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

“Oh, and maybe I’ll be able to get my watch back!” added Connie, pulling a dark cap down over her fluffy hair and carefully adjusting it at the right angle.

“We won’t get anything if you don’t hurry,” said Billie, regarding her impatiently. “What do you think you’re going to, anyway? A party?”

“You had better put on your leggings,” suggested Vi, looking doubtfully at the rubbers Billie had pulled on over her shoes. “The snow’s awfully deep.”

“Haven’t time,” cried Billie, adding distractedly: “For mercy sake, hurry! While you girls are dolling up for a party, Nick Budd will be gone.”

At this dreadful thought the girls stopped fussing and followed Billie hurriedly down the stairs. They slowed down in the lower hall, however, for there they were apt to meet a teacher, and undue haste might be thought suspicious by one of these “unreasonable beings.”

At sight of Nick Budd, a plan had come to Billie. She remembered how terrified he had seemed when he had found Teddy and her in the cave that day and thought in his crazy mind that they had come to arrest him.

So she was going to take a chance of so frightening him with a threat of arrest that he would confess, and perhaps even be prevailed upon to lead them to the cave.

In case this plan should fail, she had not an idea in the world what she would do next. But the plan did not fail. It worked more perfectly than she had dared to hope.

They caught up to the simpleton just as he was sneaking around to the janitor’s entrance of the school, and the fellow shrank from them like a frightened animal.

“Wh-what do you want?” he stammered, his hands out as though to ward them off. “I haven’t done nothin’. Ye can’t arrest me. I haven’t done nothin’, I tell you.” His terror was pitiful, but Billie followed up her advantage ruthlessly while the girls stood by in admiring silence.

“You have done something,” she told him sternly, while he cowered still further back from her. “You’ve stolen things – lots of things. And we willhave you arrested – ”

“Oh no – oh no,” he cried out, fairly gibbering in his terror and slinking further back against the wall. “Ye’re tryin’ to scare me. I haven’t done nothin’, I tell ye.”

But Billie took him by the sleeve and shook him as she would a bad child.

“I tell you I know,” she cried, conviction in her tone that carried even to the poor muddled brain of the simpleton. “And I know where they are, too. They are in your cave, hidden away. Every-last-one-of-them!”

Of course Billie was taking a big chance, but the shot went home.

The simpleton stared at her for a moment out of his blood-shot eyes while his big mouth dropped open. Then he began to cry, great tears that ran down his grimy face and made crooked streaks upon it.

It was an indescribably terrible and pitiful sight, the poor silly fellow in his abject terror, and ordinarily Billie would have felt sorry for him. But she thought of Polly Haddon, and the thought gave her courage. Polly Haddon had suffered, and now if it was this poor simpleton’s turn, it was no more than he deserved, after all.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said, pulling at his sleeve again and speaking very distinctly. “If you will take us to the cave and promise to give back everything you have stolen to the people you have stolen from, we will try to keep you from being arrested.”

“You won’t put me in jail?” jabbered the simpleton. “You won’t let the policemen get me?”

Billie shook her head, adding quickly: “But you must take us to the cave right away and help us bring back the things you have stolen. Otherwise we will have you arrested to-night.”

They were hardly prepared for his sudden acceptance of the ultimatum. He turned, with the swiftness that had surprised Billie and Teddy before, and strode off through the heavy snow, the girls, after a minute of indecision, following.

“What do you suppose Miss Walters will say?” Laura whispered in Billie’s ear. “Do you suppose she will mind our running away like this?”

“I don’t know,” answered Billie, adding with a hint of premature triumph in her voice: “I don’t imagine she will say anything though if we come home with the knitting machinery models, the blue prints, and an armful of stolen things besides.”

“Oh, if I can only get back my watch, I’ll be happy,” sighed Connie, as she plodded along beside Vi.

“‘If’ is right,” said Laura, ruefully. “We haven’t got anything yet, you know.”

“Now who’s the wet blanket?” cried Billie gayly. She was feeling amazingly happy and confident all of a sudden. For had not she just won the first prize for the best composition? After that she felt that she could accomplish anything.

It was no easy task to make their way through the woods. Nick Budd trudged along sturdily, hardly looking at the girls.

“He may be simple-minded, but he is as strong as a horse – at least, when it comes to walking,” remarked Laura in a whisper.

“Many simple-minded folks are strong,” answered Billie. “Why, some lunatics are noted for their strength – I once heard my father say so.”

They had to pass over an exceedingly rough rise of ground and then down through a hollow where the bushes grew close together. Here the walking was very uneven and Connie gave a sudden cry of pain.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Billie quickly, and came to a halt beside her classmate.

“I slipped into a hole and I – I guess I wrenched my ankle,” and Connie made a wry face.

“Can’t you go on?” questioned Vi.

“I – I guess so, but I’ll do a little limping,” was Connie’s reply.

“We’ll have to be careful,” warned Billie. “We don’t want to hurt ourselves if we can help it.”

After an hour of trudging through the snow they came at last to the twig-entwined entrance to Nick’s cave. Luckily the simpleton had beaten a sort of path through the snow from Three Towers to the cave – a fact which showed that he had made frequent visits to the school – or the girls almost surely could not have made the trip.

Nick pulled aside the twigs that concealed the entrance and dived inside, leaving the girls to follow as best they could.

But the girls did not follow – immediately. They were no cowards, but the sight of that yawning dark mouth was enough to make them hesitate. And besides, there was a simpleton at the other end of that dark passage, a simpleton who might be mad enough by this time to do any desperate thing.

“You go first, Billie,” Vi urged nervously. “He is afraid of you – ”

But at that moment a dancing light flickered down the dark passage and immediately Nick Budd himself appeared, carrying a lighted candle which he carefully shielded from the wind.

The terror had not left his face, and he looked at Billie abjectly, like a beaten dog.

“Will ye come in?” he asked in a barely audible voice. “Or shall I bring the things out here?”

But as the latter course would give the simpleton an excellent chance to retain some of his loot, Billie replied firmly that they would come in and see for themselves.

Vi made a noise that sounded something like a groan, and Connie echoed it pathetically. But they joined the queer little procession just the same, following Nick Budd down the dark passage to the still darker cave, guided only by the flaring light of his one candle.

It was a dangerous thing for the girls to do. The simpleton, with the cunning of the mentally-deficient, might have decided to attack them all there in the darkness of the cave. And he would have had a good chance of doing it, too.

But the gods that favor the daring watched over the girls that day and brought them safely through their adventure.

Billie had evidently thoroughly cowed the simpleton, and his one thought was to get rid of his stolen goods as quickly as possible and thus evade the dreadful prison that loomed more horrible to him than death.

There in a corner of the cave the girls found the knitting machinery model and the precious blue prints, besides a great pile of small trinkets that comprised pretty nearly everything that had been stolen from the girls during the last few weeks.

They were no more eager to linger in the cave than Nick Budd was to have them. So they eagerly pocketed as many of the trinkets as they could – Connie snapping the precious recovered wrist watch about her wrist with as much joy as though it had been three times as valuable as it really was – and Billie, taking the candle from Nick Budd’s fingers, ordered him to carry the wooden machinery. She herself took charge of the blue prints.

When they had reached the outside world once more, Billie blew out the candle, threw it into the cave, and readjusted the twigs at the entrance as best she could.