The promise of the snow flurries had been borne out in full measure,
and now the country about Plainville was covered by a thick, white
mantle. Real winter had come at last, for after the storm there had
been a sharp drop in temperature, forecasting not only a “white
Christmas” but also holidays brisk and invigorating. And Friday night
had arrived, with its relief from school cares, and the Safety First
Club was in full session. All the members were in attendance, and all
were discussing the most sensational bit of news the town had enjoyed
since the mysterious wounding of Major Bates.
Tom Orkney had run away!
The fact was established beyond doubt or denial. The boy was gone,
nobody knew whither. There was, to be sure, a somewhat popular theory
that he had fled to a neighboring large city; but the theory was based
on conjecture, and wholly lacked convincing proof.
For forty-eight hours Plainville had been talking about his
disappearance, but the topic had lost nothing of its interest. At the
club Poke held the floor, and submitted his philosophic view of the
case to his friends.
“Orkney’s a stubborn brute, as you fellows very well know. When he
makes up his mind, it’s made up, and it stays made up. He’s bolted, and
he’ll take precious good care not to come back right away. Where do I
think he’s gone? I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s gone far enough. And
if you insist on having my personal opinion, I think it’s good riddance
of bad rubbish.”
“Humph! Haven’t seen me shedding the sorrowful tear, have you?”
demanded Step.
“I haven’t seen any tears,” said Poke. “Why, Orkney hasn’t a friend
left, after the way he treated Little Perrine! Don’t you remember how
everybody cut him that last day in school?”
“Must have been pretty hard for him,” Sam observed thoughtfully.
“I don’t believe a soul spoke to him,” Poke went on. “That is, none of
the fellows or the girls did. The teachers, of course, had to; but they
said just as little as they could. Why, he was called up but once, and
that was in the Greek class.”
Step moved uneasily. “Say, though! That was a star translation Orkney
made! Jiminy! but he must have had an iron nerve to keep his wits about
him, with all hands doing their best to show how they despised him.”
“Just what it was--case of nerve!” cried Poke. “Bet you I know just
how he felt. He was saying to himself, ‘I’ll show this gang that they
can’t rattle me; I’ll show ’em that I don’t give a whoop for their
opinion. Let ’em hiss me! I’ll go through this day and prove that they
can’t even rattle me.’ And that is just what he did. And when school
was dismissed, he walked out as coolly as if he didn’t understand that
nobody would travel with him for love or money. You know he’d been
building up a sort of crowd of his own? Well, every one of the bunch
quit him when the pinch came. But he kept a stiff upper lip right to
the end!”
“He surely did,” admitted the Trojan, with a touch of reluctant
admiration.
“But all through it he must have been planning what he’d do. My notion
is that when he went down the school steps he was saying to himself
that it was for the last time. He’d been scheming out what would come
next. In the afternoon he got together the few things he meant to take
along. He ate supper with his folks as usual. Then he slipped out of
the house. And that’s the last anybody in Plainville knows certainly
about Tom Orkney.”
From his corner the Shark shot curt comment: “Big mistake he made! Case
of quitting!”
“How do you figure that out?” asked Herman Boyd.
“Ran away under fire, didn’t he?”
“But he’d stood the fire all day.”
“Umph! That wasn’t enough.”
Poke waved a hand. “Listen, you fellows! I’ve been meditating on that
part of it. And I’ve doped it out this way: Orkney had pride enough to
carry him through one day--pride and nerve are the same thing with him,
I reckon. But when it came to facing other days, and other days, and
then some more--why, that’s where a chap would have to have the backing
of a clean conscience. And there were all the tricks he’d played on
Sam, and the chance he took of killing one of us with that big boulder,
and the dirty deal he gave Little Perrine--why, his conscience must be
as spotted--as spotted as an old blotter!”
“So that’s your diagram?”
“Well, as I say, that’s the way I see it.”
The Shark’s lip curled. “Huh! Easy to see what you hope’s true!”
“Well, what’s your mathematical calculation, old Dry-as-Dust?”
“Oh, go on!” snapped the Shark. “You’re the lecturer.”
Poke needed no urging. “Well, I tell you he’d made up his mind to
beat it, and he did. And he got away, all right. You know his aunt
telegraphed, and telephoned, and called in the police, and offered a
hundred-dollar reward; but there was no clue anywhere. Hard luck for
her that Tom’s father is out West! They say she’s almost crazy.”
“And Tom’s mother is away, too,” said the Trojan.
“Yes; she’s visiting down South. Those are things, though, we’ve
nothing to do with.”
“That’s a queer way to put it,” grumbled the Shark.
“Not at all,” Poke insisted. “You don’t get my point, which is that
we may not be responsible for those things, but we are responsible
for others. One of them is that we’re the fellows who got on to
Orkney’s meannesses, and that Sam here promised him a thrashing and a
showing-up. Then, somehow, I can’t help feeling that Sam, in fishing
Orkney and Little Perrine out of the pond, helped to bring things
to a head. But from the very first--from the time Orkney came to
Plainville--it has been our crowd that blocked him, that took the shine
off him. The Shark downed him in ‘math,’ and Step made a monkey of him
in Greek; but, most of all, we--this club--kept him from bossing the
class. And for that, I believe, we ought to be proud to be responsible.”
“Some speech, Poke!” cried Herman Boyd.
“Shouldn’t wonder if there were something in the idea,” contributed the
Trojan.
“Thanks, kind friends!” chuckled Poke; but quickly grew serious again.
“In a nutshell, my notion is this: If Tom Orkney has been driven out of
town, we’ve driven him--and a good job, too, from first to last!”
Two or three heads nodded vigorous assent; but there was a little
pause. Step broke it.
“Sam, you’re keeping mighty quiet. What’s your opinion?”
Sam hesitated. “My opinion? I--why, I don’t know that I’d go quite as
far as Poke goes, but----”
“But I’m right, in the main,” Poke insisted.
“Well, I guess we’ve been justified in everything we’ve done,” Sam told
him. “I know I’ve tried to be fair. And, certainly, there has been
evidence enough.”
“You’re right there!” cried the Trojan.
“Every time!” quoth Step.
“I vote aye,” said Herman Boyd.
“Well, everybody knows where I stand,” declared Poke. “We’re unanimous.”
“Hold on a minute!” The Shark rose from his chair, and came forward.
“You fellows are talking about justification and evidence, eh? I
suppose you’re sure Tom Orkney threw the stone through that window,
for instance?”
“If he didn’t, who did?” demanded Step hotly.
“Answer my question first.”
“Certainly we’re sure it was Orkney.”
“I’m not, then,” said the Shark. “Fact is, I’m practically sure it
wasn’t he.”
“Oh, come off your perch!”
“I won’t. You can call it a perch if you wish; but I know what I’m
standing on, and that’s more than you can claim.”
“Give the infant prodigy and foster-brother of the Binomial Theorem his
inning!” sang out Poke. “Go to it, old Four Eyes!”
The Shark, in no wise disturbed by the raillery, produced and unfolded
a big sheet of paper, bearing a curious diagram and what appeared to be
an elaborate calculation.
“The problem may be stated thus,” he began. “Given a weight of fifteen
pounds, seven and nine-tenths ounces, what is the force required to
propel it for a distance of thirty-five feet?”
“Thirty-five feet? How do you get that?” queried Step.
“The table stood eighteen feet from the window,” the Shark explained.
“The table-top, which the stone struck, was two and a half feet from
the floor. I estimate that the stone, if it had not struck the table,
would have traveled at least five feet farther. Then it was thrown from
a point at least twelve feet from the building--if you take the trouble
to inspect the ground you will see that the thrower must have been so
far from the wall to have secure footing. Now then, eighteen and five
and twelve make thirty-five.”
“Go on!” urged Step.
“We have the weight of the object moved, and the distance moved. To
aid us in plotting the curve of flight of the object, we have three
known points, or, rather, two known points and one which can be closely
approximated. We know the height from the floor at which the stone
broke the window-pane--seven feet, nine inches. The table-top, as I
have said, was thirty inches from the floor. The approximated point is
the distance from the ground (or, rather, from the level of the floor
projected for the calculation twelve feet beyond the window), at which
the stone began its journey. This distance was not less than five feet
nor more than six, allowing for a rise in the ground, and assuming that
propulsion began about on a level with the thrower’s shoulder. But
whether it was five or six----”
“Hold on! Hold on!” cried Step. “You’ve got me going!”
“Huh! Can’t be made clearer, can it?” expostulated the Shark. “But if
you’ll look at the diagram----”
Step threw up his hands in burlesqued horror. “No, no! Take it away! I
can’t bear the sight of the thing out of school hours!”
“Never mind about the pretty picture, Shark!” chimed in the Trojan.
“No; if we follow the tune, it’ll have to be by ear,” chuckled Poke.
The Shark shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I didn’t believe you fellows
had the sense to understand the process,” he said frankly. “Still, I
thought I’d give you a chance. But if I’ve got to jump to the result,
I’ll tell you that, having secured my data, I proved conclusively that
the stone was thrown by somebody with a lot more muscle than Tom
Orkney has. Why, the low trajectory----”
Two or three of the boys were grinning. “There, there! Don’t call
names!” jeered Herman Boyd.
The Shark’s glance went from one to another of his friends.
“Oh, well,” he said resignedly, “I guess it’s useless. Only you may be
interested to know that the principal went over my work and verified
it.”
“What! Didn’t tell him, did you?”
“No; of course not. Had a supposititious case, naturally.”
“Oh!” said two or three, in relieved chorus.
The Shark put the paper back in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “You
haven’t disappointed me. I know your limitations.”
But Poke was disposed to argument. “Look here, Shark! You’re banking
too much on your rules and formulas. Remember the professors who said a
curved ball couldn’t be pitched, and proved it--on paper?”
“Different case--nothing to do with this one.”
“But you overlook the evidence of the cap,” declared Step.
“Bother the cap!” said the Shark, and snapped his fingers. “Doesn’t
interest me. It might have got there a dozen ways. What I’m trying to
tell you is something that’s absolutely established--mathematically
established. And you won’t listen!”
“We might--if you’d just figure out who except Tom Orkney would have
done the job.”
“Hang it, I’m no fortune-teller!” growled the Shark.
Again Step appealed to Sam. “What’s your notion? Don’t you still think
the club is all right, and Orkney is all wrong?”
“I think,” said Sam, honestly and with full conviction, “I think
the weight of the evidence is against him, in spite of the Shark’s
calculations. I’ve tried not to be hasty----”
“That’s right--Safety First!” cried Poke.
“And so the Safety First Club is all right!” chimed in Step jubilantly.