JACK READY’S TURN.
“Avaunt, foul creatures!” shrieked the freshman furiously. “I’ll not
go with ye! Have you not done enough? You have stained my hands with
human blood! You have made me do murder――murder! murder! murder!”
The blood ran cold in their bodies as they heard him scream forth the
words. Some of them retreated precipitately.
“Come out, fellows――come out!” they said. “He’ll do you damage! Close
the door!”
“Out on you!” snarled Ready, leaping to his feet. “Leave me――leave me
with my only friend!”
Then he put an arm about the skeleton, as if embracing the grisly
thing!
Frank passed the lamp to Hodge.
“Hold it,” he said.
“What are you going to do?” asked Bart breathlessly.
“I’m going to attempt to talk to the poor fellow. I may be able to
straighten him out now.”
“Better let him alone. There’s no telling what he may do.”
“Keep away, Merriwell!” advised several.
Frank did not heed them. He advanced toward Ready, but, of a sudden,
it seemed that the freshman recognized Merry, and he fell into a fit
of terror that was awful to see.
“Don’t touch me!” he screamed, cowering and shaking in every limb.
“You are the one I killed! Your blood is on my soul! Don’t touch me
with your hands!”
“I am not dead, Ready,” said Frank, as mildly as he could, seeking to
give the fellow confidence.
“Yes, you are!” panted the freshman. “I know, for I killed you! I
drove the knife into your heart! Oh, but I didn’t mean to do it――I
didn’t mean to! I swear I didn’t! They told me the knife was wooden!
They told me I could not hurt you! Oh, they are the ones who did it!”
Ben Halliday groaned.
“I’d give ten years of my life if I’d had nothing to do with this
wretched piece of business!” he said sincerely.
The maniac dropped on his knees before Frank, his hands outstretched
in a pitiful appeal.
“Say you forgive me!” he pleaded. “Oh, please say that! My soul will
be tortured forever and forever if you do not!”
“There is nothing to forgive, old man,” said Frank, stepping yet
nearer. “I am not dead at all. It was nothing but a joke. Can’t you
see that I am alive?”
Ready began crooning a song, as if singing to himself. It was a
strange, weird sound, and it gave the listeners a creepy feeling.
Frank attempted to touch him, but he leaped away, a frightful laugh
breaking from his lips.
“Devil!” he snarled. “I know what you are! You are a devil! You are
trying to snare me! I can see your cloven hoof and your horns!”
“Well, I feel like the devil,” said Frank, “whether I have any cloven
hoof and horns or not!”
“You planned it all! You alone are guilty! You brought it on
yourself!”
“I guess that’s right,” admitted Merry repentantly. “Come, old man, I
won’t hurt you. Let me talk to you. You are deceiving yourself. Nobody
has been killed.”
“Liar!” screamed Ready. “Get thee gone! I will destroy you!”
Then, before their eyes, he leaped at the skeleton, clutched it, tore
it to pieces, and one after another he flung the bones at them! In his
hands he seized the ghastly skull, sprang past Frank, who had not
retreated, and pursued the others from the room. Frank quickly
followed out into the banquet-chamber, and there he found the hazers
huddled at the farther end of the room, while Jack Ready was sitting
on a chair by the table and laughing till the tears actually streamed
down his face.
“Oh, ha! ha! ha!” shouted the freshman, in a paroxysm of mirth. “Oh, I
don’t know when I have had so much fun! I don’t think I ever had so
much fun in all my life! Oh, ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha! Why, you gents
are the easiest things I ever saw! Oh, ha! ha! ha!”
Frank stopped and stood staring at Ready, who had dropped the skull of
the skeleton on the table. The freshman saw Merry, and he screamed
with mirth.
“I said I’d get even with you!” he shouted. “I’ve done it! I am more
than even! I’ll bet I’m the first fellow in college who ever fooled
you, and I fooled you good! You’re just as soft as the rest, and
they’re mush!”
“Say!” cried Frank.
“What?”
“Got a gun?”
“No. Why?”
“I want to commit suicide!”
“Oh, ha! ha! ha!” shouted the freshman. “I’ll tell the whole college
of this to-morrow! I’ll have everybody laughing at you! Now I know I
never did have so much fun in all my life! This has been a perfectly
delightful evening!”
“You’re not mad?” asked Frank.
“Not a bit.”
“Well, I am!”
The way Frank said that made Ready shout once more. By this time the
others had caught on that they had been fooled, and they came down the
room slowly, looking very sheepish.
“I always did say you sophs were a lot of guys,” said Ready, “but I
didn’t think Merriwell and his chums could be fooled so easily.”
“Ready,” said Frank, “you can make your mark on the stage. That was
one of the finest pieces of acting I ever witnessed.”
“Thanks,” laughed Jack. “It was a little trick.”
“Will somebody please kick me?” grunted Bruce Browning.
“I’d like to be nit on the hut――I mean hit on the nut!” came from
Rattleton. “Never felt so foolish in all my life!”
“And you all look foolish enough to kick,” said Frank. “I expect I
look just as foolish. I feel worse than you chaps look, if possible.
Why, we thought we had it on him, and he turned the tables on us. Talk
about nerve!”
“He’s got it!” they cried.
“How did you catch on?” asked Ned Noon.
“Catch on!” chuckled Jack. “What was there to catch onto?”
“Well, wasn’t you fooled for a minute?”
“Perhaps so,” confessed the freshman; “but when I came to think it
over, when I remembered how it felt when I drove the knife into your
‘monster,’ I knew I had not stabbed anybody. I knew you were soaking
me, and I got back.”
“Fellows,” said Frank, “he’s turned the tables on us, and we can’t
squeak out of it. All we can do is grin and bear it.”
“I’ll bear it,” said Browning; “but I’ll be blowed if I’ll grin!”
Frank offered Ready his hand.
“It may be a case of nerve,” he said, “but I wish you’d take it, old
man. You may say what you like about this affair, I’ll always swear
you are a man of nerve.”
Jack accepted Merry’s hand, and then Frank called the others up.
“Shake hands with a fellow who was clever enough to fool us all at our
own game,” he said.
They did not refuse.
“Say,” said Ned Noon, “if you’ll keep still about it, Ready, we’ll
blow you off to a great spread.”
Jack shook his head.
“I’m not to be bribed,” he said. “You brought it upon yourselves, and
you’ll have to stand the laugh.”
“Well, you destroyed a splendid skeleton that cost us eighty dollars,”
said Roger Stone. “You ought to pay for that.”
“Charge it to accidental loss,” advised Jack. “You’ll never get a
penny out of me for it.”
And they did not blame him. They would have thought him a chump had he
paid anything.
He did spread the story, and set the whole college laughing at
Merriwell and his friends. Frank took it gracefully, not once denying
the story. He showed that he could stand it when the joke was on him,
which is something most practical jokers are quite unable to do. Jack
Ready became famous through this adventure and the work he did in the
Brown football-game. While he did not assume any mock modesty, he had
a humorous way of accepting his glory, and he became popular outside
of his own class, although nothing but a freshman.