CHAPTER XVTHE CLUB ENDORSES ITSELF
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 neighboringlarge 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 otherdays, 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 TomOrkney 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 beganits 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 bysomebody 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.