“WHILE you were away,” Clan was saying to Chip, later, “I was tempted to put over a dictograph scheme that would have been great. I met a fellow down at the station who was agent for the things. If I could have put one in the Duke’s room, with concealed wires running from it to this, we could have got at the bottom of the rascal’s planning. But I’d have had to bribe more than one person, and then the problem of getting the wires across bothered me. So I passed it up.”
Chip laughed.
“So it was the bother of the wires, and not any feeling that the thing wouldn’t be quite a square play; but I thought the great mechanical head you developed while running that garage down in Phoenix was equal to anything.”
Kess was twisting in his chair, and his blue eyes were glistening.
“Dot ticktograft hears vot you say dhere, unt rebeadts idt here?”
“Something like that, Villum; it’s a sort of secret telephone.”
“Uh-huh! I standt under idt; unt idt vouldt haf been greadt.”
No conscientious scruples, nor even the fear of discovery, would have kept Villum from putting the scheme over, if he could have done it. He would have had wires running not only to the Duke’s room, but to Kadir Dhin’s, and to the room of every other fellow he suspected at present of being engaged in scheming against them.
“Vale, idt iss inderesdting,” he said, as he got lazily out of his chair; “but I can’t t’ink apowet idt now. I haf got to gedt me some more ackvainted mit Chulius Cæsar.”
Yet he was still thinking about it as he went to his room to tackle his Latin and follow the wanderings and battles of Cæsar.
That night, having been out in the village, as he was passing Dickey’s place, on his way to the barracks, the hour for closing the barracks being at hand, Kess ran into a dog fight. A pair of Airedales, one of them being Dickey’s, opened a furious combat right in front of him.
Villum jumped back out of the way.
“Yiminy!” he said. “Almosdt I hadt a toe bit off.”
Out of Dickey’s poured a miscellaneous crowd, Dickey in the midst with a pail of water, which he threw over the fighting dogs in the hope that it would separate them.
When maddened Airedales come together, such gentle measures are pretty sure to fail. Dickey was soon convinced that his dog was being murdered. So he got the other dog by the hind legs and the tail and began to yell to the squirming and clamoring mob of spectators to help him separate the animals by pulling them apart.
In the background to which Kess had retreated he was unobserved, but not unobservant. He saw in the crowd Bully Carson, Duke Basil, Kadir Dhin, and—to his great surprise—Robert Realf. Some other young fellows, wearing the Fardale uniform, were cadets whose homes were in the village, and who, byliving at home, gained greater freedom for their evenings.
Bully Carson could be expected to be at Dickey’s, if in the village. Birds of his plumage congregated there naturally. But that Kadir Dhin should be there was most unexpected.
Dickey’s was a place that Colonel Gunn cordially hated, and Zenas Gale watched with zealous and suspicious eyes. Ostensibly it was a cigar and periodical store, dealing also in a small way in students’ supplies, such as writing material, and even secondhand books. This was a cover to sales of liquor and unlimited poker playing. Students liked to gather there, even those who had no relish for liquor or gaming, on account of the freedom of the atmosphere. Yet visits to the place put one under suspicion and threatened the displeasure of Gunn and the Fardale faculty.
Gunn had often spoken to the Fardale boys on the subject, and he had been heard to say that whenever the opportunity came he would “put Dickey through.” Gale, the constable, was of the same mind. But the opportunity never came. For Dickey was the slickest cake of soap in Fardale.
So Villum Kess was amazed to see Gunn’s protégé, Kadir Dhin, in the crowd that swarmed out of Dickey’s when the dog fight began.
“Budt idt iss der ticktograft obbordunity vot I am nodt oxbecting,” thought Villum.
Not a soul remained in Dickey’s; it had emptied into the street, and every person there was too busy trying to separate the dogs, or in telling others how it could be done, to observe or to think of anything else. Dickey was himself yelling orders like a village fire chief.
So Villum edged along the wall, and, reaching the steps, he passed within, then looked back to see if he had been observed. Sure that he had not, he made his way hurriedly to a door at the rear, which he found unlocked, and entered the back room famous in Fardale annals as the scene of strenuous poker games, smokefests, and drinking bouts.
There was a back door, but it was locked, and some rooms above, to be reached by a stairway. Also, there were heavily blinded windows. In the middle of the room stood a table with a green cloth top, with chairs about it, and above it a swinging electric light that had a turndown attachment. Along the walls were more chairs, with plush lounges, and at the farther end a couple of low cots, whereon, it was said, Dickey stowed students and others who had swallowed too much of his strong liquor and were not able to go on to the barracks or to their homes. The strong drink Dickey was reported to furnish was not kept here—there was always danger of a raid; Kess had heard it was kept buried in the cellar, but this may not have been so.
As his blue eyes roved round on the interior of the room, Villum moved toward the cots at the farther end.
“I vouldt yoost as lief been hung for sdealing a big sheeb as a liddle lamb; so I go me der whole hog,” he was muttering. “Uff I am foundt, der ticktograft vill be proke, unt no more can be saidt.”
With a last look around, Villum dropped to the floor, and, with squirming jerks, stowed his rotund body under one of the cots.
Something else under there squirmed. Villum’s hands were thrust into the face of a man.
“Awk!” Villum exploded, unable, in his surprise, to suppress the sound; and he clawed backward like a turtle, trying to get out.
But the dog fight had been ended, and Dickey and his friends were streaming into the front room. Villum did not realize that he might have joinedthem there in that time of confusion without attracting undue attention, until it was too late to try it. He was temporarily paralyzed by his discovery of the man under the cot. Before he recovered, some of the fellows were entering the back room, and were sitting down in the chairs by the table.
“I am sure in a fixings,” thought Villum, perspiring with the terror of the thought.
The man under the cot had moved over as close to the wall as he could get, but Villum still felt the touch of him; his imagination supplying details, he pictured a knife in the man’s hands; and, coming on top of that, like a flash, was the thought:
“Idt iss der Hindu murterer, I pet you!”
That made Villum’s flesh creep, and nearly popped him from under the cot. He moved over, shivering. But he did not leave his shelter. He would have fared badly if he had; so in the end he preferred to stick to the frying pan rather than to flop out into the fire.
Besides, Villum had slipped into the room and shoved under that cot for the purpose of playing dictograph, and he was stubborn enough to want to stick to his purpose.
A number of guesses as to who the man was, and why he was there, followed Villum’s surmise that he was the Hindu murderer; any one of them was bad enough, if true.
The man might be a common burglar, who had found a chance to hide there, and later meant to connect with Dickey’s safe; if so, he was no doubt armed with an automatic, which he would use, if cornered. This seemed a very reasonable solution.
But Villum never hunted for reasonable solutions, when others could be had; so the one which appealed to his mind most was that the man under the cot with him was not only the Hindu murderer, but that this cot and room were his usual and customary hiding places; which indicated that Dickey knew he was there, and received pay for sheltering him.
Kess and his friends had wondered where the Hindu could keep himself so that he would be safe and out of sight while he matured his plans. Kess’ one wild guess, and until now he could make no other, was that the Hindu hid in Kadir Dhin’s Oriental trunk. He thought he saw now that this guess was wrong.
“Aber I hear all vot iss saidt, unt am kilt as I am getting oudt uff here mit idt—ach, dot vill be awvul!” Villum said to himself, as if groaning mentally. “Yedt anodder fighdt mighdt come petween dhis Hindu unt der vellers in der room, unt vunce again I couldt gedt me by. So I vill vaidt, pecause I musdt, unt vill seen vot I hear.”
It was a long and trying wait that followed, and it seemed much longer than it was. Soon all chance of gaining the barracks before they were closed for the night had passed; but, then, Villum had counted on not being able to return to the barracks.
Under the cot, pressed close against the wall, the man waited as silently as Villum. And, however much or little he understood of the meaning of Villum’s action, he must have considered that he found himself in a most singular position.