Concerning Belinda Part 9

"Hurry," she urged curtly; and, with her hand on Katherine's arm, forged ahead through the door, unceremoniously pus.h.i.+ng aside everyone who interfered with her rapid exit.

Once outside, she turned unhesitatingly toward a group blocking the sidewalk. A policeman's helmet loomed large above the heads of the crowd; and, as Belinda approached, the policeman's st.u.r.dy form forced a way through the circle. Following came Mademoiselle de Courcelles escorted by two men whose faces wore smiles of quiet satisfaction.

Behind was a bewildered, hysterical group of girls, weeping, lamenting, protesting, entreating.

Belinda stopped the procession.

"There must be some mistake," she said falteringly. "What is wrong?"

One of the keen-eyed men took off his hat respectfully.

"Sorry, Miss; but it's French Liz, all right. We got the tip from Paris that she was working New York again, but we couldn't spot her till to-day."

"B-b-but what has she done?" stammered Belinda, to whom twelve anguish-stricken girls were attempting to cling, while a mixed audience looked on appreciatively.

"Cleverest shop-lifter in the graft," explained the detective. "She's got plenty of the goods on her right now; but I say"--and his glance wandered to the girls--"who'd a-thought of this lay except Liz? She's a bird, she is!"

He turned to Mademoiselle de Courcelles with honest admiration in his eyes, and she smiled at him recklessly, with white lips.

"You'd have been too late to-morrow. I was expecting a telegram calling me away to-night."

All the hesitation was gone from her English. She spoke fluently, and a hard metallic ring had crept into the velvety voice.

The detective looked at Belinda.

"This other fellow is the shop-detective. We'll have to take her in here and see what swag she has beside the diamonds we saw her lift. I don't know as there's any use keeping the young ladies----"

Evangeline Marie gave a smothered wail at the suggestion, and Laura May showed signs of fainting in Belinda's arms.

"Boarding-school crowd, I see. Now, Miss, if you'll just give me the name of the school and the address, you can take the bunch along home.

It isn't likely that any of those babes are in the game with Liz. She's just used them for a blind. Holy smoke! but that was a good idea. Turn a crowd of boarding-school girls loose at a counter, and their teacher could steal the clerks blind without their suspecting her. Lost anything in the school?"

Belinda had a sudden vision of the disgraced Ellen's tearful face, and a thought of Laura May's pocket-book smote her, but she merely wrote the address on a card and handed it to the detective.

"If you could keep the name of the school out of the scandal it would be worth your while," she said in a low voice.

The detective nodded.

"I'll try; but I guess the papers will get it one way or another. Don't let anyone touch Liz's trunks. I'll be up to go through them just as soon as I've finished here."

For the first time, Mademoiselle faced Belinda and the wide-eyed girls.

"_Ces cheres demoiselles! Cette superbe_ Mees Ryder! Bah! It was too easy. I mention a d.u.c.h.ess, a countess. The lofty Mees Ryder falls upon my neck. I tell stories of the French n.o.blemen who have adored me, persecuted me with their devotion until I fled from France; poor but honest. The little schoolgirls gulp it all down and beg for more. Oh, but they are stupid--these respectable people. You have my sympathy, Mademoiselle Carewe. You must live among them. For me--give me _les gens d'esprit_, give me a society interesting. _Adieu, mes cheres._ It was amusing, that boarding-school experience, but to endure it long--_mon dieu_, I prefer even this!"

She waved her hand airily toward the policeman and the grinning detectives, and, with a shrug, moved toward the shop door, then paused for a parting message.

"My regards to the venerable spinsters. It pains me that I shall never be able to arrange for them a meeting with the d.u.c.h.esse de Rochechouart and Madame la Comtesse de Pourtales. The maid of the d.u.c.h.ess collected stationery for me at one time. It is often of use, the stationery that carries a good crest. Adieu!"

Belinda convoyed a subdued group of girls back to the school; but, by the time they reached the door, their spirits had soared. It is sad to be disillusioned, but after all it is something to have been intimately a.s.sociated with a famous criminal, and to have been an eye-witness of her capture.

Only Laura May Lee mourned and refused to be comforted.

"I will never again open my soul to anyone," she vowed hysterically.

"I said the woman was a cat," commented Miss Barnes when the news reached her ears.

What Miss Lucilla Ryder said in the first fervor of her surprise no one save Belinda knew, for their interview was behind closed doors, but when she came from her room to meet the detective Miss Lucilla's calm dignity was without a ripple.

The investigation of teachers' credentials is now her pet hobby, and she freezes at the mention of the French n.o.bility.

CHAPTER V

THE BLACK SHEEP'S CHRISTMAS

FIVE days before Christmas the school of the Misses Ryder emptied its pupils and teachers into the bosoms of more or less gratified families, and closed its doors for the holiday season.

The princ.i.p.als lingered for two days after the girls left, in order to see that the furniture was covered, the furnace fires were allowed to die, the gas was turned off, the shades were decorously drawn, the regular butcher's, baker's and milkman's supplies were stopped. Then they, too, went out into the world, for they always spent Christmas with the old aunt who lived upon the ancestral Ryder acres in New Hamps.h.i.+re.

Five of the servants had joined the exodus. Only Ellen, the fat cook, and Rosie, the laundress, were left in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and in the back hall bedroom on the top floor was the Youngest Teacher, who had submitted to enthusiastic kisses from her departing girl adorers, had responded cheerfully to pleasant adieus from her employers, and had settled down to face a somewhat depressing situation. On Christmas Eve she was still facing it pluckily.

A storm of wind and sleet was beating at the windows, and the little hall bedroom, unheated for days past, had taken on the chill that seems to have body and substance.

In a wicker chair, beside the small table, Belinda, wrapped in blankets and with a hot-water bag under her feet, sat reading by the light of a kerosene lamp which threw weird, flickering shadows on the ugly gray walls.

As a particular vicious blast shrieked at the window the girl dropped her book into her lap, drew the blankets more closely about her, looked around the room, and made a heroic effort to smile.

Then she smiled spontaneously at the lamentable failure of the attempt, but the smile left the corners of her mouth drooping.

She was tired of being brave.

Somewhere out across the night there were love and laughter and friends.

She wondered what the home folk were doing. Probably they missed her, but they were together and they had no idea how things were with her, for her letters had been framed to suggest festive plans and a school full of holiday sojourners.

She had written those letters with one eye upon the Recording Angel and the other upon her mother's loving, anxious face, and it had seemed to her that the Recording Angel's smile promised absolution.

She was glad she hadn't been frank, but--she wanted her mother.

The quivering face was buried in the rough folds of the blankets, and a queer, stifled sound mingled with the noise of the storm.

The Youngest Teacher was only twenty-two, and this was her first Christmas away from home.

But the surrender did not last long. Belinda sprang to her feet, hurled a remark that sounded like "maudlin idiot" at a dishevelled vision in the mirror, picked up the lamp, and went down to the gymnasium on the second floor. When she came back she was too warm to notice the chill of the room, too tired to think. She pulled down the folding bed, tumbled into it, and dreamed of home.

Christmas morning was clear and cold.

Belinda awoke late, and, as the realities crowded in upon her, shut her eyes and tried to dodge the fact that there was no one to wish her a merry Christmas.