CHAPTER XIX
THE PROFESSOR’S WARNING
“Say, Cap, don’t you think things are rather slow, not to say dreary around here?” asked Bob Chapin a few days after the ball game, as he strolled into the elder Smith lad’s room, and appropriated the easiest chair. “It’s the spring fever or the summer sleeping sickness coming on, I’m sure.”
“What’s up now, Bob?” asked Bill, as he tossed aside his chemistry, glad of an excuse to stop studying.
“What Bob needs is to train for the eleven or get into a baseball uniform,” added Pete. “He’s getting fat and lazy, and he hasn’t any interest in life.”
“Get out!” cried the visitor, who did not go in for athletics, and who preferred to be considered a “Sport,” with a capital “S,” wearing good clothes and spending all his spare time in a town billiard parlor. “You get out, Pete. Didn’t I try for the glee club?”
“Yes, but you were too lazy to practice,” remarked Cap frankly.
“How brutal of you!” cried Chapin, with a mock theatrical air. “Didn’t I even forgive my enemies and beg them to take me into the banjo club?”
“Which, for the good of the service, they refused to do,” went on the elder Smith.
“Oh, have you no mercy?” asked the visitor in a high falsetto voice, striking an attitude.
“We’re all out of it—expect a fresh lot in next week,” answered Bill. Then after a pause he added: “Now there’s a thing you could do, Bob.”
“What’s that?”
“Go in for theatricals. Why don’t you join the Paint and Powder club?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Afraid of spoiling my complexion with burnt cork and grease preparations, I guess,” was the indolent reply. “But I don’t want to discuss myself. I was asking if you fellows didn’t find it dull here? Why, there hasn’t been a thing pulled off since we brought the calf into the ancient history class two weeks ago. It is frightfully dull at Westfield. Don’t you think so, really?”
“Hadn’t noticed it,” replied Cap. “What with baseball practice, and digging and boning and lectures and writing home occasionally for money we manage to exist; eh fellows?”
“Sure!” chorused his brothers.
“Well, I say it’s dull,” went on Chapin. “Now you fellows used to cut up some, when you first came, but you’d think you had all reformed the way you’ve been keeping quiet lately.”
“There’s nothing to do,” complained Bill, in whom the spirit of mischief burned more strongly than in his brothers. “Show us a good lively time and we’ll be in on it.”
“I can’t show it to you,” replied Chapin. “You’ve got to make it for yourselves.”
“Well, I’ll do my share,” went on Bill eagerly. “Why, is there something up?”
“Now, Bill, you haven’t any time to undertake any pranks you know,” admonished Cap, but his voice was not at all commanding, and there was a gleam of interest in his eyes.
“Yes, cut out the funny business,” added Bill. “But what is it, anyhow, Bob? No harm in telling; is there?”
“Sure not. I was just wishing a racket would break loose, and I happened to think of something a while ago. It would take some nerve to do it though, and maybe you fellows—”
He paused significantly—temptingly.
“Say, who says we haven’t got the nerve?” demanded Bill quickly.
“Now, Bill go easy,” advised his older brother, but he, too, looked interested.
“Oh, well, certainly you have the nerve,” admitted Chapin. “But it’s risky.”
“Are you willing to go in on it?” asked Pete quickly.
“Of course,” was the instant rejoinder.
“Then name your game!” came from Bill, “and you’ll find us right behind you up to the muzzle of the cannon. Out with it!”
“Oh, I wish you’d stayed away,” spoke Cap. “I’m back in my trigonometry, and if I flunk—Well, I suppose we may as well hear what you’ve got up your sleeve,” and he laid aside his book, with a laugh and a half-protesting shake of his head.
Bob’s first act was to go over to the door of Cap’s room,in which the gathering took place, and see that the portal was tightly closed. Then he listened at the keyhole.
“Is it perfectly safe?” he asked in a whisper. “Can anyone hear us?”
“Say, what are we up against?” asked Cap with a laugh. “Is this a gunpowder plot, or merely a scheme to burn the old school.”
“Listen, and I will a tale unfold,” went on Chapin. “Gather ’round, my children, gather ’round the camp-fire and Anthony shall tell us one of his famous stories. So they gathered ’round—”
“Oh, get along with it—we’ve got to do some boning to-night, Bob,” complained Pete. “We’ve heard that camp-fire joke before.”
“Do you know the bronze statue of ‘Pop’ Weston in front of the school?” asked the visitor in a stage whisper.
“Do we know it? The statue of the founder of Westfield? Well I should bust a bat but we do,” answered Bill.
“What do you think of the color of it?” asked Chapin.
“What do you mean?” Cap wanted to know.
“I mean wouldn’t it look prettier red or blue or pink, than the shade it is now?”
He paused to look at the three brothers. They did not answer for a moment. Then Bill exclaimed:
“Say, is that what you mean—to paint the statue?”
Chapin nodded slowly.
“It’s—sacrilege,” whispered Cap.
“Only an iconoclast would dare think of such a thing,” declared Bill. “But—” there was an eager light in his eyes.
“It was done once, years ago,” proceeded the tempter, “and the whole Freshman class was suspended for a week, as the faculty couldn’t find out who did it. It has been many, many, weary years since such an honor fell upon us Freshmen,” and he sighed deeply, as though in pain.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Cap softly. The daring plot appealed to him, conservative as he was.
“How did they get the paint off?” asked Pete.
“It had to wear off,” replied Chapin. “But I don’t want to do anything like that. We can use water colors, and they won’t spoil the bronze, and really it would be a little too rotten to make such a mess of it. Just tint it a light Alice blue, or a dainty Helen pink—it will wash off, but it will look pretty for a while, and the freshmen class will have made a name for itself that it can be proud of. Are you with me? It can easily be done, and the chances are we won’t be caught. How about it?”
“I’ll do it!” exclaimed Bill quickly.
“I don’t know,” began Cap.
“Oh, come on,” urged Pete. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had any fun.”
“If we’re caught, it means good-bye to balls and bats,” went on the eldest brother.
“But we won’t be caught,” declared Chapin eagerly. “Besides, what if we are—that’s half the fun.”
“All right, go ahead,” agreed Cap. “Might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb, I guess. I’m in on it.”
“Now about the paint,” went on the tempter, as he again listened at the door. “We’ll have to be careful where we get it, as McNibb is a regular detective for following a clue. It ought to be bought out of town.”
“That’s so,” agreed Pete.
“Hold on, I have it!” cried Bill, after a moment’s thought. “Professor Clatter.”
“Professor Clatter?” inquired Chapin. “You mean that medicine man with his queer wagon?”
“Exactly,” went on the pitcher. “I saw him in town the other day, and he said he was coming back to play a return engagement near here. He’s got some new kind of stomach dope or something like that. Besides, he has some patent face powder that he says he got at a bargain, and he’s going to try and work it off on the ladies in the crowd. It’s a beautiful pink, and it’s harmless. I was looking at a box of it, and it got on my hands. Say, for a few minutes I had the nicest baby complexion you’d want to see. But it all washed off as easily as soap.”
“Well, what’s the answer?” asked Chapin, as Bill paused.
“Why we’ll get some of that powder from the professor, mix it up, and use it on the statute. It will come off easily and I defy Proctor McNibb to trace where it came from. The professor is a friend of ours, and he’ll keep mum.”
“The very thing!” cried the visitor. “When can you get it?”
“To-morrow, or next day,” answered Bill, who had now entered heart and soul into the piece of mischief. “I’ll get enough to give Pop Weston a liberal coating.”
“Night after to-morrow,” mused Chapin, looking at a calendar over Cap’s table. “That will do. There’s no moon. What about brushes?”
“I guess a whitewash one will do. Maybe the professor hasone—or a big sponge, such as he uses for cleaning his wagon.”
“Fine!” cried Chapin. “Oh, I can just see the faculty when they file past the bronze statue, done to a beautiful baby pink! Great! No more will the lordly Seniors boast of having once run a dump cart into the class room. The Sophs with their little trick of putting tar on the bell tower will take a back seat, and the Juniors, whose stronghold, so far, has been the horrible task of burning red fire under Prexy’s windows, will be green with envy. Oh, what a lucky day this has been!”
“It isn’t over yet,” remarked Cap significantly.
“Well, I’ll see Clatter and get the stuff,” promised Bill. “Then we’ll meet and do the decorating. How many are in on it?” asked the pitcher, pausing in his planning.
“We don’t want too many,” spoke Chapin cautiously. “Us four perhaps, Bondy and Whistle-Breeches if you like, as they’re on this corridor.”
“Not Bondy,” said Pete quickly. “We’ll let Whistle-Breeches in, but Guilder isn’t in our set. He wouldn’t come if we asked him, and we’re not going to. Besides, he might squeal.”
“Well, five are enough,” said Chapin. “Now I’ll depend on you to get the paint, Bill.”
“And I’ll get it.”
“Fare thee well, then,” and with another cautious listening at the door, Chapin took himself out.
“Well?” asked Cap, of his brothers a little later, when they had sat in silence pondering over the plan.
“It’s all to the red-pepper,” declared Bill. “We need something to wake us up.”
“I guess this will prevent dreams for some time,” observed the eldest Smith.
“It’ll be a scream of a nightmare when the faculty sees it,” came from Pete, “but there’s no harm in it as long as the paint washes off.”
With many nods and winks Chapin recalled to the three brothers, and to Whistle-Breeches, next morning the plot they had made. Whistle-Breeches had been let into it early in the day, and had eagerly agreed to do his share. They would need ropes with which to mount to the top of the big statue, and Anderson had agreed to procure them.
“I can climb, too,” he said, “and I’ll decorate the top part.”
“Good for you, Whistle-Breeches!” exclaimed Pete.
It was that same afternoon that Bill saw Bob Chapin in close conversation with Mersfeld and Jonas North. It was the first time he had noticed that Chapin was chummy with the Varsity regular pitcher, and with the lad who, because of his bullying tactics was generally shunned, except by his own crowd.
“I hope Bob doesn’t talk too much about the statue business,” reflected Bill. “Too many cooks make the hash taste burned. It might leak out.”
Then, as he was summoned to practice he gave the matter no more thought until that evening, when he set off alone to see Professor Clatter, and get the pink paint.
Pete and Cap wanted to accompany him, but Bill declared that there was safety in small numbers, and that he preferred to go alone.
He found his old friend getting ready for an evening performance, filling his gasoline torches, looking over hisstock of supplies, and tuning the banjo with which, and his not unmelodious voice, he drew a throng about the gaily painted wagon.
“Ha, my young friend, back again!” cried the professor. “Greetings to you. And where are the brothers?”
“Studying, I expect, or making a pretense to.”
“Good again! Ah, the lamp of learning burns brightly when one is young. What ho! Mercurio! Some more gasoline for this torch! We must have light!” Then the professor having ordered about an imaginary slave, proceeded to fill the torch himself.
“Speaking of lamps of learning,” broke in Bill, thinking this was a good time to announce his errand, “we’re going to do a little illumination over at Westfield on our own account. How much of that pink paint have you, Professor?”
“Pink paint—you mean my Matchless Complexion Tinting Residuum?”
“I guess that’s it. We need some.”
“For a masked ball?”
“For a bronze statue,” replied Bill, and he proceeded to relate the details of the plot. The professor listened carefully. Bill told everything, and at length the traveling vendor asked:
“Did you and your brothers think of this scheme, Bill?”
“No, as a matter of fact Bob Chapin proposed it.”
“Ah, I suppose he is one of the leading spirits when it comes to these plots of—er—innocent mischief?”
“No, I never knew him to get up anything of the kind before. And that’s the funny part of it. He never takes a hand in ’em. But now he comes to us with the idea, andhe’s going to help carry it out. I never knew he had gumption enough to break out this way. It’s a good one, though.”
“And doesn’t it strike you as odd that he suddenly breaks out now?” asked the professor in rather a curious voice.
“Odd? Dow do you mean?”
“I mean do you think he had any object in it?”
“Object in it?”
“Yes, to get you boys interested and—”
“Why, he’s interested himself. He’s going to help decorate Pop Weston.”
“I know, but you say he never did anything of the kind before,” objected Mr. Clatter, looking sharply at Bill.
“No.”
“And isn’t it rather late in the college year for him to begin?”
“It is—say, look here, Professor Clatter! Do you know anything about this?” demanded Bill.
“No, only what my common sense tells me. But I gather that there is some feeling against you because of baseball matters.”
“A little—yes, Mersfeld is sore, but—”
“Wait a minute. Now, if some of your enemies could get you into a game like this, and then desert you, and let the whole blame fall on you, or, even, we’ll say, tip off the college authorities, to use a slang term—wouldn’t they make trouble for you.”
“Yes, they would, but—”
“Is this Bob Chapin a particular friend of yours?”
“Not particularly.”
“Is he in with this Mersfeld?”
“No, not any more than—By Jove!” Bill checked himself suddenly. The remembrance of Chapin talking earnestly to Mersfeld and North came back to him.
“Ah!” exclaimed the professor knowingly, as he rubbed his hands. “I fancy we are getting at something. Now if our friend Tithonus Somnus were here we would get him to read the stars for us, but, in his absence I’ll venture to give you a bit of advice, Bill.”
“What is it, Mr. Clatter.”
“You may consider this in the light of a warning,” went on the medicine vendor earnestly. “Don’t have anything to do with the trick of painting the statue, Bill; or if you do—”
He paused significantly.
“Well, if we do?” repeated Bill.
“If you do, then play the double cross, and catch your enemies in the net they have spread for you,” was the reply in a low voice.
Bill started, and, as he did so there came a cautious knock at the door of the wagon.
“Who’s there?” asked the professor quickly.
“It’s me—Tithonus,” was the answer in a hoarse whisper. “Let me in—quick! The police are after me!”