“I know what’s happened,” wailed Babe. “Our beloved matron has found us missing and she’s hunting for us under the beds and in all the closets, preparatory to calling in the police. Never mind! we’ve got a good excuse this time.”
But the Westcott was not burning its lights to accommodate the matron. The B’s had not even been missed. Katherine met them in the hall and barely listened to their excited accounts of their evening’s adventure.
“There’s been plenty doing right here, too,” she said.
“What?” demanded the three.
“College thief again, but this time it’s a regular raid. For some reason nearly everybody was away this evening, and the ones who had anything to lose have lost it—no money, as usual, only jewelry. Fay Ross thinks she saw the thief, but—well, you know how Fay describes people. You’d better go and see what you’ve lost.”
Luckily the thief had neglected the fourth floor this time, so they had lost nothing, but they sat up for an hour longer, consoling their less fortunate friends, and listening to Fay’s account of her meeting with the robber.
“I’m pretty sure I should know her again,” she declared, “and I’m perfectly sure that I’ve seen her before. She isn’t very tall nor very dark. She’s big and she looks stupid and slow, not a bit like a crafty thief, or like a college girl either. She had a silk bag on her arm. I wish I’d asked her what was in it.”
But naturally Fay hadn’t asked, and she probably wouldn’t see the thief soon again. Next morning Emily Lawrence telegraphed her father about her watch with diamonds set in the back, and he sent up two detectives from Boston, who, so everybody supposed, would make short work of finding the robber. They took statements from girls who had lost their valuables during the year and from Fay, prowled about the campus and the town, and finally went back to Boston and presented Emily’s father with a long bill and the enlightening information that the case was a puzzling one and if anything more turned up they would communicate it.
Georgia Ames displayed no unusual interest in the robbery. She happened to tell Betty that she had spent the entire evening of the bacon-roast with Roberta, and Betty, watching her keenly, was almost sure that she knew nothing of the excitement at the Westcott until the B’s came over before chapel to inquire for “the runaway lady” and brought the news of the robbery with them. The “runaway lady” explained that she wasn’t even very lame and should have to go to classes just as usual. Then she hid her face for a minute on Bob’s broad shoulder,—for though she wasn’t lame she had dreamed all night of Lady and stones and briars and broken collar-bones,—and Bob patted her curls and told her that Lady was going to be sold, and that she should have been frightened to pieces in Betty’s place. After which Betty covered her scratches with a very bewitching white veil and went to chapel, just as if nothing had happened.