CHAPTER XIV.
THE CLOUDS PART.
Then suddenly, just as they were sitting down to the first meal in their new home, there was a knock at the door, and a policeman said: “I am sorry, Terwilliger, but you are wanted again.”
“What for?” the trainer asked, thunderstruck.
“Mysterious robbery up at Madame ——’s boarding-school,” replied the officer. “Mudge gave me the order for your arrest.”
“Go and tell Mr. Van Silver,” Terwilliger said to Polo. “He won’t let me go to prison again.” And Polo was off like the wind.
Mr. Van Silver came at once, and gave bail for Terwilliger’s appearance at trial, so that he did not go to prison; but this action of Mr. Mudge’s showed that he felt sure that Terwilliger was the thief, and threw us all into consternation. Mr. Mudge had called on Mr. Van Silver, but had unfortunately not found him in, and while he had not received the explanation which had been given Adelaide, one of his detectives informed him that Terwilliger had made arrangements to leave the country soon in Mr. Van Silver’s employ, and that he had lately been expending large sums in extravagantly fitting up an apartment for his family. It was the fear that his man might escape him, which had precipitated Mr. Mudge’s action. He felt that the case was a pretty clear one, and that the trial would develop more evidence.
Winnie was at her wits’ end. She had promised to produce witnesses proving that Stacey and Terwilliger were on the river the night of the Catacomb party; and in her desperation she wrote directly to Stacey in regard to it. Unfortunately, Stacey could think of no one who had seen them just at the time when the boys were known to have been in the school building, and Stacey’s own testimony would not be regarded as of sufficient weight to clear Terwilliger, as Mr. Mudge suspected Stacey of being the trainer’s companion. This rendered Stacey very indignant. It seemed to him that he had trouble enough before this, and he was desperate now. His father, Commodore Fitz Simmons, was a naval officer, a bluff old sea dog, who had married, late in life, a refined and beautiful woman. She was lonely in her husband’s long absences, and her heart knit itself to her son. Her husband had planned that Stacey should follow his career, but when he understood how this would afflict his wife, he partly relinquished this idea.
“You can have the training of the boy till he is eighteen,” he said to his wife. “If he does you credit up to that time, I shall feel sure of him for the rest of his life, and he may have a Harvard education and follow whatever profession he pleases. But if he takes advantage of petticoat government, and develops a tendency to go wrong, I’ll put him on a school ship, and let the young scamp learn what discipline is.”
Commodore Fitz Simmons had been away for a long cruise, but Stacey’s mother now wrote from Washington that the ship was in, and that the commodore and she would take great pleasure in attending the closing exercises of his school. She hoped that her son would distinguish himself at them, and that there was no doubt about his passing his Harvard examinations, for his father had referred to their agreement that Stacey must go to sea if he had not improved his opportunities. “And you know,” she added, “that I could never bear to have you both on that terrible ocean.”
Stacey could not bear the thought, either, for he loathed the sea, and he suddenly faced the fact that he had not been distinguishing himself in his studies and had no certainty of passing the examinations. This suspicion of being implicated in an escapade which had a possible crime connected with it, was more than he could bear. When he read, in Winnie’s letter, “Mr. Mudge suspects you,” he threw the letter upon the floor and uttered such a cry that Buttertub, who was studying in the room, sprang to him, thinking that he had hurt himself.