setting, that was shining in on him through the open stable door? He
pulled out his watch, the good old reliable timepiece by which his
father had once run trains on the home railroad, and which had been
given to him as a parting gift when he left for college. Not once
since it had been his had he let it run down; but now it had run down,
stopping with its hands pointing to half-past nine. His jaw dropped.
That must have been half-past nine in the morning!
Larry propped his head in his hands and tried once more to piece the
vaguenesses up into some sort of an understandable whole. Was it
possible that he had slept through half a night and almost all of a
day? Suddenly it came over him with a shock like a bucketing of cold
water that this was, or had been, the day for the tests in Math. and
Physics――and he had cut not only these, but all his other classes as
well!
That shock brought him to his feet with a bound, and he was dismayed to
find that he was still wobbly and uncertain when he stood up, and that
he had a headache that was worse than any he had ever experienced in
his healthy, clear-headed life. This started him off on another line
of speculative wondering. What had happened to him in the close little
room where he had waited for the return of the hard-faced loafer? Was
it possible that the mere reek of the place had made him so drunk that
he could sleep eighteen hours on end, and then wake up with his head
feeling as big as a bushel basket?
Stumbling out of the cow stable he found himself in a part of the town
that he had never visited; the poorer quarter behind the row of saloons
in Main Street. The stable, which evidently hadn’t been used for a
long time, stood in a neglected back lot fronting upon a dirty alley,
and through the alley he made his way to the street and so across the
bridge to the college suburb.
Dodging aside as soon as he had crossed the river, he hoped he might
be able to reach Mrs. Grant’s and his room without meeting anybody he
knew. But at the very last, as he was turning the final corner, he ran
into Dick Maxwell and two other members of the Omegs. It was Dick who
blocked the way and said: “Just been up to your room to see if you’d
been heard from yet. Coach Brock wanted to know where you’d dropped out
to. Where’ve you been, and what makes you look as if you’d been pulled
backwards through a knot-hole?”
Larry steadied himself with a grip on the corner fence post, and in
place of answering the double question, asked one of his own.
“Where were you at eleven o’clock last night, Dick?”
Dick’s reply was prompt.
“Up to about that time I was in the house lounge with Cranny and
Stillwell here, chewing Physics with them for the test to-day. After
that I was hitting the hay for a home run in my little downy. Why?”
“Nothing,” said Larry, and he went on to the Man-o’-War gate with a
great light beginning to filter through the headache clouds. One thing,
at least, was clear: the stubble-faced loafer had told a lie cut out
of whole cloth. There had been no Dick Maxwell to be knocked down and
dragged out and carried home.
In his room Larry found Purdick working over a demonstration drawing,
and the small one nearly jumped up and flung his arms around the
home-comer when he saw who it was that had opened the door.
“Suffering Jehu! I never was so glad to see anybody in my life!” he
exclaimed, shoving the drawing-board back on the study table. Then:
“They’ve had me fighting mad all day.”
“Who had?” said Larry, dropping into a chair to get back to the old
trick of holding his head in his hands.
“Markley and Dugger, and that bunch. They’ve been telling it all over
the campus that they saw you last night in a back room at ‘Pat’s Place’
_dead drunk_! I tried to lick Dugger for saying it, but he carried too
big a wallop for me.”
“Huh!” said Larry, looking out between his fingers; “that’s where you
got that black eye, was it? You’re a mighty loyal little rat, Purdy,
and I only wish you’d been fighting for something worth while. I was in
‘Pat’s Place’ last night, and if I wasn’t drunk, there was something
else mighty funny the matter with me. I just waked up a little while
ago, and my head feels bigger than a barrel, right now. But what
were Markley and Dugger doing in Pat’s?”
“The way they’re telling it, they had been to the Sock and Buskin show,
and after it was out they stopped in the Rookery to get an ice-cream
soda. As they were passing Pat’s on their way over, some fellow out in
front told them that there was one of their college bunkies drunk in a
back room. They say they went in and found you lying spread out on a
table and so far gone that they thought it would be too much of a job
to get you home. So, with the help of the barkeeper and the fellow who
had told them, they lugged you out to an old barn in a vacant lot and
left you to sleep it off. I didn’t believe ’em, of course. If I had,
I’d’ve gone to hunt you up. It’s all a pack of lies, isn’t it? You
didn’t drink anything in that miserable dog-hole, did you?”
“Nothing but a glass of cold water.”
“Tell me,” Purdick commanded; and Larry told the whole story, or so
much of it as was clear enough to be recalled. Purdick heard him
through without interrupting, and then, out of an experience that was
wider――and sadder――than any his big-bodied room-mate had ever gone
through, he grappled with the mysteries.
“You say the card-room smelled of alcohol and the smell grew stronger:
I guess it was meant to. Don’t you know that a person can get drunk
just breathing the fumes of the stuff?”
“I didn’t know it,” Larry admitted.
“Well, it’s so. The sawdust on the floor was probably soaked for you
before you went in. Then, with the door shut, you’d soon go off your
head.”
“But, listen――Markley and Dugger say they carried me out, and that
couldn’t have been very long after I went off the handle. Just smelling
the stuff wouldn’t make a fellow sleep eighteen hours, would it?”
“No; but the glass of water, or what was in it, probably did the rest.
You were doped.”
For some little time Larry didn’t speak. When he broke the silence, it
was to say: “That brings on a lot more talk, doesn’t it, Purdy? Why
should those plug-uglies at ‘Pat’s Place’ want to fill me up with lies
and then drug me?”
“Easy,” said little Purdick. “They were paid to do it.”
“What! You mean the Underhill push?”
“It’s beating its way into your head at last, is it? Bry Underhill’s
been telling it around again, as he did a month or so ago, that you’d
never play anything but practice games on the ’Varsity――never come back
to Sheddon after this year. He’s cooked up the proper scheme, this
time, to knock you out. The story will get around to Brock――Undy will
see to it that it does get around to him――and you know how strict he is
about the booze.”
Again there was a little silence in the big room, and at the end of it
Larry started to his feet with his fists clenched.
“It was a ‘frame-up,’ just as you say, Purdy,” he said, speaking slowly
as he always did when his temper was threatening to get out of control.
“I’ve tried, all along, not to be vindictive toward Underhill and his
crowd, but this thing hits the limit. I’m going after that fellow now,
and he’ll be the one who won’t come back to Sheddon next year instead
of me!
“Now, I want you to do me a little favor. I’m as hungry as a wolf, but
I don’t want to face the bunch at the supper-table to-night. Slip down
and see Mother Grant and ask her if you can’t bring my supper up to me.
You can tell her I’ve got a bad headache, and you won’t miss the truth
by a sixty-fourth of an inch. Skip for it while I go to the bath-room
and hold my head under the cold-water faucet. I want to be able to
think straight after I get a few calories inside of me.”
XII
FRIENDS IN NEED
After little Purdick had seen Larry put away a trayful of supper, which
had to do duty for itself and two other missed meals, with an appetite
that seemed to make no account of the left-over headache, he hoped
Larry would tell him what plan he had in mind for getting square with
Bryant Underhill and his unprincipled accomplices.
But there proved to be nothing doing in that line. With the supper
despatched, Larry hurled himself upon his books after the manner of a
fellow who has lost a whole day out of his calendar and is determined
to make it up in the shortest possible interval of time. And when
Purdick went to bed at half-past ten, his room-mate was still digging
away, and nothing more had been said about the Underhill square-up.
The next day it was just the same. How Larry explained things to his
professors, made up the lost day’s class-cuts, and contrived to get
credit for the tests he had missed, were matters upon which Purdick was
left uninformed. But Ollie McKnight, between whom and little Purdick
there had grown up an intimacy which was as odd as it was comradely,
brought in a bit of news that was calculated to key any friend of
Larry’s up to the fighting pitch. It was to the effect that Brock,
the head coach, had taken Larry off the foot-ball team; had either
suspended or fired him, McKnight didn’t know which.
“That’s simply an outrage!” Purdick burst out, adding: “I suppose you
know what it comes from?”
“Sure,” said the son of Consolidated Steel; “Brock’s heard the story
that’s going around about Larry’s being off on a bat. How much do you
know about it, Purdy? Is any part of it true?”
Purdick told what he knew, and McKnight gave a low whistle.
“Larry can’t deny it, eh?――or, at least, can’t deny anything but the
intention? And his explanation, which you and I take at its face value,
of course, won’t look very good to people who don’t know Larry; in
fact, I shouldn’t wonder if a good many of the fellows wouldn’t call it
a rather clumsy lie. What does Dickie Maxwell say about it?”
“Dick was up to the room last evening just before Larry came in. He
hadn’t heard the story then. You couldn’t make _him_ believe that Larry
is telling anything but just the plain straight truth.”
“Of course he’s telling the truth. Trouble is, it’s going to sound too
improbable to be believed. What Larry ought to do is to go right after
this Underhill bunch and show it up――prove that it was a frame-up.”
“That’s what he said he was going to do, last night,” said Purdick.
“All right,” McKnight nodded. “You tell him when he’s ready to start in
he can count upon me and all the fellows in our house. We’re for him,
even if it takes a round robin to the faculty.”
Purdick nursed that little offer of help and held himself in readiness
to spring it when Larry should again broach the subject of a just
vengeance upon the Underhill plotters. But when another evening had
all but passed, and Larry hadn’t once mentioned the “frame-up,” its
perpetrators, or the humiliating blow that Coach Brock had dealt him,
Purdick could no longer contain himself.
“Ollie McKnight says you’re put off the team,” he said, stooping to
untie his shoes. “Is that so?”
Larry nodded.
“Did you tell Brock what you told me?”
Larry nodded again, adding:
“He didn’t believe what I told him, of course; nobody would.”
“Well?” Purdick broke out raspily. “Are you going to take it lying down
from this bunch of money-rotten highbinders? You said last night that
you were going after them for blood.”
Larry sat back in his chair at the study table, and the good gray eyes
were a bit gloomy.
“I know I did, Purdy, and I meant it――then.”
“But you don’t mean it now?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Larry was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know as I could make you understand, though I guess maybe Dick
Maxwell would. I’ve got a horrible temper, Purdy.”
“Yes you have!”――with what was meant to be scathing irony. “You’re
just too easy for any common kind of use――chicken-hearted where other
people are concerned, _I’d_ call it!”
“Don’t you make any such mistake as that,” Larry said quickly, with the
gloom in his eyes changing swiftly to the fighting glow that came into
them when he was struggling for that extra yard on the foot-ball field.
“I could smash every man in that gang and never turn a hair!”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Well, partly because I don’t dare to.”
“Afraid?”――incredulously.
“Yes; afraid of myself.”
“Ump!” said little Purdick; “I wear a six-and-three-quarters hat. I
guess you’ll have to make it plainer than that for a head the size of
mine.”
“I’m just afraid to let go, that’s all. You’ve read in war stories how
men, soldiers, who have been decent, sober fellows all their lives get
to be brutes and devils when they let the brute-and-devil part of ’em
come to the top. I’ve been holding my brute-and-devil down ever since
I was a little kid, and I don’t dare to let it get up now. That’s all
there is to it, Purdy.”
“So you’ll let this lying story go on spilling itself all over the
place, and lose your chance for the ’Varsity, and maybe get a call-down
from the faculty, all because you’re afraid you might let go all holds
if you went after the fellows who are trying to do you up?”
“It’s as true as if you were reading it out of a book,” said Larry, and
with that he turned back to his drawing-board, and Purdick went to bed.
To a man up a tree, that might have seemed to be the end of it, so far
as Larry’s reinstatement on the team or his vindication on the campus
was concerned. But little Purdick was of the tribe of those who stick
and hang. He was pleased to believe that he owed Larry the biggest debt
that one fellow could possibly owe another, and he didn’t propose to
see his benefactor’s record smashed by any such vengeful plot as――he
made no doubt――the Underhill conspirators had concocted and carried
out. If Larry wouldn’t fight for himself, then he, Charles Purdick,
would fight for him――and to the last ditch.
But just how to go about it, with Larry unwilling to say or do anything
in his own defense, was a problem. Purdick waited for a day or two,
hoping that Dick Maxwell would turn up; and on the third day after
Larry had been dropped from the team, Dick did turn up.
“Where’s Larry?” he ripped out, bursting into the big room just as
Purdick was settling down for the evening grind on his Math.
“He’s gone out somewhere,” said Purdick.
Dick flung himself into a chair.
“That miserable, low-down lie that’s going ’round about him!” he boiled
over. “Did you know he’d been dropped from the team?”
Purdick nodded. “That was three days ago. I’ve been hoping you’d come
over.”
“Conspiracy of silence!” Dick fumed. “No one of the fellows in the
house wanted to be the first to tell me, and I haven’t been on the
field since last Saturday. What’s Larry doing about it?”
“Nothing.”
“But, Great Moses, something’s got to be done!”
Purdick shook his head.
“Larry won’t do anything, and it’s just about breaking his heart. I’ve
tried to buck him up and get him to make a fight and show the Underhill
bunch up for what it is, but he won’t do it; says he’s got such a bad
temper that there won’t be any end to it if he lets himself go.”
“Yes; he and his temper!” Dick snorted. Then: “It was a put-up job, of
course?”
“Not the slightest doubt of it, in my mind. You know what they told him
over there at ‘Pat’s Place’――that you’d gone off the hooks and were
needing somebody to take you home. Larry fell for it, and then they
managed to get him into one of the little card-rooms that had probably
been ‘fixed’ for him――alcohol spilled around on the floor. That got him
half sick to begin with, and then, when he asked for a drink of water,
they doped him.”
“Huh!” said Dick. “So that’s the straight of it, is it? Naturally, I
hadn’t heard that part of it. It was after that that Markley and Dugger
found him, I suppose?”
“Yes. That part of it is probably true. They found him asleep and
helped carry him out to the old cow barn. But it sticks in my craw that
they didn’t need to have anybody tell them _where_ to find him.”
“Of course they didn’t. That was part of the plot. And you say Larry
won’t try to do anything to clear himself?”
“No.”
“Then it’s up to us,” said Dick promptly. “You owe him something,
Purdy, and so do I. We’ll get together on this thing and show that
money-rotten bunch up for what it really is.”
Purdick’s eyes narrowed.
“Your father is a rich man, too, isn’t he?” he thrust in quietly.
“What of that?”
“N-nothing; only I thought maybe you might want to stay on your own
side of the fence.”
“Now, see here, Purdy; let’s fight this thing out once for all. You’ve
got the same idea that Larry brought here with him at first――about
the classes and the masses, and all that. I don’t know where you’ve
been living all your life, but it certainly couldn’t have been in the
America that I know the most about. You come out West with us next
summer and we’ll show you the real America; a place where people――or
most of ’em, anyway――will take you for what you are, and not for what
you’ve got in the bank. It’s only in the crowded places that you soak
up that ‘class’ stuff.”
Purdick looked away.
“I’d like to believe you, Maxwell; honestly, I would,” he said. “And
you’re right about one thing. I’ve lived in cities――factory cities――all
my life. But to get back to Larry: this thing is fairly killing him
by inches. He doesn’t say anything to me, but I know. When he’s here
in the room he just grinds and grinds; crawls back into his shell and
pulls the hole in after him. And the minute he’s got his work up, he
pulls his cap over his face and digs out. Sometimes he doesn’t came
back until one or two o’clock in the morning.”
“I know,” said Dick; “takes to the woods. That’s what he used to do in
the old days when anything went crossways with him. I know what he’s
doing; he’s fighting that temper he told you about. He isn’t afraid of
anybody but himself. I brayed about that temper thing when you spoke of
it a minute ago, but he’s got it, all right. If he ever turned loose on
Undy, he’d kill him. I know, because I’ve seen him fighting mad one or
two times when he was just a kid in knee breeches.”
Purdick shoved his books aside.
“There’s no time like the present, Maxie. If we’re going to try to
straighten this mess up for Larry, let’s go to it.”
“I’m with you,” said Dick, getting upon his feet quickly. “Only I
haven’t any more idea than the man in the moon where to begin.”
“Perhaps I can help out a little on that end of it,” said Purdick, with
a sort of crooked smile, adding: “I’m about ten years older than you
are, Maxie, in some things.” And then he got his coat and cap and they
went out together.
Most naturally, when they were in the street, Dick thought Purdick
would head for one of the houses across the campus where the various
members of the faculty lived. The only possible thing to do, as he saw
it, was to get some one of the professors interested and so start a
faculty investigation. But Purdick seemed to have a plan of his own,
for when they reached the cross-street corner, he turned short and led
the way toward the bridge and the town.
There was no pause made until they reached “Pat’s Place,” and none
there, save that Purdick glanced up at the windows in the second story
as if to see whether they were lighted or dark. Following the upward
glance, Dick saw that there was a light in an upper room, and the next
thing he knew he was climbing a narrow stair at Purdick’s heels. At a
door near the stair-head, Purdick rapped, and a mumbling voice said
thickly: “Come in, then!”
What Dick saw when the door opened under Purdick’s hand was a rather
gaudily furnished room with a thick-piled carpet on the floor which
looked as if it were rarely swept. There was a desk in the middle of
the room, and in the pivot-chair belonging to it sat a man with a
round, fat face, little pig-like black eyes, black mustaches curled
at the ends, and shiny black hair plastered in a barber’s curl on his
forehead. To keep up the color scheme the man had a black cigar clamped
between his teeth, and on his feet, which were cocked up on the desk,
were shoes which looked as if they had just escaped from the polishing
attack of a bootblack.
Dick didn’t know the man from Adam, but he read the papers often enough
to be able to guess at once that the upper room was the private――and
unofficial――office of the most notorious of the little city’s board of
aldermen, Mr. Patrick Clanahan.
“Little college lads, eh?” grunted the man in the chair, as they filed
in and stood before him. “What’d ye be wantin’ o’ me at this time o’
night?”
Dick couldn’t have told to save his life, but little Purdick seemed to
labor under no handicap whatever.
“It’s about your saloon down-stairs, Mr. Clanahan,” he said, looking
the fat-faced man squarely in the eyes. “Last Monday night one of our
fellows was taken in there and drugged. We want to know who hired your
people to do it.”
“Lord love us!” chuckled the black-haired boss. “Would ye listen to the
nerve av the little cockerel? ‘We want to know who hired your people to
do it,’ says he!”
“That’s it,” said Purdick coolly. “We know they were hired, and we want
to know who paid them for it.”
The fat alderman took his feet down from the desk and the little
pig-like eyes snapped viciously.
“Ye little fool!” he bit out, “d’ye think f’r wan minute ye can run a
bluff the like o’ that on Pat Clanahan? Get out o’ here, the both av
yez, before I’d be t’rowin’ yez out!”
But little Purdick stood his ground.
“You’ll find that it isn’t a bluff. We don’t care anything about your
people down-stairs, though it might make trouble if it was known that
your place is one where a fellow could have knockout drops given to him
in a glass of water. What we want to know――what we’re going to find
out――is who bribed them to do it, Mr. Clanahan.”
It was just here that the real explosion came. Bounding to his feet and
making a move as if he would come around the desk to throw them out,
the fat-faced ward boss blew up.
“There’s the dure!” he shouted, pointing to it with a pudgy finger.
“Shut it whin ye go out! ’Tis babes in ar-rms yez are to be comin’ here
and talkin’ knockout drops to Patsy Clanahan! I’d have yez to know――――”
Little Purdick led the way out as he had led it in, carefully closing
the door upon the remainder of the explosion. On the sidewalk Dick drew
a long breath.
“You sure had your nerve along with you, Purdy, just as he said,” he
gasped. “Did you think you could do anything with a man like that?”
“I gave him his chance,” was the cool-voiced rejoinder. “You remember
the story in the old spelling-book, about the farmer who caught the
apple thieves up in his trees and threw clods at them first before he
began to throw stones. I was just throwing a little clod or two; but
now we’ll go and see if we can’t rustle up a few stones.”
The next place Purdick headed for was the _Micrometer_ office, on the
top floor of the _Chronicle_ Building. Luckily, they found Havercamp
there, and he was alone in the little editorial den of the college
daily.
“Hello, you near-Soffies!” he grinned as they entered. “What are you
doing out at this time o’ night?”
“Time o’ night’s time o’ the early evening,” said Purdick. Then: “It’s
about Larry Donovan. Of course, you’ve heard the story?”
Havercamp’s grin faded.
“I never was so knocked out in my life. He was here with me up to
eleven o’clock that night, and I remember when he left he said he had
to go home and work on some test stuff that was still waiting.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“Not a sign of him. He’s chucked the reporting job, along with
everything else. Hacked about being dropped from the team, I suppose.”
“Listen, Havercamp,” said Purdick; and he briefed the real facts in the
scandal case for the managing editor in true newsman fashion.
“Oho!” said Havercamp; “so that’s it, is it?――tolled in with a smooth
lie and then drugged. What have you done about it?”
Again, and in the same crisp speech, Purdick told of their late call
upon Mr. Patrick Clanahan.
“Of course, you knew _that_ wouldn’t get you anywhere,” said Havercamp.
“You have to pull a gun on Pat when you want to hold him up. Wait a
minute.”
He was gone possibly ten minutes instead of one, but when he came back
his eyes were snapping.
“Just been having a little heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Bolinger, of
the _Chronicle_,” he explained. “The _Chronicle_ will back us if we
want to make it a fight to a finish. Let’s go.”
Again Dick followed blindly, though this time it was Havercamp who was
leading the way. Still, he wasn’t very greatly surprised to find that
the way led back to the garishly furnished room over “Pat’s Place.” At
the stair-head landing Havercamp didn’t knock; he opened the door and
walked in. As when Dick and Purdick had presented themselves, the ward
boss had his feet on the desk, and he was just lighting another of the
midnight-black cigars.
Havercamp was even more brittle than Purdick had been.