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THE MARK OF THE KNIFE
BY CLAYTON H. ERNST
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHASE EMERSON
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920
_Copyright, 1920_,
By LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1920
Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co.
Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.
[Illustration: IN THEIR EYES, FOR THE TIME BEING AT LEAST, IT SURPASSED
THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE.]
CONTENTS
I THE NEWCOMER
II A BLEMISH
III A PLAN AND A GAME
IV TWO VISITS AND A THEFT
V TEENY-BITS' CHANCE
VI DISCOVERIES
VII ON THE EVE OF THE STRUGGLE
VIII STRANGE CAPTORS
IX THE GREAT GAME
X AT LINCOLN HALL
XI MYSTERIES IN PART EXPLAINED
XII A VISIT TO CHUAN KAI'S
XIII DAYS OF PLEASURE
XIV A TALE OF THE FAR EAST
ILLUSTRATIONS
In their eyes, for the time being at least, it surpassed the battle of
the Marne
At the beginning of the final quarter Coach Murray sent in Teeny-bits to
take the place of White
Only three of them had a chance to reach the Ridgley player
From the foot of the slide they mounted slowly, tracing backward the
five double tracks
THE MARK OF THE KNIFE
CHAPTER I
THE NEWCOMER
Ridgley School, with its white buildings set comfortably among the
maples and the oaks that crown the flat top of the hill a mile to the
west of the village of Hamilton, attracts and holds the attention of all
eyes that fall upon it. Partly perhaps because the dormitories and the
recreation halls fit into the landscape and do not jut boldly and
crudely above the trees--as so many buildings on hilltops do--there is
an air of hominess and informality about the place which new visitors
generally notice and mention to Doctor Wells, its head.
But it is one thing to ride up to Ridgley School in an automobile from
the Hamilton Station with half a dozen other new Ridgleyites, some of
whom have already become your friends, and to get your first view of the
campus while cheerful voices are sounding in your ears, and quite
another thing to walk up the long winding road from the village alone
and to wonder as you come nearer and nearer to those neat white
buildings whether you will succeed in making any friends at all among
the fellows who have come up in the automobiles. Under those conditions
Ridgley School might seem cold and austere and full of unpleasant
possibilities.
That in fact was the situation of the newcomer who was walking swiftly
toward the white buildings one morning late in September. He was
entering upon an adventure that filled him with mingled excitement and
gloom--excitement because of the mystery of the new life opening before
him, gloom because of the necessity of giving up so much that had made
him happy in the past. He went directly to the office of the Head in the
building nearest the road and announced himself to Doctor Wells:
"I am Findley Holbrook."
Doctor Wells, whose face looked young in spite of the gray hair at his
temples, got up from his chair and shook hands gravely. "I'm glad to see
you, Findley," he said; "I hope you're going to like the school and that
the school will like you. We've assigned you to Gannett Hall; I'll have
one of the masters take you over and introduce you to the boys who've
already come. We don't do much to-day except get settled. Did you bring
your things?"
"My father is going to bring them up this noon," Findley replied. "I
thought I'd better come early to start in with the other fellows."
Doctor Wells put him in charge of Mr. Stevens, who took him over to
Gannett Hall, a three-story building with its ivy-covered front to the
campus and its back to the tennis courts. A dozen boys were standing on
the steps; they had been talking and laughing, but as the newcomer
approached them with the master, their voices died away and they paused
in their conversations. A black-haired boy, tall and heavily built,
immediately called out:
"Hello, Teeny-bits!"
The new boy recognized the one who had hailed him as Tracey Campbell,
who had been in the class above him in the public school at Greensboro.
"Teeny-bits" was the name by which Findley Holbrook had been known ever
since he could remember and to hear himself thus addressed brought to
him a momentarily pleasant feeling, even though Tracey Campbell had
never been a special friend of his. When Findley was younger he had been
so small that some one had called him "Teeny-bits" and the name had
stuck. At the public school in Greensboro, in the village of Hamilton,
in his home, every one called him Teeny-bits, and though the name did
not apply to him now as appropriately as it had applied when he was four
or five years younger, it still fitted him so well that no one
questioned it.
Mr. Stevens smiled as he heard it from Tracey Campbell's lips and
glanced at his young companion. A compact, slim body somewhat under the
average height for seventeen, square shoulders, a very youthful mouth,
eyes that seemed older than the rest of him and light brown, almost
tow-colored hair, were the characteristics of Teeny-bits Holbrook that
Mr. Stevens, the English master, saw. He said to himself that Teeny-bits
was an apt nickname.
There were other characteristics that Mr. Stevens did not see; one of
them revealed itself half an hour after the master had introduced
Teeny-bits to the members of the school who occupied the third-floor
rooms in Gannett Hall. The newcomer found himself possessed of a small
and plain, but comfortable room, in which a bed, a chest of drawers, a
table and two chairs were the chief articles of furniture. It looked out
on the tennis courts and commanded a view of Hamilton village with its
twin church spires sticking up through the trees like white spar-buoys
out of a green sea. It made Teeny-bits a little homesick to look down
there. His thoughts were quickly turned in other directions, however.
Several of the boys came into his room, led by a tall, over-grown fellow
who had been standing on the steps of the hall when Teeny-bits had
entered. He came in at the head of the others, grinning confidently as
if he were looking forward to something that would provide amusement.
"Friends," he said in the stagey sort of voice that a person might use
in talking to an audience, "meet Teeny-bits--that's his name."
The boys behind the leader smiled in a way that suggested something else
about to happen.
"Let me introduce myself," said the tall boy. "I'm Bassett, the Western
Whirlwind, manager of Terrible Turner, the fighting bear-cat."
All of the boys laughed or snickered, and Teeny-bits smiled expectantly.
"Here is Terrible Turner himself," said Bassett, laying his hand on the
shoulder of a pug-nosed lad whose freckled face wore a queer look of
combined insolence and friendliness. "For the honor of the school he
will wrestle you to test your mettle--he's a wrestler from way-back. Do
you accept the challenge?"
Teeny-bits looked at Terrible Turner and then at Bassett, the Whirlwind.
"No," he said, "I don't want to wrestle in these clothes."
"Take off your coat, then; we consider it an insult to the whole school
if you don't accept the challenge. Are you afraid of Terrible Turner?
He's no bigger than you are."
Teeny-bits saw that the freckle-faced boy was in fact no larger than he,
but he did not seem any the more inclined to accept the call to combat.
After waiting a moment, Bassett said in a taunting voice: "Friends, let
me introduce you to Teeny-bits, the quitter."
The words had an effect that the Western Whirlwind scarcely expected.
Teeny-bits solemnly pulled off his coat, laid it on the bed, and replied
to the challenge.
"I won't wrestle with Turner," he said. "He's younger than I am. I'll
wrestle with you."
The action that took place during the next few minutes was not quickly
forgotten by the members of Ridgley School who were fortunate enough to
witness it. In their eyes, for the time being at least, it surpassed the
battle of the Marne.
Bassett made a scornful reply to Teeny-bits' challenge and let escape
the remark that he wasn't a "baby-killer" and wouldn't wrestle any
"bantams."
The words were still in his mouth when Teeny-bits launched himself upon
him. There was a brief collision and with a mighty thump Bassett, the
Whirlwind, hit the floor flat on his back.
A mighty howl went up from the onlookers; it carried to the farthest
corners of Gannett Hall,--and there was such a note of pure enjoyment
and hilarious surprise in it that every son of Ridgley upon whose ears
it fell wasted no time in abandoning whatever was at hand and dashing
madly to the scene of combat. As Bassett struggled to his feet all the
roomers in Gannett Hall began to converge on Teeny-bits' room, and by
the time the Western Whirlwind had thrown off his coat and laid hold on
his opponent again, they were crowding in at the door and craning their
necks to get a view of the fracas.
Bassett's face was the color of a ripe tomato; he considered that he had
been caught off his guard, and the hilarious shout of his erstwhile
admiring audience caused chagrin, disgust and rage to sweep over him in
swift succession. He was mad clear through, and he meant to teach this
impudent young Teeny-bits a lesson. He was twenty-five pounds heavier
and half a head taller than the newcomer, and he had no other thought in
his mind than that he could quickly regain his prestige and wipe out his
disgrace,--and he meant to do it in no gentle manner. Teeny-bits should
hit the floor and hit it hard, and if the fall should shake the whole
building he would not care.
With a bull-like rush Bassett made for Teeny-bits, seized him with rough
hands and gave a heave that was intended to finish the bout in one
brilliant coup. But in some clever way his small opponent with quick
work of his hands secured the under holds and though Bassett lifted him
off the floor he clung on like a leech, found his feet after a second
and saved himself from going down. The Western Whirlwind wrenched and
twisted and heaved; he tugged with both hands, striving mightily to
"break the back" of his opponent, he grunted as he worked and left no
doubt in the minds of the howling audience that he meant to put an
effective finish on the combat. The wonder of the crowd was that
Teeny-bits did not immediately fall an easy victim. They gave him the
ready sympathy that is generally accorded to the under dog.
"Hold him off, Teeny-bits!"
"Don't let him get you!"
"That's the way!"
"Look out!"
"Trip him up!"
Those were the shouts that filled the room with pandemonium. One moment
the struggling pair were over against the wall, the next they bumped the
bed or knocked over a chair. Surprise showed on the face of Bassett; he
could not understand how this little chap was able to keep his feet. He
grunted more fiercely and tried to get a new grip, but Teeny-bits
squirmed and shifted and somehow saved himself. The Western Whirlwind
began to puff and wheeze; sweat came out on his forehead and his face
became redder than ever. Then for an instant he let up in his heaves as
if to take breath for a new and more furious attack.
It was a fatal pause. Until that moment Teeny-bits had been content to
cling on and make a defensive fight of it. Now suddenly he changed his
tactics to the offensive. By clever leg-work he got Bassett lurching
backward. He pressed home his advantage and while a shout of amazement
and delight rang in his ears, brought his big antagonist down to the
floor with a jar that made the windows rattle.
Bassett, the Whirlwind, lay on his back, half dazed with amazement and
feeling too weak to rise because most of the wind seemed to have been
knocked out of him. Once more, as of old, David had slain Goliath, and
the victor was receiving congratulations.
At that moment a boy larger than any who had been in the room pushed his
way through the crowd. "No fighting in the dormitory!" he cried. "What's
all this about?" And then he saw Bassett just rising weakly to a sitting
posture and observed the other boys slapping Teeny-bits on the back. He
gazed in doubt from one to the other and then said to the diminutive
conqueror: "Did you put this big lummux down?"
"You bet he did!" cried a dozen voices.
"Well, you did a mighty good job," he declared. "You're new here, but a
lot of these other fellows are not, and they know as well as I do that
we're not supposed to fight or have wrestling matches in the
dormitories. Get on your feet there, Bassett, and mind your own business
hereafter. I know well enough that you started this. You got just what
you deserved, didn't you!"
In an authoritative way that was confident without being "bossy" he
ordered the boys out of the room, and when the last of them had gone and
the sound of their joking remarks to the crestfallen Bassett was
receding, he said to Teeny-bits:
"You must be a whale of a scrapper for your size--and I'm mighty glad
you gave that fresh-mouthed Bassett a good lesson. But don't get into
any more trouble with him. You know we have a sort of self-government
here, and we can't be smashing up things in the dormitory. I room
downstairs in Number 26. Come in sometime soon."
Later in the day Teeny-bits learned that his visitor was Neil Durant,
pitcher on the baseball team, and captain of the football eleven. He was
dormitory leader, which meant that he represented Gannett Hall on the
self-government committee of the school. Turner, who gave Teeny-bits the
information, was only one of many boys who dropped in that day to see
the conqueror of Bassett, the Whirlwind. Turner--the same Terrible
Turner who had been willing enough for combat earlier in the
morning--confessed with a grin that he was pretty glad Teeny-bits hadn't
wrestled with him! "If I'd hit the floor as hard as Bassett did, I'd bet
my backbone would have been broken into forty pieces," he said. "Oh,
what a pippin of a thump!"
Teeny-bits liked Turner's frank, outspoken way. He made up his mind that
he liked him still better when Turner said:
"None of the fellows call me Terrible Turner, you know--that was just
some bunk that Bassett invented. They all call me Snubby--on account of
my nose, I guess."
That noon an incident occurred that some of the roomers in Gannett Hall
noticed: just before lunch Teeny-bits' trunk came. Mr. Holbrook brought
it up from the village in a buggy drawn by a sorrel horse and with
Teeny-bits' help carried it to the room on the third floor. Several of
the boys remembered seeing Mr. Holbrook in the Hamilton station and when
Teeny-bits introduced him as his father they suddenly realized that the
conqueror of Whirlwind Bassett and the bearer of the queer nickname was
the son of the station agent and a native of the little hamlet that
nestled at the foot of the hill.
Mr. Holbrook was white-haired and he walked with a slight limp that made
him seem old. He looked at Teeny-bits' new friends with a kindly twinkle
in his eyes and told them that they were all "lucky boys to go to such a
fine school" and advised them to "study hard so as to be smart men." If
he had not been Teeny-bits' father, they might have thought he was a
queer old duffer.
When Mr. Holbrook had said good-by to Teeny-bits he went over to Doctor
Wells' office and remained alone with the Head for half an hour. At the
end of that time he came out and drove the old sorrel horse through the
campus and down the hill toward the village. One or two of the boys who
saw him wondered what he had been talking about so long with the Head.
Old Daniel Holbrook with the limp and the white hair meant every word
that he had said about the boys being lucky to go to such a fine school,
but he meant it particularly in the case of Teeny-bits, whose situation
in life was entirely different from the situation of most of the other
Ridgleyites. They came to Ridgley from half the states in the
Union--from California and Ohio and the Carolinas and New York and New
England--they came well-equipped and carried themselves with a manner
that suggested the well-to-do homes they had left. Teeny-bits Holbrook
was there because he had won the scholarship that under the terms of the
endowment of the school was awarded each year to a public-school student
who lived within the confines of Sherburne County. Fennimore Ridgley,
whose coal mines had yielded the fortune with which he had founded the
school on the hill above the village of Hamilton, had been born and bred
in Sherburne County. He had long been lying in a peaceful grave with a
tall granite shaft above it, but each year one of the boys of Sherburne
County received a gift from him--the privilege of coming free of expense
to Ridgley. For two years Teeny-bits had been going to the high school
at Greensboro, covering the four miles on his bicycle morning and
afternoon. Then the unbelievable had happened: he had won the Ridgley
scholarship, and father and mother Holbrook, whose hearts were centered
on his future, received the news as a direct gift from Heaven. Their
pride in him made up for the loneliness of the house after he had gone.
The career of Teeny-bits at Ridgley was not to be without its incidents,
it seemed. He had been a roomer in Gannett Hall only ten days and the
feeling of newness had not worn off when the school was treated to a
sensation that caused no little talk and brought him into more
prominence than had the victory in the wrestling match.
On a Wednesday morning before breakfast a sheet of paper was found
tacked to the bulletin board that hung inside the door of the dormitory.
The message that it bore had been typed crudely as if the person who had
done it were a novice in the use of the typewriter. It consisted of two
straggling lines and the words were:
"Beware of Teeny-bits! Holbrook is not his name! He's ashamed to tell
the truth!"
Two dozen boys saw the paper and read the message before Snubby Turner
tore it down and carried it up to Teeny-bits' room. They told other boys
about it and no end of talk went round the school.
"This was on the bulletin board," said Snubby to Teeny-bits. "A lot of
the fellows wonder what the dickens it means."
"You're a good friend of mine, Snubby," said Teeny-bits, "and I'll tell
you what it means. I wonder if Bassett put it up--but I don't see how he
knew anything about me--unless Tracey Campbell told him. Tracey lives
over in Greensboro and went to public school with me."
"Bassett tags around after him like a tame sheep--I don't like either
one of them," said Snubby.
The story that Teeny-bits told his friend was the same story that Mr.
Holbrook had told Doctor Wells.
Teeny-bits had never known who his father and mother were--and yet his
mother, or at least the woman whom he believed to be his mother, lay
buried in the village cemetery. Her grave was marked with a plain slab
of marble in which was cut the brief inscription:
"An unknown Mother. Died August 9th. 1903."
Teeny-bits remembered well the story of that tragic day as told him by
the man whom he had always fondly known as Dad,--old Dad Holbrook with
the white hair and the limp. On that long-ago day a train had crawled
slowly into the station at Hamilton. There was a hot box on one of the
cars, and while the train waited for the heated metal to cool, a woman
with a small child--a boy of about a year and a half--stepped down to
the track to find relief from the stifling air of the car. The Chicago
express had come hurtling down the track at fifty miles an hour. Warning
shouts had gone up, but the young woman had appeared oblivious of her
danger. Those who saw the tragedy were convinced that she was deaf. At
any rate every one agreed that she was unaware of the oncoming express
until too late. Then, sensing the danger or hearing at last the shriek
of the whistle behind her, she snatched up the child and tried to leap
to safety. The realization that she was too late must have come upon
her, for in the last fraction of a second she tossed the child to one
side. The express, grinding all its brakes in a vain endeavor to stop,
had instantly killed her. The baby escaped with a few scratches.
The matter of identifying the unfortunate mother had at first seemed not
too difficult, but a search of the bag that she had left in her seat in
the car revealed nothing that in any way offered a clue as to who she
was or whence she had come. Daniel Holbrook had attended to the burial
of the unknown mother and had taken the child home, thinking their
relatives would soon appear to claim him. But no one had ever come for
the boy and none of the notices that the Holbrooks had put in the
newspapers had brought a claimant. After a year the Holbrooks had
adopted the child and had put a stone over the unnamed grave in the
cemetery.
When Teeny-bits finished telling his story, Snubby Turner's eyes were
round with wonder. Instead of detracting from the prestige of
Teeny-bits, the story had the effect of enhancing it, and if the person
who put the paper on the bulletin board intended it to effect an injury,
his attempt defeated itself, for the true story of Teeny-bits rapidly
spread by word of mouth and, instead of bringing him into disrepute,
cast about him a certain air of mystery that caused the boys in other
dormitories to seek him out to make his acquaintance. Thus, through no
effort of his own, Teeny-bits Holbrook found himself somewhat of a
character at Ridgley School before he had been there two weeks.