BILLY'S STORY
The Lockwood twins were among the first of Short and Long's school
friends who called at the cottage the following morning for news of the
injured boy. The physician had kept even the department store detective
at a distance. The latter was an officious individual who would have put
Billy in jail at once had he had the power to do so.
The regular police, however, seemed to have their doubts about Billy's
complicity in the burglary of Stresch & Potter's store, and they kept
away from the house, only the patrolman on beat inquiring how he was. As
they had promised, either Mr. Belding, the jeweler, or Mr. Hargrew, the
grocer, was ready to go bail for Billy Long, if he was arrested.
Of course the boy denied the accusation made against him. As little
Tommy had said, he was certainly at home all the night of the robbery.
Whether any court would accept Tommy's testimony was another thing.
Billy admitted helping the surveyors in the lot behind the department
store. He understood they were surveying for a railroad siding, not for
a new street. Information of such engineers might be had at the offices
of one of the railroads entering Centerport--if the surveyors had not
been the burglars who later broke into the store and burst the safe.
"But those fellows were surveyors, all right, all right," declared Billy
Long, weakly. "And they were not the fellows I saw afterward----"
"After what, Billy?" demanded Dora Lockwood, eagerly.
"Yes; do tell us all about it," urged Dorothy.
"I don't know anything about their old robbery," said the boy, angrily.
"That man from the store kept coming here and threatening to put me in
jail. And I didn't want to go to jail. I guess I wouldn't have had any
worse time than I _did_ have. For when Laura found me I hadn't eaten
anything but a handful of berries that I could reach on that ledge, for
'most two days!"
"Oh, oh! How dreadful!" cried the twins.
"Guess I should have died," Billy said, more cheerfully, enjoying the
sensation he was creating. "And you bet that stuff I swiped out of your
boats last Saturday a week ago, just came in handy."
"Oh, Billy! was that you?" demanded Dora.
"The lone pirate!" gasped Dorothy.
"And all those whiskers----"
Short and Long laughed weakly. "That wig and whiskers I had last Hallow
E'en; don't you remember? I saw you girls a couple of times, too."
"And we saw you and thought you might be one of the robbers, after all."
"That's all right; I didn't do any robbing, except of your boats," said
Billy. "But there were two fellows over on the island who I believe
_did_ rob that store."
"No!" cried the girls.
"Yes."
"Oh, tell us all about it," urged the girls again, just as eager to hear
the particulars as though it were a story out of a book. And it _did_
sound like a story; only Billy Long was much too much in earnest to make
it up. Besides, he had learned a lesson during his weeks of "hiding
out."
"I was scart--of course I was," he said. "What fellow wouldn't be? That
detective from the store said they'd put me in jail till I'd told--and
I'd been tellin' him the truth right along.
"So I got up early that morning to go fishing. I knew where the white
perch were thick as sprats. I got Mr. Norman's boat; but I knew he
wouldn't mind. And I went over to Boulder Head. As I was starting to
fish I heard two men talking just in the mouth of the old cavern. They
were quarreling. I guess they must have been foreigners; I couldn't
understand all they said. But I got enough of their broken-English talk
to understand that one of them had hidden some money in a tight-covered
lard can, and part of the money the other fellow claimed."
Dora pinched Dorothy, and looked at her knowingly. But it wasn't until
afterward that Dorothy understood what her twin meant by _that_.
"So I got interested in them, believing that they might be the real
burglars, and I forgot the boat. When they went away and I went back to
the boat, the old thing had filled and sunk. You never could row that
boat to the island without bailing her out a couple of times; and I
ought to have dragged her ashore.
"So I couldn't get the boat up, and I thought I'd stop there. I had some
fishing tackle, and matches, and some crackers. I camped in the cave for
a couple of days, and had fires, and cooked fish. But, my goodness! fish
gets awful tasteless when you don't have any salt and pepper.
"There were berries," continued Billy, "and I managed to get along.
Then, I washed out my old bait bucket and at night I went down to the
pasture of that park superintendent and milked his old mooley cow. I got
along.
"One of those men was always hanging about in the woods, though, and
that kept me scared. But I tried to watch him. Didn't know but he'd go
to the place where he'd buried the money in the lard can. But he went
off after a while and I didn't see him again.
"Then I tried to climb that cliff to get some berries, and I slipped
down and twisted my ankle. I guess I'd have starved to death there if
Mother Wit han't found me and got me down."
This was all Billy's story; but when the twins got out of the house,
Dorothy demanded of her sister:
"What did you pinch me for? What did you mean?"
"You're so slow!" cried Dora, with some disgust. "Those two foreign men
Billy heard talking about the money were Tony Allegretto and his friend
that the police drove off the island. They weren't the burglars at all!"