Ba.s.sett leaned forward and talked in low tones as if fearing to be overheard, but there was no danger of that, for the other persons in the restaurant were too much interested in their own affairs to eavesdrop on two young fellows chatting in a booth.

At eight o'clock Campbell and Ba.s.sett sauntered out and Chuan Kai received his fat tip. The big car rolled out to the "mansion" on the hillock and, when the chauffeur had been found, sped to Ridgley School.

Five minutes before nine it discharged its burden at the doors of Gannett Hall.

During the week that followed there was a frenzy of football talk in every Ridgley dormitory. At chapel on Tuesday morning Doctor Wells granted Neil Durant's request to speak to the school. The football captain mounted the platform a little nervously, but he made a straightforward speech in which he appealed for more candidates for the scrub. "There are a good many likely-looking fellows in this school who have never tried for the football team," he said. "It's late in the season, but there's a chance for them now on the scrub and, if they show any real ability, an opportunity with the team. We've got to do our best to beat Jefferson this year and we can't afford to overlook good material even now, so if you want to show your school spirit come down to the field this afternoon."

The result of the speech and of numerous personal appeals was that a dozen new players appeared with the scrub that afternoon; they were not a remarkable addition in respect to quality, however, and after a couple of days of looking them over Coach Murray remarked to Neil Durant that he was afraid that none of them would "set the world on fire."

Those were days of feverish activity on the football field; the coach drove the members of the first team for all they were worth and when he thought they were in danger of being overworked from too much scrimmaging he called them together in the locker building and gave them blackboard talks. In the middle of the week he advanced Tracey Campbell and Fred Harper to the first squad; he then began to test some new and intricate formations.

Among the candidates who had responded to Neil Durant's appeal had been Snubby Turner. Snubby succeeded Fred Harper as quarter-back of the scrub and felt an immense elation which he intimated to Teeny-bits one afternoon on the way back to the campus.

"Keep it up, Snubby," said Teeny-bits. "You're putting life into the scrub."

"If I'll come up to your room to-night, will you give me a few pointers about running with the ball?" asked Snubby as the two approached the Gannett Hall steps.

"Come up right after supper and we'll talk for half an hour; then I'll have to study," said Teeny-bits.

Snubby Turner came--but not to talk about football. He closed the door softly behind him and looked at his friend with such a strange expression on his freckled face that Teeny-bits said:

"What in the name of mud is the matter, Snubby?"

"Do you suppose there's any one in this school mean enough to steal?"

asked Turner. "When I went down to football practice to-day I left my gold watch and a purse with twelve dollars in it in the top drawer of my chiffonier. They're both gone!"

"Are you sure?" asked Teeny-bits.

"Yes, I am," declared Snubby. "Absolutely sure."

CHAPTER V

TEENY-BITS' CHANCE

Snubby Turner was not the only member of Ridgley School who lost property during the days that preceded the game with Jefferson. His gold watch and the twelve dollars that had mysteriously disappeared from his chiffonier were the first to vanish, but they were quickly followed by other bits of jewelry and money--not only from the Ridgleyites in Gannett Hall but also from those in other dormitories.

Ned Stillson, over in Ames Hall, lost six dollars and a small gold-handled penknife that a maiden aunt had given him; Fred Harper reported the disappearance of a silver trophy of which he was inordinately proud,--a graceful little model of a sailing boat which he and his brother had won during a season of boat racing with their twenty-footer. The actual value of the trophy, aside from its sentimental value, was said to be thirty-six dollars.

In the case of Harper's loss there was an additional interest because of the fact that Fred nearly succeeded--unwittingly--in discovering the ident.i.ty of the thief. His room was on the first floor of Gannett Hall, and he remembered that on the Wednesday night when the theft occurred he had left the window wide open at the time he went over to Lincoln Hall for supper. He had gone from the table early and on arriving at the dormitory had immediately entered his room. As he opened the door he saw a dark form outlined in the window and it occurred to him that perhaps one of his schoolmates was attempting to play a practical joke upon him.

"What's the idea?" he had said. "Why don't you come in the front door like a human being?"

He had expected an answer in harmony with his question, but to his surprise the person in the window had immediately scrambled out, jumped down five feet to the ground and had lost no time in running out of sight around the corner of the building. Fred Harper had peered out of the window, still thinking that he had been the victim of a prank, and had not noticed the loss of his silver sailing trophy until he had turned on the electric lights and had seen that the place where it stood on the mantelpiece was vacant. He had then dashed out of the dormitory in the hope of intercepting the fugitive as he crossed the campus, but no one was in sight except his schoolmates returning from Lincoln Hall.

To these he reported his loss, and a dozen of the Ridgleyites made a hurried search of the campus; they investigated all the shaded corners and unlighted doorways but found nothing that in any way offered a clew to the ident.i.ty of the mysterious thief.

Within a week a dozen other thefts had been reported, and no little talk went the rounds of the school. Poor Jerry, the grizzled old-timer, who for years had been general helper to Sloc.u.m, the head janitor, was an object of suspicion in the eyes of some of the newcomers at Ridgley.

There was no doubt about it, Jerry did have a most fearsome cast of features. Mr. Stevens, the English master, once remarked that he looked like an "amiable murderer." It was an apt description. Jerry had an expansive smile, but it was bestowed only upon those Ridgleyites--masters and pupils--who, for some subtle reason, loomed high in his esteem. All others he glowered upon with an expression ferocious and uncompromising. It was said that Doctor Wells was head of the school six months before he gained the reward of the smile that Jerry bestowed on the elect. But Jerry's heart was in the right place, and the older members of Ridgley School laughed to scorn the suggestion that he had any connection with the thefts.

"I'd as soon suspect my own father as Jerry!" said Snubby Turner, "but that gives me an idea."

What the idea was he revealed to no one except Jerry himself. For some reason Jerry had taken a great liking to the genial Snubby, and when he received a call from that young man down in his bas.e.m.e.nt room, his seamed features took on an expression that might have caused Mr. Stevens to add the adjectives happy and harmless to the "amiable murderer."

"I have an idea, Jerry," said Snubby. "You know some one's been getting away with a lot of valuable truck from the fellows' rooms. It would be an awfully clever stunt to catch him. Why don't you snoop around and find out who it is?"

"There's ijeers and ijeers," said Jerry. "I got my ijeers too. I ain't got no need to snoop around. I got eyes an' ears as are uncommon good, even though I been usin' the same ones for nigh on to seventy year. I got my own ijeers as to who's sneak-thieving this school and bime-by somebody's goin' to get ketched."

"What _are_ your ideas?" asked Snubby. "Do you know who's doing it?"

But old Jerry had no further enlightenment for his friend, even when Snubby pressed him further. "I got eyes an' ears," said the old man, "an' I got my ijeers too."

Doctor Wells referred to the mystery indirectly one morning at chapel.

"How foolish it is for any of us to believe that we can commit a wrong and escape the penalty merely because no one sees us," he said. "Every evil deed leaves its heaviest mark not on the _victim_ of it but on the misguided person who performs it. Once in a while something happens at our school that proves anew that old, old truth."

There was absolute silence in the hall; every one knew to what the head was referring.

But other incidents of more stirring nature were under way at Ridgley School. As the impending struggle for football honors with Jefferson drew nearer, each day seemed to be more strongly charged with suspense and excitement until the very air that wafted itself among the maples and elms, which were now dropping their red and yellow leaves on the campus, seemed electric with possibilities both glorious and disastrous.

Since the game with Wilton, Teeny-bits had practiced regularly with the first squad and more than once had demonstrated that his ability to run with the ball was above the average. White, whose place he had taken in the Wilton game, recovered from his slightly sprained ankle, however, and resumed his old position as left half-back. Teeny-bits continued to be a subst.i.tute.

Tracey Campbell, who likewise had been promoted to the first team, seemed to have regained the attention of Coach Murray. On the Sat.u.r.day that followed the tie game with Wilton, Ridgley journeyed to Springfield to play Prescott Academy. Ridgley won the game by the score of 17 to 0, but more than once had to fight to keep the light but active Prescott team from scoring. Both Teeny-bits and Campbell played through the whole fourth quarter and, to an impartial observer, might have seemed to display a nearly equal ability. Five minutes before the end of the game, however, Teeny-bits brought the spectators to their feet by catching a punt and dodging through half the Prescott team for a gain of fifty-five yards before the home quarter-back forced him over the side line. The spectacular thing about the run was that Teeny-bits somehow wriggled and squirmed out of the grasp of four Prescott players who successively had at least a fair opportunity to tackle him. The play did not result in a touchdown, for Prescott recovered the ball on an attempted forward pa.s.s and the game soon came to an end.

Coach Murray seemed to be pretty well satisfied with the playing of the Ridgley team. "What I liked best," he said on the way back, "was that you played an intelligent game--you took advantage of your opportunities--but let me add in a hurry that you will have to play better and harder football than you've played yet when you meet Jefferson."

On the same Sat.u.r.day, Jefferson performed in a manner that brought no encouragement to Ridgley. With Norris, the mighty full-back, leading the team, Jefferson had "snowed under and buried", as one newspaper put it, the lighter Dale School eleven, which previously had won some little attention by its development of the open game, especially forward pa.s.sing. Against Jefferson, Dale seemed helpless. She was stopped before she could get started; her players kept possession of the ball only for brief moments, and as soon as it came again into the hands of the bigger team another procession toward a touchdown started. The final score was 69-0, nine touchdowns and three drop kicks.

Of the nine touchdowns, Norris had made six, which was said to establish a record for school games in the state. Three goals were missed.

At Ridgley the name of Norris became a thing of dread; the leader of the Jefferson team had a.s.sumed the proportions of a Goliath.

"I'll bet Neil Durant can stop him," Fred Harper loyally declared to a group on the steps of Gannett Hall. But there was no great a.s.surance in his voice and the answer that came back revealed the doubt that was in every one's mind.

"He can if _any one_ can."

Teeny-bits was walking up from the locker building with Neil Durant after practice when the captain surprised him by saying:

"I used to know Norris; we used to go to a day school in Washington together."

"You did!" exclaimed Teeny-bits. "What was he like?"

"It was four or five years ago and we were young kids, but I remember that Norris was gritty as the d.i.c.kens; he used to play quarter-back then; of course he's developed a lot since those days."

Somehow that little incident seemed to change Teeny-bits' state of mind toward Norris; he had been unconsciously thinking of him as scarcely a human being, rather as a super-athlete who was virtually invincible. He began to develop a great desire to play against him, and then suddenly something happened that seemed to make what had been a remote possibility almost a certainty.

Ten days before the big game, during a scrimmage in front of the scrub's goal line, White's weak ankle gave way sharply beneath him with the result that the bone was cracked and White was out of the game for the season. It was a heavy blow to the team; White had never been a spectacular player, but by hard work he had earned the reputation of being the "Old Reliable" of the team. Neil Durant and Ned Stillson were better at running with the ball and played perhaps more brilliantly, but White was steady and sure. His team-mates called him "a bear at secondary defense." He had an uncanny way of guessing where a play was coming through, and he made it his duty to plant himself in front of it,--and to stop it. If he had had more of leadership in his personality, he might have made as good a captain as Neil Durant made.

Coach Murray and Neil helped him off the field, plainly showing their disappointment and sympathy.