DON’S YANKEE INVENTION.
“I am not to blame for it, fellows,” repeated Dick. “I did just as I was
told to do, as nearly as I could. I know I did not succeed in stopping
Don Gordon, and I don’t believe there is a boy in school who could have
stopped him; but I did my best.”
“I hope you see now what you have done by your meddling,” exclaimed Tom,
turning fiercely upon Duncan. “You are not at all to blame, Dick; only
another time don’t take any private orders from anybody. We all run the
same risk, and we ought all to have a word to say in regard to the
manner in which things shall be conducted.”
“If Dick had stopped Gordon, as I told him to do, this thing never would
have happened,” said Duncan, as soon as he had had time to collect his
wits.
“There’s where I differ with you,” answered Tom. “The fact that Gordon
wasn’t stopped does not in the least alter the case, so far as these
bolts are concerned. If Don had been caught, the bolts would have been
put on all the same, and, furthermore, you and I and all the rest of us
would have had to stand a court-martial, for Don would have gone back on
us as sure as you are a foot high. Dick ought to have let him pass.”
“And I would, too, if Clarence hadn’t told me to halt him,” exclaimed
Dick.
“I know it. Duncan is the one we have to thank for the loss of many
pleasant evenings we might have had this winter. We may as well throw
away our keys, for they will be of no further use to us, now that the
doors are to be bolted on the inside.”
“I don’t know why you should take on so about those bolts,” exclaimed
Duncan, who began to think he had been scolded quite enough. “If we
wanted to go to Cony’s to-night, what is there to hinder one of us from
slipping up the stairs as soon as this man goes away, and drawing the
bolts? Don’t throw away your key yet, Tom. It may come handy to you.”
Fisher, who was too angry to reply, turned on his heel and walked away.
Before many hours had passed all the boys belonging to the “set” had
heard about the bolts, and listened with no little indignation to the
story of Clarence Duncan’s “meddling”—all except Don Gordon, who did not
know that he was the victim of misplaced confidence. The fellows were
careful to keep that from his ears for fear that he and Clarence would
come to blows over it. Some of them, would have looked upon a fight
between these two as an interesting spectacle; but they knew that it
would be followed by a court of inquiry, during which some things they
wanted to keep concealed would probably be brought to light. They had
learned that it was not quite safe to trust their friend Duncan too far;
and as for Don, he was a stranger, and there was no telling how he would
act or what he would say when he was told that he could take his choice
between answering such questions as were propounded to him, and being
punished by expulsion from the school.
“That would bring him to his senses,” said Tom to some of his cronies
who had gathered about him to talk over the situation. “He says he
wouldn’t blow on us, but I don’t believe a word of it. There isn’t a boy
in school who can stand defiant in the presence of the superintendent
when he draws down those gray eyebrows of his and looks at a fellow as
if he meant to pierce him through. Hallo! here comes Henderson with more
news. He’s a bully little scout, even if he did come near getting us all
into trouble by halting Don Gordon. What is it this time, Dick?”
“We may as well follow your advice and throw away our keys, for they are
of no use to us now,” was Dick’s reply. “The officer of the day goes up
and tries those doors and examines the new fastenings as regularly as he
makes his rounds.”
“There!” exclaimed Tom, in great disgust. “You see what Duncan has
brought us to by being so smart. No more pancakes for us.”
During the next few weeks nothing happened at the academy that is worthy
of record. Duncan and Don Gordon had rather a lonely time of it, for the
members of the “set” were not as cordial toward them as they used to be.
They did not cut them entirely, for they did not think that would be
quite safe; but they did not seek them out and associate with them as
freely as they would if they had been on friendly terms. Duncan took it
very much to heart, but Don did not seem to care. He studied and drilled
with the rest, and having served the sentence that had been passed upon
him for overstaying the time for which his leave of absence was granted,
he began to feel and act more like himself. So did Bert, who soon began
to count his friends by the score. They were true friends, too, and very
unlike the boys who belonged to Tom Fisher’s crowd.
It was not long before the Plebes began to show the result of their
regular and fatiguing drills. They became handy with their muskets, very
proficient in company and battalion evolutions, and, finally, they were
ordered to go on dress parade. This honor brought with it a duty from
which they had thus far been exempt, that of standing guard.
Up to this time Cony Ryan had been deserted by all except a very few of
his old patrons who sometimes passed an hour or two there of a Saturday
afternoon; but they never came away without telling one another that
they had not enjoyed themselves in the least—that their visits now were
not at all like the jolly times they used to have when they crowded into
his little parlor after creeping by the sentries. There had been none of
that sort of work of late. The sight of the bolts the carpenter had put
on the doors, and the increased vigilance of the officer of the day, had
taken all the courage out of the bravest of them; at least so it seemed,
for no one ever thought of running the guard now. Tom Fisher had almost
forgotten that he had ever done such a thing, when one day he was
approached by Don Gordon, who beckoned him off on one side.
“Look here, old fellow,” said Don, “you’ll dry up and blow away if you
don’t have some excitement to put your blood in circulation. If you want
to go down to Cony’s again, to-night is your time.”
“But the bolts!” exclaimed Tom, greatly surprised.
“The bolts won’t delay you five minutes,” replied Don, confidently. “I
haven’t been idle during the last few days, and I have found a way to
draw those bolts.”
“I could do it myself by going up the back stairs,” said Tom; “but the
officer of the day would find it out the first time he made his round.
Besides, we want to get in after we have gone out, and how would we
throw those bolts back to their place when the door was closed behind
us? Have you thought of that?”
“I have; but I can show you how it can be done easier than I can explain
it to you. We can’t go up to my floor to operate, for Bert is standing
guard there. Who’s on your floor?”
“Clarence Duncan.”
“Are you willing to trust him? I notice that you and he are not quite as
thick as you used to be.”
“I’ve got to trust him whether I am willing or not. If I should go back
on him entirely he would find a way to get me into a row that would send
me down.”
“I don’t see how he could make anything by that. He is as deep in the
mud as you are, and he would probably be sent down himself.”
“He wouldn’t care for that. He’ll go any lengths to injure a boy he
hates. That’s his style. I have managed to keep up a show of friendship
with him, and I know he will let you do anything you like on his floor.
Come on.”
Clarence, who was seated in his chair reading a sensational story paper
that one of the students had smuggled into the academy, nodded to Tom,
returned Don’s salute, and would probably have paid no further attention
to them had he not seen them turn into the hall that led to the
fire-escape. This excited his curiosity and he arose and followed them.
“What are you going to do here?” he demanded.
“Gordon has discovered a way to open these doors,” replied Tom.
“Not from this side,” exclaimed Duncan.
“Yes, from this side,” said Don. “I have done it once, and I know I can
do it again.”
Duncan, who believed that the feat could not possibly be accomplished,
was unable to find words with which to express his surprise. He could
only look bewildered. He took up a position in the main hall so that he
could watch the stairs and guard against intrusion, and occasionally
turned his eyes toward Don, whose proceedings he watched with the
greatest interest.
Don’s first act was to produce his pocket-knife, with which he removed
from the lower left-hand corner of the panel above the lock a round plug
of wood, which fitted into a hole about half an inch in diameter. The
top of the plug was painted white, like the door, and it filled the
opening so accurately that the different officers of the day, who had
probably looked at it a hundred times since it had been placed there,
had never seen it. Don then pulled out of his pocket a short, crooked
wire, one end of which was bent into the form of a hook and the other
made into the shape of a ring. The hook he inserted into the hole in the
panel, and a moment later the bolt was heard to slide from its socket.
“There you are,” said he, turning to Tom. “Now, take out your key and
open the door.”
Tom obeyed, lost in wonder, and then he and Duncan stepped forward to
see how Don’s invention worked. Simple as it was, it was admirably
adapted to the purpose for which it was intended. “The only difficult
thing about it,” said Don, in explanation, “is to get the hook around
the knob of the bolt. That done, a simple turn of the wrist does the
rest.”
“Gordon, you’re a good one,” exclaimed Tom. “You ought to be a Yankee.”
“This is a Yankee invention—at least a New England carpenter was the one
who brought it to my notice,” answered Don, as Fisher closed and locked
the door. “While he was doing some work on our plantation, our
smoke-house and corn-cribs were robbed more than a dozen times. It
seemed impossible for father to get locks that could not be picked or
broken. The carpenter said he could put a stop to that business, and he
did it by making some heavy wooden bolts, working on the same principle
that this one does, only there were three or four knobs in them instead
of one. Then he made a key, in shape something like this one of mine,
and when we wanted to shut up for the night, all we had to do was to
throw the bolts to their places, take out the wire, and the doors were
fast. There was but one way to pass them, and that was to break them
down; and if anybody had tried that he would have got himself into
business directly, for I own some dogs that won’t permit any such
doings.”
“Well, I’ve locked the door,” said Tom, when Don ceased speaking, “and
now I’d like to see you throw that bolt back again. That’s important,
you know.”
Don said he knew it. He thrust his wire through the opening again, and
in a second more the bolt was shot into its socket. In order to make
sure of it, Tom unlocked the door again and tried to open it; but the
bolt held it fast. Don’s plan would work to perfection—Fisher and Duncan
were sure of it.
“When did you find opportunity to do all this work?” asked the former.
“O, I did it at odd times when I thought there was the least danger of
being caught; but, I tell you, I had a narrow escape once. I was working
on this very door, and Tom, you were floor-guard at the time. You see
there were a good many days when I couldn’t do anything at all on
account of the guards, who I knew were not to be trusted. Well, I was
working there in the dark and had just put the plug into the hole, when
the bell rang. I had been obliged to do some whittling in order to make
the plug fit to suit me, but I had been careful to put all the shavings
on a piece of paper. If I had left them on the floor, and anybody had
come in there with a lantern, he would have seen them, of course, and I
should have had my work for nothing. When I heard the bell ring, I
grabbed up that piece of paper and started for the stairs; but just then
the back door opened, and who should come in but the officer of the
day.”
Don’s auditors, who were listening with almost breathless interest,
uttered ejaculations indicative of the greatest surprise and sympathy.
“I thought I was fairly cornered,” continued Don, “and at first I did
not know what to do. I listened until I heard the officer go into the
hall on the lower floor, and then I jerked off my boots and went up the
next two flights of stairs, and up the ladder that leads to the scuttle;
and there I sat on one of the topmost rounds until he tried all the
doors and went down again.”
“Don, you’re a good one,” said Fisher, again. “But why didn’t you let us
know what you were doing? Some of us might have helped you.”
“Well, you see, I expected to be caught, and I wanted to be able to say
that I had received no assistance, and that nobody knew what I was up
to. I couldn’t have told that story if I had taken you into my
confidence; and I wouldn’t, either.”
We confess to a great liking for Don Gordon, and to a positive
admiration of his moral as well as physical courage; but we are not
blind to his failings. We have no patience with the way he acted at
school after the solemn promises he had made his mother—they were all
forgotten now—nor do we like the way he reasoned with himself. In his
opinion there were different grades of lies. For example: If the
superintendent had asked him if it were he who had been halted by Dick
Henderson on a certain morning, he would have promptly replied that it
was—the fear of punishment would not have made him deny it; and yet when
he reached his room he told Bert a lie, although every word he uttered
was the truth. By the answers he gave to Bert’s questions he led the
latter to infer that the officer of the day was the only one who had
come into that room, and we know that such was not the case. Don was not
altogether consistent.
“Are all the doors that lead into the fire-escape fixed in this way?”
asked Tom.
“No; only yours and mine. There was no need of bothering with the other
two doors, for the boys in the first and second classes don’t run with
our crowd.”
“That’s so,” said Duncan; “but I know that some of them go to Cony
Ryan’s as regularly as we do.”
“They used to,” said Tom; “but I don’t think they have been there since
these new fastenings were put on. What shall I do with this?” he added,
as Don passed the wire over to him.
“Why, take it and use it.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I have another, but I shall not need it to-night.”
“Are you not going down to Cony’s with us?”
“I can’t. I am to relieve Henderson on post No. 8 at midnight; so you’ll
have to go out and come in by Dick and me.”
That night everything passed off smoothly. The guards who held the floor
when Tom and a chosen few went out and in, were accommodating; the bolt
was easily worked by the aid of the wire Don had fashioned; the sentries
on post No. 8 kept themselves out of sight; the pancakes and syrup were
excellent; the night was passed in a most agreeable manner; and at three
o’clock in the morning the guard-runners were all sleeping soundly in
their beds, and no one was the wiser for what they had done. They missed
Don (especially Tom Fisher, who had to pay his share of the bill from a
very slender purse), whom they as well as Cony Ryan declared to be an
honor to his class.
“It begins to look as though the old times were coming back again,” said
Cony, as he sat by and saw his pancakes disappear before the attacks of
his visitors, who ate as though they never had anything good served up
to them at the academy. “I tell you the boys who went to school here
years ago, some of whom are now men with boys of their own to look
after, were a sharp lot. You couldn’t keep them in if they didn’t want
to stay, and there was no use in trying. Of late you fellows haven’t
done anything to be proud of; but perhaps this young Gordon will put
some life into you.”
And he certainly did. Guard-running, in which Don took an active part,
became of common occurrence, although the teachers never suspected it;
and Cony Ryan slapped his well-lined pockets and blessed the day that
brought Don Gordon to the Bridgeport academy. But the reckoning came at
last, though long delayed, and Don, aided by an unexpected proceeding on
the part of Tom Fisher, did something that raised him to a high place in
the estimation of all the students, and knocked the “set” so high that
it never came down again; at least it was never heard of afterward. It
came about in this way:
Winter had passed, the snow had disappeared, the ice was all out of the
river, the buds were starting on the maple trees, and those of the
students who were ambitious to be something better than privates in
their companies, were studying night and day to prepare themselves for
the approaching examination. These found rest and recreation by whipping
the neighboring brooks for trout on Saturday afternoon (you know it is
time to begin trout-fishing when the maple buds start), while Tom Fisher
and his followers diverted themselves by running the guard as often as
the opportunity was presented.
On a certain night one of Tom’s friends who held one of the outside
posts from eight o’clock until midnight, was taken suddenly ill, and was
relieved by the corporal, his beat being taken by a boy who did not
belong to the “set.” Tom had made arrangements for visiting Cony Ryan’s,
and Don Gordon had charge of his floor. When taps had sounded, and the
officer of the day had made his rounds, the guard-runners left their
dormitories, one by one, Don turning his back so that he did not see
them as they passed. They left the building without being discovered,
but when they attempted to pass the sentry, their troubles began. They
were halted, and by a voice that did not belong to the friend they had
expected to find on that post. Amazed and disconcerted, they huddled
together for a moment like a flock of sheep that had been suddenly
frightened, and then, knowing that there was but one thing they could
do, they turned and started for the academy on a dead run, the vigilant
sentry all the while rending the air with his lusty calls for the
corporal of the guard. They tumbled up the stairs, gained access to the
floor on which their dormitories were situated, pulled off their
uniforms without loss of time and went to bed, as miserable and
frightened a lot of boys as the walls of that academy had ever inclosed.
“Did you ever hear of anything so very unfortunate?” whispered Fisher to
his friend Duncan. “If there was any one of our fellows except Gordon in
charge of this floor, we should be all right, for it is as dark as a
pocket out of doors, and I know that that sentry could not have
recognized us.”
“We ought never to have had anything to do with Gordon in the first
place,” whispered Duncan, in reply.
“That’s what I have thought for a long time; but it is too late to mend
the matter now. There they are,” he added, as the sound of footsteps on
the stairs came to their ears. “It is all over with us now.”
So thought Don Gordon, only he used the word “me” instead of “us.” “I am
in for it,” he soliloquized, “and I would give something to know what
they will do with me. I’ll not go back on the boys, and that’s flat. The
superintendent will give me a lively shake-up, of course; and then what
will Bert say? What will mother think?”
When the officer of the day, attended as usual by the corporal, came up
the stairs, he found Don pacing slowly along the hall with his hands
behind his back. They returned his salute, but did not speak to him.
They went to the upper end of the hall and began a thorough examination
of all the rooms, the officer of the day arousing the occupant of every
bed, while the corporal held his lantern aloft so that the face of each
one could be plainly seen. Don’s dummy would not have saved him this
time. When they had satisfied themselves that no one on that floor was
missing, and had tried the door opening into the hall that led to the
fire-escape, they went up the stairs to look into the dormitories on the
floors above. In a quarter of an hour they went back to the guard-room,
and Don was left alone. Scarcely had the sound of their footsteps died
away in the lower hall when a dozen doors were softly opened, and almost
twice as many heads were thrust cautiously out. “What’s the row,
Gordon?” was the whispered chorus that saluted Don’s ears. “What did the
officer of the day wake us up for? Anybody out?”
“There’s no one out who belongs on this floor,” replied Don. “And if
there has been anything going on up stairs, I don’t know it.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Not a word!”
The students were all surprised to hear this, and there were some among
them who were frightened as well. After a few more questions, which
brought no information from Don for the simple reason that he had none
to impart, the students all went back to bed except Fisher and Duncan,
who lingered to have a word with Don in private. They were ill at ease,
and told themselves that when the new fastenings were put on the doors,
some new routine had been adopted of which they had not yet heard.
“Didn’t he ask you any questions at all—not a single one?” whispered
Fisher.
“He didn’t open his lips,” answered Don.
“Didn’t say anything to you about reporting to him as soon as you were
relieved, did he?” put in Duncan, who thought Don must surely be
mistaken.
“How could he, when he didn’t open his lips?” asked Don, in reply.
“This is an unusual way of doing business,” said Tom, reflectively, “and
there’s something about it that doesn’t look just right to me. Now, mark
my words, fellows: they’re going to spring something new on us, and they
will do it so suddenly, that it will knock us flatter than one of Cony
Ryan’s pancakes. You’ll see.”
And sure enough they did.