Betty Gordon in Washington Part 23

She drew herself up before Bob could stop her, and, raising the window as high as it would go, scrambled over the sill.

"It's fine--come on in," she laughed back at the others. "Cunning office and no one in it. I suppose the owner has gone out to see us rescued."

Bob lifted up Libbie, who was the shortest, and, one after the other, the girls climbed in, Bob following last.

It was a finely furnished office and one Bob had never been in, though he had a speaking acquaintance with many of the tenants in the building. A pair of tiny scales and a little heap of yellow dust lay on the highly polished mahogany desk.

The door into the corridor was partly open, and as they had to pa.s.s the desk to reach the door, it was natural that the group should draw nearer and glance curiously at the pair of scales.

"No nearer are you to come!" snapped a sharp voice with the precision of a foreigner who is not sure enough of his English to speak hurriedly. "I warn you not to put a finger out."

Libbie squawked outright in terror, and the others fell back a step.

A little man with very black eyes stood facing them, and at them he was leveling a small, businesslike looking revolver. The door had closed noiselessly, and he had evidently been behind it.

"I saw you all to enter," he informed them sternly. "I, of all in the building, remembered that it is in excitement that sneak thieves do their best work. Mr. Matthews is trusting, but I--I stood on guard. It is well. You are not to move while I telephone to the police."

"Look here," said Bob determinedly, almost overwhelmed with his responsibility and blaming himself for having placed the girls in such an awkward position. "We're no thieves. You can telephone upstairs to Mr. Derby and he'll vouch for us."

"I know no Mr. Derby," said the little man stubbornly. "Why should you pick out a jeweler's office and creep in through the window?

Answer me that! Are there not stairs?"

"Well we wanted to avoid some--er--men," blurted Bob.

"Yah--already the police seek you!" triumphed their captor. "Well, they will not have long to seek."

"They were not the police." Betty found her voice and spoke earnestly. "They were reporters, and we didn't want to be interviewed. We came down the fire escape from the fourth floor, and found the hall window locked. This window was open, and we crawled in, intending to get out into the hall. That is the absolute truth."

CHAPTER XXIII

ANOTHER RESCUE

The black eyes of the little man suddenly disappeared. They were so bright and glistening that their disappearance was noticeable. He had closed them tight and was laughing!

As suddenly as he had laughed, his mirth stopped, and he stared sternly at the anxious Betty.

"You expect me to believe that?" he asked incredulously.

"It is true," she said quietly.

"True--bah!" The vehemence of his tone quite startled her. "True!

When all you had to do to reach the first floor--had access to the street been your object--was to let down the folding flight to the ground."

Betty's jaw dropped. She and Bob looked at each other helplessly.

"We--we never thought of that!" she faltered.

It was true. In her excitement she had not noticed the folding flight of steps that let down to the ground in an emergency, and for protection against sneak thieves was always drawn up except during fire drills. Bob had been equally careless. As for the Littell girls, like docile sheep, they had never thought to question their leaders.

Still keeping the revolver pointed at them, the little man took down the telephone receiver.

"Bob!" whispered Betty. "Oh, Bob, this is dreadful! What will Mrs.

Littell say? And those reporters! If they get hold of this, the elevator story will be nothing."

Bobby and Louise and Esther and Libbie stood in a forlorn group, their gaze fixed trustingly on Bob and Betty, whom they trusted to get them out of this sc.r.a.pe somehow.

As for Bob, he was handicapped by numbers. He could easily have planned a way to get himself and one girl out of the room, but to hope to spirit away five substantial maidens under the black eyes fastened unwaveringly upon him, was too great a problem for quick solution. He did not fear trouble in establis.h.i.+ng their innocence, but the notoriety accompanying such an episode could not be otherwise than distinctly unpleasant.

"I suppose that's gold dust in the tray," thought Bob wretchedly.

"Of all the poor luck, to pick out an office with gold dust floating around as free as air! Why didn't the dub lock it up in his safe?"

The little man was having trouble to get "Central." He jiggled the hook frantically in flat defiance of all telephone rules, and he shouted loudly into the transmitter, as though enough noise could rouse the number he sought.

Just at this moment the outer door opened and a man entered. He was a man of middle age with a closely clipped gray moustache and kindly gray eyes. It was Mr. Matthews, the owner of the business.

The little man, seeing him, flung the receiver into the hook with a bang and poured forth a volley of French, emphasized by wild gestures.

After listening for a few moments, Mr. Matthews turned a wondering gaze on the group of subdued looking young people. His expression soon turned to one of amus.e.m.e.nt.

After a word or two in French to the little man, evidently of thanks for his zeal, he said to Bob and the girls:

"Won't you please tell me your side of the story? I find it hard to believe that you have set forth to rob and steal."

The tale came out with a rush, Bob, Betty, and Bobby taking turns or all talking together, the others, fortunately, being content to let the three tell the story.

Mr. Matthews was sympathetic and apologetic, but he was also amused, and he laughed heartily. It seemed he knew Mr. Littell. The "robber band," as Bobby afterwards named them, laughed with him; in fact, in their relief, laughing till the tears came. The black-eyed man, meanwhile, left the room, still, evidently, suspicious of them.

"Monsieur Brissot," explained Mr. Matthews, "is a Belgian diamond cutter who has just come to this country. He seems to be suspicious of everybody, and, I fear, does not always use judgment in his handling of such matters. I am grateful, however, for the interest he takes in my business, and trust you young people will overlook his excess of zeal."

Mr. Matthews showed them to the door, and as by this time the reporters were well away intent on other affairs, they went out of the building in the regular way-a more seemly way than scuttling down fire escapes and breaking into jewelry shops, so Betty declared.

"Well, good gracious!" observed Bobby, when they were once outside.

"If this hasn't been an exciting morning! First we get nearly killed, then we're rescued, and next we're almost arrested."

They boarded a street car and went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where they spent an interesting afternoon touring the immense plant, the best equipped of its kind in the world.

The recital of their adventures at the dinner table that night provoked mingled merriment and concern.

"Never mind, it will teach 'em self-reliance," Mr. Littell insisted, when his wife protested that the girls would have to be more closely chaperoned on subsequent trips. "Falling into sc.r.a.pes is the finest lesson-book ever opened to the heedless."

Sunday morning the girls and Mrs. Littell motored to Was.h.i.+ngton and attended services in one of the fine old churches. There they had an excellent opportunity to observe the President of the United States and his wife, who, as Libbie said disappointedly at dinner that day, "looked just like anybody."

"I hope you didn't expect them to get up and make a speech?" teased her uncle. "However, I'm glad you saw them, my dear. A country where the head of the government 'looks just like anybody' and goes to church as simply and reverently as any one else is the finest in the world."

Early in the new week Bobby announced that it was their duty, meaning the girl contingent, to go into the city and pay a call upon a friend of the Littells' who was staying with an aunt at one of the large hotels. They had met them at church, and a tentative promise had been given, which Bobby was determined should be kept.