Part 30 (1/2)

The Blunderbuss nodded vigorously. ”Certainly I will. I'll bring them all here to-night. I don't want them for anything. I never wanted them.

I'm sure I don't know why I took them. Oh, there's just one thing,” she added hastily, ”that I can't bring. It isn't with the rest. But I've got everything else all safe and I'll come right after dinner. Good-bye.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIRLS WATCHED HER IN BEWILDERMENT]

The girls watched her go in a daze of bewilderment. Just outside the door she evidently b.u.mped into some one, and her clattering laugh and loud, ”Goodness, how you scared me!” sounded as light-hearted and unconcerned as possible.

”How did you ever guess that she was the one?” Eleanor asked at last.

”It just came over me,” Betty answered. ”But, why, she doesn't seem to care one bit!”

”About running into me?” asked Jean Eastman, appearing suddenly in the doorway. ”Has she been doing damage in here, too?” No one answered and Jean gave a quick look about the room, noticing the rummaged drawers, the girls' excited, tragic faces, and the jewelry that Eleanor still had in her hand. Then she made one of her haphazard deductions, whose accuracy was the terror of her enemies and the admiration of her followers.

”Oh, I see--it's more college robber. So our dear Blunderbuss is the thief. I congratulate you, Eleanor, on the beautiful poetic justice of your having been the one to catch her.”

”Yes, she's the thief,” said Betty, before Eleanor could answer. She had a sudden inspiration that the best way to treat Jean, now that she guessed so much, was to trust her with everything. ”And she acts so strangely--she doesn't seem to realize what she has done, and she doesn't care a bit that we know it. She said----” And between them they gave Jean a full account of their interview with Miss Harrison.

Jean listened attentively. ”It's a pathetic case, isn't it?” she said at last, with no trace of her mocking manner. ”I wonder if she isn't a kleptomaniac.”

Betty and Eleanor both looked puzzled and Jean explained the long word.

”It means a person who has an irresistible desire to steal one particular kind of thing, not to use, but just for the sake of taking them, apparently. I heard of a woman once who stole napkins and piled them up in a closet in her house. It's a sort of insanity or very nearly that. Of course jewelry is different from napkins, but Miss Harrison has taken so much more than she can use----”

”Especially so many pearl pins,” put in Betty, eagerly. ”Haven't you noticed what a lot of those have been lost? She couldn't possibly wear them all.”

”Perhaps she meant to sell them,” suggested Eleanor.

”But her family are very wealthy,” objected Jean. ”They spend their summers where Kate does, and she says that they give this girl everything she wants. She never took money either, even when it was lying out in plain sight, and her being so ready to give back the things seems to show that she didn't take them for any special purpose.”

”Then if she's a----” began Betty.

”Kleptomaniac,” supplied Jean.

”She isn't exactly a thief, is she?”

”No, I suppose not,” said Jean doubtfully.

”But she isn't a very safe person to have around,” said Eleanor.

”I'll tell you what,” said Betty, who had only been awaiting a favorable opening to make her suggestion. ”It's too big a question for us to try to settle, isn't it, girls? Let's go and tell Miss Ferris all that we've found out so far, and leave the whole matter in her hands.”

Then Jean justified the confidence that Betty had shown in her. ”You couldn't do anything better,” she said, rising to leave.

”I wish I'd known her well enough to talk things over with her,--not public things like this, I mean, but private ones. Betty, here's a note that Christy Mason asked me to give you. That's what I came in for, originally. Of course this affair of Miss Harrison is yours, not mine, and I shan't mention it again, unless Miss Ferris decides to make it public, as I don't believe she will. By the way, I wonder if you know that Miss Harrison can't graduate with us.”

”You mean that she has been caught stealing before?” asked Eleanor.

”Oh, no, but she couldn't make up the French that she flunked at midyears, and she must be behind in other subjects, too. I heard rumors about her having been dropped, and last week I saw the proof of our commencement program. Her name isn't on the diploma list.”

”Oh, I believe I'm almost glad of that,” said Betty softly. ”It's dreadful to be glad that she has failed in every way, but I can't bear to think that she belongs in our cla.s.s.”

So it was Miss Ferris who met the Blunderbuss in Eleanor's room that night, who managed the return of the stolen property to its owners, with a suggestion that it would be a favor to the whole college not to say much about its recovery, and she who, finding suddenly that the noise of the campus tired her, spent the rest of the term at Miss Harrison's boarding place on Main Street, where she could watch over the poor girl and minimize the risk of her indulging her fatal mania again while she was at Harding. She was nonchalant over having been caught stealing, but her failure in scholars.h.i.+p had almost broken her heart.