The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies Part 26

Briefly and plainly the message read: _Do not_ _give the bracelet to Miguel. He is a thief._

Agnes sat down and stared almost breathlessly at the paper. That it was a threatening command from one crowd of Gypsies or the other, she was sure. But whether it was from Big Jim's crowd or from Costello, the junkman, she did not know.

Her first thought, after she had digested the matter for a few moments, was to run with the paper to Mrs. McCall. But Mrs. McCall was not at all sympathetic about this bracelet matter. She was only angry with the Gypsies, and, perhaps, a little angry with Agnes for having unwittingly added to the trouble by putting the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper.

Neale, after all, could be her only confident; and, making sure that no other dark-visaged person was in sight about the house, the girl ran down the long yard beyond the garden to the stable and Billy b.u.mps' quarters, and there climbed the board fence that separated the Kenway yard from that of Con Murphy, the cobbler.

"Hoo, hoo! Hoo, hoo!" Agnes called, looking over the top rail of the fence.

"Hoo, hoo, yerself!" croaked a voice. "I'd have yez know we kape no owls on these premises."

The bent figure of Mr. Murphy, always busy at his bench, was visible through the back window of his shop.

"Is it that young yahoo called Neale O'Neil that yez want, Miss Aggie?" added the smiling cobbler. "If so--"

But Neale O'Neil appeared just then to answer to the summons of his girl friend. He had been to the store, and he tumbled all his packages on Con's bench to run out into the yard to greet Agnes.

"What's happened now?" he cried, seeing in the girl's face that something out of the ordinary troubled her.

"Oh, Neale! what do you think?" she gasped. "There's been another of them at the house."

"Not one of those Gypsies?"

"I believe she was."

"Oh! A _she_!" said the boy, much relieved. "Well, she didn't bite you, of course?"

"Come here and look at this," commanded his friend.

Neale went to the fence, climbed up and took the paper that Agnes had found stuck to the plate on which she had placed the food for the Gypsy girl. When he had read the abrupt and unsigned message, Neale began to grow excited, too.

"Where did you get this?"

Agnes told him about it. Of course, the hungry girl had been a messenger from one party of Gypsies or the other. Which? was Agnes'

eager question.

"Guess I can answer that," Neale said gravely. "It does look as though things were getting complicated. I bet this girl you fed is one of Big Jim's bunch."

"How can you be so positive?"

"There are probably only two parties of Gypsies fighting over the possession of that old bracelet. Now, I learned down there in that junk neighborhood that Costello--the Costello who is bothering us--is called Miguel. They are all Costellos--Big Jim's crowd and all. June Wildwood says so. They distinguish our junkman from themselves by calling him by his first name. Therefore--"

"Oh, of course I see," sighed Agnes. "It is a terrible mess, Neale! I do wish Mr. Howbridge would get back. Or that the police would find that junkman and shut him up. Or--or that Ruthie would come home!"

"Oh, don't be a baby, Aggie!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Neale.

"Who is the baby, I want to know?" flashed back the girl. "I'm not!"

"Then pluck up your spirits and don't turn on the sprinkler," said the slangy youth. "Why, this is nothing to cry about. When it is all over we shall be looking back at the mystery as something great in our young lives."

"You can try to laugh if you want to," snapped Agnes. "But being haunted by a junkman, and getting notes from Gypsies like that! Huh!

who wouldn't be scared? Why, we don't know what those people might do to us if we give up the bracelet to the wrong person."

"It doesn't belong to any of the Gypsies, perhaps."

"That is exactly it!" she cried. "Maybe, after all, it is the property of Miss Ann t.i.tus' friend, Sarah."

"And was lost somewhere on Willow Street--about where your garage now stands--forty years ago!" scoffed Neale. "Well, you are pretty soft, Agnes Kenway."

This naturally angered the girl, and she pouted and got down from the fence without replying. As she went back up the yard she saw Mrs.

Pinkney, with her head tied up with a towel, shaking a dustcloth at one of her front windows. It at least changed the current of the girl's thought.

"Oh, Mrs. Pinkney!" she cried, running across the street to speak to Sammy's mother, "have you heard anything?"

"About Sammy? Not a word," answered the woman. "I have to keep working all the time, Agnes Kenway, or I should go insane. I know I should! I have cleaned this whole house, from attic to cellar, three times since Sammy ran away."

"Why, Mrs. Pinkney! If you don't go insane--and I don't believe you will--I am sure you will overwork and be ill."

"I must keep doing. I must keep going. If I sit down to think I imagine the most horrible things happening to the dear child. It is awful!"

Agnes knew that never before had the woman been so much disturbed by her boy's absences from home. It seemed as though she really had lost control of herself, and the Corner House girl was quite worried over Mrs. Pinkney.

"If we could only help you and Mr. Pinkney," said Agnes doubtfully.

"Do you suppose it would do any good to go off in the car again--Neale and me and your husband--to look for Sammy?"

"Mr. Pinkney is so tied down by his business that he cannot go just now," she sighed. "And he has put the search into the hands of an agency. I did not want the police to get after Sammy. But what could we do? And they say there are Gypsies around."

"Oh!" gasped Agnes. "Do you suppose--?"

"You never can tell what those people will do. I am told they have stolen children."

"Isn't that more talk than anything else?" asked Agnes, trying to speak quite casually.

"I don't know. One of my neighbors tells me she hears that there is a big encampment of Gypsies out on the Buckshot Road. You know, out beyond the Poole farm. They have autovans instead of horses, so they say, and maybe could carry any children they stole out of the state in a very short time."

"Oh, dear me, Mrs. Pinkney! I would not think of such things," Agnes urged. "It does not sound reasonable."

"That the Gypsies should travel by auto instead of behind horse?"

rejoined Sammy's mother. "Why not? Everybody else is using automobiles for transportation. I tell Mr. Pinkney that if we had a machine perhaps Sammy might not have been so eager to leave home."

"Oh, dear, me!" thought Agnes, as she made her way home again, "I am sorry for Mr. Pinkney. Just now I guess he is having a hard time at home as well as at business!"

But she treasured up what she had heard about the Gypsy encampment on the Buckshot Road to tell Neale--when she should not be so "put-out"

with him. The Buckshot Road was in an entirely different direction from Milton than that they had followed in their automobile on the memorable search for Sammy. Agnes did not suppose for a moment that the missing boy had gone with the Gypsies.