Two Little Women on a Holiday by Carolyn Wells (popular romance novels .txt) 📖
- Author: Carolyn Wells
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“I know,” put in Dotty. “Because just then, Mr. Forbes showed us a bracelet that had belonged to Cleopatra, and we all crowded round to look at that, and Doll laid down the earring to take up the bracelet. We didn’t suppose we were going to be accused of stealing!”
“Tut, tut,” said Mr. Forbes. “Nobody has used that word! I don’t accuse you of anything,—except carelessness.”
“But when it comes to valuable antiques,” interrupted Fenn, “it is what is called criminal carelessness.”
“It WAS careless of Dolly to lay the earring down,” said Mr. Forbes, “but that is not the real point. After she laid it down, just where she showed us, on that small table, somebody must have picked it up. Her carelessness in laying it there might have resulted in its being brushed off on the floor, but not in its utter disappearance.”
“Maybe it fell out of the window,” suggested Bernice, suddenly, “that window was open then, you know.”
Mr. Forbes waited over to the table. “No,” he said, “this stand is fully a foot from the window sill. It couldn’t have been unknowingly brushed as far as that.”
“Of course, it couldn’t,” said Fenn, impatiently. “You’re making no progress at all, Mr. Forbes.”
“Propose some plan, yourself, then,” said Dotty, shortly; “you’re so smart, suppose you point your finger to the thief!”
“I hope to do so, Miss Rose,” and Fenn smirked in a most aggravating way. “But I hesitate to accuse anyone before I am quite sure.”
“A wise hesitation!” retorted Dotty. “Stick to that, Mr. Fenn!”
She turned her back on him, and putting her arm round Dolly, sat in silent sympathy.
Suddenly Bernice spoke. She was not crying now, on the contrary, she was composed and quiet.
“Uncle Jeff,” she said, “this is a horrid thing that has happened. I feel awfully sorry about it all, but especially because it is making so much trouble for Dolly and Dotty, the two friends that I brought here. Alicia and I belong here, in a way, but the others are our guests, as well as your guests. It is up to us, to free them from all suspicion in this thing and that can only be done by finding the earring. I don’t believe for one minute that any one of us four girls had a hand, knowingly, in its disappearance, but if one of us did, she must be shown up. I believe in fairness all round, and while I’m sure the jewel slipped into some place, or under or behind something, yet if it DIDN’T,—if somebody did,—well,—steal it! we must find out who. I wouldn’t be willing, even if you were, Uncle, to let the matter drop. I want to know the solution of the mystery, and I’m going to find it!”
“Bravo! Bernie, girl,” cried her uncle, “that’s the talk! As I told you I must know the truth of this thing,—never mind why, I MUST find it out. But how?”
“First,” said Bernice, speaking very decidedly, but not looking toward the other girls, “I think all our things ought to be searched.”
“Oh, pshaw, Bernie,” said Alicia, “that would be silly! You know if any of us wanted to hide that earring we wouldn’t put it in among our clothes.”
“Why not?” demanded Bernice. “I can’t imagine any of us having it, but if we have, it’s by accident. Why, it might have caught in any of our dresses or sashes, and be tucked away there yet.”
“That’s so,” and Dotty looked hopeful. “It could be, that as one of us passed by the table, it got caught in our clothing. Anyway, we’ll all look.”
“But don’t look in your own boxes,” objected Fenn. “Every girl must search another’s belongings.”
“I wonder you’d trust us to do THAT!” snapped Dotty, and Fenn immediately replied:
“You’re right! It wouldn’t be safe! I propose that Mrs. Berry search all your rooms.”
“Look here, Fenn, you are unduly suspicious,” Mr. Forbes remonstrated, mildly.
“But, sir, do you want to get back your gem, or not? You asked for my advice and help in this matter, now I must beg to be allowed to carry out my plans of procedure.”
It was plain to be seen that Mr. Forbes was under the thumb of his secretary. And this was true. Lewis Fenn had held his position for a long time, and his services were invaluable to Jefferson Forbes. It was necessary that the collector should have a reliable, responsible and capable man to attend to the duties he required of a secretary, and these attributes Fenn fully possessed. But he was of a small, suspicious nature, and having decided on what course to pursue regarding the lost curio, he was not to be swerved from his path.
“Well, well, we will see,” Mr. Forbes said, an anxious look wrinkling his forehead as he looked at the girls. “Run away now, it’s nearly luncheon time. Don’t worry over the thing. Each one of you knows her own heart. If you are innocent, you’ve no call to worry. If you are implicated, even in a small degree in the loss of my property, come to me and tell me so. See me alone, if you like. I will hear your confession, and if it seems wise, I will keep it confidential. I can’t promise this, for as I hinted, I have a very strong reason for probing this affair to the very core. It is a mystery that MUST be cleared up!”
The girls went to their rooms to tidy up for luncheon, though there was some time before the meal would be announced.
By common consent the door was closed between the rooms, and on one side of it the two D’s faced each other.
“Did you ever see such a perfectly horrid, hateful, contemptible old thing as that Fenn person?” exclaimed Dotty, her voice fairly shaken with wrath. “I can’t see how Mr. Forbes can bear to have him around! He ought to be excommunicated, or whatever they do to terrible people!”
“He IS awful, Dotty, I don’t wonder you gave it to him! But you mustn’t do it. He’s Mr. Forbes’ right hand man, and whatever Uncle Jeff tells him to do, he’ll do it. The idea of searching our trunks! I won’t allow them to touch mine, I can tell you that!”
“Oh, Dolly, now don’t be stubborn. Why, for you to refuse to let them look over your things would be the same as saying you had the thing hidden.”
“Dorothy Rose! What a thing to say to me!”
“I’m not saying it to you! I mean, I am saying it to you, just to show you what other people would say! You know it, Dolly. You know Fenn would say you had the earring.”
“But, Dotty, it must be somewhere.”
“Of course, it must be somewhere,—look here, Dollyrinda, you don’t know anything about it, do you? Honest Injun?”
“How you talk, Dot. How should I know anything about it?”
“But do you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“But, DO you?”
“Dotty, I’ll get mad at you, if you just sit there saying, ‘But do you?’ like a talking machine! Are you going to change your dress for luncheon?”
“No, I’m not. These frocks are good enough. But, Dolly, DO you? do you know anything, ANYTHING at all, about the earring?”
Dolly was sitting on the edge of her little white bed. At Dotty’s reiteration of her query, Dolly threw her head down on the pillow and hid her face.
“Do you?” repeated Dotty, her voice now tinged with fear.
Dolly sat upright and looked at her. “Don’t ask me, Dotty,” she said, “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t tell me,” cried Dotty, in bewilderment, “then who on earth COULD you tell, I’d like to know!”
“I could tell mother! Oh, Dotty, I want to go home!”
“Well, you can’t go home, not till day after tomorrow, anyway. What’s the matter with you, Dolly, why can’t you tell me what you know? How can I find the thing, and clear you from suspicion if you have secrets from me?”
“You can’t, Dotty. Don’t try.”
Dolly spoke in a tense, strained way, as if trying to preserve her calm. She sat down at their little dressing-table and began to brush her hair.
A tap came at the door, and in a moment, Bernice came in.
“Let me come in and talk to you girls,” she begged. “Alicia is in a temper, and won’t say anything except to snap out something quarrelsome. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Bernie,” and Dotty looked as if at her wits’ end. “It’s bad enough to put up with that old Fenn’s hateful talk, but now Dolly’s gone queer, and you say Alicia has,—what ARE we to do?”
“Let’s talk it all over with Mrs. Berry at lunch, she’s real sensible and she’s very kind-hearted.”
“Yes, she is. And there’s the gong now. Come on, let’s go down. Come on, Dollikins, brace up, and look pretty! Heigho! come on, Alicia!”
Alicia appeared, looking sullen rather than sad, and the quartette went downstairs.
Mrs. Berry listened with interest to their story. Interest that quickly turned to deep concern as the story went on.
“I don’t like it,” she said, as the girls paused to hear her comments. “No carelessness or thoughtlessness could make that valuable earring disappear off the face of the earth! I mean, it couldn’t get LOST, it must have been taken.”
“By us?” flared out Alicia.
“Maybe not meaningly, maybe for a joke, maybe unconsciously; but it was carried out of that room by some one, of that I’m certain.”
“The idea of thinking we’d do it as a joke!” cried Bernice.
“But you told me about the joke Mr. Forbes played on you about the B. C. image, why mightn’t one of you have taken this to tease him? Oh, girls, if any of you did,—give it back, I beg of you! Mr. Forbes is a kind man, but a very just one. If you give it back at once, and explain, he will forgive you, fully and freely. But if you delay too long he will lose patience. And, too, you must know he wants to—”
“Wants to what, Mrs. Berry?” asked Dotty, for the lady had stopped speaking very suddenly.
“Never mind. I forgot myself. But Mr. Forbes has a very strong reason for wishing to sift this matter to the bottom. Don’t, girls,—oh, DON’T deceive him!”
“What makes you think we’re deceiving him?” cried Dotty. “That’s the way old Fenn talks! Isn’t he a disagreeable man, Mrs. Berry?”
“Mr. Fenn is peculiar,” she admitted, “but it isn’t nice for you to criticise Mr. Forbes’ secretary. He is a trusted employee, and of great use in his various capacities.”
“But he was very rude to us,” complained Alicia. “He was positively insulting to Dolly and me.”
“Don’t remember it,” counselled Mrs. Berry. “The least you have to do with him the better. Forget anything he may have said, and keep out of his way all you can.”
Mr. Forbes’ housekeeper was a tactful and peaceable woman, and she well knew the temperament and disposition of the secretary. She herself disliked him exceedingly, but it was part of her diplomacy to avoid open encounter with him. And she deemed it best for the girls to follow her course.
“I think,” she said finally, “the best thing for you to do, is to go for a nice motor ride in the park. It is a lovely day, and the ride will do you good and make you feel a heap better. Then on your return, stop at a pretty tearoom, and have some cakes and chocolate, or ices; and while you’re gone, I’ll have a little talk
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