CHAPTER XII
ROBBED
The students turned to find Miss Jane Romaine on the steps.
For a moment there was silence out of respect for the presence of the beloved head of Laurel Hall.
Then pandemonium broke loose again, the girls surging toward the slender, commanding figure on the steps.
Miss Romaine raised her hand and frowned slightly. Again silence fell, although some of the girls looked as though they would burst with the importance of the news they had to tell.
"Doris Maybel," Miss Romaine singled out the girl standing with Jessie Robinson, "suppose you tell me what the trouble is?"
Doris Maybel, short and blonde and very pretty, stepped forward quickly.
"Some of the girls and I thought we would like to try out the new apparatus we have in the gym, Miss Jane——"
"Yes?" prompted Miss Romaine as the girl hesitated.
"Well, I guess nobody had been there before to-day. Anyway, there was nobody in the gym when we got there, but when we went to look for our gym suits we found that some of the lockers had been opened and some of the things in them taken. My own new gym suit was taken," she added, in conclusive proof of the robbery.
"And my new tennis racket and balls!" wailed another mourner from the crowd.
Miss Romaine raised her hand again, the furrows between her brows deepening.
"I suppose this must have happened last night," she said, then added sharply, turning to Doris: "Why was I not informed of this before?"
The girl started at the swift change of tone and hastened to justify herself.
"I came to tell you, Miss Jane," she said. "I asked for you everywhere, but no one seemed to know where you had gone. Then I came out here to look for you and met the other girls on their way from the boathouse."
"And some of the lockers were opened there, too, and things taken from them, Miss Jane!" broke in an excited girl in the crowd.
"My rowing suit is gone!" cried another.
Miss Romaine checked the growing confusion with a gesture of her hand.
"I will investigate this," she said. "And I want you, Doris, to go with me and show me what damage has been done. I have just one thing to say."
She paused and her large dark eyes swept the uplifted faces of the girls.
"This looks like the work of thieves. Since our head janitor, Mr. Forbes, has not yet arrived, robbers would have found it comparatively easy to break into the gym and the boathouse last night.
"I shall set an investigation afoot at once and if we find that this is an actual robbery we will do our utmost to apprehend and punish the thieves."
Again she paused and swept the girls with her slow, keen gaze.
"It has been our misfortune once or twice in the past," she said, speaking clearly, "to have harbored within the walls of Laurel Hall that worst of public nuisances, the practical joker. If I find," each word came clear and distinct like the tinkling of icicles upon stone, "that any one of my girls has been so unworthy as to play a trick of this sort, I warn her now that she may expect scant mercy from me. There is one thing that Laurel Hall cannot and will not tolerate—and that is the perpetrator of practical jokes."
She held them with the severity of her gaze for a moment longer; then motioned to Doris and went with her toward the gymnasium.
The tension relaxed, and as soon as Miss Jane had disappeared, the girls broke up into chattering, excited, gesticulating groups.
Jessie Robinson was the center of one of these and seemed temporarily to have forgotten her new friends.
Feeling a bit out of things, the three chums decided to run up to their room—the room coveted by Kate Speed—to talk things over.
"Wherever I go these days, I seem to run into thieves," said Jo.
They had closed the door behind them and now exchanged rueful glances.
"First some one robs my father and just about ruins him," continued Jo, enlarging on her statement. "Then I come to Laurel Hall to find that some one has broken in here the night before I arrive. Guess I must be a jinx or something."
"A mighty nice jinx," said Nan affectionately.
She took off her hat, flung it on a bed, and sank into a chair with a prodigious yawn.
"Goodness, but I'm weary!"
"Who wouldn't be after the trip and now all this excitement." Sadie took off her coat and opened one of the closets in the room—there were two roomy ones. "Let's get our grips unpacked," she suggested. "The trunks ought to be up pretty soon, and we've got to get ready for dinner."
"I wonder who really did break into the gym," said Jo, frowningly concentrated on her own thoughts and seeming not to have heard Sadie.
Nan shook her head.
"Sounds more like a practical joke to me. Why should thieves want to break into a school gym and a boathouse? Wouldn't be enough in it for them."
"I don't know about that. Most of the girls' things were brand new and probably could be sold again at a fairly good price."
"I still think it's a practical joke," insisted Nan. She rose lazily and went over to one of the dresser mirrors where she critically inspected her reflection. "Dear me, look at that streak of dirt across my nose! I look a sight!"
"I don't think it's a practical joke." Jo could not be shaken from the subject. "A girl might open one locker just to be funny. But she wouldn't be apt to go about opening them wholesale. That would be silly, because it would only get her into heaps of trouble."
"It probably will—if Miss Jane finds her out." Nan was as persistent in her theory as Jo was in hers. "I certainly would hate to be that girl!"
There was the sound of footsteps and laughter in the hall outside.
The next moment the door burst open and three girls entered the room. One was Jessie Robinson, another Doris Maybel. The third was as yet unknown to the chums.
"Here's a fine row," said Jessie without preface. "Miss Jane is bound to find the girl or girls who played that practical joke, and there isn't a girl in the school but what suspects every other girl of being the guilty one. A fine time we're going to have at Laurel Hall for the next few days, I can see that!"
At this point the impulsive girl appeared to realize that new friends and old had not, as yet, been properly introduced and promptly set herself to correct the error.
"This is Doris Maybel," she said. "We room together, although our room isn't anywhere near as nice as this. And this," thrusting forward the third of the trio, "is Gladys Holt—a nice girl if you don't cross her——"
"Thenshe'scross," said Doris, and they all laughed together at the feeble joke.
"Now listen, girls, don't give me a bad reputation at the start," drawled Gladys, as she perched herself on the rail of the bed and regarded the party with twinkling eyes. "No telling how I may end up, but I want to get off on the right foot, anyway!"
"Jessie has told us how mad Kate Speed is that you have her room," Doris flung herself into a chair near the chums and pushed back the hair from her warm face. She was smiling as though in anticipation of a joyful prospect. "We expect to get a lot of fun out of this, let me tell you."
"Believe me, we will!" chuckled Jessie. "I happened to pass Kate's room a few minutes ago," she added. "The door was open, and I looked in."
"What kind of a room was it?" Jo interrupted with interest.
"Oh, not so bad——"
"And not so good," supplemented Gladys. "I happen to know that room, and I can tell you it's cold in winter!"
"Well, anyway, it has an alcove something like this," Jessie explained, with a wave of her hand. "It's a 'three girls' room,' anyway, and that's what Kate wants. But of course it's smaller than this one and it has only two windows. Kate was furious. She was railing at poor Lily Darrow as if it was all her fault, though how it could be, goodness only knows."
"And I suppose Lily was sitting with her hands crossed and taking it all meekly," Doris interrupted, with an impatient bounce in her chair. "Sometimes I lose all patience with that girl. I don't believe she has any spine!"
"We met them both on the train coming up," Sadie offered.
"And it seemed to us as if Lily Darrow was afraid to own her own name," Jo added.
Their three new friends nodded solemnly and Jessie pounded one small brown fist in the other by way of emphasis.
"There's something funny about the friendship between those two," she said. "I guess every girl in the school has tried to get Lily Darrow away from Kate at some time or other——"
"We all feel sorry for Lily—she has such a frightful time of it," Doris said, in an aside.
"But she won't budge," Jessie finished. "She hates Kate——"
"Any one could see that with half an eye!" drawled Gladys Holt.
"And she's mortally afraid of her, and yet she sticks to her like a fly to flypaper," finished Jessie. "We can't understand it, and it makes us mad."
"Is Lily Darrow the only close friend Kate has?" asked Jo, who had listened to all this with great interest.
"Oh, my goodness, no!"
The three visitors exchanged laughing glances and Jessie chuckled audibly.
"Kate has what Miss Slade, our dramatics teacher, calls an 'understudy,'" Jessie explained. "Lottie Sparks is her shadow. She thinks Kate is grand because she has a lot of money, and she does exactly what Kate tells her to do."
"In other words," said Gladys Holt, lazily stretching her arms above her head, "Kate makes the bombs and Lottie fires them."
"That's just it!" cried Jessie. "Whatever Lottie says, you can be pretty sure that Kate prompted her ahead of time."
"Lottie's noisy, but Kate's sly," offered Doris.
"Those two girls have made more trouble at Laurel Hall than all the rest put together," Jessie said energetically.
"Oh, well," laughed Doris, "let's forget about Kate and Lottie for a while. I can think of lots pleasanter things to talk about."
As she finished speaking, as though to put a period to her sentence, a loud gong rang sonorously through the halls.
The visiting girls sprang to their feet.
"The preliminary gong," explained Jessie. "Just fifteen minutes to get ready for supper. Excuse us while we rush!"
"Hey, wait a minute!" Jo caught one of the girls as she flew past and held on to her. "Which way is the dining hall?"
"We'll call for you," Jessie promised. "See you later!" The door slammed shut.