Amanda's jaw dropped and she sprang back while Eliza cowered behind her.
The former held an ink bottle which she had been about to turn upside
down in Miss Race's desk.
With a quick movement Laura snatched it from the girl's hand and held it
aloft triumphantly.
"Look, Billie," she said in a loud whisper. "Amanda was going to spill
this in the desk and then blame it on you."
Amanda made a quick dart for the door, but Billie ran after her and
pulled her back.
"Not yet," she said, grimly. "You'll wait till we're through with you or
I'll go to Miss Walters and report the whole thing. You had better not
try to get funny."
Amanda started to bluster, but on second thoughts decided not to. Billie
and her chums had the argument all on their side this time, and the
thought made her fume inwardly.
As for the "Shadow," her homely face was pale with fright, and she stood
motionless and scared on the spot where the girls had first discovered
her.
The plan of the two conspirators had evidently been to upset the
teacher's desk and then blame the whole thing on Billie. But how could
Amanda hope to prove that Billie had done it all?
Thus thought the girls as they rummaged through the desk in search of
some further trick. And then, they found it.
"Look at this!" cried Billie, holding aloft a little square of linen at
sight of which Amanda grew more sullen and Eliza quaked. "It's my
handkerchief with my initials and my laundry mark on it.
Those--those--girls--were going to leave it here after spilling the ink,
and when Miss Race found it she would of course think that I was the
guilty one. Oh--what shall we do to them?"
She glared at the tricksters while Amanda tossed her head defiantly and
Eliza shrank still farther back into the corner.
"But that would have been so silly," cried Laura, who had snatched the
handkerchief from Billie and was examining it eagerly. Vi, in her turn
was trying to pull it from her. "Miss Race would know that you would
have sense enough not to give yourself away by leaving your
handkerchief. Their heads sure are made of bone," and she favored the
girls with a contemptuous glance that was harder to bear than Billie's
anger.
"I wouldn't leave my handkerchief on purpose of course," Billie pointed
out. "I might have dropped it by accident, though."
"But how did they get the hanky," wondered Vi, wide-eyed at this example
of depravity.
"Probably stole it out of my pocket when I wasn't looking," said Billie
contemptuously, and at that Amanda made a show of defense.
"You needn't call me a thief, Billie Bradley!" she exclaimed, but Laura
cut her short with a flippant observation.
"Would you rather she would call Miss Walters?" she asked, which
effectively closed the girl's mouth.
"Let's make 'em clean up," suggested Billie. "I'd call Miss Walters,
only they're not worth spoiling her sleep for. Come on over here, you
two, and get busy."
"We won't do it," said Amanda, but as Billie started toward her she
quite suddenly changed her mind.
"Oh, all right," she said angrily, as she flounced over to the desk,
pulling the limp "Shadow" after her. "We'll do it this time. But you
just look out, Billie Bradley. I'll make you pay for this."
Laura struck a dramatic attitude.
"Look out," she cried. "The worm is turning. Let us nip it in the bud!"
It was all right for them to laugh at Amanda's discomfiture then and
treat the whole thing as a joke, but in the morning they were not quite
sure that they had done the right thing.
"I think we ought to have reported her to Miss Walters," worried Vi.
"Then she and the Shadow would have been expelled, or suspended at
least, and we would have had no more trouble with them. As it is----"
"Oh, don't be an old gloom hound," commanded Billie, seizing her chum
round the waist and whirling her about the room in a fantastic dance.
"They've never been able to do anything to us yet, so what's the use of
worrying?"
"Sure," agreed Laura, busy marking passages in her "Life of Washington."
"That's what I say. We're too many for 'em."
But in spite of their optimism, in their hearts the girls decided to
watch Amanda and her cowardly "Shadow" more closely than ever in the
future.
And the girls would have been put even more on their guard if they could
have peeped into the library one afternoon and overheard the curious
conversation that took place between two girls seated in a far corner of
the big room.
"I've got it at last!" gloated one of the girls, who was no other than
the plotting Amanda herself. Eliza, of course, was her inevitable
companion.
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the latter rather
snappishly. For, since the fiasco in Miss Race's room, she had not
entered into Amanda's schemes quite so whole-heartedly as she had
before. "I don't see why you should be so pleased about finding a musty
old book."
"Of course you don't see," said Amanda, patronizingly. "That's what I'm
going to explain to you."
She paused a moment, regarding the "musty old book" in her hand
lovingly. Eliza moved impatiently in the seat beside her and Amanda
grinned at her.
"You remember I told you I was going to try for the composition prize?"
"Yes," said Eliza crossly, adding with a frankness that might have been
disconcerting to anybody but Amanda: "And I thought you were crazy even
to think of it. You haven't a chance in the world beside Billie Bradley
or Rose Belser or any of those girls."
"I know I wouldn't as a rule," admitted Amanda, her small eyes gleaming
with triumph. "But with this book," she caressed the little volume
fondly, "_they_ won't have a chance against _me_!"
"And still I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about,"
snapped Eliza. "I wish you'd stop grinning to yourself and get to the
point--if there is one," she added under her breath.
"All right," said Amanda, too delighted with her own cleverness to
notice her shadow's bad temper. "Listen then, and I'll tell you just how
I came to think about it.
"I was rummaging through some books on the top shelf one day, trying to
find one I needed, when down behind the rest of them I happened to come
across this little old book of biographies of the great generals of the
world. It was covered with dust, and so old and shabby-looking that I
was sure it hadn't been touched in an age."
"Yes," said Eliza impatiently, as Amanda paused for breath.
"Of course that was before the composition prize was offered, so I put
the book back where I found it and forgot all about it. But now----" she
paused and the "Shadow" saw a gleam of light.
"And now," Eliza finished, "you think you are going to get material
enough out of this musty little old book to take the prize away from
Billie Bradley. I see."
"Oh no, you don't see." It was Amanda's turn to be impatient. "I'm not
going to try to write an original composition at all. Listen," she
lowered her voice to a whisper although they two were the only ones in
the large room. "I'm going to copy it from this book--word for word!"
For a moment Eliza stared at the grinning girl, pop-eyed. Then as the
daring of the thing sank into her muddled brain she sank back in her
chair and shook her head slowly.
"Don't do it," she said. "If they should find out----"
"But nobody's going to find out," cried Amanda, as gleeful as though the
coveted prize were already in her hands. "This is an old book, and
probably nobody in this place has even heard of it. Say, won't that
Bradley girl's eyes stick out when she sees me walking off with the
prize? Oh my, oh my! This is the time I'm going to settle _her_!"
It was just about this time that a furor was caused in the school by the
disappearance of articles belonging to the students.
The articles were small and seldom valuable--so insignificant were some
of them, in fact, that the owners never missed them until the report of
numerous other losses spread through the school and woke them to the
realization that they, too, were victims of the petty thief--whoever she
was.
For that the guilty one was one of their schoolmates there seemed to be
little doubt. For what outsider would care for such things as pencils
and erasers and old jackknives?
It was true that one or two of the losses were valuable. A gold-mounted
fountain pen for instance, which had been a Christmas present to one of
the girls, who lamented her loss with "loud wailings and gnashings of
teeth," as Laura described it.
It was when the excitement over this strange series of events was at its
height that Billie drew Laura and Vi aside one day and whispered a
startling decision in their ears.
"Girls," she said, "I've dreamed of that locked room in tower three two
nights in succession, and I've found an old bunch of keys and one of
them may fit. Are you willing to come with me? Or have I got to go
alone?"