Produced by eagkw, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) WITCH WINNIE'S MYSTERY [Illustration] WITCH WINNIE'S MYSTERY OR THE OLD OAK CABINET _THE STORY OF A KING'S DAUGHTER_ BY ELIZABETH W. CHAMPNEY AUTHOR OF "WITCH WINNIE," "VASSAR GIRLS ABROAD," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. D. GIBSON AND J. WELLS CHAMPNEY. NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION, 7 I. THE FIRST ESCAPADE OF THE SEASON, 15 II. THE CABINET, 25 III. THE ROBBERY, 41 IV. TROUBLE IN THE AMEN CORNER, 61 V. L. MUDGE, DETECTIVE, 76 VI. HALLOWEEN TRICKS, 96 VII. A STATE OF "DREADFULNESS," 111 VIII. IN THE MESHES OF A GOLDEN NET, 138 IX. "POLO," 161 X. THE CATACOMB PARTY 183 XI. A FALSE SCENT, 210 XII. THE INTER-SCHOLASTIC GAMES, 229 XIII. POLO IS SHADOWED, 265 XIV. THE CLOUDS PART, 304 XV. THE OLD CABINET TELLS ITS STORY, 330 XVI. THE MYSTERY DISCLOSED, 354 INTRODUCTION. For those who have not read the first volume of this series, "Witch Winnie, the Story of a King's Daughter." We four girls, Adelaide Armstrong, Milly Roseveldt, Emma Jane Anton, Nellie Smith, had been chums at boarding school. (Let it here be explained that although my name is Nellie, I am never called anything but Tib by my friends.) We occupied a little suite of apartments in the tower, consisting of a small study parlor from which opened two double bedrooms and one single one. Our family was called the Amen Corner, because our initials, arranged as an acrostic, spelled the word Amen, and because we were a set of little Pharisees, prigs, and "digs," not particularly admired by the rest of the school, but exceedingly virtuous and preternaturally perfect in our own estimation. This was our status at the beginning of our first school year together, and the change that came over us, owing to the introduction into our circle of Witch Winnie, the greatest scape-grace in the most mischief-making set of the school, the "Queen of the Hornets," has already been told. A quieting, earnest influence acted upon Winnie, and a natural, merry-hearted love of fun reacted on us, and we were all the better for the companionship. The greatest practical result outside the change in our own characters was the formation, by the uniting of the "Amen Corner" and the "Hornets," of a Ten of King's Daughters, who founded the Home of the Elder Brother, for little children. This institution was adopted by our parents, who formed themselves into a board of managers, but left much of the working of the enterprise in our hands.[1] The Home prospered during the first year of its existence in a truly wonderful manner. It was undenominational and unendowed. No rich church or wealthy man stood behind it. It was entirely dependent on the efforts of a few young girls, and on the voluntary subscriptions of benevolent people. But it grew day by day. Little ripples of influence widened out from our circle to others. During the vacation our ten separated, and at each of their homes they formed other tens, who worked for the same object. Every one who visited the Home was interested in its plan of work, which was to help the poor without pauperizing them; to aid struggling women whose husbands had died, or were in hospitals or prisons, and who could have no homes of their own, by providing them with a substitute for the baby farming, so extensively carried on in the tenement districts, by offering them, on the same low terms, a sweet and wholesome shelter for their little ones. Some wondered why we charged these poor women anything; why the _half_ charity was not made a free gift. But wiser philanthropists saw the superior kindness of this demand. The women whom we wished to aid were not beggars, but that worthy, struggling class who, overburdened, but still desperately striving, must sink in the conflict unless helped, but who still wished to do all in their power for their children, and brought the small sum asked for their board with a proud and happy self-respect. [1] This Home is a truthful picture of one really founded by a band of little girls--the Messiah Home, at 4 Rutherford Place, Stuyvesant Square, New York, which is aided in its good work by different circles of King's Daughters. One of our own members, Emma Jane Anton, on graduating at Madame's, became matron of the Home, assisted by dear Miss Prillwitz, formerly our teacher of botany, from whose heart this beautiful thought had blossomed. The Home was just across the park from the school building and we frequently visited it; but though we were all deeply interested in this sweet charity, it did not interfere with our studies or with a great deal of girlish, innocent fun. Since Winnie had become my room-mate we had lost much of the prestige which was formerly the boast of the Amen Corner, and after Emma Jane left the little single room, Madame, feeling that our influence had done much for Winnie, sent another of the "Hornets" into our midst. We had accepted and adopted Winnie with all our hearts, for her many lovable qualities, and above all for her genuine good fellowship and affectionate nature, but Cynthia Vaughn was a very different character. There was nothing but enjoyable fun in any of Winnie's tricks; Cynthia's were mean and malicious. We never liked her, and she openly showed her scorn of Winnie and of me, while she fawned in a hypocritical manner, striving to ingratiate herself with aristocratic Adelaide and with gentle Milly, who was the wealthiest girl at Madame's. We were no longer the best behaved set in school, and an acrostic formed from our initials could not now be made to spell anything; but the name "Amen Corner" clung to the little apartment, and Madame still looked upon us with favor. She knew that Adelaide and Milly, Winnie and I, were all, beneath our mischief, true-hearted, earnest girls, and she charitably hoped for great improvement in Cynthia. There was one person who did not believe in us--Miss Noakes, our corridor teacher. She believed that Winnie was filled with all iniquity and that Adelaide was far too attractive to be allowed the confidence which Madame reposed in her. It was Miss Noakes's great grievance that she could never discover the least approach to a flirtation in Adelaide's conduct. I believe that she fairly gloated with anticipated triumph when Madame engaged a handsome young artist to take charge of our art department, and that from this time she watched and peeped and listened with an industry which would have done credit to a better cause. She seemed to argue that as no lover of the beautiful could fail to appreciate Adelaide's beauty, therefore our artist must admire Adelaide, and in this deduction she was not far from the truth, but she ought not to have taken it for granted that Adelaide must be equally pleased with her admirer. How her espionage tracked us through several innocent tricks and capers, and was finally foiled by our beloved Winnie; how the great mystery of the robbery for a time brought doubt and suspicion between four dear friends who would, and did, go through fire and water for one another; and how, in spite of doubt and jealousy and trouble, our love and devotion for one another: burned brightly and steadily on to the end of the school year, and into the life beyond--this little book will tell. That the events which I am about to relate may be better understood, I subjoin a plan of the "Amen Corner." [Illustration: PLAN OF THE =AMEN CORNER=] WITCH WINNIE'S MYSTERY. CHAPTER I. THE FIRST ESCAPADE OF THE SEASON. [Illustration] "Girls!" Winnie exclaimed excitedly as we entered our study parlor after recitation, "I am wild with curiosity to know what they are doing in the hospital. All the morning, while I have been trying to study, there has been the greatest thumping and bumping going on in there. I wonder whether they are chaining down an insane patient, or if the ghostly nurses are having a war dance." "Why didn't you look and see?" Cynthia Vaughn asked, pointing to the transom over a locked door, which formerly opened from our parlor into the hospital ward. Madame had made abundant provision for sickness in the original arrangement of the school building. A large sky-lighted room had been set apart as an infirmary, and a little suite of rooms in the great tower adjoining as the physician's quarters. But it was rare indeed that any one was ill at Madame's, and when a pupil was taken sick, her parents usually took her home at once. So the doctor, having nothing to do but to hear the recitations in physiology, preferred not to reside in the school building, and the pretty suite of rooms, consisting of a parlor and three bedrooms, was assigned to us, and the hospital proper was used as a trunk room. Winnie always maintained that ghosts of medical students experimented there in the night watches on imaginary cases of vivisection, that corpses were embalmed, and shrieks and howls were to be heard, in the wee small hours, while phantom lights fumed blue on the other side of the transom, and sickly odors of ether and other drugs penetrated through the keyhole. We all laughed at Winnie's phantasms, but there were none of us so brave as to care to visit that room after nightfall. The trunks looked too much like coffins, and there were dresses of Madame's sewed up in bags made of sheets, and suspended from the roof, which had the uncanny look of corpses of people who had hanged themselves. It was broad daylight now, and we were not at all nervous, and Cynthia remarked scornfully, "Winnie has told us so many of her bug-a-boo stories that she has come to actually believe in them herself. She dare not for her life look through that transom to see what occasions the noise in the hospital." "You dare me to do it?" Winnie asked, confronting Cynthia with flashing eyes. "Don't, Winnie," I pled. "We have no right to peep." Winnie hesitated. "I told you so," Cynthia said provokingly. "She dares not look. It is only a lumber room. The noise was probably made by some cat chasing a rat around." "It would take a whole army of cats to make the noises I have heard," Winnie replied hotly, at the same time rolling Adelaide's great Saratoga trunk in front of the door. "There it goes again!" and as a loud hammering re-echoed through the adjoining room, she sprang upon the trunk. The transom was still too high for her to reach. "Quick, girls, something else," she exclaimed, and Milly dragged the "Commissary Department" from its retirement under my bed. The "commissary" was a small, old-fashioned trunk, which had belonged to my great-grandmother. It was covered with cow-skin, the hair only partially worn off, and studded with brass-headed nails which formed the initials of my ancestors. It was lined with newspapers bearing the date 1790, and was altogether a very quaint and curious relic. Its chief interest to us, however, lay in the fact that it had come to us from my home filled with all the good things that a farm can produce and a mistakenly soft-hearted mother send. There were mince pies and pickles, a great wedge of cheese, a box of honey, pounds of maple-sugar, tiny sausages, a great fruitcake, jars of pickled peaches, ginger snaps, walnuts and chestnuts, pop-corn and molasses candy, and what Milly called the _interstixes_ were filled in with delicious doughnuts. It was a treasure house of richness upon which we revelled in the night after the gas was turned out and we all met in our nightgowns, and formed a semicircle sitting on the floor around the register, while Winnie told the most deliciously frightful ghost and robber stories. Then, it was that the "commissary" yielded up its contraband stores and we ate, and shivered, partly with cold and partly with delightful terror inspired by the rehearsal of legends for which Winnie ransacked, during the day, the pages of the detective Vidocq and Poe's prose tales. Then if a mouse did but squeak in the deserted hospital ward, or the shuffle of Miss Noakes's slippers was heard in the corridor outside, we all scuttled incontinently to our beds, and Winnie snored loudly, while Milly buried her head beneath the blankets. Miss Noakes occupied a large room opposite the hospital. She was a disagreeable, prowling teacher and we had nicknamed her _Snooks_. The "commissary" being now carefully poised upon the curved top of Adelaide's trunk, Winnie mounted upon it, and found that it was exactly what was needed, as it brought her face just on a level with the transom. "O girls!" she exclaimed, "the trunks are all gone, and they are making the room over into a studio. And that handsome man that sat at Madame's table yesterday at dinner is in there hanging pictures. I wonder if he is an artist and is going to teach us. My! he is looking this way," and Winnie crouched suddenly. The movement was a careless one, and the commissary slid down the sloping cover of the trunk upon which it rested, striking the door with its end like a battering-ram, and with such force that the rusted lock yielded, and the commissary, with Winnie seated upon it, swept forward, like a toboggan, far into the center of the hospital. It was strange that Winnie was not hurt, but she was not; and before the astonished artist could quite comprehend what had happened, she had picked herself up, scampered back into our room, and we had closed the door behind her, and were fastening it to the best of our ability by tying the knob to Adelaide's trunk by means of a piece of clothes-line which had formerly served to cord the commissary. At first we laughed long and merrily over the adventure, but by degrees its serious aspects were appreciated. In the first place, Milly suggested dolorously that the commissary had fallen into the hands of the enemy, while Cynthia Vaughn drew attention to the fact of the broken lock. "However you girls will explain that to Madame is more than I know," she remarked maliciously. "_You_ girls!" Winnie repeated indignantly, "as if you were not as much concerned in it as any of us." "Indeed," Cynthia exclaimed scornfully, "if I remember rightly, it was Milly who brought the commissary from its retirement, Tib who balanced it so judiciously, and Winnie who dawned so unceremoniously on that strange man in the other room. I had absolutely nothing to do with the affair." "You were the instigator of it all," I retorted hotly. "If you had not dared Winnie to do it she would never have tried to look in." "That is like you, Tib," Cynthia replied icily, "to get into a scrape and then lay the blame on some one else." "I take all the blame," Winnie exclaimed loftily. "If inquisition is ever made into this affair, I and I alone am responsible," and then she uttered a little shriek and scampered into her own bedroom, for some one was knocking at the door, which we had just attempted to fasten. "Who is there?" I asked, with as much boldness as I could muster; "and what do you want?" "I am Carrington Waite, the new Professor of Art, and I would like to return property which has been most unexpectedly introduced into my studio, unless it is possible that the articles to which I refer were intended as a donation." We all laughed at this sally, and made haste to unfasten the door, whereupon Professor Waite handed in the commissary. He had a pleasant face, and there was a merry twinkle in his eye as he said: "I tried to bundle everything in, but the trunk collided with my box of colors, and you may find rose madder in your jam, while the pickle jar actually seemed to explode, and showered pickles all over the studio. I have no doubt I shall find them along the cornice when I hang the pictures on that side of the room. The doughnuts, too, flew in every direction. Some rolled under the cabinets, and a mince pie applied itself like a plaster to the back of my neck. A bottle of tomato catsup was emptied on one of my canvases, and made a fine impressionistic study of a sunset. I am afraid I stepped on the cheese, but I believe everything else is all right." He looked about him with interest, and asked, "Where is the heroine who performed this astonishing acrobatic feat? I trust she was not hurt. It must have been a thrilling experience. Is it a customary form of exercise with you young ladies?" We did not deign to reply to these questions, but I opened the commissary and offered the artist some of our choicest dainties. He accepted our largess, and retired with polite invitations for us to be "neighborly" and "to call again." "Not in just that way," I replied, and I entreated him, if possible, to repair the broken lock. He examined it carefully. "I am afraid," he said, "that it will require a locksmith to do it thoroughly, but I can make it look all right, and you can screw a little bolt on your side which will fasten the door securely." We thanked him and he was about to close the door, when Adelaide, who was the only one of our circle who had not had a part in the escapade, entered the room hastily from the corridor. "O girls," she exclaimed--but stopped suddenly as she caught sight of the open door and the young artist. At first her face showed only blank surprise, then, as she told herself that this must be a joke of Winnie's, who was fond of masquerading in costume, she remarked with dignity. "Really, this is quite too childish; where did you ever get that absurd costume? You look too ridiculous for anything----" Cynthia Vaughn shrieked with laughter. The artist bowed, but colored to the roots of his hair and closed the door, while Milly threw her arms around Adelaide, laughing hysterically, Winnie appeared from behind her door also laughing, and I vainly attempted to explain matters. "What a mortifying situation," Adelaide remarked, when she finally understood the case. "I must apologize for my rudeness, and I am sure I would rather put my hand in boiling water than speak to that man." "I am sure I only wish that I may never see him again," said Winnie. "Nothing in this world could induce me to join the painting class, and if there is one thing that I am profoundly grateful for, it is that I have no talent for art." CHAPTER II. THE CABINET. [Illustration] Winnie's queer toboggan ride was innocent enough in itself but it brought in its train many unforeseen circumstances, chief among which was the affair of the old oak cabinet. This cabinet stood in our study parlor, in the corner diagonally opposite the door leading into the new studio, and was used as a depository of the funds of all the occupants of the Amen Corner. The cabinet was always left locked and there was but one key to it, which was kept in the match-box, well covered with matches. Only we five knew its hiding place, or the fact that the cabinet was used as a bank. We had agreed that it was best to keep this a secret among ourselves--and it was so kept until the day after the robbery, weeks after Winnie's escapade. We intended to follow Professor Waite's advice and buy a bolt for the door, but what was everybody's business was nobody's business, and whenever we went shopping there were so many errands that we forgot it, or some other girl, or one of the teachers was with us, and it would have been embarrassing to explain why the bolt was needed. The door, as has been explained, opened outward from our parlor into the studio. Professor Waite had placed a heavy carved chest against it on his side, so that there was no danger of its flying open, and we had uncorded the knob and rolled Adelaide's trunk back to her bedroom. No one occupied the studio at night, and, though I spent several hours there during the day, I always entered the room by its corridor door, and we never thought when we locked our own corridor door at night how easily any one so minded could push aside the chest and enter our apartment from the studio. That the contents of the old oak cabinet on the night of the robbery may be understood, an explanation of the finances of the different occupants of the Amen Corner is possibly now in order. Adelaide's father and mother had gone West for the winter. Mr. Armstrong was an able financier, and he wished to make Adelaide a thorough business woman. She was eighteen years old and she might be a great heiress some day, if his wealth continued to accumulate, and he wished to accustom her to the management of money. He had given her the year before a model tenement house, built after the most approved principles, on the site of Richetts' Court, previously occupied by one of the worst tenement houses in the city. The new building contained accommodations for ten families; the sanitation was perfect; there were no dark rooms, but bath rooms, fire escapes, and provision for every necessity. A good janitor, Stephen Trimble, occupied the lower apartment and looked after the order and comfort of the building, and every month Adelaide, attended by one of the teachers, went down and personally collected her rents, and listened to the complaints and requests of her tenants. There were few of either, and as a general rule the pay was prompt, for the rent was low, and Adelaide did all she could to oblige her tenants, having a small drying room built for the laundress, Mrs. McCarthy, who had contracted rheumatic fever from hanging out her wash on the roof and so exposing herself to the icy winds, when over-heated from the steaming tubs. Adelaide had no stringent rules against pets. She caused kennels to be built in the court for several pet dogs, and added some blossoming plants to Mrs. Blumenthal's small conservatory in the sunny south window. Noticing that the Morettis were fond of art, and had pasted cigarette pictures on their walls and driven nails to suspend some gaudy prints of the virgin and saints, she had a narrow moulding with picture hooks placed just under the ceiling in every sitting-room. She patronized all their small industries as far as it was in her power, and interested her friends in them; having her boots made by the little shoemaker on the top floor, who was really a good workman, but had been turned away from a prominent firm, as they had cut down their list of employees. Her underclothing was made by the little seamstress on the third floor back. She gave each of her tenants a Thanksgiving dinner and a substantial present on Christmas Day, and only allowed those to be evicted whose flagrant misbehaviour showed that nothing could be done for them. From the income of this building her father had insisted that Adelaide must pay all her expenses. As Madame's boarding school was a fashionable one, the margin left, after the payment of tuition, to be divided between dress and charity, was not very large. Mr. Armstrong knew that Adelaide's weakness was a love for beautiful clothing; that she delighted in sumptuous velvets, in the sheen of satin, and the shimmer of gauze. Her regal beauty would not have been over-powered by a queen's toilette, but she adorned the simplest costume, and set the fashion in hats for the school season. Mr. Armstrong also knew that Adelaide was very tender of heart, and that if left entirely to herself she would gladly have opened the doors of her tenement house freely to unscrupulous and undeserving people; that she would have easily credited every woeful story, and have remitted rents when it would have been no real kindness to do so. He therefore pitted these two weaknesses against each other. "We will see what comes of it at the close of the year," he said. "She may become a grinding, close-fisted proprietress, screwing the last possible dollar out of the poor to lavish it on her own personal adornment, but I hope better things of Adelaide than that. It would be more like her, I think, to go to the opposite extreme--dress like an Ursuline nun and take nothing from her tenants; but let us hope that she may be able to strike the golden mean." It was a hard thing to do, and Adelaide went without a new winter cloak until nearly Christmas time, waiting for the Morettis to pay up an arrearage; and only consented to the turning out of a shiftless family who occupied the best apartment, and were three months behind hand, because the tuition for the first term at Madame's would be due in a few days, and a respectable wood engraver offered to pay two months in advance. It was hard, because she did not wish to spend all the money on herself. She was as interested as any of us in the Home of the Elder Brother, and longed to contribute more generously to it; but since these poor people were her tenants, they were in some sense her own family, and she felt that charity began at home. Often I know that Adelaide denied herself as really, in not being more lenient, as her tenants did to scrape together their monthly rental. She was a generous girl to her friends, and before her father had made this arrangement she deluged us all with her presents. Milly, who had unlimited credit at several stores, kept up this pernicious custom of lavishly giving presents of flowers and candies. It was hard for Winnie and me, who were in moderate circumstances, not to return them, but doubly so for Adelaide--who entreated her to desist, as we all did, but without avail. Milly was incorrigible. "You don't seem to understand," Winnie said to her at Christmas time, "that the receipt of a gift which one cannot return in kind is a bitter pill to a sensitive nature." "No," replied Milly, "I don't understand anything of the sort. Adelaide always translates my Cæsar for me. You help me with my algebra, and Tib as good as writes my compositions. I couldn't return any of those favors '_in kind_,' and they are pills that are not the least bit bitter to me----" "It's of no use, Adelaide," laughed Winnie, "we must let Milly have her own way. It is such a pleasure to Milly to give that we will sacrifice our own feelings and bear the infliction." Mr. Armstrong had given Adelaide an old oak cabinet, beautifully carved in the style of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, with architectural columns, caryatides, scroll work, and arabesques. The upper cupboard of this cabinet was used as a strong box to hold the funds of our little circle. The interior was divided into pigeon holes and shelves, and the door was provided with a curious key with a delicate wrought-iron handle. Adelaide had given each of us a compartment in this little safe, but when its entire contents were counted there was rarely much money kept here, for Adelaide had a bank account, and after collecting her rents usually deposited them at the bank before returning to school, paying all her debts by cheque. Milly, as before explained, had her running accounts charged to her father,--a book at Arnold's, at the florist's, the confectioner's, the dressmaker's, stationer's, etc.,--but her supply of ready cash was never equal to demand, and though she could telephone for a messenger and order a coupé at any time, she was always in debt to the other girls, and I have frequently lent her postage stamps and paid her car fare. Mr. Roseveldt had a horror of entrusting funds to young girls with no limitation of the way in which they were to be spent; he felt that in looking over the shop-keeper's accounts he knew exactly how much Milly expended, and for what the money went. But his plan was a mistaken one; and the perfect freedom which Adelaide enjoyed was training her in a sense of responsibility, while Milly was becoming unscrupulous as to waste, where waste was encouraged, and frequently ordered a coupé when the street car would have done just as well, or rang for a messenger to save a postage stamp. Winnie and I, the two poorer girls, were the ones who usually had money in the safe. Winnie received a moderate allowance from her father outside of her tuition, which he sent directly to Madame. As soon as the cheque arrived, she cashed it and placed the new, crisp bills in separate envelopes labelled, "Personal expenses," "Charity." She was very generous, but she had a horror of debt, and she never expended the funds in the latter envelope until she had received another remittance. As Winnie abhorred sweets, and would rather any day have gone to the dentist's than the dressmaker's, and as she had a supreme contempt for display of any kind, the charity envelope was always full, and she had usually a comfortable margin in personal expenditure to lend or bestow on others. Winnie had always been generous, but this quality of foresight had only come to her during the past year in her work as a member of the finance committee of the Home of the Elder Brother. My own case was different from that of the others. My father was a Long Island farmer, and my allowance, though meagre as related to my necessities, was liberal when compared with his own income. Miss Sartoris, Madame's former drawing teacher, had boarded with us one summer, during which I had sketched with her, and she had persuaded father that I possessed a talent for art and had taken me back with her to Madame's. So far I had easily led all the art students, and my studies, although abounding in faults, presumptuous and immature, were considered by the school as something quite remarkable. During the past summer a young man of engaging address, and otherwise irreproachable honesty, had stolen our beloved teacher, and Miss Sartoris, now Mrs. Stillman, was known to Madame's no more. When the school reorganized in the fall, Madame engaged me to take charge of the art department, temporarily, until she could provide herself with a more competent instructor. We had a small, crowded studio, with a poor light, but the class was large. I did the best I could, but we sorely needed ampler accommodations, and a head whose ability in his profession should be unquestioned. Both were now provided. Carrington Waite was a young artist fresh from the _École des Beaux Arts_ at Paris, and he brought to us the training traditions of the schools, and the latest European ideas in art. There were very few girls in the school sufficiently advanced to understand his instruction, but they flocked into the studio and listened with undisguised admiration to words that might as well have been uttered in an unknown tongue. Poor little Milly gazed at him in a rapt, adoring way, without ever comprehending what he said. The tears came to her eyes and rolled swiftly down her cheeks when he told her that it was manifestly absurd to draw a full face seen from the front with its nose in profile, but she smiled a brave little quiver of a smile while he reviled her work, and thanked him as though he had uttered the most fulsome compliments. Even Winnie had felt the wave of influence and joined the class in spite of her assertion that she had no taste for art and never wished to see Professor Waite again. Only Adelaide held firmly out and would none of him. Winnie was not at all afraid of the Professor, and seemed to devote herself especially to making his life miserable. When he informed her that she must join the "preparatory antique" section and draw in charcoal, she calmly explained that she "perfectly loathed" casts, and she had purchased an outfit of oil paints and intended to devote herself at once to color. Strange to say, Professor Waite humored her and gave her some of his landscape studies to copy. She was never contented with reproducing these faithfully, but always "improved" upon them, as she audaciously expressed it. It was a common thing for Professor Waite to remark, when he sat down before Winnie's easel, "Well, this is about the worst atrocity you have yet committed." Winnie, standing behind him, would make eyes at the rest of the girls, and remark penitently, "I am very sorry." "You look sorry," Professor Waite replied, on one occasion. "I don't see how you can tell how I look," Winnie answered, "when you are sitting with your back to me." I do not know whether Milly's denseness or Winnie's impudence was the more irritating to Professor Waite. Winnie resented his severity to Milly and was always more provoking whenever he had grieved her pet and left her sobbing in a mire of charcoal and tears. "You give me more trouble than a three-week's-old baby," Professor Waite had remarked to poor Milly, and Winnie had retorted spitefully, "I wish you had to take care of one--I guess you would find a difference." Winnie's sauciness and Milly's dulness, combined with that of many of his other pupils, drove the Professor to despair after a week's trial. He told Madame, as I learned later, that he must give up the position, as her pupils were all "too hopelessly elementary." Madame was disappointed. Her art department had always been an attractive feature, and since the name of Professor Carrington Waite, late of the _Académie des Beaux Arts_, had appeared in her circulars, many had joined the school purely for the sake of the studio instruction. Madame explained this to the young artist. He ran his fingers through his hair in despair. "Of what manner of use is it for me to remain?" he asked. "There is only one pupil sufficiently advanced to gain anything from my instruction, and that is Miss Smith. The others made as much advance, perhaps more, under her teaching as they have under mine." A happy thought came to Madame. "If I engage Miss Smith as your assistant, Professor Waite, perhaps she can translate your ideas into terms which will be intelligible by the students of lower intelligence or advancement, and possibly she can so enlighten some of them that they can profit later by your personal teaching." This plan struck Professor Waite as practicable. He now only visited the studio for an hour each morning, during which time he criticised the work which had been done under my supervision during the previous day. The new arrangement was an excellent one for me, for I profited by all his remarks, listening to them with the keenest attention, and thus received thirty lessons during the hour instead of one. As I had but three other studies, and these were in the senior class, it was possible for me to give the necessary time by preparing all of my lessons in the evening. It was unremitting, incessant work, but my health was excellent, and art was my supreme delight. Moreover, Madame had offered me a salary of three hundred dollars beyond my school expenses, and it was perfect joy to be able to relieve father of this burden. I had a high ambition to go abroad some day and study art in Paris, and I wished to save as much as possible of my salary toward this purpose. I had the lower compartment in the safe, and here I laid away every dollar that I could spare, limiting myself in everything but my subscription to the Home of the Elder Brother; but for this outlet I would have grown niggardly and avaricious. The same charity which made Winnie prudently retrench her propensity to lavish expenditure, and take thought carefully for the morrow, kept me from utter selfishness and penuriousness by keeping one channel of generous giving open and pulsing freely toward others. Cynthia Vaughn's affairs were kept closely to herself. We sometimes fancied that she pretended to greater wealth and consequence than she really possessed. Certainly, if the sums of which she frequently spoke of receiving were at her disposal she was a veritable miser; for her subscription to the Home was the smallest of any girl in the King's Daughters' Ten; the presents which she ostentatiously bestowed upon Adelaide and Milly were cheap though showy, as was her own clothing. The treasures which she committed to the cabinet safe were carefully locked in a small japanned tin box, the key of which she kept in her pocket-book, and she was the only one of us whose belongings within the safe were so protected. We had perfect confidence in one another, and our funds lay open to the observation or handling of any one possessing the pass key in the match box. It is needless to say that up to the night of the robbery our security had been inviolate. CHAPTER III. THE ROBBERY. [Illustration] Adelaide led the school in more respects than in the style of hats, and in the Amen Corner she reigned as absolute queen. It may seem strange that this was so, for Winnie was the genius of our coterie. She was perhaps too active and restless. She seemed born to be a leader, but the leader of a revolt, while Adelaide had the calm assurance of a princess who had no need to assert her rights, but to whom allegiance came as a matter of course. Even Winnie was her loyal subject and delighted in being her prime minister. I have spoken of Winnie's fondness for reading and telling detective stories. It really seemed as if in so doing she was preparing us for the events which followed, and the time when every one of us felt that she was a special detective charged with the mission of finding a clue to a great and sorrowful mystery. It all came about through the robbery. On the eve of my birthday it so happened that there was an unusual amount of money in the little safe. Adelaide had returned from collecting her rents too late to deposit her funds in the bank. She looked very much relieved as she slipped a roll of bills, amounting to nearly one hundred dollars, into her pigeon-hole, and turning the key, deposited it in the match safe. Winnie had that morning cashed a check just received from her father, and had brought back from the bank some crisp, new notes, with which she filled her envelopes for the coming month. Cynthia had ostentatiously and yet mysteriously dropped some silver dollars into her cash box, and even Milly had laid aside an unwonted sum, for her father had called at the school and contrary to his usual custom had given her five bright ten-dollar gold pieces. Milly seemed very happy as she slipped them into her snakeskin and tucked it into her own particular corner of the safe. "Unlimited pocket money this month, eh! Milly?" I asked. Milly laughed and shook her head. "Don't know that I am obliged to account to you for everything," she said, saucily, but the sting was taken out of the speech by the kiss with which it was immediately followed, and I more than half suspected that Milly intended one of those gold pieces as a birthday present for me. Late in the evening I counted over my own hoard. We were all in the study parlor, with the exception of Winnie, and as I counted I looked up and saw that Adelaide and Milly were regarding me with interest, though their glances instantly fell to the books which they had apparently been studying. "How much have you, Tib?" Adelaide asked; "enough yet to buy the steamer ticket for the ocean passage?" "No," I replied, "only forty-seven dollars as yet, but I hope to make it before the close of school." "Of course you will," Milly replied reassuringly. Cynthia laughed raspingly. "You have almost enough now, if you go in the steerage," she sneered. Adelaide suddenly threw a bit of drawn linen work belonging to Cynthia over the money, which I had spread out in the chair before me. "What are you doing with my embroidery?" Cynthia snapped. "Did you mistake it for a dust rag?" "Natural mistake," Milly giggled. Adelaide lifted her finger warningly. "Hush!" she said, "I saw a face at the transom; some one was looking in from the studio." Milly turned pale and clutched my hand, and we all looked at the transom with straining eyes. It was almost dark in the studio and for a few moments we saw nothing but some one was moving about, for we heard cautious steps, and a creaking sound just the other side of the door. Presently a hat cautiously lifted itself into view through the transom. It was a broad-brimmed, soft felt hat of the Rembrandt style, which Professor Waite sometimes wore. It moved about silently from one side of the transom to the other, descended, and appeared again. "I never thought that Professor Waite would peep or listen," Cynthia whispered. "He would not," I replied aloud. "He must be at work there hanging pictures or doing something else of the sort." "Then he would make more noise," Cynthia suggested, as the hat continued its stealthy movements. "It may be some one else who has put on the Professor's hat as a disguise," Milly gasped. "That was the reason I covered up the money," Adelaide replied, in a low voice. "You had better put it away, Tib." I hastily bundled my money into the safe and locked the door, and we sat for some moments quietly watching the transom, but the spectre did not come again. Winnie entered a few moments later and seemed greatly interested by our accounts of the incident. "Do you suppose that it could have been one of that band of Italian bravos who has climbed up on the fire-escape and who intends to murder us?" she asked with an assumption of terror. "Hush," I whispered, pulling her dress, and pointing to Milly whose eyes were staring with fright. "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Winnie; "can't you tell when I'm joking? It was Professor Waite. Of course it was Professor Waite. He has been in love with Adelaide ever since she complimented him on his appearance at their first meeting. He is dying for a glimpse at her fair face, and as she won't join his painting class he relieves his yearning heart by gazing over the transom." There was more joking, and Milly's fears were as quickly quieted as they had been raised. Professor Waite had undoubtedly been at work in the studio, I insisted, and I knocked on the door and called his name. No answer, and I tried to open the door, but the chest held it firmly in place. "Shall I look over the transom?" I asked. "For pity's sake do not repeat Winnie's experience," Adelaide begged. "Then I will look in by the corridor door," I said resolutely, and I stepped down the hall and into the studio. The door was open, so was Miss Noakes's door just opposite, and that watchful lady sat rocking and reading beside her little centre table. She was not too much absorbed, however, to give me a keen questioning glance--but she said nothing, for as assistant teacher in art I had a perfect right to frequent the studio. The moon was shining in clearly through the great window, and every object was distinctly visible, but there was no one in the room. I opened the door leading to the turret staircase and listened; all was silent, and I screwed up my courage and descended, finding the door at the foot safely locked. The great Rembrandt hat lay on the chest in front of our door, and the Professor's mahl-stick, or long support on which he rested his arm when painting, leaned beside it. I could not see any change in the disposition of the pictures on the wall, or other indications of what the Professor had been doing, if indeed it was the Professor, and I did not know of his ever before visiting the studio at that hour. As I came out I noticed that Miss Noakes was still rocking before her open door, her slits of eyes glancing sharply up. "Have you seen any one go into the studio lately?" I asked. "No one has passed through the corridor since the beginning of study hour, with the exception of Miss Winifred De Witt." "Then this door must have been open all the time, and you have seen no one in the studio?" "I have observed no one. Why do you ask?" "We thought we saw the shadow of a man on the transom." "Nonsense--it is silly to be frightened at nothing. It was probably Professor Waite. If you young ladies would interest yourselves less in the movements of that young man it would be much more becoming in you." I turned away quickly, not relishing her tone, and looked at the corridor window, which opened on the balcony of the fire escape. It was securely fastened. I was puzzled, but did not wish to alarm Milly, and I now reported only what seemed to me the favorable aspects of the case. No one there, all quiet and in order; lower turret door opening on the street, and the corridor window opening on the balcony, both locked, showing that no one could have come up the stairs or the fire escape. Miss Noakes, on guard, had seen no one enter the studio. Of course it must have been Professor Waite. "Of course," Winnie echoed. "Tib knows him too well to be mistaken even when she only sees him through a glass darkly. But think what that devotion must be, which leads a man to keep guard before his lady's door at night," and Winnie shouldered an umbrella and paced back and forward, singing in a deep bass voice, "Thy Sentinel am I." Winnie was irresistible and we all laughed merrily at her pranks. But for all that I locked the cabinet with unusual care that night and Adelaide tried the door afterward to see that it was securely fastened. While doing so, she noticed something which we had not hitherto discovered--a little steel ornament like a nail head at the foot of one of the columns. Touching this, a small shelf shot forward. It had evidently been intended for a writing table, for it was ink-stained. Adelaide pushed it easily back into its place and its edge formed one of the three moldings which formed the base of the upper division of the cabinet. "That is a very convenient little arrangement," Adelaide said. "I wonder that I have never noticed it before." I soon fell asleep, and slept long and dreamlessly. I awoke at last with an uneasy feeling of cold. It was quite dark, and putting out my hand I found that Winnie's place at my side was vacant. I started up alarmed, and called her name. There was a little pause, during which I stumbled out of bed and groped vainly for a candle, which usually stood on a stand at the head of the bed. Not finding it, I noticed a beam of light streaming from beneath the closed door leading into the study-parlor, and I remembered vividly that when I went to bed I had left that door open, as I always did, for more perfect ventilation. I stood hesitating, vaguely alarmed, when the door was opened from the parlor side and Winnie stood before me holding a lighted candle--her face white as that of a spirit. "How you frightened me!" I exclaimed. "What is the matter?" "Nothing, I merely went out to see whether the door into the corridor was locked. I was lying awake, and I could not remember seeing any one lock it." She spoke mechanically, and her voice sounded strange and hollow. "Why, you did
{'title': "Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet: The Story of a King's Daughter", 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}