“I’m lucky to get off to-night for the play,” Betty told them sternly, and in the pause before dinner she tried to concentrate her mind on preparing a menu for the next day. She needed to consult Bridget about several items, and as the tea-room was quite empty and she would only be gone a minute she slipped out without calling in Emily, who was busy in the kitchen, to take her place at the desk. When she came back she was startled to find her chair occupied by Mr. Smith, who had opened several drawers and was poking the fan-shaped panel, trying vainly to push it to one side. Betty stared at him for a moment in amazement, then she called out loudly, “I thought you had gone, Mr. Smith,” keeping meanwhile close to the kitchen door which separated her from Bridget, Nora, and Emily, for she had no idea what a man might do when you caught him robbing your desk.
But Mr. Smith was not even disconcerted. “Oh, no, Miss Wales,” he began easily. “Don’t you remember I haven’t paid for my grub? I’m not the sort of man to go off without paying my bill. I’d finished, and you weren’t here, so I was taking a last lingering look at your lovely desk. Seems to me as if there might be a secret drawer behind one of these panels.” He tapped the panels gently, one after another, with his knuckles.
“If we ever decide to sell you the desk, Mr. Smith, you can examine it as closely as you like,” Betty told him with dignity. “But now I must ask you to leave it alone.”
“Oh, very well,” Mr. Smith answered absently, still fingering the carved panel in the center.
As Betty watched him indignantly, a dreadful thought came into her head. The three checks that Eugenia had given her were on the desk. She had tucked them carelessly under the blotter, meaning to take them out again as soon as Kate and the others had gone. Betty did not stop to consider how useless they would be to Mr. Smith. She only reflected that he was certainly dishonorable, and probably dishonest, and that the checks were a sacred trust. Mr. Smith was absorbed in the arrangements of the desk. Betty slipped silently through the kitchen door and approached Bridget.
“I’m not sure, but I think there’s a burglar in there,” she whispered. “He’s at the desk, and he won’t get away from it. I want you to scare him into another part of the room, and then bar the door until I’ve found out whether or not he’s stolen anything. Do you understand?”
“Aisy,” returned Bridget calmly, wiping her hands on her apron, and seizing a poker and a rolling-pin she marched boldly into the tea-room.
“Scat!” she hissed into the ear of the astonished Mr. Smith, who jumped back like a frightened rabbit when he saw the poker and the rolling-pin brandished dangerously about his head. In a minute Bridget had him prisoned in Flying Hoof’s stall, in front of which she danced back and forth, waving her improvised weapons frantically.
“I’ve got him,” she called triumphantly to Betty. “An’ if he’s a burgular fur shure, I’ll kape him safe while Miss Emily do be runnin’ for the perlice.”
It took Betty only an instant to put her hand under the blotter, and there, just as she had left them, were the three checks.