“Of course not. But I’d have looked everywhere and when I came to this place, why there I’d have seen it.”
“But Madeline and I looked there,” explained Betty in perplexity, “and the drawer was empty then. So if you haven’t put it in there since, some one else has.”
“Here’s another paper,” said little Dorothy, handing Betty a card. “What does it say? I can’t read that queer kind of printing.”
“Well, if that isn’t the strangest thing!” Betty quite forgot to tell Dorothy that the card said, “Mrs. George Garrison Hinsdale, Thursdays.” “Mary put that in there herself the day she opened the drawer—I remember she said we might lose the combination and then, years after, her card would be found there, and people would wonder what the things she wrote on the back could mean. See: ‘Perfect Patron, Promoter of Ploshkins, Candle-shades, and Cousin Kate’s Cookies.’ And that card most certainly wasn’t there either, when Madeline and I had the drawer open hunting for Eugenia’s theme.”
“You didn’t look very hard, I guess,” said little Dorothy wisely. But Betty was over at the desk, putting back the secret drawer with Mary’s card still in it. Then she went through the combination, and when the drawer came out it was empty again.
“Goodness, but this is funny!” she said, shutting it in hurriedly. “But I think I see how it happens. Now, Dorothy, you open the drawer, please.”
And when Dorothy opened it, there was the card. She had used the second combination that Madeline had hit upon, and Betty had used the first. There were two secret drawers, only one of which could be opened at a time. They were side by side, and it took close inspection to notice the slight difference in their positions. When Madeline had shown Mary how to find the drawer she had used the second combination, and it was that drawer that had stayed open all day and into which Eugenia’s ill-fated theme had slipped. But when Madeline had looked for the theme, she had happened to use the other combination, and consequently had opened the wrong drawer.
Betty hastily added a postscript to her letter: “Eugenia’s theme is found. There are two secret drawers in the desk, and it was in the other.”
Then she took Dorothy home, for it was long past her bedtime, and mailed her letter, which must reach Madeline without fail the first thing in the morning, so as to give her the earliest possible chance to countermand the ploshkin order and get ready to start for Harding. She reached the campus on her other errand just in time to hear the college clock toll out the last strokes of ten and to see the shadow of the Belden House matron and her candle stalk majestically down the length of the lower hall. That meant locked doors everywhere, so Betty went home and to bed. She dreamed that Eugenia Ford was throwing the Tally-ho dishes at Miss Raymond, who was standing on a table pelting Eugenia with handfuls of oats pulled from the big horseshoe over the fireplace. And through the door to the kitchen wound a procession of little ploshkins, who hopped along exactly as Billy and Willy Stocking had at the Christmas party.
She woke up later than usual the next morning with a queer feeling that something unpleasant had happened. In a minute she remembered, and resolved not to waste time in worry, but to get Eugenia’s theme to her as soon as possible and then devote herself to persuading Nora to postpone her departure a little.