Billie made a great effort to remember. Then, suddenly, the case of jewels loomed up in her mind. She had forgotten all about them.
“Billie, Billie,” called a voice from below.
“Yes,” she answered, looking over the roof.
“She’s here,” shouted Ben, from the top of the ladder, which reached only to the second story.
“All right,” called the one-armed man on the roof. “We have a rope here. We’ll swing down to the ladder.”
The next thing Billie remembered she was surrounded by a crowd of her friends at the foot of the ladder. The girls were weeping and her Cousin Helen was giving vent to hysterical expressions of relief and thankfulness. The wet sand felt cool and soft to the parched soles of her bare feet, and she tried to smile; but she really had quite forgotten what it was all about. Some one close by her groaned and sobbed alternately, and a sickening feeling came over her when she saw a girl stretched on a blanket almost at her feet. The girl’s hands were torn and bleeding and her pale blue silk kimono was covered with blood. Down one cheek was a long, bloody mark and to complete her grotesque and terrible aspect, at least a dozen little red rubber devils’ horns stood upright all over her head.
The next thing Billie remembered was huddling into her own beloved red motor car with the others, while some one took them somewhere, and all the time in her ears she heard a man’s voice saying:
“Where is that box of jewels?”
And her own voice replied:
“Under the ruins of the Shell Island Hotel.”