Part 31 (1/2)
”I am going to telegraph to your father the first thing in the morning.
Roberto has been fooling us all. You can't tell me! I know he's been able to talk all the time.”
”You don't really think so, dear?” asked Helen.
”I do. He must have been conscious when we picked him up that time and carried him to the carriage. And we mentioned his grandmother then and the necklace. He's just as sharp as a knife, you know; he's been dumb for a purpose. He did not want to be questioned about Zelaya and the missing pearl necklace.”
”My goodness me! Father will be _so_ angry,” cried Helen.
”Roberto will have to tell. I like him, and he was very brave to-night.
But I do not believe the boy is a thief himself, and he would be better if he entirely left his thieving relatives.”
”Maybe he'll run away,” suggested Helen.
But Roberto would have been obliged to start very early that next morning to have run away. Ruth Fielding was the first person up in the school, and she was standing outside Tony's door, when the little Irishman first appeared.
”Helen Cameron wants you to take this telegram down to the office at once, Tony,” she said. ”Mrs. Tellingham knows about it. We are in a dreadful hurry. Is Roberto inside?”
”Sure he is, Miss----”
”You take the message; don't let Roberto see it, and you keep your eye on that boy to-day, until Mr. Cameron arrives. He'll want to see him.”
”Now, don't be tellin' me th' bye has been inter mischief?” cried the warm-hearted Irishman.
”Not much. Only he's suddenly recovered the use of his tongue, Tony, and Mr. Cameron wants to talk with him.”
”Gracious powers!” murmured Tony. ”Recovered his s.p.a.che, has he? The saints be praised!”
He obeyed Ruth, however, in each particular. If Roberto had it in his mind to run away, he had no chance to do so that day. Tony watched him sharply, and in the evening Mr. Cameron arrived at Briarwood Hall.
The gentleman greeted his daughter and Ruth in Mrs. Tellingham's parlor, but when he interviewed Roberto, it was downstairs in Tony Foyle's rooms.
The girls saw Mr. Cameron only for a moment after that. He was just starting for the train, and Roberto was going with him.
”The young rascal has admitted just what Ruth suspected,” said Mr.
Cameron, chuckling a little. ”He fooled us all--including the doctor.
Though the Doc., I reckon, suspected strongly that the boy could talk, if he desired to.
”Roberto did not want to be questioned. Now he has told me that his grandmother did not go south at all. He says she often spends the winter in New York City as do other Gypsies. She is really a great character among her people, and with the information I have gathered, I believe the New York police will be able to locate her.
”I shall hang on to Master Roberto until the matter is closed up. He will say nothing about the necklace. He'll not even own up that he ever saw it. But he tells me that his grandmother is a miser and h.o.a.rds up valuables just like a magpie.”
Helen's father and the Gypsy boy went away then, and the chums had to possess their souls with patience, and attend strictly to their school work, until they could hear how the matter turned out.
CHAPTER XXV
FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS
It was not likely that Ruth found it any easier, after this, to attend strictly to her school duties, but after her conversation with Mrs.