The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall: or, Great Days in School and Out

CHAPTER XXIII
THE BLOW FALLS

The next day, after school hours, Professor Raymond opened his desk to get a paper that he wanted. He was about to close it again, when something in the tumbled condition of its contents, attracted his attention. He reached sharply over to the lower right-hand corner, and felt for a package that he knew had been there the day before.

A startled look came into his face, and he felt again more carefully. Then he hastily took out everything that the desk contained.

He sat down in his chair with a jolt, and a grim expression came into his eyes. Then he made a painstaking examination of the lock.

It had not been broken, nor was there any other evidence that violence had been used.

He took out his penknife and scraped the lock. A tiny shaving of something soft was brought out by the blade, and close examination showed that it was wax.

He rang the bell for the janitor, and when Big Sluper came in, he motioned him to a chair.

“Sluper,” he said abruptly, “my desk was robbed last night.”

“What!” cried Sluper, starting up. “How could that be? Are you sure, sir?”

“Perfectly sure,” replied the professor. “I only wish I were not. But I had a valuable package in here yesterday, and now it’s gone.”

“Why, nothing of that kind has ever happened before,” said Sluper, much agitated. “Did the thief take anything else?”

“No,” replied Professor Raymond. “And it was no outsider that took the package. There was a little money in the desk, and any ordinary thief would have taken that. Besides, the papers that were taken would have been of no value to any one outside the school. They were the examination slips for the next algebra test. Sluper, we’ve a thief right here in Rally Hall.”

“I’d be sorry to think that, sir,” said the dismayed janitor. “I can’t think of any of the boys who might do such a thing.”

“But some one of them did, just the same,” replied the professor. “See here,” and he showed the janitor the shaving of wax.

“That proves that it was all planned beforehand,” he said. “An outside thief would have had a skeleton key, or simply pried it open with a jimmy. But somebody has taken a wax impression of the lock and had a key made to fit.

“Keep this thing perfectly quiet for a time,” the teacher cautioned. “Be on the watch for anything suspicious you may see or hear among the boys. And I want you to go down town to Kelly’s, the locksmith. Get into a talk with him, and bring the conversation round to the subject of duplicate keys, and how they’re made. If he’s done anything of that kind lately, he may drop a hint of it. He’d have no reason to keep quiet, for he’s an honest man and wouldn’t do a crooked thing. If he’s made such a key, the thief has given him some plausible reason for getting it made. Find out anything you can, and let me know at once. But, above all things, don’t let the matter get out.”

The janitor, badly confused, went away on his mission, while Professor Raymond sought out Dr. Rally to lay the matter before him. If it had been an ordinary case, he would have acted on his own discretion. But this was altogether too serious, involving as it did the good name of one of the scholars, and, to a certain extent, the reputation of the school itself.

He found the doctor in his office, and laid the matter before him, giving him all the details that he knew himself and telling of his instructions to the janitor.

Dr. Rally was white hot with amazement and indignation.

“The rascal shall suffer for it if we catch him!” he announced, with a grimness that would have delighted Aaron Rushton and confirmed him in his admiration for the doctor’s sternness. “I’ll dismiss him. I’ll disgrace him. I’ll make such an example of him that nothing of the kind will ever happen in this school again.”

His eyes flashed under his shaggy brows, and the fist he brought down on the desk clenched till the knuckles showed white.

“But what could have been the motive?” he asked, as he grew more composed. “Of course, we can understand why some one might want to know the questions that were going to be asked. But why did they take the whole package? One slip would have done as well as fifty. Then, too, they might know that if the whole package were taken, you would simply call the examination off, as soon as you had missed them, and make out a new set of questions. Then they’d have had all their trouble and risk for nothing.”

“It is curious,” answered Raymond. “If the idea was simply to get advance information to help some boy through with the test, the only way to do it was to take one copy and leave the rest of the slips there, trusting me not to notice that the package had been tampered with.

“My theory is that he meant to do this, but perhaps was frightened away by some sound, and didn’t have time to do it. In that case, he may take out one of the slips and try to put the package back to-night. The examination doesn’t take place till day after to-morrow, and he may figure that I haven’t missed them. As a matter of fact, it was only by the merest chance that I did miss them to-day.”

“Well, let us hope that he will try it,” said Doctor Rally. “We’ll have Sluper stay in your office all night and nab him if he comes.”

Sluper came back from his trip to town and reported that Kelly knew nothing of the matter. Nor had he heard of anything among the boys that might throw light on the mystery.

He kept a careful watch that night in Professor Raymond’s office, but without result.

The next day there was something in the atmosphere of Rally Hall that made every one feel that a storm was brewing. The air was electric with signs of trouble. Nothing had been allowed to leak out, but any one could see that something was the matter, though without the slightest idea of what it was.

Doctor Rally was more snappy and gruff than they had ever seen him, and Professor Raymond went about his work in a brooding and absent-minded way, that, with him, was most unusual.

“What’s come over Raymond to-day?” asked Fred. “He looks as though he were going to the electric chair.”

“He certainly does have plenty of the gloom stuff,” agreed Billy.

“Off his feed, perhaps,” suggested Slim, to whom nothing seemed more tragic than a loss of appetite.

“Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days be dark and dreary,”

quoted Tom.

Fred laughed and made a pass at him, little thinking how soon the lines would apply to himself.

In his mail that afternoon, the professor received a letter. There was nothing about it to identify the writer. In fact, there was no writing, as both the address and the letter itself were printed in rough, sprawling letters. It read this way:

“Look in Fred Rushton’s locker.”

The professor was thunderstruck. For several minutes, he sat staring at the printed words without moving a muscle.

The first shock of amazement gave place to a sharp, gripping pain.

It could not be a coincidence. In the present condition of affairs, this mysterious note could refer only to one thing–the missing slips of the algebra test.

Fred Rushton! He, of all boys! Why, he would almost have been ready to stake his life on the lad’s honesty. He was so frank, so square, so “white.” The professor had grown to have the warmest kind of a liking for him. In study and in sport, he had stood in the first rank, and so far there had not been the slightest stain on his record.

No, it could not be possible that he had done this dastardly thing. He was almost tempted to tear the letter up.

And yet–and yet —

He must make sure.

He went to the office of Doctor Rally. From there, after a short conference, he went in search of Fred.

“Would you mind letting me take a look at your locker, Rushton?” he asked carelessly.

“Why, certainly not,” answered Fred promptly, but wonderingly.

They went to the dormitory which at that hour was deserted.

“Here you are, Professor,” he said, opening the locker.

There were some clothes lying there, neatly folded. The professor picked them up.

There, with the seals still unbroken, lay the missing package!

CHAPTER XXIV
A PUZZLING CASE

Professor Raymond picked the package up and examined it carefully. There was no sign of tampering with the seals. It was in precisely the same condition as when he had received it.

“Well,” he said, as he looked coldly and accusingly at Fred, “what have you got to say?”

Fred was looking at the package with wide open and horrified eyes. He groped for words in his bewilderment, but his tongue seemed unable to utter them. The silence grew painful.

“Why,” he managed to stammer, at last, “I don’t know what to say. I hadn’t any idea that there was anything in the locker, except my clothes.”

“How could it have got there unless you put it there?” pursued the professor.

“I don’t know,” replied Fred, his head still whirling, “unless some one else put it there by mistake, thinking it was his own locker. I certainly never saw the package before. That is,” as he looked at it more closely, “I think I did see it once.”

“Oh, you did, eh?” said Professor Raymond quickly. “And when was that?”

“Two or three days ago,” answered Fred. “I was gathering up my books in your office, and I saw you put in your desk a package that looked just like this one.”

The professor’s heart grew sick within him, as every new item seemed to connect Fred more closely with the theft.

“You knew then that it was in my desk?” he went on. “Did you have any idea of what the package contained?”

“Not then,” answered Fred. “But, a little while afterward I was talking with some of the fellows in the gymnasium, and they said it probably held the examination slips for the algebra test.”

“Do you remember anything else you said at that time?” asked the cross-examiner.

“No-o,” began Fred slowly. “Oh, yes, I remember saying what fun it would be if one were a mind reader and could know just what you were going to ask.

“But, Professor,” he broke out, as the significance of all these questions dawned upon him, “you don’t think for the minute, do you, that I stole this package from your desk?”

“I hardly know what to think,” replied the professor sadly, “but I want you to come right over with me to Doctor Rally’s office.”

Utterly stunned and overwhelmed by the blow that had fallen upon him, Fred followed the professor. His limbs dragged, as though he were walking in a nightmare. They crossed the campus, and went straight to the room where Doctor Rally awaited them.

He motioned them to chairs, and sat there, stern and implacable as Fate, his eyes seeming to bore Fred through and through, while the professor told of the finding of the papers in Fred’s locker, and the explanation, or rather the lack of explanation, that Fred had offered.

“Well, young man,” the doctor said, and, although his eyes were flaming, his words were as cold as ice, “you seem to have put the rope around your own neck by your admissions. Have you anything else to say?”

“What can I say?” burst out Fred desperately. “If telling the truth has put the rope around my neck, I can’t help it. I didn’t take the papers, and don’t know a single thing about them. Every single word I’ve said is true.”

“But the papers were found in your locker,” returned the inquisitor coldly, “and they couldn’t have got there of their own accord. Some one put them there. If you didn’t, who did?”

“I don’t know,” said Fred miserably.

“Have you any enemy in the school, who might have done it?” asked Professor Raymond.

“Not that I know of,” answered Fred. “That is – ” the thought of Andy flashed across his mind, but he was too generous to give it utterance. “No,” he went on, “I don’t think of anybody who could be mean enough to put the thing off on me.”

“Is there anything that might have any connection with this matter that you haven’t yet told us?” continued his questioner.

“Only one thing,” replied Fred, to whom at that moment came the recollection of what he had seen in the moonlight. “I did see a fellow going away from the Hall the other night after twelve o’clock.”

“Ah,” came from both men, bending forward, and then they questioned him carefully about the size and general appearance of the midnight skulker.

“Why didn’t you tell some of us about that at the time?” asked Doctor Rally severely.

“I suppose I ought to have done so,” was the answer, “but I was cold and sleepy, and the next day I forgot all about it.”

There was a long silence, while Doctor Rally pondered. He broke it at last by saying:

“I want to be entirely just to you, Rushton. I am not ready to condemn you on this evidence, though I will not deny that things look dark for you. I shall look into the matter further, and when I have reached a decision I will let you know. That is all for the present.”

He nodded a dismissal, and Fred, picking up his hat, stumbled blindly from the room.

The two men who held his fate in their hands, stared at each other for a long minute without speaking.

“It looks bad,” said Doctor Rally, at last, “and I am more sorry than I can tell, that he should be mixed up in such a wretched mess. His parents are the finest kind of people, and his uncle is a particular friend of mine.”

“Do you think that he is guilty, then?” asked the professor.

“What else can I think?” said the doctor gloomily. “Everything seems to indicate it. The facts are like so many spokes of a wheel, all leading to the hub, and that hub is Rushton.

“Who knew that the examination papers were in your desk? Rushton. Who had been wishing he were a mind reader, so that he might know what questions you were going to ask? Rushton. Who saw, or says he saw a mysterious marauder coming from the building at midnight, and yet said nothing to any one about it? Rushton. And, above all, who actually had the missing package in his locker? Rushton.

“Of course, all this is circumstantial evidence. But sometimes that is the strongest kind. Naturally, he would take the greatest care not to have any witnesses to the theft. The proof seems strong and many a man has been hung on less.”

“That is true,” admitted the other thoughtfully, “but there are many things, too, to be said on the other side.

“In the first place, there is the boy’s character up to this time. He ought to have the full advantage of that, and certainly he has seemed to be one of the most upright and straightforward boys in the entire school. I haven’t had a black mark against him, and neither has any of the other teachers.

“Then, too, what motive did he have for taking them? He’s very bright, especially in mathematics, for which he has a natural gift. He’s always up in the nineties somewhere in his marks. He hadn’t the slightest reason to fear the examinations.

“And I can’t understand his manner, if he is guilty. When I first spoke to him, instead of being the least bit flustered, he wasn’t at all slow in taking me straight to the locker. And when we caught sight of the papers, he was just as much dumfounded as I was myself, more so if anything, because I had had a hint that they were there.

“Why did he tell us about the talk in the gymnasium? He didn’t need to say a word about it. Yet he blurted it out without any hesitation. Either the boy is innocent, or he’s one of the finest actors I ever saw.”

“What is your theory, then?” asked the doctor. “Do you think that somebody, in his haste to conceal the papers, mistook Rushton’s locker for his own?”

“Hardly that,” replied Professor Raymond. “The matter was too important for such carelessness. The papers were put there deliberately.”

“By whom?”

“By the person who wrote this letter,” and the professor took from his pocket the scrap of paper he had received that afternoon.

CHAPTER XXV
TO THE RESCUE

The master of Rally Hall and Professor Raymond knitted their brows as they studied the scrawl. There was absolutely no clue, except that it bore the Green Haven postmark on the envelope, and had been mailed that morning.

“One of the boys sent it, without a doubt,” went on the professor. “He knew we were familiar with his handwriting and so printed the letter.”

“Might not the writer, whoever he is, have seen Rushton hide the package, and chosen this method to tell on him?” queried the doctor.

“I would go further than that,” said the other slowly. “I believe that the writer of this note deliberately stole the package and put it in Rushton’s locker, in order to bring disgrace on him.”

“It’s hard to think that there is such a despicable wretch as that in Rally Hall,” said Doctor Rally, bringing his clenched fist down on his desk.

“So it is,” replied the other, “but to believe that Fred Rushton stole them is harder yet.”

“Who, in the whole body of students, do you believe is capable of such a thing?” asked the doctor.

“Only one,” was the cautious answer, “but, in the total absence of proof, it wouldn’t perhaps be fair to name him.”

“I think I know whom you have in mind,” rejoined the master. “Here,” tearing two bits of paper from a sheet on his desk, “in order that our guess be independent, you write a name on this piece of paper and I will write on this. Then we will compare.”

The professor did so. Then they laid the papers side by side.

Each bore the same name, “Shanks.”

“He’s a poor stick,” mused the doctor, “but I’d hate to think that he’d sink as low as this. And, of course, so far, it is purely guess work. He may be as innocent as the driven snow. Has he ever had any trouble with Rushton?”

“Not that I know of,” was the answer, “although at one time I came upon them when they seemed to have been having words,” and Professor Raymond narrated the affair on the campus.

“Well,” Doctor Rally wound up the discussion by saying, “for the present, we suspend judgment. Keep a sharp eye on both Rushton and Shanks. I’ll not rest until I have probed this thing to the bottom.”

In the meantime Fred had gone to his room utterly crushed and despondent. The whole thing had come on him like a thunderbolt. In half an hour, from being one of the happiest boys in the school he had become the most miserable.

It seemed to him as though all his world had fallen into ruins. To be accused of theft, to be, perhaps, driven in disgrace from Rally Hall, to have all his relatives and friends know of the awful charge against him! For a time, he felt that he would go crazy.

Teddy, who was the only one in whom he could confide, was studying when Fred dragged himself in.

“Oh, Ted,” he groaned, as he threw himself down on his bed.

“What’s the matter, Fred?” exclaimed Teddy, leaping to his feet in alarm, as he saw the blank misery in his brother’s eyes.

“They think I’m a thief,” moaned Fred.

“Who thinks so? What do you mean?” and Teddy fairly shouted.

“Doctor Rally and Professor Raymond,” was the answer. “They think I stole the examination papers.”

“Stole! Stole!” roared Teddy. “Why, they’re crazy! What makes them think anything like that?”

“They’d been taken from Professor Raymond’s desk, and they found them in my locker.”

He blurted out the whole story and Teddy was wild with grief and rage. But in the absence of the slightest clue, they were unable to do anything but await events while they ate their hearts out in silence.

A week went by without results. The winter had set in in earnest, and the lake was coated with ice, thick enough for skating.

Fred had been looking forward to hockey and skating, in both of which he took great delight. But now, he had little interest in them, and kept as much as possible to himself.

The boys, of course, saw that something had happened, and did all they could to cheer him up.

“You’ve simply got to come to-day, Fred,” said Melvin, one bright December day, bursting into the room, his eyes dancing and his cheeks glowing with the frost. “It’s just one peach of a day, and the ice is as smooth as glass.

“Nothing doing,” he went on, as Fred started to protest. “Come along, fellows, and we’ll rush him down to the lake. A bird that can skate and won’t skate must be made to skate.”

“I never heard of a bird skating,” objected Fred, but yielded, as the whole laughing throng closed around him and hurried him out of doors.

Once on the ice, with the inspiring feeling of the skates beneath him, with the tingling air bringing the blood to his cheeks, and the glorious expanse of the frozen lake beckoning to him, the “blues” left him for a time, and he was his natural self again, all aglow with the mere delight of living.

He had gone around the lower end of the lake, and was making a wide sweep to return when he passed Andy Shanks and Sid Wilton. They shot a malicious look at him as they passed, and he saw them whisper to each other.

Once more he made the circuit of the lake, with long swinging strokes, his spirits steadily rising as the keen air nipped his face and put him in a glow from head to foot.

At the northern end of the lake was a bluff about twenty feet high. As there had been two or three heavy snowfalls already that winter, the top of the bluff held a mass of snow and ice that was many feet deep. The wind had hollowed out the lower part of the drifts so that the upper part overhung the lake for some distance from the shore.

A group of boys, including Andy Shanks and his toady, Sid Wilton, were playing “snap-the-whip.” Shanks had put his “valet,” as the boys called him, at the extreme end, and, although this was the most dangerous point and Wilton had little relish for it, he had not dared to object to anything that Andy wanted.

As Fred approached, the “whip” was “snapped”

Skating at full speed, the long line straightened out and Wilton was let go. He shot away from the others, trying to skirt the edge of the ice so as to avoid the shore and sweep out into the open. But the space was too narrow and he went into the bluff with a crash.

He scrambled up, jarred and bruised, and just as he did so, Fred saw the great overhanging mass of snow on the top of the bluff sway forward.

“Jump!” he yelled. “The snow! Quick! For your lives!”

The other boys looked up and skated from under. Sid made a desperate lunge forward, but too late. With a sullen roar the snow came down and buried him from sight.

There were exclamations of fright and horror. Andy skated away, panic-stricken. Most of the boys lost their heads. Two or three shouted for help.

Fred alone remained cool. With one motion, he unclamped his skates and threw them from him. The next instant he had plunged into the tons of snow and his arms were working like flails as he threw the masses aside.

“Quick, fellows!” he shouted. “Go at it, all of you! He’ll smother if we don’t get him out right away!”

Inspired by his example, the others pitched in, working like beavers. Other boys coming up aided in the work of cleaving a way to their imprisoned schoolmate.

Their frantic energy soon brought results.

“I touched him then, fellows!” cried Fred. “Hurry, hurry,” he added, as he himself put forth redoubled efforts.

A few minutes more and they had uncovered Sid’s head and shoulders. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be unconscious.

“We’re getting him,” exulted Fred, forgetful of his hands that were torn and bleeding from tearing at the ice mixed with the snow.

He grabbed Sid under the arms.

“Now, fellows,” he cried, “get hold of me and when I say pull – ”

But just then there was a startled cry:

“Look out! There’s more coming!”

Fred looked up and saw that another enormous mass was slipping slowly over the edge.

The other boys jumped back, but Fred remained. He tugged frantically, putting forth all his strength. One more desperate pull and he fell back on the ice, dragging Sid with him. At the same instant a tremendous mass of snow came down, one heavy block of ice just grazing him where he lay, panting and breathless.

“Fred, old boy, that was a grand thing for you to do!” cried Melvin, who with Teddy had just come up; and the sentiment was echoed by all the others who clustered admiringly around him.

“Oh, that was nothing,” disclaimed Fred. “We’ve got to get a hustle on now and take him to the Hall.”

They carried the unconscious Sid to his dormitory, and medical aid was called at once. The doctor worked over him vigorously, and was soon able to predict that in a day or two he would be all right again.

Fred took a hot bath and changed into other clothes, and had soon shaken off all the shock of the accident.

He had barely finished supper when a message was brought to him that Sid wanted to see him.

He went at once, without any thought of what awaited him.