Monty encountered Jimmy the next morning in front of School Hall. Jimmy was one of a dozen youths awaiting the nine o’clock bell on the steps. It was a brisk morning in the last week of October, but here in the sunlight it was comfortably warm. Jimmy disengaged himself from Ned Musgrave and Nick Blake, with whom he had been talking, and sauntered out to intercept Monty. He had a quizzical smile on his face as he thrust a hand under Monty’s arm, and turned him along the brick wall.
“Fine morning, Monty,” he observed blandly.
“Why not?”
“No reason at all, no reason at all. I’m glad it is. I’m glad for your sake.”
Monty gazed around over the turf. “I didn’t know loco weed grew in these parts,” he murmured.
“Because,” proceeded Jimmy, “it’s nice to have pleasant recollections of a place. You’ll remember Grafton as you see it today, Monty, with the sunlight gilding the façades of our noble buildings, and the autumn sky blue overhead——”
“I like it rhymed better. There’s more swing to it. This ‘free verse’ stuff——”
“Yes, you’ll look back on this fair morning, and say, ‘Ah, them was the “halcyon” days!’ You’ll remember the school at its best, Monty.”
“I’ll try to. I’m in no hurry, but it’s about two minutes to nine, and maybe you’d better get down to cases, partner.”
“What train have you decided on?” asked Jimmy solicitously.
“Oh, I’m going away, am I? That’s the idea. Well, shoot, Jimmy!”
“Don’t pretend innocence, Monty. In the words of our best playwrights, ‘All is discovered!’”
“Who’s Hall?” inquired the other interestedly.
“He’s the key to the situation,” chuckled Jimmy. “Say, it was all right, Monty. I give you that. It was some circus while it lasted. Where you made one mistake was not to stick around and watch the fun. You ought to have heard the howls!” Jimmy laughed gleefully. “We spent about half an hour trying to fit keys from the upper corridor rooms before someone got sore and hiked down to ‘Jimmy’ Rumford, and told his troubles. Then ‘Jimmy’ sent for Mr. Craig, and Craig had gone to bed, and after he came he couldn’t find which was the right passkey, and there was the dickens generally.”
“Of course,” drawled Monty, “I’m supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
Jimmy winked slowly. “You are. Bixby recognized you.”
“I don’t know him personally, but I’ve used his blacking.”
“You put your head in his room and asked for me, you idiot. That was a crazy thing to do. But they say criminals always fall down somewhere on the job.”
“Oh, that was Bixby, was it? And he up and spoke a piece?”
“Not Bix! Bix is all right. He told me in confidence, and you can depend on his keeping mum.”
“I always liked his blacking,” said Monty gratefully. “Well, then, why the stampede? Why look up trains, Jimmy?”
“Because Rumford’s hopping, tearing mad, darling. Says you—meaning whoever did it—tried to fasten the crime on him. He’s gone and told Charley. Says he will find the culprit if he has to question every fellow in school. He will, too. He’s like that. All the—er—tenacity of a bulldog; without his forgiving disposition. That was mistake number two, old dear. ‘Anyone but Jimmy’ should have been your motto.”
The nine o’clock bell rang, and Jimmy turned back along the path. But Monty grabbed him. “I guess I’m sort of boneheaded, Jimmy,” he said, “but kindly tell me where Rumford comes in on it. What did I do to him, Jimmy?”
“What did you do to him?” demanded the other incredulously as he led the pace back to School Hall. “Why, you triple-ply, self-starting idiot, you dumped the keys on his table!”
“What!”
“Sure! Didn’t you know it? Didn’t you mean to?”
Monty shook his head weakly as they stumbled up the steps, and Jimmy gave way to a gale of laughter.
“Oh, that’s great!” he gurgled. “Monty, you’re a wonder! You—you——”
“Shut up!” whispered the other. “Don’t sing about it! How much does Old Whiskers know?”
“Nothing—yet. But watch out for trouble, dearie. And, say, if you still have the key to Number 8 go and drop it in the river. It’s the only one that wasn’t found, and having it on you will be just about as safe as carrying a stick of dynamite. See you at eleven, Monty. Come up to the room.”
Jimmy darted off down the corridor, leaving Monty to climb the stairs to a Latin recitation. As he went his right hand clutched tightly a brass key and tag at the bottom of a pocket. He feared it might jingle!
“What gets me,” said Jimmy later, as they sat in Number 14, “is why Charley didn’t spring something about it in chapel this morning. He must have known by then, because he and ‘Jimmy’ were talking together when Dud and I went in. Maybe he’s going to do some detective work, and find that Number 8 key. I say, you don’t know where it got to, eh?”
Monty hesitated. Then he nodded.
“You do? Where is it? You haven’t got it still, I hope!”
“It’s best for you not to know, Jimmy,” replied Monty gravely. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“Well, all right, but, for the love of lemons, Monty, get rid of it if you have it! If it got found on you—or in your room—or anywhere—” Jimmy was quite breathless.
“I’d have to look up another school, eh? Why is it, Jimmy, that Fate knocks me around the way it does? I want to lead a quiet and peaceful life, but I’m not let. I’m a regular tumble-weed. Look at the way things happened at Dunning.”
“But you told us you deliberately fired yourself, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but why? I was bored, just as I was last night. I needed excitement, and there wasn’t any, and so, of course, I had to find it. But it isn’t my fault, is it? I guess it’s my evil genius,” said Monty sadly. “The real A Monty Crail is a quiet, peace-loving hombre, but——”
Jimmy laughed. “The trouble with you, old scout, is that you need more room than you get at prep school. You’re a child of the boundless west, eh, what?”
“Maybe. Anyhow, I’ve had a good time so far. I’d be sorry to lose football, though. Look here, how’s Old Whiskers going to fasten the childish prank on me as long as you and Bixby keep your ears down?”
“I’m hoping he won’t,” said Jimmy. “But he’s a determined old codger, and if there’s any sort of a clue he will find it as sure as shooting. At that, though, you might not get anything more than probation.”
“What’s that do to you?” asked Monty anxiously.
“Well, it keeps you out of athletics, for one thing. And you have to stick around the school, and can’t go off, and you stay in your dormitory every evening after six o’clock, and you have to get up and stay up in all your studies. And if you make one false move faculty is on you like a ton of bricks.”
“Is that all?” asked the other sarcastically. “They don’t draw and quarter you, then?”
“It’s better than being dropped, though,” responded Jimmy philosophically. “If you’re on pro you can get reinstated again, but if you’re expelled—good night!”
“I would just as soon get fired as go on probation,” said Monty. “Anyway, what’s the good of worrying about it? If Old Whiskers gets me, why, he gets me, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe, after all, I wasn’t intended to mingle with you high-brows. Maybe one of those catch-as-catch-can schools out our way would be more my style. Might as well be cheerful, eh?”
“Sure! ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet,’ as the poet so beautifully hath it.”
“Did the fellows notice the fact that I left before the party was over?” asked Monty.
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t know you had gone until we stopped yelping. Leon was looking for you, too. If Bixby doesn’t talk, and he promised he wouldn’t, I don’t see that ‘Jimmy’ has much of a show. Of course, if he gets to asking all the fellows he might stumble on something to put him wise.”
“He wouldn’t be likely to ask any fellows outside Lothrop, would he?”
“I suppose not. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Come across. What are you wondering about? Did someone see you up here?”
“Only Bixby. But—well, the silly part of it’s this. I didn’t know I’d missed one of those keys when I dumped them through that window. I suppose I dropped it in another pocket. Anyway, when I got back to Morris, that Indian, Standart, had a nose-bleed——”
“Who handed it to him?” asked Jimmy, eagerly.
Monty shook his head. “That’s what I hoped, but it wasn’t so. He just has ’em for fun. Well, I remembered that if you put something cold against the back of your neck you generally stopped it. I mean the nose-bleed. So I did the Good Samaritan act and fished out a key——”
“You howling idiot!”
“Take the money, Jimmy. I didn’t think anything about it being one of those keys; didn’t stop to think that it was a key, I guess; and Standart got hold of it, and wanted to know how I came by it.”
“Did you tell him you found it?”
“Something of the sort. I tried to be careless about it, but——”
“It’s all up, dearie! Still, maybe Standart won’t peep, eh?”
“Won’t he?” said Monty grimly. “He hates me like he hates soap and water, and that’s some hate! I didn’t know last night that I’d gone and put the keys in Rumford’s room or that there’d be all this fuss about it. If I had I’d have made Standart promise not to squeal. Now, I guess it’s too late. He’s probably talked it all over the school.”
“I’m afraid so,” groaned Jimmy. “Say, you are one fine little criminal, aren’t you? Look here, though, Monty, why don’t you go and find Standart and see if he’s blabbed? There’s always the chance that he hasn’t. And if he hasn’t—” Jimmy paused eloquently. “You might be able to convince him that it would be a lot more healthy to forget it!”
“I guess I’d better,” agreed Monty, reaching for his hat. “It may just be that he hasn’t connected that key with the little affair yet.”
“Don’t bank on that, old dear. Standart’s no fool, if he is an ass. He knows, all right, all right, but he may be chewing it over and thinking out the best way to spring his little piece. Get after him and buy him off or scare him to death.”
“Buy him off!” said Monty scornfully. “I wouldn’t bargain with the beast. But I might show him two mighty good reasons for keeping quiet!”
Monty didn’t overtake Alvin until dinner-time. Then he encountered him on his way downstairs to the table. During the meal, during which the practical joke played on the second floor residents of Lothrop was the main subject of conversation, Monty cast many appraising glances across the board at his roommate without, however, being able to decide how much Alvin knew or guessed. At least, he offered no light on the problem that interested the gathering, which was who had had the beautiful effrontery to put those keys on Mr. Rumford’s cabinet. Monty gathered that it would have been far less rash to have rung Doctor Duncan’s doorbell and handed the keys to a maid with his compliments!
When dinner was over Monty trailed Alvin to the front steps. It almost seemed that the latter was aware of Monty’s espionage, for he appeared to take especial pains to avoid him. He sat down, and entered the conversation that was going on, while Monty grimly stood watch in the doorway. One by one, however, the other fellows got up and went indoors or wandered away toward the campus, and Alvin, finding himself threatened with being left alone with Monty, arose, too, and started upstairs. Monty followed him leisurely, and reached the next floor only in time to prevent Alvin from dodging into Number G.
“I want to see you a minute,” he said, laying a persuasive hand on Alvin’s shoulder. “Just a minute, hombre. Come on in here.”
Alvin expostulated haughtily, but evidently didn’t care to make a physical issue of it, and followed the other into F. Monty closed the door. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets—the right coming into startling contact with that horrible key—and faced his roommate. Alvin was eyeing him at once slyly and defiantly.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to give you some advice, partner,” replied Monty gravely. “If you know something you think faculty would like to hear it’ll pay you best to forget all about it.”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“I think you do, son. And my advice to you is: Don’t do it! Because if I found that faculty had learned something unpleasant about me I’d hitch it right up to you, and then, if it was the last act of my young and blameless career, I’d everlastingly wallop you, hombre. Sprinkle that on your oats and chew it!”
“If I did know anything,” blustered Alvin, “your threats wouldn’t keep me quiet. Not if I wanted to tell. I’m not saying, though, whether I know anything or not.” He smirked. “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. That’s for you to find out.”
“Whether you do or don’t isn’t worrying me, Standart. I’m only giving you fair warning that if you talk you’ll wish you hadn’t. Savvy?”
“I’m not afraid of you, you blow-hard! I’ll do just as I please. Maybe if I wanted to I could tell Mr. Rumford something that would interest him, though.”
“So you do know, eh?” asked Monty grimly. He began to get out of his coat. “Then I guess you’ve already squealed, and I’d better——”
“I haven’t!” protested Alvin, moving hurriedly around the table. “Give you my word I haven’t, Crail!”
“Sure?” Alvin nodded vehemently. “Well, are you going to? Because, if you are, you might as well have it right now while I’m feeling in the right mood. Are you?”
“I haven’t said I knew anything,” hedged the other. “And you can’t lick me for something I haven’t done. And—and I’d like to know what I’d be doing all the time! I’m not afraid of you, you big bully!”
“I’m no bigger than you are, and I’m nearly a year younger,” replied Monty, “but I sure can lick you, and I mean to do it the very first time you make a yip. I mean that, Standart. Remember this, hombre; if you tell anything you know or think you know it will be good-by for me, and when it is good-by I shan’t care a hang what I do, because I’ll be pulling my freight anyway. Now, you think that over, and if you think hard you’ll decide to keep your ears flat down to your head, son.”
Monty pulled his coat back into place, and Alvin, seeing that instant punishment was not his doom, recovered his sang-froid. He smiled contemptuously, and snapped his long fingers.
“I’ve got you guessing, haven’t I, Mr. Smart Alick?” he asked. “And I’ll keep you guessing, too,” he chuckled. “When things are going along their nicest, Crail, you just remember that I’m still around with a tongue in my head. I make no promises, understand. I’ve got you where I want you, and I’ll keep you there as long as it pleases me to! Now you do some thinking!”
“That’s all right, hombre,” replied Monty. “Just remember what I’ve said. There’s no time-limit set.”
After that, Monty sauntered across to School Hall, and, being quite alone in the corridor, hung the key of Number 8 Lothrop to a tack on the notice board.