“Mercy me!” pursued the next-to-the-oldest Corner House girl. “If I ever find a battered ten cent piece again, I’ll believe it’s good until it’s proved to be lead. Just think! If I’d only had faith in that money in the old book being good, I’d have shouted loud enough to wake up the whole household, and surely somebody—Mrs. MacCall, or Ruth—would have kept me from letting poor Neale take the book away.
“Poor Neale!” she sighed again. “It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t believe that paper was any good—and those bonds. Of course he didn’t. I—I wonder if he showed the bonds and money to anybody at all?”
This thought was rather a startling one. Her boy friend had taken the old album away from the Corner House in the first place with the avowed purpose of showing the bonds to somebody who would know about such things.
Of course, he did not show them to Mr. Con Murphy, the cobbler. And it did not seem as though he had had time on Christmas morning to show the book to anybody else before he went to Tiverton.
Nor would he have taken the book away if he had been decided, one way or the other, about the bonds and money. Had he shown them to any person while in Tiverton?
If so, Agnes suddenly wished to know who that person was. If Barnabetta Scruggs could get into Neale’s room at the winter quarters of Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie, and could take a peep at the contents of the big book the boy carried in his bag, why could not some other—and some more evil-disposed person—have done the same?
Ruth had suggested it. She had said that a robber might have followed Neale O’Neil all the way from the circus and stolen the book off the porch of the old Corner House.
The same possibility held good regarding the removal of the money and the bonds from the book after Barnabetta had hidden it in the dining room closet. At that very moment the robber might have been in the house and seen what Barnabetta did with the book.
Of course, that was the explanation! Some hanger-on of the circus had followed Neale home to rob him—and had succeeded.
But, beyond that thought, and carrying the idea to its logical conclusion, Agnes pondered that Neale might have noticed that he was followed to Milton, and might know who the person was.