Never since she had been Principal of West Haven High School had Miss
Gray been so upset as she was now. For the first time a scandal was
connected with her beloved institution. Every day there was a new
complaint.
"Miss Gray, I only left my ring on the washstand a minute, while I was
washing my hands, and when I looked for it, it was gone," said one girl.
"But who was in the washroom, Julia?" asked the Principal wearily. She
was disgusted and angry with this troublesome situation.
"Oh, all the girls, Miss Gray, but nobody saw any one take it."
Small purses containing lunch money were emptied of their contents and
put back into jacket pockets. Some of the teachers lost money and Miss
Gray herself was robbed of ten dollars, the wages of the old janitor,
which she had placed under a paper weight on the desk, in her own
private office.
The whole school had gone distracted, but the pilferer was too clever to
be caught.
Twice Miss Gray had summoned Mary Price to her office, but, after
looking gravely into the young girl's serious eyes, she kissed her and
sent her off on some improvised errand.
"I shall wait a few days," the Principal said. "After all, there may be
some mistake."
And it was then that she determined to try an experiment.
One bleak autumn afternoon a thick, wet mist rolled in from the ocean
and enveloped the town of West Haven so densely that it seemed like a
city floating on a bank of cloud. Only the dim outline of objects twenty
yards away could be seen and the muffled call of the fog horn at the
lighthouse on the Black Reefs sounded its dismal warning through the
mist.
Billie and Mary were hurrying arm in arm down the street in earnest
conversation. Notwithstanding it was after school hours, they were going
toward the High School.
"Do you think we can get it, Mary?" Billie was saying.
"Oh, yes, the janitor always leaves the door to the basement corridor
open until evening for Miss Gray and the teachers who sometimes stay
late."
"It was stupid of me to have left that horrid old algebra, but you know
I always forget the things I don't like. If Miss Finch hadn't called me
down so thoroughly this morning about my average in mathematics, I would
just let the lesson for to-morrow go, or if Miss Finch were only Miss
Allbright, or Miss anybody else but just a stern, animated mathematical
cube."
"She's all right if you know your lessons," said Mary, smiling. "It's
only the ones who don't study hard enough to suit her who call her a
human arithmetic."
The door to the corridor was open, as Mary had predicted, and the girls
entered, their footsteps resounding with a hollow echo through the empty
place.
"'I feel like one who treads alone some banquet hall deserted,'" quoted
Billie. "Could anything be more ghostly than a deserted school?"
"It's not deserted," said Nancy. "I heard voices somewhere, I am certain
of it, just as you opened the door."
They paused and listened for a moment, but the place was as still as a
tomb. A dim gas-light burned in the long corridor, on each side of which
were the arched entrances to the locker rooms of the various classes,
wash rooms and Miss Gray's own private office.
"It reminds me of the catacombs in this light," whispered Billie. "I'm
almost afraid of the sound of my own voice."
The girls slipped silently down the passage to the stairway leading to
the class rooms. At her desk in the sophomore study room on the third
floor Billie found her algebra. As she gathered together some of her
scattered papers in the not over tidy interior of the little one-seated
desk form, and searched for a certain favorite stubby pencil which she
claimed brought her good luck with her problems, Mary at her own desk
gave a cry of dismay and sat down limply.
"What was it, a mouse?" asked Billie, her voice sounding quite loud in
the empty room.
"Oh, Billie, Billie, no, it was not a mouse. It was fifty dollars,"
cried Mary. "I found it just now in my desk."
"Fifty dollars?" echoed Billie, slipping her algebra into her pocket and
hurrying over to her friend's desk. "Are you playing a trick on me,
Mary?"
"Listen, Billie," said Mary. "I'm going to tell you something. I believe
I am the victim of some kind of conspiracy. You know of course about all
of the things that have been stolen from school lately?"
"Yes, but I haven't had any losses myself; so I haven't talked about it
much to the others."
"Of course you had no idea that I was supposed to be the thief," Mary
went on, with a sort of dry sob in her voice that was more
heart-breaking to Billie than real weeping would have been.
Mary told her the story of Fannie Alta and the twenty dollars.
"I didn't tell it before," she continued, "because I was so ashamed
somehow, I couldn't bear for any one to know it."
Billie's heart swelled with indignation.
"The little wretch," she exclaimed, "you should have gone straight to
Miss Gray about it, Mary."
"I know it, and I am sorry now I didn't, but I thought she wouldn't dare
do it again, and she hasn't, but things are disappearing all the time,
and I believe she has told it around school that I took the twenty
dollars and all the other things. Nobody has said anything, of course,
but I can't help feeling that they are all whispering about me whenever
my back is turned."
"You poor, blessed child," exclaimed her friend. "And all this time you
have been keeping it secret and suffering in silence."
Mary nodded her head.
"And the worst of it is, Miss Gray suspects me too. But she is not going
to say anything until she is sure. I thought of talking to her about it,
but it would look as if I had a guilty conscience to complain before I
am accused."
"How dare any one suspect you of stealing," cried Billie, putting her
arms around her friend and kissing her warmly. "Would Miss Gray or any
one else be so stupid as to take the word of Fannie Alta before yours?"
"But nobody has said anything that I know of," groaned poor Mary. "It's
all in the air. That is why I don't know what to do. Suppose after all I
was mistaken and they didn't suspect me. Suppose I took this money to
Miss Gray and suppose she would think that I had taken all the other
things and was just returning this because I had lost my nerve and
suppose--suppose----"
"But, Mary," remonstrated Billie, "why suppose anything at all so awful?
Why not suppose that Miss Gray will listen to you and believe every word
you say. You are perfectly innocent and nothing on earth can make you
guilty. Of course Fannie Alta must have left the money in your desk,
though where she got so much is a mystery to me."
"But I tell you I am frightened, Billie. Such wretched things do happen
and innocent people often suffer for guilty ones."
"Nonsense, Mary, you must not lose your nerve in this way. Take the
money and go straight to Miss Gray with it now. I will go with you."
The two girls gathered their things together silently. Mary put the roll
of money in her jacket pocket and they made for the door. It was almost
dark now and the rows of empty desks down the big room were like
kneeling phantoms in the half light.
"Did you hear anything?" whispered Mary as they reached the door.
"I heard a step," answered Billie in a low voice. "It was probably the
janitor."
With a mutual impulse they clasped hands and a wave of fear swept over
them when they found that the door would not open.
"It must have stuck," whispered Mary. "Try it again."
But the door was locked fast.
"There is only one way for you to get back the key to the door, young
ladies," said a voice so near to them that they both jumped back as if
they had been struck in the face.
The person who had spoken had been standing flat against the wall at the
side of the door. He emerged from the shadows, as quietly as a shadow
itself, and in the twilight his long, lank figure seemed almost to be
floating in space. The small black mask which covered his face and his
whole appearance reminded Billie of a gruesome picture she had once seen
called "The Black Masque."
"You have a small sum of money there," he went on, "which you evidently
do not wish to keep and which I would be pleased to have and can use at
once. By a strange coincidence, I happened to overhear your
conversation, you see, and as the money appears to belong to nobody and
is exactly the sum I require I must have it."
Mary tried to speak, but her lips refused to form the words, and she had
no voice left. There was a sound in Billie's ears like the pounding of
surf on the beach and she felt quite dizzy.
"This is fright," she found herself saying, as a wave of homesickness
for her father swept over her.
"Oh, papa, papa," she whispered.
The man had seized Mary's two hands in one of his with a grip of steel,
while with the other he felt in her jacket pocket, took the roll of
money, pushed Billie roughly from the door, and with a laugh pulled back
the bolt; there had been no key after all. The next instant he had
slipped downstairs as softly as a cat and was gone.
The girls followed after him like two sleep walkers.
"We've been robbed, Billie," moaned Mary, giving her dry sob. "The fifty
dollars is gone. What shall we do now?"
Billie did not reply. She wanted to get out of that dark stuffy school
building, and breathe in some fresh air before she dared trust her
voice. It was good to feel the wet fog again in their faces as they
hurried up the street.
"Why not still tell Miss Gray, Mary?" asked Billie at last, but already
there was a feeling of doubt in her heart. It was certainly a very
unlikely sounding story, a robber in the school room.
Suddenly a figure loomed up in the mist. It was Miss Gray herself.
"You are out late, girls," she said as she hurried past, and for some
reason they both had an uncomfortable feeling of having done something
wrong.
Miss Gray hastened into the school building just as the janitor appeared
to lock up.
"Jennings," she said, "switch on the light in the sophomore study room.
I shall only be there a moment."
The janitor shuffled after her and turned on the light while Miss Gray
opened Mary's desk. She sighed deeply and shook her head.
"She must have got here before me," she thought. "It was cruel to tempt
the child at such a time as this when her mother is in great need of
money. I felt so sure she would bring it straight to me and that was the
only test I required. Oh, dear, what a crooked world this is. I am out
fifty dollars. But how will the poor child ever explain all this money
to her mother? She must have saved a good deal out of her pilfering----"
Miss Gray's disconnected train of thought did not bring her any comfort,
as she slowly descended the three flights of steps into the basement and
plunged into the mist again.
"At least I shall wait a day or two," she continued. "The child may
think better of it. She might have stopped me this evening, though. At
all events I deserve to lose the money. It was a silly, stupid impulse,
but I was so sure--so very sure----"
The mist had grown so thick now that the Principal walked very slowly,
keeping close to the fence in order to guide herself to the corner where
she must turn to go to her own home. A voice reached her through the
fog. Someone was coming up from behind.
"I have procured fifty, Señor, a curious lucky stroke, and from a
schoolroom, too--would you have believed----" the voice broke off in a
laugh.
"Be careful----" said another voice, and two figures passed Miss Gray in
the fog and were swallowed up again immediately.
"Is it possible," she exclaimed, "robbers in West Haven High School?
What does it mean? And I have been blaming that innocent child. What an
imbecile I have been!"
Her last resolution before sleep came to her that night was to notify
the town police in the morning and hire a detective to stay about the
High School day and night.
Imagine the surprise of the bewildered Principal, when, next morning
bright and early, Mary Price, after a timid knock on the office door,
came hesitatingly into the room.
"Miss Gray," she said, "I found this money yesterday afternoon in my
desk. I don't know how it came there nor whose it is. But it would be
better for you to take charge of it until the owner asks for it."
Mary spoke quickly, as if she had learned the little speech carefully by
heart. There was a strange expression on Miss Gray's face as she took
ten crisp new five-dollar bills from the young girl's outstretched hand.
"This is not even the same money," she thought, forgetting to answer
Mary in her amazement. "Am I losing my senses or is the child a deep
dyed villain?"
Mary flushed scarlet under the Principal's steady gaze, but she did not
lower her eyes, and there was not a sign of guilt in the expression of
the sad little face.
"Very well, dear," Miss Gray said at last.
Mary, as she closed the door behind her, was more mystified than Miss
Gray.
"I should think she would have shown a little surprise," she said.