CHAPTER III.
THE ROBBERY.
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.