Читать книгу Betty Gordon and the Lost Pearls - Eunice W. Creager - Страница 4

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“Oh, Betty!” screamed Norma. “Betty, are you hurt?”

With the help of Alice, Betty struggled dazedly to her feet.

Mrs. Pryde Calott arose, panting and furious.

“You miserable girl! How dare you knock me down?” she shrilled.

“Oh, excuse me! I don’t know how it ever happened!” Betty was confused and, truth to tell, her own anger was rising.

“Happened? Happened? You knocked me down, that’s how it happened! I am Mrs. Pryde Calott. I shall report——”

What she would report was never known. The coach began to sway violently. The girls screamed in terror.

“The train’s leaving the track!” screeched Mrs. Calott. “Save us! Save us!”

The words were scarcely out of her mouth before there was a deafening crash, the sound of breaking glass, a lurching forward and settling back of the coach. A number of passengers were thrown from their seats.

The car swayed horribly. Betty was thrown violently upon Alice. Both girls went to the floor.

After a moment of nausea, Betty struggled to her feet. There was great excitement. The girls did not know what to do.

A brakeman ran through the car.

“All out! Train wrecked!” he yelled. He was evidently as excited as anybody.

Betty turned and looked down at Alice, who, disheveled and white, was struggling to a sitting posture.

“Oh, Alice, did I hurt you much? Where’s Norma?”

“Here—what’s left of me.” Norma was holding her head. “What’s happened, anyway? My, but my head got a fearful whack!”

“Wreck. Is any one hurt?” asked the thoughtful Alice. “Betty, I feel like a pancake since you passed over.”

Mrs. Hiller was helping Mrs. Pryde Calott from the floor of the coach. The face of the lady in black was full of concern.

“Are you hurt, Mrs. Calott?” she asked anxiously.

“How can you ask such a question?” the overdressed woman demanded. “My back is broken. I am black and blue all over! What a train! What a railroad! I will sue the company. I am——”

But the passengers were hastening from the car and paid scant heed to the querulous woman.

“Make haste, girls!” advised a kindly old gentleman. “The cars may catch fire at any minute.”

The girls hastily gathered together their belongings. A quick glance around revealed the fact that no one in the coach was seriously hurt. The girls made a hasty exit.

As they stepped from the train they noted that woods were on either side of them. Not a house was in sight. The girls looked around with a queer sinking at heart.

An excited brakeman came running toward them.

“What happened?” asked Betty. “Is any one hurt?”

“Not seriously,” he panted. “Engineer and fireman jumped. A close shave, I tell you! Some one left the switch open and we hit a bunch of freight cars on the siding.”

“That is lucky—no one hurt seriously,” Alice said softly. “How long before we can go on?”

“Oh, gosh, girls, that engine never will go on! I wish you’d see her! She’s fit only for the scrap pile! It will be hours before the wreck is cleared away.” The man ran on down the line.

Betty eyed her friends in dismay.

“What shall we do?” questioned Alice.

Mrs. Pryde Calott and Mrs. Hiller had followed the three girls from the car. At every step Mrs. Calott was protesting and threatening to sue the railroad company. No one paid the least attention but Mrs. Hiller, who sought in vain to quiet her. Suddenly the overbearing woman screamed frantically.

“My black handbag! Where is it? I’ve been robbed! Help! Help! Thieves! My money! My je— Everything is gone!”

A crowd quickly collected. Mrs. Pryde Calott was in the midst of it, gesticulating and screaming hysterically.

“I have been robbed, I tell you! Find the thief!”

“Are you sure you did not put the handbag in your grip?” Mrs. Hiller was white with anxiety.

“You know it never left my arm. I have been robbed, I tell you! Find the thief! Find the thief!”

“Oh, please!” implored Mrs. Hiller, “wait until we know for sure. You must have dropped it in the coach. I will go back at once and look for it.”

The gray-haired man and several other passengers volunteered to help her. Mrs. Pryde Calott stumbled after them, loath to have another touch the precious bag. For the moment, her egotism was in eclipse. She looked like a broken old woman.

The girls found themselves in the midst of a small crowd.

“The old girl will find it just where she dropped it,” prophesied a rough-looking man who had shared the same coach. He laughed loudly and many of the passengers joined in the laugh. The crowd was not sympathetic.

“She is absent-minded,” remarked Alice in a low voice.

“But she’d rather die than admit it,” finished Betty grimly.

“I believe she has something more valuable in that bag than she lets on,” whispered Norma excitedly.

The rough-looking man overheard her.

“A brass brooch from the five and ten or a paper of pins!” he chuckled. “The old girl’d make a fuss over anything!”

Presently the little party reappeared. Mrs. Pryde Calott was leaning heavily on the gray-haired man. Her face was ashen. The kindly old man looked as if he wished the earth would open and swallow him. However, he was doing all he could for Mrs. Calott.

“The bag was not in the car,” Mrs. Hiller stated. Her face was like chalk.

Mrs. Calott revived, somewhat.

“Every one must be searched!” she shrilled. “It contained a large amount of money, my—Oh, I cannot lose it! Find the thief! Find the thief!”

Every one was talking at once and asking questions. The crowd scattered. They were no longer interested in Mrs. Pryde Calott, but curious to see the damage done to the engine.

The woman was left with no one for an audience but Mrs. Hiller, the gray-haired man, and the three girls, who were a short distance from them.

“Let’s go up and take a look at the engine,” suggested Norma, eagerly.

“All right,” Betty agreed. “Come on, Alice.”

But Norma did not stir. She stood staring at Betty’s skirt. Her eyes grew as round as saucers.

“Betty! What is that hanging below your traveling bag?”

“What’s what?” Betty looked down and her eyes grew wide with amazement. “Why, it’s Mrs. Calott’s bag!” she gasped.

“If it isn’t!” Norma was dumbfounded. “How in the world——”

“That is easily explained.” Alice spoke quietly. “When Mrs. Calott fell the bag must have fallen from her hand and caught on the metal clasp of your traveling bag, Betty. In the excitement of the wreck we did not notice it hanging there until now. Don’t get excited, Betty. She can’t eat you,” concluded Alice, with a smile.

“That woman and I are hoodooed!” groaned Betty. Her face was crimson with embarrassment. Nevertheless, with head in the air and chin high with determination, but with inward misgivings, she retraced her steps toward Mrs. Calott. From Betty’s traveling bag still dangled the little black bag.

“I will show her just how I found it,” thought Betty.

The gimlet eyes of Mrs. Calott bored their way to the bag before Betty reached her.

“Look at that girl!” she screamed, suddenly galvanized into action. “She has my bag!”

The woman rushed forward, followed by Mrs. Hiller and the gray-haired man.

Betty began to explain, but without a word of thanks and heedless of her explanations, Mrs. Calott jerked the bag from the catch of the traveling bag and, turning her back upon them all, began to examine thoroughly the contents of the bag.

Mrs. Hiller put her arms around Betty and smiled her gentle, kindly smile.

“You dear child, I am so glad you found the bag. It contained quite a bit of money and caused us much uneasiness. Yes, yes, it is quite plain how it happened.”

Mrs. Calott turned from her examination of the bag and said grudgingly.

“Everything is safe. Come, let us get out of this horrid place! I am not accustomed to so much annoyance.”

Without a glance in Betty’s direction, she walked haughtily toward the wrecked engine. Mrs. Hiller and the gray-haired man followed reluctantly.

“Well, that’s over,” sighed Betty, in relief, as she joined Norma and Alice, who had watched the little scene with much interest. “Come on, girls, we’ll take a look at the wreck and find out if there isn’t some way of getting to Orchard Cove from here without waiting until the wreck is cleared away.”

“Oh, look at that engine!” exclaimed Norma, a few moments later.

The remains of the engine were piled in a fantastic heap. Passenger coaches remained intact, but overturned freight cars spilled their messy contents in every direction—eggs, fresh fruit, tomatoes, watermelons.

A smashed freight car, filled with barrels of molasses, was disgorging its dark and sticky contents. The crowd moved gingerly forward.

The voice of Mrs. Pryde Calott was heard demanding explanations. Elated at the recovery of her bag, her old arrogance had returned threefold.

“Who is responsible for this wreck? I must get on at once. I am Mrs. Pryde Calott,” she announced importantly. Raising her monocle, she inspected a man in overalls, who was evidently the engineer. “I demand an explanation for all this annoyance,” she went on.

The engineer, his head bound up and arm in a sling, replied civily enough.

“An accident, ma’am—an open switch.”

Mrs. Calott’s eyes blazed with anger.

“Such carelessness! Why did you leave it open? I shall report you to the president of the road. I shall——”

Further threat was prevented by a backward step into something dark and sticky. Mrs. Calott’s foot slipped. Her unwieldy form toppled. She fell, shrieking, into a half-filled barrel of molasses!