Rhode Island ? Four college students are accused of stealing items worth more than $100,000, including vases and a mantel clock, from a seaside mansion that was once railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt’s summer “cottage.”

Investigators believe the students from Salve Regina University stole several items during break-ins at the Breakers mansion on Friday and Saturday.

The students drove the stash to Maine, then brought it back to Rhode Island when they realized police were questioning fellow students at the university, just up the road from the Renaissance-style palace in Newport, police Lt. Michael Brennan said Wednesday.

Eric Fudge, 18, of Boxford, Mass., and Joseph Sullivan, 18, of Scarborough, Maine, were arrested Tuesday after abandoning the collection near a large trash bin at a public beach, Brennan said.

William C. Elliott, 18, of Peabody, Mass., and Avery W. Lloyd, 19, of Portland, Maine, were arrested Wednesday and would be held overnight until their arraignment today on the same charges, Brennan said.