“You got it back!” Alice cried softly. “You’re a wonder. How ever did you find it? And how did you manage to smuggle it out right under their noses?”
“An excellent question,” said a man’s voice. “Alas, there’s no time for an answer.”
And before I could make a peep or swing my fists, iron fingers pried the sardine tin from my hands.
“Help!” Alice screamed. “Intruder! There’s a man in our room!”
I sprang toward the dark figure, my fists flailing. I grabbed at handfuls of hair and punched a back in what I hoped were the fiend’s kidneys.
“Give that back, you villain!” I yelled.
Alice kept on screaming, but managed to strike a safety match and light a candle.
He was the man with the ginger whiskers!
His dark eyes took us both in murderously before he darted for the window and wrestled with the lock. I tackled him afresh and tore at his coat pockets, but he shoved me aside roughly. I’d felt the flat weight of the tin swinging in his coat pocket, though. I dove for the pockets again, but he boxed my ears. His heavy ring probably left a mark on the side of my face.
Alice rushed to my side and pushed hard at the man. They scuffled back and forth. I think he was so surprised to be attacked by a pink-cheeked, blond-haired cherub that he wasn’t sure how to strike back. He’d had no problem shoving me. But Alice was relentless. My corruption of her was complete.
He darted toward the door, but I managed to trip him so that he stumbled. Voices and footsteps running toward the door made him pause, and he darted back toward the window and pried up the sash. He looked down the drainpipe toward the ground, far below, hesitated, then swung himself out the window, hanging from the ledge. Alice rushed over and pounded and pried on the man’s fingers.
“Alice!” I cried. “Are you trying to kill him?”
“Kill whom?” demanded Miss Salamanca, bursting through the door. “What’s all this screaming about a man in the room?”
“Here, at the window.” Alice panted and pointed. “He was in our room!”
Miss Salamanca went to the window and looked down. “I don’t see anybody.”
Alice and I ran to the window to see for ourselves. I pointed down below. “Don’t you see that shadow, Miss Salamanca?” I said. “That’s him, getting away!”
“How could he have gotten away so quickly, Maeve?” Alice asked.
I wondered the same thing myself. “Slid down the pole, I expect.”
“Or never was there in the first place,” Miss Salamanca said darkly.
More teachers came pouring into the room, wrapped in blankets over their nightdresses. Curious girls followed them in droves. Miss Salamanca shooed everyone back out the door. When it was just the three of us, Miss Salamanca glowered and took a deep breath, priming herself to deliver a fatal verbal blow. She looked, if it was possible, even more gaunt and forbidding in her long nightdress, robe, and cap.
“What is the meaning of this outburst?” she demanded. “You wake the whole school in the dead of night, with an invented story about a man in your room, putting the entire staff and student body into an apoplexy of fright, and for what? Some attention-seeking stunt? A cover for some misdeed of yours?”
Poor Alice. She’d had a terrible night. And she wasn’t used to scoldings as I was—or to having her story doubted. Her eyes grew red and filled with tears.
“But we’re not making it up, Miss Salamanca,” she protested. “There really was a man here. I swear it.”
“Well-bred young ladies never swear,” said our kind headmistress.
The bell rang down below, and Miss Plumley, in her housecoat, showed two police officers upstairs. We heard their deep voices and their heavy boots on the stairs. Miss Salamanca went out into the hallway to confer with them.
“Psst! Alice, Maeve. Everything all right?”
We turned to see Tommy’s bright-red hair poking up from his head, which hovered in the window opening.
“I heard the screaming,” he said. “Something about a man?”
All my frustration and anger washed over me once more, like a bucket of cold water dumped over one’s shoulders in a bathtub.
“He got away with the sardine tin, Tommy!” I sank down onto my bed and buried my face in my knees.
“No!” He let out a low whistle.
Out in the hallway we heard Miss Salamanca’s voice. “I assure you, Constables, that there’s no need to investigate.”
“Good,” I whispered. “Old Sally’s getting rid of the bobbies. Here, come on in, Tom, before you freeze to death.” I reached him an arm and pulled him inside.
“Which way did he go?” Tommy said. “Could I catch him, do you think?”
“He’s a big man, Tom. He’d beat you to a pulp.”
Alice darted back to the door in a panic. “Maeve, if they find Tommy in here—”
I looked up to see why she’d stopped talking. There, framed in the doorway like a portrait of three avenging angels, were Miss Salamanca, the tall constable with the mustaches, and the older officer with the spectacles.
“Well, well,” Miss Salamanca said coldly. “It appears I was in error, Miss Alice. It appears there was a male”—she sniffed—“in your room after all.” She pointed an accusing finger at Tom. “Officers! Arrest this intruder!”