door, slid noiselessly from the window-seat and tiptoed across the
room until he stood in front of it. Then, thrusting hands into pockets
to aid thought, he began a slow, close and minute study of it. It was
quite an ordinary door, placed there when the dormitory was built in
order, presumably, that the two rooms might be thrown together and used
as study and sleeping apartment. But Randall’s didn’t believe in too
great luxury, and you drew only one room and, if economical, shared it
with another fellow. Talbot Cummings didn’t share his, which to Jonesie
was most satisfactory. Jonesie whistled under his breath as his eager
eyes became acquainted with every niche and angle and knot and bit of
hardware before him. Of course the door was locked, and the key was
doubtless in safe keeping at the office, but besides being locked it
was secured by a bolt on each side; and some secretive former occupant
of Jonesie’s room had plugged up the keyhole with red sealing-wax. When
it did open it swung into the adjoining room, and, as the hinges were
on the inward side of the door, Jonesie was denied contemplation of
them. He was also denied contemplation of the knob for the excellent
reason that it was not there. He recalled having detached it but
couldn’t remember for what purpose. Not that it mattered, however, for
what is a knob between enemies?
At intervals Jonesie retired to the window-seat and scowled over his
problem. At intervals he arose hopefully and stared anew at the door.
Beyond it, unsuspecting of the malign influences at work, Cummings read
on in peace. The brief afternoon darkened to twilight. Across the yard
pale lemon-yellow pin-points of flame struggled above the entrances.
Below the door a thin line of radiance indicated that Cummings had
lighted up. But in Jonesie’s room darkness crept from the shadowed
corners until only the window remained visible, a grayish oblong in the
encompassing gloom. And presently the eerie silence was shattered by
the sound of a sinister chuckle.
Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., arose phenomenally early the next morning
and at eight o’clock, having attended chapel and eaten a hearty, if
hurried breakfast, might have been seen entering the popular hardware
emporium of Bliss & Benedict. At four minutes to nine, after a return
journey through unfrequented streets and alleys and an entrance to the
building by way of the furnace room door, he turned the key in the
lock of Number 14 and unburdened himself of numerous packages which he
thereupon secreted where they would be safe from the prying eyes of the
chamber-maid. After which he seized on certain books and hurried to a
nine o’clock recitation.
It cannot be truthfully said that he was a shining success in classrooms
that morning, although he managed somehow to “fake” through. His fresh,
cherubic countenance shone with the light of a high resolve and for the
first time in two days he faced the world with fearless eyes. Whispered
jibes fell from him harmlessly. Instructors, noting his innocence and
nobility, viewed him with a suspicion born of experience.
At ten-thirty Jonesie had a free half-hour. Returning to his dormitory
he glanced across to the second floor of Manning and was filled
with gratitude. For there, in the school infirmary, “Sparrow” Bowles
was interned with mumps. Three days ago Jonesie had deeply resented
his room-mate’s good fortune, charging the Fates with inexcusable
favoritism, but to-day he had no fault to find. Envy and all
uncharitableness had departed from him. Indeed, instead of begrudging
“Sparrow” his luck, he sincerely hoped that the malady would continue
for at least a week longer!
I now offer to your attention Talbot Cummings. Cummings was an Upper
Middler, a large, somewhat ungainly youth of seventeen addicted to
bookishness and boils. But in spite of much reading he was not a
learned nor brilliant youth, and in spite of the boils he had little of
Job’s patience. He thought rather well of himself, however, and prided
himself on a delicate wit which was really rather more blatant than
delicate. In spite of the fact that he avoided all forms of athletics
and abhorred physical exertion, he was well-built and, when free from
gauze and surgeon’s plaster, was rather comely. Upper class fellows
viewed him tolerantly and lower class boys pretended an admiration they
didn’t feel because he had an uncanny ability for finding their weak
spots and holding them up to ridicule. As has been said, Cummings lived
alone. In the matter of furnishings he affected artistic simplicity,
leaning toward fumed oak and brown leather. His study――he liked to
call it study rather than room――was supposed to express individuality.
The table was never littered. There was a very good-looking drop-light
with a near-Tiffany shade, three or four soberly-clad books, an
always-immaculate blotting-pad and a large bronze ink-well which, as
he invariably wrote with a fountain-pen, was more ornamental than
necessary. So much for the table. The dresser, instead of being the
repository for numerous photographs and miscellaneous toilet articles,
held a pair of silver-backed military brushes, a silver shoe-horn
and one large photograph in a silver frame. The bookcase was always
orderly. The window-seat adhered to the color scheme of brown and tan,
the tan necessitated by the wall paper, which was not of his choosing.
The cushions were of brown ooze leather or craftsman’s canvas. If I
have seemed to dwell overlong on the room and its furnishings it is for
a reason presently to be perceived.
At a few minutes after twelve that day Cummings threw open the door of
his study and paused amazed. Nothing was where it should have been. The
lovely near-Tiffany shade rested precariously atop a pile of pillows in
the middle of the floor. The drop-light dangled over the edge of the
table. The volumes in the bookcase leaned tipsily outward at various
angles. The silver-framed photograph smiled blithely from the top of
the radiator. And so it went. Everything was elaborately misplaced.
Cummings viewed and swallowed hard, doubled his fists and hammered at
the portal of Daniel Webster Jones, Jr. There was no reply and the door
proved to be locked. Bitterly, Cummings vowed that so his own door
should be hereafter! It took him a long time to restore order and he
narrowly escaped being late for dinner.
He failed to encounter Jonesie until four o’clock. Then they met in a
pool of water in front of Whipple and Cummings spoke his mind to an
amazed and uncomprehending audience. Cummings offered to accommodate
Jonesie in a number of ways, to wit: to break his head for him, to
kick him across the yard, to make his nose even stubbier than it was
and to report him to faculty. Jonesie closed with none of the offers.
Instead he viewed the irate Cummings with surprise and heard him
patiently, and in the end Cummings was assailed by doubts, although he
didn’t allow the fact to be known. Surely such an innocent countenance
and demeanor could not hide guile! Fearing that he might apologize to
Jonesie if he remained longer, he tore himself away, muttering a last
unconvincing threat.
Cummings slept that night, as always, with his door locked and a
chair-back tilted under the knob. (Once in his first year at Randall’s
there had been a midnight visitation attended by unpleasant and
degrading ceremonies.) In the morning he awoke to find that the pillows
had moved from the window-seat to the foot of the bed, doubtless
accounting for a certain half-sensed discomfort. Also that his
clothing, left neatly arranged over a chair, now lay scattered over the
floor. He arose in a murderous mood and tried the door. It was securely
locked, the key was in place and there was the guardian chair just as
he had left it. He cast unjustly suspicious looks at the eleven-inch
transom. It was closed as usual, nor could it be opened from without
in any case. He went to the window. Below was a sheer twelve feet of
straight brick wall. From his casement to the casement on either side
the distance was a good three yards. Then and not until then his gaze
fell on the communicating door and he said “Ha” triumphantly and seized
the knob. It came forth in his hands and he staggered half across
the room. When he had recovered himself he said “Huh!” But further
investigations left him still puzzled, for the stout bolt on his own
side of the door was shot into its socket and secured. Cummings went to
breakfast in a detached frame of mind that caused him to walk into Mr.
Mundy, the Hall Master, in the corridor, and, later, to say “yes” when
he meant to say “no.” As a result of the latter mistake “Puffin” Welch
seized on his second roll and devoured it before Cummings awoke to the
situation.
Thus, then, began the amazing series of depredatory visitations that
befell Talbot Cummings; or, rather, his study, for so long as he was
on hand nothing befell. All one morning he remained uncomfortably
concealed beneath the bed, thereby cutting four recitations and being
obliged to invent an unconvincing attack of toothache. And while he
lay there, inhaling dust, he heard Jonesie arrive gayly next door,
remain for a half-hour of song and depart lightsomely. It was while
he was describing that toothache to the Principal that vandalism again
occurred. When he returned, far from happy, he found that, in spite
of locked door and window, his near-Tiffany shade sat on the rug
surmounted by “Travels in Arctic Lands” and the bronze ink-well, the
latter, fortunately, empty. The silver-framed photograph lay on its
face and the contents of the lower dresser drawer, or most of them,
were lying about the floor. Cummings dropped into a chair, grabbed his
neatly-arranged hair in both hands and raged.
Like most persons who appreciate a joke on another, Cummings hated
ridicule when directed against himself. It was principally for this
reason that for three days he kept the matter quiet. A lesser reason
was that he didn’t like to believe that anyone was smarter than Talbot
Cummings and that he thought he could eventually outwit the perpetrator
of the dastardly deeds. His suspicions had long since returned
irrevocably to Jonesie. He recalled the incident of the composition and
Jonesie’s threats to get even. But there was no use charging that youth
again with the crime until he had proof, and proof was not forthcoming.
At first he suspected Jonesie of having a duplicate key to the
corridor door, but reflection told him that all the duplicate keys in
the world wouldn’t allow Jonesie or anyone else to enter the room and
retire without disturbing the key that was on the inside or the chair
that was under the knob. And after he had added a specially large and
heavy bolt he was still more certain that the vandal did not come in
that way. Neither did he enter by the window. He proved that by locking
it and finding it still locked after the bed-clothes had transferred
themselves to the window-seat. Nor was it possible that Jonesie came
in by the communicating door, for there was the undisturbed bolt, a
key-hole filled with sealing-wax and a piece of paper still reposing
between door and frame, just where Cummings had craftily placed it.
Cummings spent so much time trying to solve the mystery that studies
suffered and he was spoken to harshly more than once. The thing even
began to affect his appetite, and at last, when seven separate times he
had found his study turned topsy-turvy, he offered an armistice.
“Come in!” called Jonesie.
Entered Cummings, smiling knowingly, and seated himself with a fine
nonchalance. Jonesie, looking up from Latin, eyed him with disfavor.
“What you grinning about?” he demanded coldly.
Cummings winked and leered. “You win,” he announced cheerfully, and
managed a deprecatory laugh. Jonesie frowned darkly.
“Win what?”
“You know. I don’t know how you do it――That is, I’m not certain, but
I have an idea. Anyhow, it’s clever, Jonesie. You had me guessing at
first, all right. But I guess we’re quits now, eh?”
“Would you mind giving me a hint? I’ve got Latin and math to get and
there isn’t much time for conundrums, Cummings. If it’s one of the
‘What’s-the-difference-between’ kind, I never could guess those.”
“Oh, don’t keep it up. I tell you I give in, don’t I? What more do you
want?”
“Say, what are you gabbing about, anyway?” inquired Jonesie crossly.
“If you’ve got something on your mind come out with it.”
“You know plaguey well what I’m talking about,” replied Cummings,
losing his temper. “I came in here ready to call quits. If you won’t
have it, all right. Then I’ll go to Faculty. A joke’s a joke, but you
don’t need to keep it up forever!”
“Of course not; that’s what they call _monotony_,” Jonesie agreed
blandly. Cummings scowled.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, you won’t when you get hauled
up at the Office.”
“What for?”
“What for! For――for making a beastly pig-pen of my study! For upsetting
my things! You know what for!”
“Not _again_?” exclaimed Jonesie in shocked tones.
“Half a dozen times! More! I’m sick of it. A joke’s a joke――――”
“You said that before,” said the other, sweetly. “Now look here,
Cummings: you blamed me two or three days ago for ‘pieing’ your room. I
stood for that, but I’m not going to have you keep it up all――――”
“Then you quit――――”
“――The year. If――if you annoy me any more with――with your unjust
accusations I’ll go straight to Faculty. It――it’s getting _monotonous_.”
Cummings’s jaw fell and for a moment speech deserted him. At last:
“_You’ll_ go to Faculty! Ha, ha! Why, you――you little button-nosed――――”
“Never mind my nose. At least I keep it out of other fellows’ affairs!
I don’t――――”
“You keep it out of my study then! Just once more――――”
“Don’t be an ass, Cummings,” begged Jonesie. “How could I get into your
old study if the door’s locked? Use your bean.”
“I don’t _know_ how you do it! I wish I did! But you _do_ it! I’m sick
of it. And you’ll break something first thing you know! I――I ought to
knock the stuffing out of you, Jonesie, that’s what I ought to do. I’ve
stood mor’n most fellows would stand.”
“Try it and see what happens, old dear.”
“Oh, yes, you’d run to Faculty with it!”
“Like a shot,” agreed Jonesie.
“All right, two can do that. It’ll be probation for you just as
soon――――”
“That doesn’t frighten me. When a fellow’s conscience is clear――――”
“Yah!” Cummings made for the door. “We’ll see! Just wait!”
“Right-o! But, I say, Cummings. If you want to know what I think, I
think it’s spooks!”
Cummings slammed the door behind him and Jonesie looking past the
green-shaded drop-light, fixed his gaze on a recently acquired article
of adornment, a large, brightly-colored calendar, which hung on the
knobless door, and winked gravely.
“Funny about Cummings’s spooks, isn’t it?” observed Jonesie later to
Turner, of the Lower Middle.
“Haven’t heard,” replied Turner eagerly. “What is it?”
Jonesie seemed surprised at the other’s ignorance and enlightened it.
He really made a very interesting yarn of it and when he had finished
Turner was grinning from ear to ear. “Fine!” he chortled. “Oh, corking!
And, say, Jonesie.” Turner’s right eye closed slyly. “Of course _you_
know nothing about it, eh?”
“Me? Give you my word, Tom, I haven’t set foot in his room in weeks!
Besides, how could I? How could any fellow, with his door locked and
everything? It’s spooks, that’s what it is.”
Turner was Randall’s nearest approach to a town crier. If Jonesie
didn’t want the story to spread he shouldn’t have told Turner. It was
careless of him, for inside of two hours the mysterious happenings
in Talbot Cummings’s room were known all over the school. Cummings
attempted denial, but it was no use. Randall’s had found a new
sensation and refused to be deprived of it. Cummings had to tell his
story over and over, until he was sick and tired of it. It wouldn’t
have been so bad had it been accepted seriously, but it wasn’t.
His audiences invariably became hilarious and offered all sorts of
nonsensical advice, like putting sticky fly-paper on the floor,
erecting barbed-wire entanglements or ringing burglar-alarms. The
younger boys, long intimidated, fairly haunted Cummings and with solemn
countenances begged to be told about the spooks. His room became
a Mecca for the curious and he had no privacy. Cummings was most
unhappy, so unhappy that when he awoke the following morning and, in
spite of having laid awake and watchful until well after two, found
his counterpane abloom like a flower garden with his neckties, he
metaphorically threw up the sponge. Those ties had been neatly arranged
in the top drawer of his dresser, and the top drawer was now not only
tightly closed but the key was turned in the lock! It was too much! It
was――yes, sir, it was spooky! Cummings dressed hurriedly and tumbled
down to Mr. Mundy’s study and incoherently told his tale. Mr. Mundy
was young and a man of action. In four minutes he was at the scene of
the crime.
Ten minutes later he owned to defeat. He had found the window secured,
the door between the rooms showed that it had not been opened at least
in months by the accumulation of dust and lint in the interstices, the
transom was impossible and Cummings had shown him how the corridor door
had been fastened: lock turned and key left cross-wise, bolt shot and
engaged, chair wedged under knob. Mr. Mundy frowned and shook his head.
There was just one explanation. He offered it kindly. “What you’ve been
doing, my boy, is walking in your sleep. Maybe you don’t get enough
exercise during the day. Then sleeping with everything shut up like
this――――”
“But I don’t walk in my sleep in the daytime, do I?” asked Cummings
wildly. Mr. Mundy looked blank.
“N-no, but are you――ahem――are you quite certain――――”
“Yes, sir,” declared Cummings bitterly. “It’s _worse_ in the daytime.”
“Hum. And he denies it utterly?”
“Yes, he does, but I know it’s him, Mr. Mundy!”
“_He_,” corrected the instructor from force of habit. “I’ll have a talk
with him. Stay here.”
Jonesie opened promptly, the picture of smiling innocence. And he
spoke _so_ convincingly! “Mr. Mundy, I really think you’d ought to do
something about him, sir,” he said concernedly. “He comes in here and
tells the strangest stories and accuses me of annoying him. He says I
go into his room and disarrange his things when he’s out. He even says
I do it when he’s in bed. He’s threatened to lick me, sir.” Cummings,
listening beyond the door, shook a fist helplessly. “You know that
isn’t right, sir,” pleaded Jonesie. “He says himself he locks the room
up tight. I ask you, sir, how I could get in there if I wanted to.”
“Quite so, Jones, quite so, but――ahem――hasn’t there been some
ill-feeling between you two recently?”
“Why, he came in here and swiped a composition of mine off the table
and read it to the fellows and had a laugh on me, but that was days
ago and I don’t care anything about it _now_, sir. If he’d just stop
having these――these hallucinations of his――――”
“Hallucinations, eh?” Mr. Mundy repressed a smile. “I wonder.” He
sauntered to the communicating door and studied it attentively. He
even lifted the large and brilliant calendar and looked behind it, and
Jonesie, watching politely and imperturbably, blinked twice. Then Mr.
Mundy gazed at the place where the knob should have been.
“Where’s the knob?”
“I don’t know, sir. It’s been gone a long while.”
“Hm.” The instructor seemed about to ask a second question, but changed
his mind. Instead, he threw his weight against the door. It didn’t even
creak. He turned to Jonesie.
“When was the last time you were in Cummings’s room?” he asked suddenly.
“About nine weeks ago, sir. It was before Christmas recess.”
“That’s the absolute truth, Jones?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” Jonesie looked slightly hurt.
“Very well. That’s all. If I were you I’d――ahem――I’d find that knob,
Jones. Or one like it.”
The door closed behind the instructor and Jonesie subsided in the
nearest chair, grinning like the famous Cheshire Cat.
Next door Mr. Mundy spoke firmly but kindly to Cummings. “If I were
you,” he said, “I’d go in for some sort of regular exercise besides
your gymnasium work. Be out of doors more, Cummings. You might take a
good long walk every day; three or four miles. Aren’t worrying about
anything, are you?”
“I’m worrying about having my room upset every time I turn my back,”
said the boy excitedly. “That’s what――――”
“Yes, yes,” soothed Mr. Mundy. “But I think if you’ll follow my advice
regarding the walks and being out of doors you’ll find that――ahem――your
worries will cease. About three miles to-day, to start with, eh? And
drop in this evening and tell me where you went and what you saw.” He
nodded encouragingly and departed.
Oddly enough, Cummings did just what Jonesie had done a minute before.
That is, he subsided into a chair. But he didn’t grin. He groaned.
“_Three miles!_” he muttered. “_Great Scott!_”
But he did them. He didn’t dare not to. And when he stumbled back, at
five, foot-sore and aching from the unaccustomed effort, he found his
study sickeningly confused. “It’s fine for _him_,” he thought bitterly.
“He knows I’m safe out of the way for an hour. Mundy makes me sick!”
Supper that evening was torture, for he was tired and discouraged to
start with and everyone he met asked about his spooks. He lost his
temper completely with Turner and that youth had the cheek to read him
a lecture on manners. He anticipated some satisfaction in reporting to
Mr. Mundy that his walk had not prevented the “pieing” of his study,
but the instructor told him that he mustn’t expect his prescription
to work so soon. “Keep on, Cummings,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll soon
tell. Try four miles to-morrow.”
But Cummings was through. He climbed wearily upstairs and knocked at
Number 14. “When do you want to quit, Jonesie?” he asked humbly.
“I won’t pretend to ignorance of your meaning,” replied Jonesie
grandly. “I’ve been thinking about your case, Cummings, and I’ve
solved it.” Cummings moistened his lips but said nothing. “It’s your
conscience that’s at the bottom of all this, old man. I believe that if
you clear your conscience you’ll stop imagining things.”
“Imagining!” gasped Cummings.
Jonesie nodded. “You have something on your conscience, haven’t you?
You’ve done something you’re sorry for? Something you repent of,
Cummings?”
Cummings nodded, all fight gone. “I guess so,” he muttered. “I――I’m
sorry, Jonesie. I apologize.”
“For what?”
“You know. Reading that composition.”
“Oh! Why, I’d most forgotten that. So many things have happened since
to――to vary the _monotony_, Cummings. But it’s decent of you to
apologize, old man. And I accept it. I never hold grudges, Cummings.
That’s not my way. If I can’t show fellows somehow that they have made
a mistake, why, I forget it. So _that’s_ all right.”
“And――and it won’t happen again?” pleaded Cummings.
“Not if my theory is right, old dear, and I think it is. In fact I
almost think I can promise, Cummings, that it won’t happen again.”
It didn’t. Jonesie’s theory was vindicated.
Three days later “Sparrow” Bowles returned from the infirmary, and
one of the first things he did was to take exception to Jonesie’s
beautiful calendar. But if he hoped to start something he was
disappointed. “That’s all right,” said Jonesie, “take it down. I’m
through with it, anyway.” So “Sparrow” removed it, and, having done so,
regarded the door closely.
“Someone,” said “Sparrow,” “has been monkeying with this panel. Looks
to me like it had been out. That’s funny!”
Jonesie yawned. “Maybe the heat’s loosened it,” he suggested.
A few days later “Sparrow” observed: “Hello, I didn’t know you had one
of these electric torches.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, son,” said Jonesie; adding to himself:
“You don’t know what can be done with a fishing rod with a piece of
wire on the end of it, for one thing!”
THE QUITTER
They were revising the line-up for the final game of the season, that
with Fairfield, when Jack Groom entered: Coach Thornton, Payson Walsh,
manager; Larry Logan, quarterback; and Jim Walsh, left guard. Had
Tinker, the trainer, been on hand too, the Board of Football Strategy
of Staunton School would have been, with Jack’s advent, complete.
“Tink’s” absence, however, had been discounted: and the same was true
of Jack, for none of those in the coach’s study had expected the
captain to hobble all that half-mile between campus and village. There
were four simultaneous exclamations of surprise when he appeared in the
doorway.
“Oh, Doc says I’m out of it for good,” defended Jack. He lowered
himself into a chair, leaned his crutches alongside and scowled
malignantly at the bulky swathings of his right foot.
“Maybe, son, but you don’t want to have trouble with that ankle, even
if you can’t play,” said Mr. Thornton.