GEMS AND MOSS AGATE
A week passed rather tranquilly, with Jane still presiding over Jack’s
room and Gloria still wondering what would happen when Mrs. Corday
would come back from her treasure quest.
No mention of the necklace episode had been made to Jack, who was now
progressing very favorably, and also getting gayer every day, according
to Pat, and prettier every day according to Gloria.
“There’s nothing like idleness to really make a girl look handsome,”
Gloria insisted absurdly, “caps and cushions are so wonderfully
becoming.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled Trixy. “You look all right in a smock and
standing.”
“Thanks, but I’ve done my share. You may don the smock, and here’s
the duster.” Trixy caught it on the way to her eye. “This is the
psychological moment for me to read dad’s letter over. I want to see
what he says about Honolulu brides.”
“They’re hideous. Just consult your geographical,” commented Trixy.
“Besides, I didn’t invite the girls in here to kick up all this dust.
It was your party.” But she continued to flutter the duster around
indifferently, and once caught the alarm clock before it smashed its
face desperately upon the hearth. “I may re-read a letter myself.
Mother expects us both for Thanksgiving, you know,” set forth Beatrix
Travers.
“I’d just love to accept, Trix. Everybody seems to be going some place,
although we are only to have a week-end. Jane may adopt Jack or Jack
adopt Jane, the way things look now. I never guessed I was putting my
own poor nose out of joint when I lent Jane out. I didn’t tell you,
Trix, I’m just doing it now. Miss Alton has written an elaborate letter
to my dad, saying a lot of foolish things about me. You see, she wants
to make amends for my lost essay prize. Not that I had really caught
the gay plunder----”
“I’m glad she wrote. It saves me a heap of trouble,” put in Trixy.
“It’s one thing to lose out fair and square, but quite another to be
blocked. You wait and see if Alty and Ray Sanders do not contrive to
run a little contest all their own. Then, you may drag out those poor
crumpled little sheets of paper that are smothering under the table
cover.”
“I won’t. I never want to hear of a contest again. Besides, just see
what a lot of fun we have had on the mystery story,” reasoned Gloria.
“I just wonder----” Trixy said seriously, “where Mary Mears will go for
Thanksgiving. She’s so alone----”
“Mary’s a queer duck,” interrupted Gloria. “I’m sure she’s trying to
avoid me for some reason. Every time I almost meet her she detours.”
“Can any one have hurt her feelings? She actually walked past me in the
lecture room this morning without lifting her eyes. Of course, she saw
me; I wonder----”
“And she hasn’t been near Jack since that first wild night. Do you
know, Trix, even Sam remarks upon her moods! He declared she has
something on her mind, which is worse than it sounds, from Sam.”
“Yes, she is plainly discontented. Yet most girls are, during the
first half year. That’s why all the queer things happen in that brief
period,” said Trixy, trying the wrong side of the couch cover for a
change and getting enough of the change in the actual process. “Yes,
Glo dear, we may be prepared for a real slump--after Thanksgiving. I’m
told the girls all settle down to the quiet life and depend upon hikes
and the gym for excitement.”
“I won’t mind,” replied Gloria. “The little mystery trunk and the
hoodooed necklace are quite enough for my first year. I hope it is
finally cleared up before the so-called holiday.”
“It will be. Didn’t you know Jack really does expect a visit from
Steppy?”
“No! When?”
“She didn’t say. Just mentioned it casually.”
“Trix, do you think we should have told Jack anything? Prepared her, I
mean?”
“Land sakes, no! Let the climax take care of itself,” moaned Trixy.
Which was really all the preparation either of the girls had for the
same climax which came upon them three days later, just when the
programme was being checked off for the Thanksgiving week-end.
“She’s come!” breathed Gloria, and Trixy knew she meant--Jack’s Steppy.
A premonitory fluttering betrayed Gloria’s high hopes.
“Yes, I know,” admitted Trixy, “and Jack just sent Pat down to ask us
in. Poor Pat looked left out.”
In Jack’s room they encountered the full blown Steppy, garbed, this
time, in chrysanthemum golden brown, with a glorious plumy hat
caressing her faithful sunset, golden hair. Her smile might also be
termed golden, for it lighted up her big shadowy eyes, and flashed
through every hidden line of her determined face.
She laughed outright as the girls greeted her, after Trixy’s brief
introduction. The burst of emotions was more graphic than words could
have been. It was dramatically with a touch of comic:
“The mystery is solved!”
“Sit down and gasp in comfort,” invited Jack. She was beaming happily.
“We got it,” announced Mrs. Corday briefly. “The little moss agate was
in the necklace, and it led us right to the secret box.”
“How?” asked Gloria, eagerly.
From the beaded bag Mrs. Corday drew out the necklace. She laid it
carefully upon Jack’s small table.
“See this stone?” she indicated. “That’s the agate, just as I
suspected. The clue was made by my dear husband from this queer,
innocent, little stone. The directions were in his lawyer’s keeping,
safe with our friend, Mr. Gilbert, the only honest lawyer I ever knew.”
All three girls were gazing, fascinated, at the little talisman.
“But how could this----”
“It is strange,” the woman interrupted Gloria’s query. “But like
everything else, simple when you understand. Here is the paper,” she
raised her voice to a tone of importance and sort of chanted from the
typewritten slip:
“With base of moss at north, follow left limb to the hickory.” She
paused dramatically. “As plain as the nose on your face,” she said.
“With base of moss at north?” repeated Gloria, puzzled rather than
enlightened.
“Yes. You see the moss agate has a tree veined through it, Mr. Gilbert
pointed it all out to me,” admitted Mrs. Corday. “You only have to lay
this down just as it would hang on your neck. Then, see this line?
That’s the left limb; you just follow that limb straight and you will
find, as we did, it points to a certain big hickory tree. Under that
tree the box was buried----”
“But how could you dig in this frozen weather?” demanded incredulous
Jack.
“Where there’s a will you can always find out how,” replied Mrs.
Corday. “We simply built a little fire on the spot and the ground
seemed glad of the heat, for it turned over quite agreeably, and we
didn’t have to dig down very deep either. And now, Jacky, who says I’m
crazy!” she demanded, fairly exhaling her prideful exultation.
“No one but ‘money grabbers’ ever did,” declared Jack. “They simply
wanted the commission on handing out my prize packages,” she smiled,
putting an arm affectionately through the golden brown elbow. “But tell
the girls all of it. You haven’t said what you dug up.”
“That’s the way I go. Always so easily excited. Well, you see, my
dear,” she turned to Gloria, “the hidden gem is a rare one, indeed.
It was in a sealed box, just as dear Philip said, and it is called
a Golconda diamond from the place in India where it was discovered.
The cuttings-it has forty-eight small facets all pointed together in
the one great diamond!” Her description was a queer mixture of the
technical and the possible, but there was no mistaking her claims for
a most wonderful diamond, unearthed from the roots of the protecting
“hickory” and traced through the almost invisible “left limb” of the
moss agate with “the base of moss at the north.” The woman was too
agitated to continue at once. Trixy filled the gap.
“What ever will you do with it, Jack?” she asked.
“Give it to a museum,” promptly replied Jack. “It has already given me
enough trouble, and I wouldn’t fancy it as a keepsake even for all it
means--to me,” she uttered the last clause reverently.
“You see,” again spoke friend Steppy, “the old Turk or whatever he
was, followed that diamond until Philip just had to bury it because we
were so far out in the mountains and he couldn’t get it to safekeeping
quickly enough----”
“I guess poor dad felt his illness was becoming serious,” broke in Jack
gently.
“Indeed he did, my dear. No one knows that as well as I do. And he
was so anxious about that stone! No wonder I acted like a crazy woman
trying to find it,” she sighed.
“Take your hat off, Steppy,” suggested Jack, offering to assist her
with the task. “We have all been too excited to think of your comfort.”
“Never mind hats,” replied the woman, probing for the pins and promptly
setting the big plumed headpiece upon the table like a decoration. “But
what I would like to know is, how this little lady got hold of the
necklace?” She looked quizzically at Gloria. “Who gave it to you?” she
asked earnestly.
“I don’t know,” replied Gloria simply. “It was left on my dresser
anonymously.”
At that moment a figure appeared, gliding its way from the screen that
hid the doorway.
“Mary!” exclaimed blended voices.
“Yes,” said Mary Mears. “I have come to confess my part in the curious
plot.”
Statuesque she stood before them, her ever pale face unlighted by a
hint of a smile, and her shadowy eyes like wells too deep for star
gleams.
“Mary!” gasped Mrs. Corday, incredulously.
“Yes, our friend, Mary Mears,” said Trixy easily. “Come sit down,
Mary,” she continued. “We are just having a little clearing up party.”
But Mary, tragically, remained standing.
[Illustration: JIM SAID AN OLD INDIAN THREATENED TO MURDER HIM FOR THE
“BEADS.”
_Gloria at Boarding School._ _Page 236_
]