THE PROFESSOR’S WARNING
“Say, Cap, don’t you think things are rather slow, not to say dreary
around here?” asked Bob Chapin a few days after the ball game, as he
strolled into the elder Smith lad’s room, and appropriated the easiest
chair. “It’s the spring fever or the summer sleeping sickness coming
on, I’m sure.”
“What’s up now, Bob?” asked Bill, as he tossed aside his chemistry,
glad of an excuse to stop studying.
“What Bob needs is to train for the eleven or get into a baseball
uniform,” added Pete. “He’s getting fat and lazy, and he hasn’t any
interest in life.”
“Get out!” cried the visitor, who did not go in for athletics, and who
preferred to be considered a “Sport,” with a capital “S,” wearing good
clothes and spending all his spare time in a town billiard parlor. “You
get out, Pete. Didn’t I try for the glee club?”
“Yes, but you were too lazy to practice,” remarked Cap frankly.
“How brutal of you!” cried Chapin, with a mock theatrical air. “Didn’t
I even forgive my enemies and beg them to take me into the banjo club?”
“Which, for the good of the service, they refused to do,” went on the
elder Smith.
“Oh, have you no mercy?” asked the visitor in a high falsetto voice,
striking an attitude.
“We’re all out of it—expect a fresh lot in next week,” answered Bill.
Then after a pause he added: “Now there’s a thing you could do, Bob.”
“What’s that?”
“Go in for theatricals. Why don’t you join the Paint and Powder club?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Afraid of spoiling my complexion with burnt cork and
grease preparations, I guess,” was the indolent reply. “But I don’t
want to discuss myself. I was asking if you fellows didn’t find it dull
here? Why, there hasn’t been a thing pulled off since we brought the
calf into the ancient history class two weeks ago. It is frightfully
dull at Westfield. Don’t you think so, really?”
“Hadn’t noticed it,” replied Cap. “What with baseball practice, and
digging and boning and lectures and writing home occasionally for money
we manage to exist; eh fellows?”
“Sure!” chorused his brothers.
“Well, I say it’s dull,” went on Chapin. “Now you fellows used to cut
up some, when you first came, but you’d think you had all reformed the
way you’ve been keeping quiet lately.”
“There’s nothing to do,” complained Bill, in whom the spirit of
mischief burned more strongly than in his brothers. “Show us a good
lively time and we’ll be in on it.”
“I can’t show it to you,” replied Chapin. “You’ve got to make it for
yourselves.”
“Well, I’ll do my share,” went on Bill eagerly. “Why, is there
something up?”
“Now, Bill, you haven’t any time to undertake any pranks you know,”
admonished Cap, but his voice was not at all commanding, and there was
a gleam of interest in his eyes.
“Yes, cut out the funny business,” added Bill. “But what is it, anyhow,
Bob? No harm in telling; is there?”
“Sure not. I was just wishing a racket would break loose, and I
happened to think of something a while ago. It would take some nerve to
do it though, and maybe you fellows—”
He paused significantly—temptingly.
“Say, who says we haven’t got the nerve?” demanded Bill quickly.
“Now, Bill go easy,” advised his older brother, but he, too, looked
interested.
“Oh, well, certainly you have the nerve,” admitted Chapin. “But it’s
risky.”
“Are you willing to go in on it?” asked Pete quickly.
“Of course,” was the instant rejoinder.
“Then name your game!” came from Bill, “and you’ll find us right behind
you up to the muzzle of the cannon. Out with it!”
“Oh, I wish you’d stayed away,” spoke Cap. “I’m back in my
trigonometry, and if I flunk—Well, I suppose we may as well hear what
you’ve got up your sleeve,” and he laid aside his book, with a laugh
and a half-protesting shake of his head.
Bob’s first act was to go over to the door of Cap’s room, in which the
gathering took place, and see that the portal was tightly closed. Then
he listened at the keyhole.
“Is it perfectly safe?” he asked in a whisper. “Can anyone hear us?”
“Say, what are we up against?” asked Cap with a laugh. “Is this a
gunpowder plot, or merely a scheme to burn the old school.”
“Listen, and I will a tale unfold,” went on Chapin. “Gather ’round, my
children, gather ’round the camp-fire and Anthony shall tell us one of
his famous stories. So they gathered ’round—”
“Oh, get along with it—we’ve got to do some boning to-night, Bob,”
complained Pete. “We’ve heard that camp-fire joke before.”
“Do you know the bronze statue of ‘Pop’ Weston in front of the school?”
asked the visitor in a stage whisper.
“Do we know it? The statue of the founder of Westfield? Well I should
bust a bat but we do,” answered Bill.
“What do you think of the color of it?” asked Chapin.
“What do you mean?” Cap wanted to know.
“I mean wouldn’t it look prettier red or blue or pink, than the shade
it is now?”
He paused to look at the three brothers. They did not answer for a
moment. Then Bill exclaimed:
“Say, is that what you mean—to paint the statue?”
Chapin nodded slowly.
“It’s—sacrilege,” whispered Cap.
“Only an iconoclast would dare think of such a thing,” declared Bill.
“But—” there was an eager light in his eyes.
“It was done once, years ago,” proceeded the tempter, “and the whole
Freshman class was suspended for a week, as the faculty couldn’t find
out who did it. It has been many, many, weary years since such an honor
fell upon us Freshmen,” and he sighed deeply, as though in pain.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Cap softly. The daring plot appealed to him,
conservative as he was.
“How did they get the paint off?” asked Pete.
“It had to wear off,” replied Chapin. “But I don’t want to do anything
like that. We can use water colors, and they won’t spoil the bronze,
and really it would be a little too rotten to make such a mess of it.
Just tint it a light Alice blue, or a dainty Helen pink—it will wash
off, but it will look pretty for a while, and the freshmen class will
have made a name for itself that it can be proud of. Are you with me?
It can easily be done, and the chances are we won’t be caught. How
about it?”
“I’ll do it!” exclaimed Bill quickly.
“I don’t know,” began Cap.
“Oh, come on,” urged Pete. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had any
fun.”
“If we’re caught, it means good-bye to balls and bats,” went on the
eldest brother.
“But we won’t be caught,” declared Chapin eagerly. “Besides, what if we
are—that’s half the fun.”
“All right, go ahead,” agreed Cap. “Might as well be killed for a sheep
as a lamb, I guess. I’m in on it.”
“Now about the paint,” went on the tempter, as he again listened at
the door. “We’ll have to be careful where we get it, as McNibb is a
regular detective for following a clue. It ought to be bought out of
town.”
“That’s so,” agreed Pete.
“Hold on, I have it!” cried Bill, after a moment’s thought. “Professor
Clatter.”
“Professor Clatter?” inquired Chapin. “You mean that medicine man with
his queer wagon?”
“Exactly,” went on the pitcher. “I saw him in town the other day, and
he said he was coming back to play a return engagement near here. He’s
got some new kind of stomach dope or something like that. Besides,
he has some patent face powder that he says he got at a bargain, and
he’s going to try and work it off on the ladies in the crowd. It’s
a beautiful pink, and it’s harmless. I was looking at a box of it,
and it got on my hands. Say, for a few minutes I had the nicest baby
complexion you’d want to see. But it all washed off as easily as soap.”
“Well, what’s the answer?” asked Chapin, as Bill paused.
“Why we’ll get some of that powder from the professor, mix it up, and
use it on the statute. It will come off easily and I defy Proctor
McNibb to trace where it came from. The professor is a friend of ours,
and he’ll keep mum.”
“The very thing!” cried the visitor. “When can you get it?”
“To-morrow, or next day,” answered Bill, who had now entered heart and
soul into the piece of mischief. “I’ll get enough to give Pop Weston a
liberal coating.”
“Night after to-morrow,” mused Chapin, looking at a calendar over Cap’s
table. “That will do. There’s no moon. What about brushes?”
“I guess a whitewash one will do. Maybe the professor has one—or a big
sponge, such as he uses for cleaning his wagon.”
“Fine!” cried Chapin. “Oh, I can just see the faculty when they file
past the bronze statue, done to a beautiful baby pink! Great! No more
will the lordly Seniors boast of having once run a dump cart into the
class room. The Sophs with their little trick of putting tar on the
bell tower will take a back seat, and the Juniors, whose stronghold,
so far, has been the horrible task of burning red fire under Prexy’s
windows, will be green with envy. Oh, what a lucky day this has been!”
“It isn’t over yet,” remarked Cap significantly.
“Well, I’ll see Clatter and get the stuff,” promised Bill. “Then we’ll
meet and do the decorating. How many are in on it?” asked the pitcher,
pausing in his planning.
“We don’t want too many,” spoke Chapin cautiously. “Us four perhaps,
Bondy and Whistle-Breeches if you like, as they’re on this corridor.”
“Not Bondy,” said Pete quickly. “We’ll let Whistle-Breeches in, but
Guilder isn’t in our set. He wouldn’t come if we asked him, and we’re
not going to. Besides, he might squeal.”
“Well, five are enough,” said Chapin. “Now I’ll depend on you to get
the paint, Bill.”
“And I’ll get it.”
“Fare thee well, then,” and with another cautious listening at the
door, Chapin took himself out.
“Well?” asked Cap, of his brothers a little later, when they had sat in
silence pondering over the plan.
“It’s all to the red-pepper,” declared Bill. “We need something to
wake us up.”
“I guess this will prevent dreams for some time,” observed the eldest
Smith.
“It’ll be a scream of a nightmare when the faculty sees it,” came from
Pete, “but there’s no harm in it as long as the paint washes off.”
With many nods and winks Chapin recalled to the three brothers, and to
Whistle-Breeches, next morning the plot they had made. Whistle-Breeches
had been let into it early in the day, and had eagerly agreed to do his
share. They would need ropes with which to mount to the top of the big
statue, and Anderson had agreed to procure them.
“I can climb, too,” he said, “and I’ll decorate the top part.”
“Good for you, Whistle-Breeches!” exclaimed Pete.
It was that same afternoon that Bill saw Bob Chapin in close
conversation with Mersfeld and Jonas North. It was the first time he
had noticed that Chapin was chummy with the Varsity regular pitcher,
and with the lad who, because of his bullying tactics was generally
shunned, except by his own crowd.
“I hope Bob doesn’t talk too much about the statue business,” reflected
Bill. “Too many cooks make the hash taste burned. It might leak out.”
Then, as he was summoned to practice he gave the matter no more thought
until that evening, when he set off alone to see Professor Clatter, and
get the pink paint.
Pete and Cap wanted to accompany him, but Bill declared that there was
safety in small numbers, and that he preferred to go alone.
He found his old friend getting ready for an evening performance,
filling his gasoline torches, looking over his stock of supplies, and
tuning the banjo with which, and his not unmelodious voice, he drew a
throng about the gaily painted wagon.
“Ha, my young friend, back again!” cried the professor. “Greetings to
you. And where are the brothers?”
“Studying, I expect, or making a pretense to.”
“Good again! Ah, the lamp of learning burns brightly when one is young.
What ho! Mercurio! Some more gasoline for this torch! We must have
light!” Then the professor having ordered about an imaginary slave,
proceeded to fill the torch himself.
“Speaking of lamps of learning,” broke in Bill, thinking this was
a good time to announce his errand, “we’re going to do a little
illumination over at Westfield on our own account. How much of that
pink paint have you, Professor?”
“Pink paint—you mean my Matchless Complexion Tinting Residuum?”
“I guess that’s it. We need some.”
“For a masked ball?”
“For a bronze statue,” replied Bill, and he proceeded to relate the
details of the plot. The professor listened carefully. Bill told
everything, and at length the traveling vendor asked:
“Did you and your brothers think of this scheme, Bill?”
“No, as a matter of fact Bob Chapin proposed it.”
“Ah, I suppose he is one of the leading spirits when it comes to these
plots of—er—innocent mischief?”
“No, I never knew him to get up anything of the kind before. And that’s
the funny part of it. He never takes a hand in ’em. But now he comes to
us with the idea, and he’s going to help carry it out. I never knew he
had gumption enough to break out this way. It’s a good one, though.”
“And doesn’t it strike you as odd that he suddenly breaks out now?”
asked the professor in rather a curious voice.
“Odd? Dow do you mean?”
“I mean do you think he had any object in it?”
“Object in it?”
“Yes, to get you boys interested and—”
“Why, he’s interested himself. He’s going to help decorate Pop Weston.”
“I know, but you say he never did anything of the kind before,”
objected Mr. Clatter, looking sharply at Bill.
“No.”
“And isn’t it rather late in the college year for him to begin?”
“It is—say, look here, Professor Clatter! Do you know anything about
this?” demanded Bill.
“No, only what my common sense tells me. But I gather that there is
some feeling against you because of baseball matters.”
“A little—yes, Mersfeld is sore, but—”
“Wait a minute. Now, if some of your enemies could get you into a game
like this, and then desert you, and let the whole blame fall on you,
or, even, we’ll say, tip off the college authorities, to use a slang
term—wouldn’t they make trouble for you.”
“Yes, they would, but—”
“Is this Bob Chapin a particular friend of yours?”
“Not particularly.”
“Is he in with this Mersfeld?”
“No, not any more than—By Jove!” Bill checked himself suddenly. The
remembrance of Chapin talking earnestly to Mersfeld and North came back
to him.
“Ah!” exclaimed the professor knowingly, as he rubbed his hands. “I
fancy we are getting at something. Now if our friend Tithonus Somnus
were here we would get him to read the stars for us, but, in his
absence I’ll venture to give you a bit of advice, Bill.”
“What is it, Mr. Clatter.”
“You may consider this in the light of a warning,” went on the medicine
vendor earnestly. “Don’t have anything to do with the trick of painting
the statue, Bill; or if you do—”
He paused significantly.
“Well, if we do?” repeated Bill.
“If you do, then play the double cross, and catch your enemies in the
net they have spread for you,” was the reply in a low voice.
Bill started, and, as he did so there came a cautious knock at the door
of the wagon.
“Who’s there?” asked the professor quickly.
“It’s me—Tithonus,” was the answer in a hoarse whisper. “Let me
in—quick! The police are after me!”