“You have a small sum of money there,” he went on, “which you evidently do not wish to keep and which I would be pleased to have and can use at once. By a strange coincidence, I happened to overhear your conversation, you see, and as the money appears to belong to nobody and is exactly the sum I require I must have it.”
Mary tried to speak, but her lips refused to form the words, and she had no voice left. There was a sound in Billie’s ears like the pounding of surf on the beach and she felt quite dizzy.
“This is fright,” she found herself saying, as a wave of homesickness for her father swept over her.
“Oh, papa, papa,” she whispered.
The man had seized Mary’s two hands in one of his with a grip of steel, while with the other he felt in her jacket pocket, took the roll of money, pushed Billie roughly from the door, and with a laugh pulled back the bolt; there had been no key after all. The next instant he had slipped downstairs as softly as a cat and was gone.
The girls followed after him like two sleep walkers.
“We’ve been robbed, Billie,” moaned Mary, giving her dry sob. “The fifty dollars is gone. What shall we do now?”
Billie did not reply. She wanted to get out of that dark stuffy school building, and breathe in some fresh air before she dared trust her voice. It was good to feel the wet fog again in their faces as they hurried up the street.
“Why not still tell Miss Gray, Mary?” asked Billie at last, but already there was a feeling of doubt in her heart. It was certainly a very unlikely sounding story, a robber in the school room.
Suddenly a figure loomed up in the mist. It was Miss Gray herself.