Billie Bradley and Her Classmates: or, The Secret of the Locked Tower

They waited till the conspirators had had time to get well down the hall, then they too slipped quietly out of bed, pulled their nightgowns off, and started in pursuit.

“Sh,” whispered Billie. “Take your time. We want to let them do it before we catch them at it.”

When they reached Miss Race’s door they were surprised to see a light in the room. Was it possible Amanda had been brazen enough to turn on the light herself?

Cautiously Billie peeped into the room and saw that Amanda and Eliza were busily at work doing something to the teacher’s desk at the other end of the room. They were alone, so it must have been Amanda who had switched on the light. The girl was bold with the courage of stupidity.

Laura uttered a stifled exclamation, and would have pushed past Billie but the latter held her back. For still another minute she hesitated, then called to the girls softly.

“Now,” she said, and ran swiftly into the room, Laura and Vi beside her. So quickly and silently did they come that they were almost upon the two girls before either of them looked up. Then —

“Amanda Peabody!” cried Billie, her voice choked with anger. “We’ve caught you this time! Now let’s see what you were doing!”

CHAPTER XVIII – AMANDA’S REVENGE

Amanda’s jaw dropped and she sprang back while Eliza cowered behind her. The former held an ink bottle which she had been about to turn upside down in Miss Race’s desk.

With a quick movement Laura snatched it from the girl’s hand and held it aloft triumphantly.

“Look, Billie,” she said in a loud whisper. “Amanda was going to spill this in the desk and then blame it on you.”

Amanda made a quick dart for the door, but Billie ran after her and pulled her back.

“Not yet,” she said, grimly. “You’ll wait till we’re through with you or I’ll go to Miss Walters and report the whole thing. You had better not try to get funny.”

Amanda started to bluster, but on second thoughts decided not to. Billie and her chums had the argument all on their side this time, and the thought made her fume inwardly.

As for the “Shadow,” her homely face was pale with fright, and she stood motionless and scared on the spot where the girls had first discovered her.

The plan of the two conspirators had evidently been to upset the teacher’s desk and then blame the whole thing on Billie. But how could Amanda hope to prove that Billie had done it all?

Thus thought the girls as they rummaged through the desk in search of some further trick. And then, they found it.

“Look at this!” cried Billie, holding aloft a little square of linen at sight of which Amanda grew more sullen and Eliza quaked. “It’s my handkerchief with my initials and my laundry mark on it. Those – those – girls – were going to leave it here after spilling the ink, and when Miss Race found it she would of course think that I was the guilty one. Oh – what shall we do to them?”

She glared at the tricksters while Amanda tossed her head defiantly and Eliza shrank still farther back into the corner.

“But that would have been so silly,” cried Laura, who had snatched the handkerchief from Billie and was examining it eagerly. Vi, in her turn was trying to pull it from her. “Miss Race would know that you would have sense enough not to give yourself away by leaving your handkerchief. Their heads sure are made of bone,” and she favored the girls with a contemptuous glance that was harder to bear than Billie’s anger.

“I wouldn’t leave my handkerchief on purpose of course,” Billie pointed out. “I might have dropped it by accident, though.”

“But how did they get the hanky,” wondered Vi, wide-eyed at this example of depravity.

“Probably stole it out of my pocket when I wasn’t looking,” said Billie contemptuously, and at that Amanda made a show of defense.

“You needn’t call me a thief, Billie Bradley!” she exclaimed, but Laura cut her short with a flippant observation.

“Would you rather she would call Miss Walters?” she asked, which effectively closed the girl’s mouth.

“Let’s make ’em clean up,” suggested Billie. “I’d call Miss Walters, only they’re not worth spoiling her sleep for. Come on over here, you two, and get busy.”

“We won’t do it,” said Amanda, but as Billie started toward her she quite suddenly changed her mind.

“Oh, all right,” she said angrily, as she flounced over to the desk, pulling the limp “Shadow” after her. “We’ll do it this time. But you just look out, Billie Bradley. I’ll make you pay for this.”

Laura struck a dramatic attitude.

“Look out,” she cried. “The worm is turning. Let us nip it in the bud!”

It was all right for them to laugh at Amanda’s discomfiture then and treat the whole thing as a joke, but in the morning they were not quite sure that they had done the right thing.

“I think we ought to have reported her to Miss Walters,” worried Vi. “Then she and the Shadow would have been expelled, or suspended at least, and we would have had no more trouble with them. As it is – ”

“Oh, don’t be an old gloom hound,” commanded Billie, seizing her chum round the waist and whirling her about the room in a fantastic dance. “They’ve never been able to do anything to us yet, so what’s the use of worrying?”

“Sure,” agreed Laura, busy marking passages in her “Life of Washington.” “That’s what I say. We’re too many for ’em.”

But in spite of their optimism, in their hearts the girls decided to watch Amanda and her cowardly “Shadow” more closely than ever in the future.

And the girls would have been put even more on their guard if they could have peeped into the library one afternoon and overheard the curious conversation that took place between two girls seated in a far corner of the big room.

“I’ve got it at last!” gloated one of the girls, who was no other than the plotting Amanda herself. Eliza, of course, was her inevitable companion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the latter rather snappishly. For, since the fiasco in Miss Race’s room, she had not entered into Amanda’s schemes quite so whole-heartedly as she had before. “I don’t see why you should be so pleased about finding a musty old book.”

“Of course you don’t see,” said Amanda, patronizingly. “That’s what I’m going to explain to you.”

She paused a moment, regarding the “musty old book” in her hand lovingly. Eliza moved impatiently in the seat beside her and Amanda grinned at her.

“You remember I told you I was going to try for the composition prize?”

“Yes,” said Eliza crossly, adding with a frankness that might have been disconcerting to anybody but Amanda: “And I thought you were crazy even to think of it. You haven’t a chance in the world beside Billie Bradley or Rose Belser or any of those girls.”

“I know I wouldn’t as a rule,” admitted Amanda, her small eyes gleaming with triumph. “But with this book,” she caressed the little volume fondly, “they won’t have a chance against me!”

“And still I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” snapped Eliza. “I wish you’d stop grinning to yourself and get to the point – if there is one,” she added under her breath.

“All right,” said Amanda, too delighted with her own cleverness to notice her shadow’s bad temper. “Listen then, and I’ll tell you just how I came to think about it.

“I was rummaging through some books on the top shelf one day, trying to find one I needed, when down behind the rest of them I happened to come across this little old book of biographies of the great generals of the world. It was covered with dust, and so old and shabby-looking that I was sure it hadn’t been touched in an age.”

“Yes,” said Eliza impatiently, as Amanda paused for breath.

“Of course that was before the composition prize was offered, so I put the book back where I found it and forgot all about it. But now – ” she paused and the “Shadow” saw a gleam of light.

“And now,” Eliza finished, “you think you are going to get material enough out of this musty little old book to take the prize away from Billie Bradley. I see.”

“Oh no, you don’t see.” It was Amanda’s turn to be impatient. “I’m not going to try to write an original composition at all. Listen,” she lowered her voice to a whisper although they two were the only ones in the large room. “I’m going to copy it from this book – word for word!”