Billie Bradley and the School Mystery: or, The Girl From Oklahoma

Edina crimsoned.

“No,” she admitted. “I was so sure the money was there I – I – didn’t bother to look.”

“A fine treasurer!” came shrilly from the fringe of the crowd.

“I should ’a’ looked,” confessed Edina miserably. “I’ll never forgive myself for – for not lookin’.”

Billie’s grip tightened reassuringly upon her fingers.

“Hold fast,” she whispered.

“Let’s get this straight,” said Ray Carew. “Your story is that you took your purse from your locked trunk about two o’clock this afternoon. You don’t know that the money was there then, because you didn’t bother to look,” there was the faintest sarcasm in Ray’s drawling tones.

“I’m sure the money was there then,” Edina persisted doggedly. “Nobody could get into my trunk without breaking the lock – and the lock wasn’t broken.”

“Well, let’s say that the money was in your purse when you took it from the trunk,” Ray conceded. “You took the purse in your hand then. Was there anyone in the room with you?”

“No one except Billie,” said Edina.

“Well, now, think hard. This may be quite important. Did you hold the pocketbook in your hand every moment from the time you took it from the trunk to the moment you opened it in the Molata bank?”

Edina pondered the question, brows knitted.

“I – I think so.”

“Thinking won’t do,” said Ray inexorably. “Don’t you know?”

Edina thought again and finally shook her head in miserable bewilderment.

“I can’t be absolutely sure – I don’t seem to remember very well. I’m practically sure I didn’t lay down that there pocketbook for a minute, but – ”

“Yes you did, Edina!” Billie cried triumphantly.

“Where – when – ” stuttered Edina.

“You put it down on the table for a minute while you went to the bathroom at the last moment to wash your hands. Don’t you remember?”

“I can’t seem to think,” replied Edina hesitatingly. “If I only could be sure – ”

Ray Carew turned a serious face to Billie.

“Are you sure of that, Billie?”

Someone in the group snickered and a voice not hard to identify as Amanda Peabody’s said meaningly:

“If Billie Bradley was in the room alone with that money, what was to prevent her making off with it herself?”

CHAPTER XXI

EVIDENCE PILES UP

For a moment there was such dead silence in the room that one could easily have heard a pin drop.

Then Billie said in a clear, hard voice:

“Are you suggesting that I stole the Gift Club money, Amanda Peabody?”

“Because if you are,” cried Laura fiercely, “I’ll settle with you now, you miserable sneak, once and for all!”

“Girls! Girls!” pleaded Ray Carew. “Don’t let’s fight among ourselves. What Amanda just said is too silly to notice. I think you had better apologize, Amanda. You won’t be very popular until you do.”

A murmur of assent rose from the girls, a murmur so fierce and insistent, that Amanda was temporarily cowed.

“Oh, all right,” she muttered surlily. “Maybe I didn’t mean that Billie Bradley did it. But the thing looks very queer to me, just the same.”

The thing looked very queer to everybody. As the dreary days dragged by things looked queerer and queerer. The mystery grew blacker and blacker and the general interest and indignation aroused over the mysterious disappearance of that two hundred and sixty dollars amounted to a school revolution.

Many at first stood for Edina, partly for Billie’s sake, partly because they could not bring themselves to believe that the girl from the West would deliberately misappropriate funds entrusted to her by her comrades.

However, little by little bits of evidence piled up against the treasurer of the Gift Club.

Nellie Bane came back to the Hall one day from a trip into town with information that blanched Billie’s face and for a moment shook even her staunch belief in Edina.

“I barged into this shop to buy a pair of shoes,” so went Nellie’s breathless story, “and when the salesman reached into his till for change, he pulled out a five dollar gold piece.” She paused and regarded the intent ring of faces for a long, impressive moment. “It was the very same gold piece that I handed over to Edina Tooker as my contribution to the Gift Club fund!”

A deep sigh burst from the group. Billie sat back and passed her hand over her forehead.

“But I don’t see – That is, how did you know – ”

“That it was my gold piece?” Nellie finished eagerly. “Well, here’s how I knew! I said some idiotic things to the shoe clerk about how pretty gold money is – because, you see, I was suddenly anxious, very anxious, to know where that particular gold piece had come from.

“The clerk seemed willing enough to talk, and he said it had been paid to him just two days before by a stunning-looking girl who said she came from Three Towers Hall. You can imagine how I felt then!”

“Did you ask the clerk to describe this girl?” asked Billie faintly.

“Of course. And, girls, the description fitted Edina Tooker like a glove. It just couldn’t have been any one else! Edina spent my five dollar gold piece for a pair of shoes!”

Billie got to her feet.

“I don’t believe it, Nellie,” she said quietly. “No matter how strong the evidence is against Edina Tooker, I never will – I never can– believe that she is a thief!”

She hesitated, started off, and then came back to them again.

“Let’s put the thing reasonably. What possible motive would Edina Tooker have for stealing our poor little Gift Club fund? She doesn’t need it. Her father is a rich man.”

“So she says!”

Billie shrugged.