CHAPTER VI.--THE BOX OF TROUBLES.
Shell Island is really only an island in name. A narrow creek whichfills and empties with the incoming and outgoing tides divides it fromthe mainland. A bridge spans this chasm over which flows a constantstream of motor and driving parties from all the villages and summerresorts up and down the coast.
Just at sundown, as the "Comet" took the steep road down the cliff tothe bridge, a big touring car shot past.
"Oh, dear," exclaimed Nancy, "I did hope we would leave all care behindwhen we came away, and now I am perfectly certain that Belle Rogers wassitting on the front seat of that automobile. I suppose she'll befloating around the ballroom in blue chiffons this evening."
"Is she a care?" asked Billie, who had a placid and rather masculine wayof forgetting all about the people she didn't like.
"Oh, I don't mind her, only she always makes me feel like a rag picker'sdaughter."
"I think she's over-dressed," put in Billie. "I should feel utterlyfoolish with all that finery and jewelry on me. When papa and I used tobuy my clothes, he would say: 'Suppose we stick to plain white,daughter, and skip the furbelows. We can't go very far wrong if we dothat, and if my little daughter begins to put on ruffles and puffles andfalals without anybody's advice but mine, I'm afraid she might be takenfor a walking fashion plate and some one will try to stand her up in ashop window."
Nancy laughed.
"I think you have the prettiest dresses I ever saw, Billie, but I amglad Miss Campbell has persuaded you to stop dressing so much like aboy. Lace collars are lots more becoming than those stiff linen ones."
"They were chokers," answered Billie, good-naturedly, as the car drew upat the steps of the hotel immediately behind the automobile which hadpassed it on the road.
Belle and her party were waiting on the piazza, the women in long pongeecoats with the very latest motor bonnets and veils.
"Those are her rich friends, the Jordannes," whispered Nancy, in awedtones. "They used to be just plain Jordan before they made so muchmoney."
"I think Jordan is a much nicer name. It has such a fine Oriental sound,'Where rolls the River Jordan.'"
By this time several porters from the hotel had stepped to the motor cardoor and assisted Miss Campbell, somewhat stiff from the long ride, toalight. The girls jumped nimbly out after her and their luggage wasunstrapped and piled on the ground near the Jordanne luggage. But Billiewas careful to keep a firm hold on her own suit case with its preciousload.
"Let the man take your bag, dear," called Miss Campbell. "You willstrain your back carrying that heavy thing."
There was nothing for Billie to do but resign the suit case, althoughshe tried to keep an eye on it as they followed the porter through thelobby to the elevator. Miss Campbell had telegraphed ahead for rooms.
As luck would have it, there was another elevator for luggage, and thebag was temporarily out of Billie's sight, but her mind was soon at easewhen she saw it stacked with the others in the bedroom which she andNancy were to share.
"While we dress for dinner," she observed, "we'll have a talk about thatjewelry. What on earth are we going to do with it?"
"Don't you think we'd better tell Miss Campbell?" suggested Elinor.
"I suppose it would be best, but Cousin Helen does go off so aboutthings, and I have a feeling that if she knew it she wouldn't allow usto keep our promise to our poor beautiful lady. She would be sure toturn the box over to the police or call in a lawyer or something. And ifwe could only keep the box until we heard from the man in Paris, atleast, we should be keeping our word about it."
Elinor and Mary were all for telling, but the other girls were stillunder the spell of the very beautiful and distressed woman, and since itwas mostly their affair they concluded not to tell.
You must not blame Billie for this want of frankness. Girls who havenever had mothers to talk to in the intimate way that only a mother anddaughter know, are apt to be reserved and self-reliant. Billie wouldcertainly have told her father, but, then, he was in Russia.
Mary and Elinor, whose room adjoined the other, had put on their kimonosand were lolling on the beds, while Nancy with solicitous care wasremoving her pretty muslin frock from the valise and smoothing out thepink taffeta ribbons tenderly.
Billie knelt on the floor and opened her suit case.
"Before I undress," she said decisively, "I'm going to take this boxstraight down stairs and give it to the clerk to put in the safe. Thenwe can spend the evening with easy minds."
She flung back the top and sat down on the floor with a gasp.
"In the name of all the powers, this is not my suit case."
The girls gathered around her in great excitement.
"It's exactly like mine," she went on, "but there are no initials on itand mine has 'W.H.C.' on the end."
"Girls," cried Nancy, flinging her bathrobe around her with a tragicgesture, "the very last person in the world we could wish to haveBillie's suit case is the very one who has it. She'll look at everythingin it; examine the underclothes to see if they are hand-made and thestockings to see if they are silk, and--she'll open the box of jewelsand read the card of the avocat from Paris and----"
"Who? Who?" interrupted the other three.
"Who but Belle Rogers," cried Nancy, flourishing a towel in one hand anda hair brush in the other.
"Yes, that's her costume," admitted Mary, laughing. "Blue chiffon with awreath of pink roses for her hair."
She pulled up a corner of the pale blue gauzy material and pointed to alittle pink wreath which lay in the folds of the dress.
"There are her blue satin slippers, No. Two's, absolutely not a sizelarger," said Elinor, pointing to the toe of a little slipper whichshowed at one end of the suit case.
"This is what I get for losing the keys to everything," groaned Billie."Telephone for a boy, quick, some one, while I fasten this thing up.Perhaps she hasn't opened mine yet."
"Opened it!" echoed the others. "You don't know her."
Presently a bell boy tapped at the door.
Billie gave him the suit case with full instructions.
"And hurry," she added. "If you are back here in five minutes, you shallhave an extra tip."
Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. The other girls were almost dressed,and Billie was beginning to tap the floor nervously with an impatientfoot, when at last there was a tap at the door.
"Why didn't you come sooner?" demanded Nancy and Billie in one voice.
"The young lady wouldn't let me, Miss."
"But what was she doing all that time?"
"I don't know, Miss. She simply told me to wait outside. She was veryangry, Miss, about her bag."
"Angry, indeed," answered Billie, seizing her own suit case. "At leastno time was lost in sending it to her."
The two girls opened the suit case with great anxiety. The things in itwere assuredly in rather a rumpled condition. They had the appearance ofhaving been unfolded and hastily rolled up again in new folds.
Nothing could be told about the box of jewels. They were all thereapparently in a glittering bunch with the card laid on top.
"Dear me, I'm sorry that combination lock broke," exclaimed Billie. "Idon't mind Belle Rogers looking through my clothes if it gives her anysatisfaction, but I would just as soon she hadn't looked into this boxof jewels. And we can't explain to her, because we mustn't seem to knowthat she was capable of doing anything so low and common as to gothrough my suit case."
She dressed herself hastily in a pretty white frock. Her smooth rolls ofhair and trim braid did not need re-arranging, and she hurrieddownstairs to the desk with the troublesome box, which she gave into thecharge of the clerk.
"These are some really valuable things," she said. "Will you put them inyour safe?"
The clerk wrapped the box up neatly in heavy brown paper, sealed it withred sealing wax, labelled it with her name and address and deposited itin the safe.
"That's off my mind," she said, giving a si
gh of relief, just as theelevator door opened and Miss Campbell appeared with the other girls.
"Cousin Helen, you're a dream," cried Billie, taking her cousin's arm."You are like a young girl whose hair had gone and turned white in asingle night."
"Thank you, my dear, but you may be sure that if anything happened whichcould make my hair turn white in a night, it wouldn't leave me anygirlish looks. But why didn't you come to my room and let me have a lookat you? Are you all exactly right and in place? That's a sweet littlefrock. I suppose you got it in Paris last summer. You and your fatherare a pair of children shopping together, I imagine. All my girls looksweet," she added, not wishing to wound any feelings by admiring onemore than another. "See this lovely dress my little Mary is wearing.Could anything be more exquisitely made than that? Your mother is awonderful woman, child. There's nobody like her in West Haven."
At dinner there was another surprise for the girls. This time it was anagreeable one: four extra places at the table, and presently they werejoined by four West Haven boys, looking rather embarrassed but quitehappy as they shook hands with the fairy godmother of the party,Billie's Cousin Helen.
Two of the boys we have met before, Ben Austen and Charlie Clay. Theother two were their intimate friends and boon companions, AmericusBrown, Nancy's brother, known as "Merry Brown," and Percival AlgernonSt. Clair, whose mother's fancy had run riot in naming her only child.He was called "Percy" by his friends for short.
"Why, look who's here," exclaimed Nancy. "Percival Algernon St. Clair,why didn't you tell us yesterday when you gave us soda water at the drugstore that you were coming on this trip, too?"
"Because it was secret," answered Percy, who was very blond and blushedeasily. "Miss Campbell wanted to surprise you."
"I thought it would be nice for my girls to have some partners for thedance to-night," said Miss Campbell. "I wanted to see some realdancing."
"If you want to see the real thing, then, Miss Campbell," said MerryBrown, "if you want to see the poetry of motion, you must see Bendance."
"Shut up, bow-legs," called Ben across the table. "I've been learningfor months. I took lessons last summer."
"Where?" demanded his friends, because at the school dances, Ben'sexpression of misery was well known when he towed an unfortunate friendaround the room.
"I know," said Percy, "it's all explained now. That's what you weredoing at the Dutch picnics every week."
"Well, they were pretty good teachers," replied the imperturbable Ben."They taught me that guiding a girl in a dance was very much likesailing a boat with a windmill for a sail. You have to guide and twirlat the same time, and the more speed you make in twirling the betteryour dancing is."
Everybody laughed uproariously at this description.
"Ben Austen, I didn't expect to be treated like a windmill sail boatwhen I promised to give you my first dance," announced Elinor.
"It would be better than to be treated like a stationary windmill and goturning around in one place like the Germans dance," observed Billie.
"You may all have your choice," said Ben. "Stationary or progressive,it's all one to me, only remember that you have each promised to do aDutch twirl with me."
The ballroom was already quite filled with dancers and it seemed verybewildering and delightful to the young girls, if it was only a summerhotel with a piano and two violins and a flute for an orchestra. Ben'sDutch whirl was so skillfully performed, because like everything else heattempted he had mastered it perfectly, that the girls found it ratherexciting fun.
"It's a regular romp," cried Billie, who, with glowing cheeks, droppedbreathlessly into a chair beside her Cousin Helen.
"Look," whispered Mary Price, who had been dancing a quiet glide withCharlie Clay and had had a chance to notice some of the other dancers.
For some reason both their young faces turned suddenly very grave. Wasit a strange, unexplained premonition that told them the most dangerousenemy either was ever to have was dancing past that moment, in floatingpale blue chiffon draperies?
After the dance there was a merry supper party with sandwiches andlemonade in the grill room, and then the Motor Maids were glad enough toget to their beds.
"What a relief it is, Nancy, dear, to have that box of jewels in thesafe," said Billie sleepily, as her eyelids drooped and she settledherself under the covers.
But Nancy did not reply. She was sleeping deeply. Billie, too, was soonoblivious of everything in the world.
As the night wore on, Nancy dreamed that she was dancing the Dutch twirlin a wonderful blue gauze dress, but that the diamond necklace she woreso weighed her down that she could not breathe.
Billie also dreamed of the diamonds. They were not around her neck, butin their box, which had grown to the size of a trunk and pressed on herchest so heavily that she was suffocating.
Suddenly a great bell clanged out in the night.
Billie opened her eyes with difficulty. The room was filled with smokeand down the corridor there came the cry of "Fire! Fire!"