh impossible.

“I wish Teddy were here,” she said, half to herself, and her voice was very wistful.

“Don’t you though!” echoed Laura, heartily. “It seems an age since we’ve seen any of the boys.”

“Say, Billie,” broke in Vi, who was shivering in the bitter cold despite her warm furs, “are you sure you are going right? It wouldn’t be any fun to be lost in these lonely woods with maybe a blizzard coming on.”

At this observation Billie stopped and turned to Miss Walters and Polly Haddon, who were following close behind.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at Miss Walters appealingly. “If it weren’t snowing I might be able to find the way, but as it is I’m afraid I would only get you all lost. I’m lost myself now.”

“All right, honey. Don’t look so distressed about it,” said Miss Walters, patting her kindly on the shoulder. “You would have to know the way pretty well to be able to find it in this storm. We shall have to give it up to-day, and try again as soon as we can.”

“Yes, that will be best,” said Polly Haddon, through chattering teeth. Her thin shawl formed scarcely any protection against the freezing weather. “Thank you all so much for bothering with my affairs. Now I must get back to the children. Good-bye.”

Before they had fairly realized she was going, she was gone, and the girls and Miss Walters turned back to the Hall.

“Bother the old snow,” said Laura crossly. “I always liked it before, but now I hate it.”

They were all glad when the warmth of Three Towers Hall closed in about them again. Miss Walters said a few words to them about saying nothing of this affair to any one. Then she dismissed them to the dormitory while she herself hurried off to do a little work that she had neglected all day. For around examination time, Miss Walters was not always free, even on Sunday.

Some of the girls had seen Billie and Laura and Vi come in with Miss Walters, and they demanded to know what “all the excitement was about.” And the fact that the girls would not talk made their classmates all the more curious.

Connie was the only one to whom they would tell the story, for they knew that they could trust her as they trusted themselves.

“And it’s still snowing,” mourned Billie, as she cleared a space on the misted window and looked out at the snow-covered world. “It looks as if we shouldn’t get out of here for weeks!”

Billie’s gloomy prophecy was fulfilled. The storm developed into one of the worst blizzards that part of the country had ever known, and for almost two weeks the occupants of Three Towers were practically house-bound.

It was good that the school boasted a well-stocked larder. Otherwise the girls might actually have gone hungry. And they wondered a great deal about Polly Haddon and her little brood.

“Suppose she hasn’t enough in the house to eat?” worried Vi. “Why, they may starve!”

“Maybe she used the gold pieces we left her to stock up when she saw the blizzard coming on,” suggested Billie, and the suggestion comforted them a great deal.

The day was approaching when those competing for the composition prize were to hand in their essays. Billie and Laura and Connie and Rose Belser and the half dozen other girls who had entered the lists were writing like mad – and biting their pens to bits – in an effort to get their essays in on time.

And in the heart of each was the fervent hope that she would be the winner. Only Amanda had no need to hope. She was sure! The prize was hers!

She had carried out her intention of copying her essay straight from the little musty book. So sure was she that her ruse would not be detected that she had not bothered to alter a word. And while the others worked, she smiled.

At last came the day when the finished essays were to be handed in, and all day long Miss Walters was closeted in her office with Miss Race and one or two of the other teachers, reading and tabulating the manuscripts as they came to her.

So busy had Billie been in rewriting a phrase here, changing a word there, that she handed in her essay the very last of all – just a scant half hour before the time was up. But she was happy, because she knew that she had given her best effort.

“I imagine we shall enjoy reading this,” Miss Walters remarked to her associates, tapping Billie’s manuscript with a thoughtful finger. “Billie Bradley has real literary talent.”

The result of the contest was to be announced the next morning in the auditorium and the prizes to be awarded to the winners.

When the longed-for, yet dreaded, moment arrived, the girls filed into the auditorium, the contestants near the front, and almost the entire school occupying the seats behind them.

Billie’s heart was hammering so loudly that she glanced about her to see if anybody else seemed to notice it. But the majority of the girls were babbling away too excitedly to hear anything but themselves.

Billie was surprised to see that even the girls who were expecting to hear their fate within the next few moments were talking – chattering away excitedly, to be sure – but still talking. As for herself, she was sure she could not have uttered a word just then if her life had depended upon it. She did want that prize so dreadfully!

“Cheer up, Billie,” whispered Vi, slipping a loyal hand into hers. “You’re not afraid of missing the prize, are you? Why, you couldn’t miss it if you tried.”

Billie did not say anything, but she gripped Vi’s hand hard. And she was still holding on to it when Miss Walters ascended the platform and a deep hush spread over the room.

“As you all know,” came the clear, sweet voice of the head of Three Towers Hall, “I have come here this morning to announce the winners of the composition prize.

“I and my associates have had difficulty in choosing the winning essays, for the reason that they are all so excellent. We are only sorry that we have not a prize to attach to each.”

A buzz broke out in the audience, but when Miss Walters raised her hand it instantly died down again.

“And now,” she said, “not to keep you any longer in suspense, we will announce the winners.”

Billie’s grip on Vi’s hand tightened till it hurt.

Then into the tense silence Miss Walters threw the bomb of her announcement.

“The first prize goes to Amanda Peabody,” she said. “Will she please step up upon the platform?”

CHAPTER XXIII – DISGRACED

For a moment there was intense silence while Amanda rose triumphantly and flounced up to the platform.

Then an amazed, angry buzz rose from the audience of indignant girls. Amanda, who was proverbially stupid, to have taken the prize from some of the brightest girls in the school! It was impossible – incredible! And yet it was only too true!

Miss Walters, with a few words of congratulation, handed the prize – a fine set of books – to Amanda, and the latter swept haughtily back to her seat, triumph in every line of her figure as she passed the other pupils.

She had beaten Billie Bradley at last! And her revenge was sweeter than even she had dreamed it would be.

But Billie, tears of anger and disappointment stinging her eyes, felt sure that she had not been beaten fairly. Amanda had played a trick on her, on the rest of the contestants for the prize, on Miss Walters herself. But, in Teddy’s vocabulary, Amanda had “gotten away with it.” The prize was in her possession.

“It’s a shame,” she heard in angry protest all about her.

“She never did it honestly.”

“Somebody ought to tell Miss Walters. She doesn’t know Amanda as well as we do.”

But Miss Walters had raised her hand for silence, and in a few seconds the angry murmurs died down again.

“I have the pleasure of awarding the second prize,” the principal announced, “to Beatrice Bradley. Will you step up on the platform, Billie?”

The second prize! She didn’t want the second prize, Billie told herself, when Amanda had come in first. To march up there on the platform with that girl’s gloating eyes upon her —

But Vi and Laura were pulling her out of her seat, pushing her out into the aisle – and while Billie hesitated Miss Walters had impatiently repeated her summons.

Someway Billie found her way to the platform, thanked Miss Walters incoherently for the fine volume of poetry which was the second prize, and stumbled back to happy oblivion among her schoolmates.

“It’s a shame, honey,” Laura whispered in her ear, generously forgetting her own disappointment in Billie’s. “But never mind, you got the second prize anyway – which was more than the rest of us did,” she added, with a little stab of regret at her own failure.

“And you would have won the first prize if it hadn’t been for that cat,” added Vi fiercely.

Billie pressed their hands gratefully and glanced for the first time at her prize.

“I’d like to throw it away!” she cried fiercely.

“Sh-h,” whispered Vi, for Miss Walters was making an interesting announcement.

“The winning compositions will now be read,” she said. “Miss Arbuckle has volunteered to give us that pleasure.”

There was a great clapping of hands as Miss Arbuckle stepped on the platform and smiled down at them. For the little teacher was a great favorite with the girls.

“We will read Amanda’s composition first,” she said, “as it has had the distinction of winning the first prize.”

Again there was tense silence in the Hall. The girls were agog with curiosity to hear this wonderful composition which had been written by one of the notoriously stupid girls of the school.

As for Amanda, she had not foreseen this event. She had not expected to hear her stolen composition read aloud, and before all this assembly of stern young critics. The prospect made her a trifle nervous, but her smile was as proudly triumphant as ever.

Her chief concern was with Eliza. For the girl was so white and scared that she threatened to give the deception away.

Amanda gave her a sharp nudge with her elbow.

“Cheer up, will you?” she muttered fiercely. “You’re not at a funeral.”

Miss Arbuckle began to read, and as she read the well-rounded phrases, the telling metaphors, the girls became more than ever stupefied with astonishment.

“Could it be,” they asked themselves incredulously, “that Amanda had remarkable literary ability that they had never suspected? Could she really have written a thing like that?”

The same thought seemed to be in Miss Arbuckle’s mind, for as she read on her brow became clouded and she paused now and then as though she were trying to recollect something.

Finally she stopped altogether, looked across at Amanda for a thoughtful moment, then laid the manuscript down and turned to Miss Walters. She said something that the girls could not catch, then hurried from the room.

This was something no one had counted upon. Amanda, her triumphant smile gone at last, quaked as she heard again the excited buzz of the girls about her.

Miss Walters’ voice rose over the murmur, clear and very grave.

“Miss Arbuckle thinks she has made a discovery,” she said. “She will be back in a moment, and until then I must ask that there be absolute silence in the room.”

Miss Sara Walters possessed that rare gift of authority that needed no raising of the voice or undue emphasis to command obedience.

Instantly the murmuring stopped and the girls waited in breathless silence for Miss Arbuckle’s return.

They did not have to wait long. A moment later the teacher reëntered the room, holding a book in her hand, the sight of which made Amanda’s craven heart sink in consternation.

The book looked like an exact copy of the one from which she had copied her “original” prize composition!

“Miss Walters,” said Miss Arbuckle in a voice which indignation made vibrant, “I am sorry to have to admit that one of the students of Three Towers Hall has been guilty of so disgraceful an act. But the composition that I have just read, the essay that was handed in as original by Amanda Peabody, has been copied word for word from this book.

“It is an old book that has been in my possession for years – was my father’s before it was mine – and doubtless the girl thought herself perfectly safe in copying from it. Here is the passage.” She had been marking a place with her finger, and now she opened the book at the place and handed it to Miss Walters to read.

What a hideous minute for Amanda! If she had been awaiting a death sentence she could hardly have felt more terrified.

To be publicly disgraced, to have all the girls laughing at her, gloating over her —

With intense gravity Miss Walters closed the book and laid it on the table. Amanda knew that her moment had come.

“Amanda,” said Miss Walters sternly, “will you please stand up in your place?”

Amanda stood up, conscious of a score of curious and contemptuous glances focused upon her. Her heart was beating suffocatingly, her hands were clenched tight at her side.

“You have been guilty to-day,” Miss Walters’ clear voice pronounced sentence, “of blackening the good name of Three Towers Hall by a most disgraceful act. But by your wretched duplicity you have injured yourself far more than you have injured any one else. You will go to my office. I will see you there.”

There was intense silence while Amanda, her head hanging, walked from the room. Then the eager murmur rose once more, but again Miss Walters lifted her hand for silence.

“I am sorry,” she said. “More sorry than I can express that such a thing could have happened here. Of course the first prize will now go to Beatrice Bradley and I will decide later to whom the second prize belongs. That is all.” With a little gesture she dismissed them and she herself walked quickly from the room.

Then the riot that had been suppressed so long broke loose and the girls formed into little groups talking excitedly and all at once about the dramatic turn events had taken.

Billie, the center of a little group of her own, was fairly overwhelmed with congratulations.

“We knew all along that you should have been the winner!”

“To think that Amanda should try to get away with a thing like that!” said Laura, disgustedly.

“She might have, just the same,” Connie reminded her. “It was just luck that Miss Arbuckle happened to have that book.”

“My, but I bet you’re happy, Billie Bradley!” sighed Vi. “I shouldn’t let anybody speak to me if I were in your place.”

“What’s the matter, honey?” asked Laura, regarding Billie’s sober face curiously. “I say, cheer up, old dear. What have you got to gloom about?”

“I was just thinking about Amanda,” said Billie, with all her sweet sympathy for the unfortunate. “I was wondering how it would feel to be in her shoes now.”

“Out, out upon such doleful thoughts,” Laura sang out airily. But Billie, who had turned toward the window, suddenly clutched her by the arm.

“Look!” she said, excitedly. “There’s Nick Budd!”

CHAPTER XXIV – TRIUMPH

Before her classmates knew what she was about or had fairly taken in what she had said, Billie had darted from the room and was flying toward the dormitory.

“She’s crazy again,” cried Vi. “Come on,” and she and Laura and Connie flew after her, overtaking her as she reached the stairs.

“What’s the big idea?” gasped Laura, as they ran together down the hall toward the dormitory. “What do you expect to do to poor Nick – sandbag him?”

“Something like that,” returned Billie, slipping hurriedly into her coat and hat and motioning impatiently for the girls to do the same. “If we can only get hold of him we may be able to frighten him into telling us where the machinery is.”

“Oh, and maybe I’ll be able to get my watch back!” added Connie, pulling a dark cap down over her fluffy hair and carefully adjusting it at the right angle.

“We won’t get anything if you don’t hurry,” said Billie, regarding her impatiently. “What do you think you’re going to, anyway? A party?”

“You had better put on your leggings,” suggested Vi, looking doubtfully at the rubbers Billie had pulled on over her shoes. “The snow’s awfully deep.”

“Haven’t time,” cried Billie, adding distractedly: “For mercy sake, hurry! While you girls are dolling up for a party, Nick Budd will be gone.”

At this dreadful thought the girls stopped fussing and followed Billie hurriedly down the stairs. They slowed down in the lower hall, however, for there they were apt to meet a teacher, and undue haste might be thought suspicious by one of these “unreasonable beings.”

At sight of Nick Budd, a plan had come to Billie. She remembered how terrified he had seemed when he had found Teddy and her in the cave that day and thought in his crazy mind that they had come to arrest him.

So she was going to take a chance of so frightening him with a threat of arrest that he would confess, and perhaps even be prevailed upon to lead them to the cave.

In case this plan should fail, she had not an idea in the world what she would do next. But the plan did not fail. It worked more perfectly than she had dared to hope.

They caught up to the simpleton just as he was sneaking around to the janitor’s entrance of the school, and the fellow shrank from them like a frightened animal.

“Wh-what do you want?” he stammered, his hands out as though to ward them off. “I haven’t done nothin’. Ye can’t arrest me. I haven’t done nothin’, I tell you.” His terror was pitiful, but Billie followed up her advantage ruthlessly while the girls stood by in admiring silence.

“You have done something,” she told him sternly, while he cowered still further back from her. “You’ve stolen things – lots of things. And we willhave you arrested – ”

“Oh no – oh no,” he cried out, fairly gibbering in his terror and slinking further back against the wall. “Ye’re tryin’ to scare me. I haven’t done nothin’, I tell ye.”

But Billie took him by the sleeve and shook him as she would a bad child.

“I tell you I know,” she cried, conviction in her tone that carried even to the poor muddled brain of the simpleton. “And I know where they are, too. They are in your cave, hidden away. Every-last-one-of-them!”

Of course Billie was taking a big chance, but the shot went home.

The simpleton stared at her for a moment out of his blood-shot eyes while his big mouth dropped open. Then he began to cry, great tears that ran down his grimy face and made crooked streaks upon it.

It was an indescribably terrible and pitiful sight, the poor silly fellow in his abject terror, and ordinarily Billie would have felt sorry for him. But she thought of Polly Haddon, and the thought gave her courage. Polly Haddon had suffered, and now if it was this poor simpleton’s turn, it was no more than he deserved, after all.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said, pulling at his sleeve again and speaking very distinctly. “If you will take us to the cave and promise to give back everything you have stolen to the people you have stolen from, we will try to keep you from being arrested.”

“You won’t put me in jail?” jabbered the simpleton. “You won’t let the policemen get me?”

Billie shook her head, adding quickly: “But you must take us to the cave right away and help us bring back the things you have stolen. Otherwise we will have you arrested to-night.”

They were hardly prepared for his sudden acceptance of the ultimatum. He turned, with the swiftness that had surprised Billie and Teddy before, and strode off through the heavy snow, the girls, after a minute of indecision, following.

“What do you suppose Miss Walters will say?” Laura whispered in Billie’s ear. “Do you suppose she will mind our running away like this?”

“I don’t know,” answered Billie, adding with a hint of premature triumph in her voice: “I don’t imagine she will say anything though if we come home with the knitting machinery models, the blue prints, and an armful of stolen things besides.”

“Oh, if I can only get back my watch, I’ll be happy,” sighed Connie, as she plodded along beside Vi.

“‘If’ is right,” said Laura, ruefully. “We haven’t got anything yet, you know.”

“Now who’s the wet blanket?” cried Billie gayly. She was feeling amazingly happy and confident all of a sudden. For had not she just won the first prize for the best composition? After that she felt that she could accomplish anything.

It was no easy task to make their way through the woods. Nick Budd trudged along sturdily, hardly looking at the girls.

“He may be simple-minded, but he is as strong as a horse – at least, when it comes to walking,” remarked Laura in a whisper.

“Many simple-minded folks are strong,” answered Billie. “Why, some lunatics are noted for their strength – I once heard my father say so.”

They had to pass over an exceedingly rough rise of ground and then down through a hollow where the bushes grew close together. Here the walking was very uneven and Connie gave a sudden cry of pain.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Billie quickly, and came to a halt beside her classmate.

“I slipped into a hole and I – I guess I wrenched my ankle,” and Connie made a wry face.

“Can’t you go on?” questioned Vi.

“I – I guess so, but I’ll do a little limping,” was Connie’s reply.

“We’ll have to be careful,” warned Billie. “We don’t want to hurt ourselves if we can help it.”

After an hour of trudging through the snow they came at last to the twig-entwined entrance to Nick’s cave. Luckily the simpleton had beaten a sort of path through the snow from Three Towers to the cave – a fact which showed that he had made frequent visits to the school – or the girls almost surely could not have made the trip.

Nick pulled aside the twigs that concealed the entrance and dived inside, leaving the girls to follow as best they could.

But the girls did not follow – immediately. They were no cowards, but the sight of that yawning dark mouth was enough to make them hesitate. And besides, there was a simpleton at the other end of that dark passage, a simpleton who might be mad enough by this time to do any desperate thing.

“You go first, Billie,” Vi urged nervously. “He is afraid of you – ”

But at that moment a dancing light flickered down the dark passage and immediately Nick Budd himself appeared, carrying a lighted candle which he carefully shielded from the wind.

The terror had not left his face, and he looked at Billie abjectly, like a beaten dog.

“Will ye come in?” he asked in a barely audible voice. “Or shall I bring the things out here?”

But as the latter course would give the simpleton an excellent chance to retain some of his loot, Billie replied firmly that they would come in and see for themselves.

Vi made a noise that sounded something like a groan, and Connie echoed it pathetically. But they joined the queer little procession just the same, following Nick Budd down the dark passage to the still darker cave, guided only by the flaring light of his one candle.

It was a dangerous thing for the girls to do. The simpleton, with the cunning of the mentally-deficient, might have decided to attack them all there in the darkness of the cave. And he would have had a good chance of doing it, too.

But the gods that favor the daring watched over the girls that day and brought them safely through their adventure.

Billie had evidently thoroughly cowed the simpleton, and his one thought was to get rid of his stolen goods as quickly as possible and thus evade the dreadful prison that loomed more horrible to him than death.

There in a corner of the cave the girls found the knitting machinery model and the precious blue prints, besides a great pile of small trinkets that comprised pretty nearly everything that had been stolen from the girls during the last few weeks.

They were no more eager to linger in the cave than Nick Budd was to have them. So they eagerly pocketed as many of the trinkets as they could – Connie snapping the precious recovered wrist watch about her wrist with as much joy as though it had been three times as valuable as it really was – and Billie, taking the candle from Nick Budd’s fingers, ordered him to carry the wooden machinery. She herself took charge of the blue prints.