Part 26 (1/2)
”Oh, Billy! was that you?” demanded Dora.
”The lone pirate!” gasped Dorothy.
”And all those whiskers----”
Short and Long laughed weakly. ”That wig and whiskers I had last Hallow E'en; don't you remember? I saw you girls a couple of times, too.”
”And we saw you and thought you might be one of the robbers, after all.”
”That's all right; I didn't do any robbing, except of your boats,” said Billy. ”But there were two fellows over on the island who I believe _did_ rob that store.”
”No!” cried the girls.
”Yes.”
”Oh, tell us all about it,” urged the girls again, just as eager to hear the particulars as though it were a story out of a book. And it _did_ sound like a story; only Billy Long was much too much in earnest to make it up. Besides, he had learned a lesson during his weeks of ”hiding out.”
”I was scart--of course I was,” he said. ”What fellow wouldn't be? That detective from the store said they'd put me in jail till I'd told--and I'd been tellin' him the truth right along.
”So I got up early that morning to go fis.h.i.+ng. I knew where the white perch were thick as sprats. I got Mr. Norman's boat; but I knew he wouldn't mind. And I went over to Boulder Head. As I was starting to fish I heard two men talking just in the mouth of the old cavern. They were quarreling. I guess they must have been foreigners; I couldn't understand all they said. But I got enough of their broken-English talk to understand that one of them had hidden some money in a tight-covered lard can, and part of the money the other fellow claimed.”
Dora pinched Dorothy, and looked at her knowingly. But it wasn't until afterward that Dorothy understood what her twin meant by _that_.
”So I got interested in them, believing that they might be the real burglars, and I forgot the boat. When they went away and I went back to the boat, the old thing had filled and sunk. You never could row that boat to the island without bailing her out a couple of times; and I ought to have dragged her ash.o.r.e.
”So I couldn't get the boat up, and I thought I'd stop there. I had some fis.h.i.+ng tackle, and matches, and some crackers. I camped in the cave for a couple of days, and had fires, and cooked fish. But, my goodness! fish gets awful tasteless when you don't have any salt and pepper.
”There were berries,” continued Billy, ”and I managed to get along.
Then, I washed out my old bait bucket and at night I went down to the pasture of that park superintendent and milked his old mooley cow. I got along.
”One of those men was always hanging about in the woods, though, and that kept me scared. But I tried to watch him. Didn't know but he'd go to the place where he'd buried the money in the lard can. But he went off after a while and I didn't see him again.
”Then I tried to climb that cliff to get some berries, and I slipped down and twisted my ankle. I guess I'd have starved to death there if Mother Wit han't found me and got me down.”
This was all Billy's story; but when the twins got out of the house, Dorothy demanded of her sister:
”What did you pinch me for? What did you mean?”
”You're so slow!” cried Dora, with some disgust. ”Those two foreign men Billy heard talking about the money were Tony Allegretto and his friend that the police drove off the island. They weren't the burglars at all!”
CHAPTER XXI
IN PRACTICE AGAIN
All the time the twins had been forbidden to row in the new sh.e.l.l the crew had been getting on very badly. Professor Dimp was hopeless, and Mrs. Case could not find two girls to take the twins' places who worked well with the other members of the crew.
Dora and Dorothy could only walk on the bank of the lake and watch the crew struggle to make the time that was its former record. Hester Grimes and her particular friends scoffed at the practice. Hester and Lily paddled almost daily in their canoe, and they seemed pretty sure of being chosen to represent the girls of Central High in the canoe race instead of the Lockwood twins.