III
Dear Reader, have you ever personally conducted five active and anxious rats across a campus inhabited by hostile faculties at nine o’clock at night? If so, you will properly appreciate the difficulties that beset Jonesie, Pinky and Tubby Bumstead. Unfortunately Perkins’s stable lay to the west of the school and Steve Cook was domiciled directly to the east and the campus lay between. To have made a detour would have added some eight or nine blocks to the journey. Hence it was decided that in this case a straight line between two points was not only the shortest but wisest course. With the rats confined in two wire cages, which were in turn wrapped in oat bags, and Ace wriggling excitedly in Jonesie’s arms, only partly hidden by another sack, the three conspirators crossed the campus, keeping to the darker paths and avoiding buildings as far as possible. They walked hurriedly but yet cautiously,and as they proceeded strange sounds escaped from beneath the enfolding bags, sounds that, had they been heard by a faculty member, would undoubtedly have occasioned curiosity. Now it is a well-known fact that faculties are the most curious persons in the wide, wide world; always introducing their noses into other people’s affairs, always athirst for knowledge that can profit them but little. Consequently the three boys were extremely desirous, not to say anxious, that their progress should go unnoticed. So much so, in fact, that more than once the sight of a suspicious figure across the yard caused them to pause in the shadow of a tree or building and, in a silence broken only by the agitated squeals of the rats and the excited and stertorous breathing of Ace, await the disappearance of the dim and uncertain form. There were many anxious moments during that passage of the enemy’s country, but in the end sheer audacity won and they climbed the further fence—there were obvious reasons why gateways were to be avoided—and hurried across into the gloom of a side street. From there on it was plainer sailing.One or two townsfolk, having passed the trio, turned to peer suspiciously after them, but no one challenged. At Mrs. Sharp’s luck again befriended them. When they opened the front door the hall was empty and six leaps took them up the stairs, from the summit of which they gained Steve’s room without detection.
The apartment presented a strangely altered appearance. The furniture had been moved against the walls, leaving the center of the room carpeted with a worn and stained straw-matting, clear and unobstructed. Occupying points of vantage atop the desk and the bureau and strung out along the window-seat, was the audience. The audience, representative patrons of sport from the Upper and Lower Middle classes of Randall’s School, greeted the arrival of the trio with unrestrained delight, so unrestrained that Jonesie harshly instructed them to “cut it out!”
“Let’s see ’em,” begged Steve and Chick Allen, and the audience climbed down from their reserved seats and clustered about while Pinky and Tubby proudly removed the wrappings and exhibited five badly frightened rats.
“Gee,” said Pill Farnham dubiously, “they aren’t very big, are they? I thought——”
“You thought they were racoons,” interrupted Jonesie scathingly. “They’re big enough; don’t you worry. Look at that old gray fellow. Bet you he will put up a peach of a fight!”
“Your dog doesn’t seem awfully interested in ’em,” remarked Pigeon Brown. Which was a fact, since Ace, having been liberated, was dodging in and out of the displaced furniture, sniffing and wagging the stump of his tail, but apparently quite unaware of the presence of the rats. Jonesie scowled upon him and demanded his attention, but the terrier was too much interested in the contents of the waste-basket to heed the summons. After a brief but interesting chase, Pinky dragged Ace from under the bureau, to which place he had retired with a banana peel. Ace, confronted with the rats, put his head on one side, pricked up his ears when the rodents squealed at sight of him and wagged his tail amiably. After that he gazed trustingly and inquiringly at Jonesie and seemed to be asking permission to continue hisinteresting investigation of the premises. Pinky’s firm grip on his collar denied him, however, and Pill Farnham chuckled.
“Bet you he never saw a rat before in his life, fellows!” said Pill.
Jonesie faced him indignantly. “Didn’t he?” he inquired with deep irony. “He’s killed more rats than you ever dreamed of.” Pill tried to state that he was not accustomed to dreaming of rats, but Jonesie went on with growing indignation. “You don’t expect a dog that’s seen as many rats as he has to throw a fit, do you? You wait till we let ’em out! Then you’ll see whether he can kill rats or not! Only thing I’m bothering about is whether we oughtn’t to let ’em all out at once. I dare say one or two at a time won’t be any fun for him.”
“It’ll be more fun for us, though,” responded Steve, climbing back to the top of the table and carefully removing his feet from proximity to the floor. “Let her go, Jonesie!”
“Are we all here?” asked Jonesie, looking about. “Where’s Sparrow?”
“Isn’t coming,” answered young Fletcher.“Said he had a headache. Told me to tell you.”
“Headache!” jeered Jonesie. “Too lazy to walk, I guess! All right, fellows. Get out of the way now. Which trap shall we open first, Pinky?”
“This one,” replied Pinky, pushing forward the cage which held two rats.
“We-ell.” Jonesie studied the scene of combat. “Now when I open the thing you let Ace loose. Where are you going?”
“Just—just over here,” murmured Pinky, reaching behind him for the bureau.
“Oh, don’t be such a coward! A rat won’t hurt you. Now, then, all ready? Say, for the love of Mike, turn him toward the cage, can’t you? Here, Ace? Sick ’em, sick ’em, sir!”
“How many are you going to let out?” asked Chick from the safe altitude of the window seat.
“Just one this time,” replied Jonesie, struggling with the door of the cage. “All ready now, Pinky!”
But Jonesie was mistaken. With the door open the rats showed a strange disinclination to leave their prison and face the enemy, eventhough the enemy was showing not the slightest degree of animosity—or even animation!
“Get ’em out!” commanded Jonesie.
“Sick ’em!” cried the patrons of sport in unison.
Ace looked inquiringly at Jonesie and then about the room. Pinky shoved him forward. This Ace took to be an invitation to play, and immediately dashed at Pinky and licked his nose, thereby upsetting Pinky’s balance. At the moment when Pinky’s feet were furthest from the floor and Ace was dancing about his struggling form, the rats agreed on a sortie and dashed from the cage together.
“There they go!”shrieked the excited audience.“Sick ’em, pup! Go after ’em, you fool dog!”
“‘There they go! Sick ’em, pup! Go after ’em, you fool dog!’”
“‘There they go! Sick ’em, pup! Go after ’em, you fool dog!’”
But Ace was having such a fine time jumping upon Pinky, who was vainly trying to get his feet under him again, that he neither saw the rats nor heard the commands. It was only when Jonesie reached down and delivered a sounding slap on his brown spot that Ace awoke to the fact that possibly he had made a mistake. By that time the rats were gone fromsight. Jeers and laughter emanated from the audience. Pinky, arising, red of face and annoyed, was confronted by an indignant Jonesie.
“You old fool, you!” cried Jonesie. “Why didn’t you pay attention? Didn’t I tell you they were coming?”
“Well, didn’t you see your fool dog knocked me over?” inquired Pinky wrathfully. “Why didn’t you keep them in for a second?”
“How could I keep them in when I’d opened the door? If you can’t do your share of this decently, why, say so!”
“Quit your jawing,” advised Steve, “and catch the rats. It won’t be any fun now, though, because we won’t be able to see him kill ’em.”
“Kill ’em!” jeered Pill. “That pup couldn’t kill a straw hat! If I was you, Jonesie, I’d put him in the closet. If a rat got at him he might get hurt.”
“Is that so?” responded Jonesie heatedly. “You’ll get hurt if you give me any more of your lip! Which—which way did they go, fellows?”
The replies were confusing. Every member of the audience insisted on a different localityas harboring the rats. Jonesie looked disgusted.
“Seems to me you fellows might have watched them and seen which way they went,” he said. “Got an umbrella, Steve?”
By moving the table slightly young Fletcher, who was the smallest there, was able to slide through into the closet. After that the hunt began. Jonesie used the umbrella, and the rest of the audience armed themselves with whatever they could find: tennis rackets, hockey sticks, even a ruler. Under chairs, table, bureau the weapons were poked and flourished. Ace, recovering from the shock of chastisement, lent eager assistance. The noise became deafening. Once one of the rats appeared for a brief moment on top the bureau, left it just ahead of a racket hurriedly aimed by Pigeon, landed on the mantelpiece and disappeared again behind the Morris chair. The only fatality was a photograph frame. Out came the Morris chair, there was a squeal and the rat whisked behind the bureau. Out came the bureau then, Ace barking frantically and wagging his stumpy tail in a veritable paroxysm ofdelight. This was a real game! Confusion reigned supreme. All thought of secrecy had flown. The excitement of the chase gripped them all. Shouts and cheers rent the air, Ace yelped and barked shrilly, sticks banged at chair legs, furniture was whisked about on grumbling casters and ten excited patrons of sport pursued the prey with relentless vigor and enthusiasm. The waste basket spread its varied contents across the floor, and even the pictures on the walls became imbued with the contagion and danced themselves askew.
At this moment there was a shrill and resentful expression of grief from Ace, who, all but the stump of his tail hidden from sight beneath the Morris chair, had encountered one of the rats behind the radiator. A cornered rat will fight, and it was this discovery that brought the yelp of pain from the terrier. The alacrity with which he backed out from under the chair was remarkable. Doubtless his sole desire was to remove himself from the vicinity of the painful indignity and consider his wounded nose. It is not presumable that he entertained any designs on Tubby Bumstead.What followed must be laid to Chance. In retreating from beneath the chair Ace unfortunately obtruded his hind quarters in the path of Tubby, who, armed with a hockey stick, was in full cry. Tubby, being, as his nickname suggests, somewhat obese, was not able to recover from the collision with the grace and celerity of a lither youth. To save himself Tubby dropped his weapon and grabbed at the arm of the Morris chair. Now it so happened that a few moments before someone had thoughtfully transferred the unopened cage containing the three rats in reserve from the floor to that particular arm of the chair. It would be, perhaps, interesting to pause here and speculate as to the thoughts and emotions which possessed those three rats as, elevated to a position of unrestricted view, they watched the scene before them. But there is no time. Tubby’s frantic reach for the support of the chair dislodged the cage. The cage, in falling, struck the already nervous Ace on top of the head. Ace, now thoroughly undone, yielded to blind, unreasoning terror, a terror which became absolute panic when the cage, reboundingfrom head to floor, threw open its door and delivered into the confusion its three prisoners. That was too much for Ace. With one wild and piercing howl he fled. As it was not possible for him to flee in a straight line, he fled in a circle. For one brief but highly colored moment life became a kaleidoscopic nightmare of flying rats, dogs and boys. To be sure, there was but one dog, but he rotated so rapidly that it was difficult to believe that he was not in reality a revolving procession of dogs. And ever as he went he howled. And ever as he howled he collided with someone’s legs, and the owner of the legs toppled ungracefully to earth. A Futurist could have won immortal fame by transferring that scene to canvas! And then, at the zenith of the glorious orgy of movement and sound, the room door opened and The Terror stood revealed in all his majesty and severity!
Now Ace, as it happened, had reached a position in his orbit about midway between window seat and door when the latter opened. There was no hesitation on the part of the revolving body. Leaving its path at a tangent it hurleditself at the doorway. It was not Ace’s fault that Mr. Williams, Instructor in Modern Languages, was stationed midway between lintel and lintel. Doubtless Ace tried his best to pass to one side of The Terror’s none too sturdy legs. That he did not succeed is not surprising when we consider the speed at which he was going and the fact that he had been deprived of all save a scant two inches of his rudder. Mr. Williams crumpled against the banisters across the narrow hall with a loud and expressive grunt and Ace, rounding the post, hurled himself down the stairs. Mrs. Sharp, nervously eavesdropping halfway up the flight, had a momentary vision of a white streak plunging down upon her, shrieked hysterically and rolled slowly and, because of her well-padded condition, not uncomfortably to the bottom. Ace disappeared into the night.
The Terror recovered his feet and his dignity and regained his position in the doorway. Before him ten boys and five rats maintained silence and frozen attitudes. The five rats were not in sight. Nor was one of the ten boys. A long moment of portentous stillness reigned.Then The Terror, somewhat pale as yet, pronounced the names of the nine visible patrons of sport in a voice which, while still a trifle shaky, was as icy cold as a blast from the Pole.
“You will all,” concluded The Terror, “report at the Office to-morrow morning. And now return to your rooms at once.”
One by one they recovered their caps from the confusion and filed past him and down the stairs and into the night. Only Steve remained in view. Then, with a final glare, Mr. Williams followed. Simultaneously from behind the bureau appeared a cautious head.
“Gone?” asked Jonesie hoarsely.
Steve nodded gloomily.
Jonesie extracted himself from concealment and crawled out of thedébris. In one hand he held by the tail a large gray rat, quite dead.
“Where’d you get it?” asked Steve with a brief flash of interest.
“Back there.” Jonesie nodded toward the bureau. “I fell on him when I dived in.”
“Somewhere,” responded Steve bitterly, “there are four more of the things, and I’ve got to sleep here with ’em!”