Billie Bradley and Her Classmates: or, The Secret of the Locked Tower

“But it’s only a candle, Billie, and – ” Teddy was beginning when the little fellow himself interrupted impatiently.

“Light it, light it,” he commanded, glancing nervously over his shoulder into the spooky corners of the cave. “Your match will be burnt out and we will be left in the dark. The dark. I’m afraid of the dark. Hurry, hurry!”

To Teddy and Billie at the same instant came the startling thought that the man was a lunatic. His looks, his voice, his manner, were all proof of it.

And while Teddy lighted the candle with his one remaining match, Billie began to shiver wretchedly. If only they had not found the old cave everything would have been all right. They might even have been home by this time. For the moment she had forgotten how cold it was outside and that neither she nor Teddy knew the way home.

While Teddy glanced about for some place to set the lighted candle, she furtively studied the simpleton, into whose hiding-place they had been unlucky enough to stumble.

He was about twenty-one, she guessed, scarcely more than a boy. His features were as small as his body, his eyes little and red-rimmed and shifty, with an expression of vacancy that made Billie’s blood run cold. His hair, as nearly as she could tell in the flickering light, was red.

And while Billie watched him, he watched Teddy, and she was surprised to see his vacant eyes suddenly fill with terror. Then, when Teddy turned back, after setting the candle on a projecting piece of rock, the simpleton came close to him, holding out shaking, imploring hands.

“Have you come to take me away? Have you?” he asked wildly, and then as Teddy still continued to stare at him, he fell to the ground, groveling in the dirt at the boy’s feet.

It was not a pretty sight, and with a little exclamation of disgust, Teddy reached down, gripped the fellow’s collar and jerked him to his feet.

“For heaven’s sake, get up,” he cried. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You haven’t come to take me away? You won’t put me in prison?” whined the simpleton, shaking and trembling there before them till Billie put her hands before her eyes to shut out the sight of him. “I haven’t done anything! Truly I haven’t! Don’t put me in prison. Oh, I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of the dark!”

There is no telling how much longer he might have gone on in that manner had not Teddy put a hand over his mouth and shaken him into silence. Billie, cowering back against the wall, had begun to cry.

“Now,” growled Teddy, giving one extra shake to the whining wretch, “suppose you keep still for a minute and try to understand what I am going to tell you. We didn’t come into your cave to get you, and we’re not going to hurt you if you will do what we tell you. We’re lost, and we want to get back to Three Towers Hall. Do you suppose you can tell us how?”

The simpleton, relieved of his suspicion that they had come to do him harm, became suddenly sullen. Teddy had to repeat his question before the fellow answered.

“I can,” he said then, “if I want to.”

Teddy was about to answer angrily, but he remembered that he had heard somewhere that the only way you can get anything out of a weak-minded person is to humor him.

So he controlled his temper and said that he hoped very much that the fellow would want to – and the sooner the better, or words to that effect.

“What’s your name?” asked Billie suddenly. It was the first time she had spoken, and both Teddy and the simpleton started. The latter stared at her a moment open-mouthed, and then his manner underwent a bewildering change – became softer, more normal. Evidently he had not noticed before that she was a girl, for she had been nearly hidden behind Teddy.

“What’s your name?” asked Billie again.

“Nick Budd, ma’am,” answered the fellow, never taking his eyes from Billie’s pretty face. “Son of Tim Budd, the gardener up at Three Towers Hall.”

“Oh!” cried Billie delightedly, while Teddy himself felt immensely relieved. “Then you will show us the way home, won’t you? We’ll be ever so much obliged to you.”

“Yes’m,” said the poor simpleton, shuffling his feet as though embarrassed. “I’ll show you right away. But there’s a powerful lot o’ snow between us and the Hall,” he added, as he turned to leave the cave.

Teddy started to take the candle to light them out, but the simpleton, as though he had eyes in the back of his head, turned upon Teddy furiously.

“You let thet candle be,” he cried to the astonished boy, while Billie shrank back in fresh alarm. “You let thet candle be, I tell you! It’s my candle, ain’t it?”

“Whew!” whistled Teddy, feeling a wild desire to shout, yet afraid to do it for fear of angering still more this poor idiot. “Yes, it’s your candle, old man. Be sure you take good care of it. It’s very precious.”

The simpleton stared at him suspiciously for a moment, then turned his back and led the way out of the cave.

“Oh, Teddy, I’m scared to death,” whispered Billie, as the boy grabbed tight hold of her hand and started to follow Nick Budd.

“You needn’t be,” he whispered back to her. “I could clean up that little shrimp with one finger.” Which observation, though extremely slangy, was very comforting to Billie.

They found the sled outside where Teddy had dropped it when they entered the cave, and then there began a long, hard struggle with the snow and the wind that the boy and girl were to remember long afterward.

They did not talk much, for they were too busy trying to keep up with Nick Budd as he floundered through the snow, and breath was precious. However, Billie did find a chance to ask the question that had been looming bigger and bigger with each second.

“Teddy, what do you suppose the boys and girls will think of our disappearing like that?” she asked him.

“I suppose they’ll think we went off in an aeroplane or something,” he answered, trying to be funny and not succeeding very well.

“Well,” sighed Billie, “I only hope they won’t go and say anything about it at school – not till we get back and have a chance to explain, anyway.”

Teddy glanced at her quickly.

“Nobody would be mean enough to do that,” he said, decidedly.

“No-o, I guess not,” agreed Billie, but in her heart she was not at all sure. She was thinking of Amanda Peabody.

CHAPTER XII – THE ACCUSATION

Nick Budd, plunging on in the snow ahead of the young folks, hardly once turned his head to look back. Evidently he had made this trip often and was used to wading through snow half-way to his waist, for he went so swiftly that Teddy was winded and Billie pretty nearly worn out when they at last reached the road.

Oh, but what a relief it was to step out on its hard, crusty firmness after the yielding depth of the snow in the field!

Then Nick Budd turned and addressed them for the first time since they had left the cave behind them.

“This here is the road thet leads to Three Towers,” he told them, evidently in a sullen mood again. “Jest foller straight and ye’ll git thar.” And before either Teddy or Billie had a chance to thank him he turned back without another word and started to retrace his steps through the heavy snow, leaving the two standing in the middle of the road staring after him.

Then Billie turned wonderingly to the boy.

“Teddy, isn’t he the queerest thing?” she breathed.

Teddy nodded.

“He sure is,” he said, soberly, adding slowly: “I’m just wondering what made him so afraid that we were going to put him in prison. He was scared almost to death until we told him why we had come.”

“But he’s a simpleton,” Billie pointed out. “Poor thing, I don’t suppose you could count on anything he says or does. People who aren’t ‘all there’ have moods, don’t they?”

“Is that why you act so funny sometimes?” asked Teddy with a grin, and Billie pouted most becomingly.

“I think you’re horrid,” she said, while Teddy’s grin became still wider. “Come on, let’s get back. I’m freezing to death. Don’t stand there grinning like an ape,” she commanded, with an impatient stamp of her foot. “You look silly.”

“Like Nick Budd?” asked Teddy good-naturedly, and Billie had to smile. “Look here,” he added, jerking the sled toward him and motioning to Billie to sit on it. “We can get back much more quickly if you let me pull you. Get aboard, Miss Billie, and I’ll give you a regular sleighride.”

“Oh fine!” cried Billie, as she settled herself comfortably on the big sled. “Only I’m ’fraid its rather a long pull, Teddy. You may get tired.”