CHAPTER XX

THE OLD DESK REPAYS KINDNESS

“Did you find him?” asked Peaches, carelessly.

“Find who?” asked Barry, perplexed.

“Mister Moth.”

“Oh! Yes, I let him out.”

Peaches seated himself on an arm of the easy-chair and viewed Barry

shrewdly. After a silence he asked:

“Well, going to let anything else out?”

“Huh?” Barry was not, it seemed, very quick-witted this evening. “What

do you mean?”

Peaches shrugged.

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Only, if the head coach paid me

a visit I’d be telling all about it. But I dare say I lack

what-you-call-it――er――reticence.”

Barry began to lift the desk drawers and slide them back into place. He

performed the task very slowly, very thoughtfully. When the last one

was in he perched himself on the edge of the desk, studied his hands a

moment――rather scratched and scarred they were these days――and finally

said:

“Well, I guess I’d like to tell you, only――”

“Since I’m being consumed by curiosity,” said Peaches, when the other

paused, “I might perhaps be prevailed on to listen. You were about to

say――?”

“It’s no joke,” answered Barry, rather plaintively. “He――I――he said I

needn’t report again.”

“’Cause why?” asked the audience, after a surprised instant.

So the story came out and Peaches listened, without comment, to the

end. Then he said:

“It’s hard to say which of you is right, Barry. I see your position,

and his, too. I can’t blame him for wanting to get his hands on the

moron who sent that letter, and I can see that you’d naturally hate to

get Allen into trouble.”

“Allen!” exclaimed Barry. “Why, I didn’t say―― What makes you think――”

“Of course you didn’t say, but he’s the only chap in school you’d lose

your job on the team for, isn’t he? Don’t be worried. I’m as deaf as

the grave. No, I mean dumb. Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” muttered Barry.

“All you can do, I guess,” said Peaches, after some thought. “I don’t

quite get the Major’s view, though. Near as I can make out, he’s been

grooming you for more than a month to play against Hoskins. Now he

drops you three days before the game, for something that isn’t really

connected with the team. I guess he was sort of mad, wasn’t he? They

say he has a fair to middling temper. Still, it doesn’t seem quite

like him to make the school pay for a personal grudge. Well, it isn’t

exactly that, either, but――”

The telephone bell had rung during Peaches’ discourse and now Betty’s

voice called from below:

“Barry, you’re wanted on the ’phone, please!”

Downstairs, with the receiver at his ear, Barry answered, and to his

surprise heard Major Loring’s voice:

“Is that you, Locke? This is Coach Loring. I’ve been thinking over our

talk a while ago. I made a mistake, Locke. I find that you have reason

on your side. If you can give me the information I want I hope you’ll

do it, but I was wrong when I threatened you. Report as usual, Locke.

Good night.”

Barry hung up the receiver rather dazedly and stood for a long moment,

staring at the telephone, before he turned and went quickly upstairs.

Peaches had only to look at his face to know that something pleasing

had happened.

“Coach?” he asked.

Barry nodded, grinned broadly, and dropped into a chair. When Peaches

had heard the message he said approvingly:

“Good old Major! Blamed if he isn’t a white man, just as I thought!

Say, Barry, I’m awfully glad!”

Well, Barry was, too, so glad that it was some little time after

Peaches had gone back to his own room that the thought of Clyde’s

treachery returned to leaven his pleasure. He didn’t want to believe

Clyde guilty, but he had to. The evidence was too strong to admit of

doubt. There was Clyde’s threat to keep him out of the Hoskins game,

a threat never really recanted; there was the typewriter in Clyde’s

room that printed the B’s out of alignment; and finally, there were

Clyde’s almost anxious efforts to be agreeable, efforts which viewed in

the light of to-night’s developments were so plainly designed to avert

suspicion should suspicion later fall on him.

Peaches had brought up one apparently weak spot in the plot before

they had ceased discussion of it, and his subsequent explanation had

not been wholly satisfactory. Suppose, he had propounded, that Prince,

the Hoskins coach, had simply dropped that letter contemptuously into

the waste-basket. In that case nothing could have come of it. It was,

Peaches thought, taking a pretty long chance, the odds being about even

that the design to implicate Barry would fail. They had puzzled over

that for some time before Peaches offered his solution.

“What may have happened was this,” Peaches had said. “The fellow who

did it may have taken a carbon copy. If nothing happened after a few

days he would ‘find’ the copy somewhere and see that it got to the

Major or, perhaps, Captain Buck. Then if they called up the coach at

Hoskins and asked if such a letter had been received――well, there you

are! Sort of an awkward, roundabout scheme, but I don’t see any other

way it could have been done, do you?”

Barry didn’t, but a thought had come to him at about the same moment it

reached Peaches.

“If the fellow who wrote it sees that I’m still playing――”

“He’s likely to produce the copy!”

They had looked at each other in silence for a long moment. Then

Peaches had added in a detached way, “Unless, of course, some one

tipped him off.”

“Yes,” Barry had agreed thoughtfully. They had talked of other things

after that; largely of football and Barry’s reinstatement and of Friday

night at the big log cabin near the summit of Mount Sippick where the

team was taken every year on the eve of the Big Game. Now, ready for

bed, Barry still lingered. Twice he wandered to the desk and fingered a

pad of paper and twice he went away without penning the line that had

composed itself.

L. has received a letter from P.

He had only to write that and see that it got to Clyde and probably

nothing more would ever come of the affair. Clyde would understand,

and, if Peaches’ theory was correct, would not present the copy of the

letter. Still, they didn’t know that there was a copy, Barry reflected.

Peaches’ theory was ingenious, but it might be utterly wrong. If it was

wrong, there was no reason to warn Clyde. Besides, Barry wasn’t in a

forgiving mood to-night. Just short of eleven, he put out the light and

crawled wearily into bed, the note unwritten.

But in the morning the old liking for Clyde reasserted itself and

he dressed hurriedly and knocked on Toby’s door while that youth was

still in the throes of waking. Toby held the record in that house

for sleeping late, dressing quickly, and reaching chapel at the last

possible split second. And Toby was not one who sprang blithely

from bed with a glad cry to greet the dawn. Far from it! Toby awoke

gradually, protestingly; and instead of glad cries he uttered sounds

that possibly resembled the first grunts and grumbles of a bear aroused

from his winter’s hibernation.

To get Toby awake was no mean task. To get him to leave his warm couch

and stumble over to his typewriter was a man-sized job. Yet Barry

eventually succeeded in both, and Toby, still drugged with sleep,

his eyes half open and his head nodding on his shoulders, grumbling

continually, at last tapped out the words: “L. has receeved a Lettre

from P.”

“Thanks,” said Barry. “I’ll do as much for you sometime, Toby.”

“Yes you will!” mumbled Toby, bitterly. “I’ll bet if I got _you_ out of

bed in the middle of the night――”

But Barry was already beyond hearing, the sheet of paper borne in

triumph. Back in his own room, he folded it into an envelop on which he

wrote, “Allen,” in a painfully disguised hand. Then when, as he knew,

both the Second-Class fellows were at a ten-o’clock class, he went

to Number 42 Dawson and dropped the missive conspicuously on Clyde’s

chiffonier.

He didn’t see Allen until he reached the field that afternoon. Then,

if the older boy was experiencing surprise at the other’s presence at

practice, he failed to show it. He looked a bit gloomy, to be sure,

but of late he had frequently looked so, and Barry couldn’t have said

positively that the look denoted guilt. Barry was relieved that he had

to answer Clyde’s “Hello, youngster!” merely with a nod. The squads

were already forming and he hurried past.

There was an enthusiastic mass meeting that evening, and while on the

gymnasium floor little was to be heard save the sharp barks of the

quarter-backs, the shuffling of rubber soles, and the patient, measured

voices of the coaches, outside, cheers and songs filled the air. Barry

did his best to avoid Clyde and succeeded, just as he had done all day.

He was finding it hard to define his sentiments toward Clyde. There

were moments when he was very angry, moments when he felt only sorry,

moments when the old half-worshipful admiration returned powerfully.

Even when most bitter he hoped that Clyde had understood the meaning

of that note. Once he wondered if by any possibility Waterman had an

inkling of what had transpired, for twice he caught Rusty viewing him

with a broodingly malevolent gaze.

Peaches had attended the mass meeting, and so Barry, when he reached

home, was thrown on his own society. He tried study, but could make no

headway; tried a magazine, and soon cast it aside. He was thoroughly

tired, and at the same time oddly restless. Even after Peaches had

returned, informative of the celebration, the restlessness continued.

Barry listened without hearing, his thoughts racing hither and thither.

He hadn’t punted well that afternoon, he told himself. Suppose that on

Saturday he got into the game with Hoskins and fell down on his job! A

chill, pricking sensation played along his spine.

“――and that,” concluded Peaches, “is how the pole-cat came to have

white stripes.”

“Wh-what?” asked Barry, startled.

Peaches laughed.

“Well, you weren’t hearing a word I said, so I thought I’d try a jolt.

What’s the worst symptom? Do you see black specks floating before your

eyes? Does the mind suddenly go blank? So far as you know, were any of

your ancestors insane? Do you experience a strange sinking sensation

when falling from a roof?”

“Shut up,” said Barry, grinning faintly. “I―― Gee! I do feel sort

of――of queer! Kind of like I felt just before I had the grippe. I ache

in lots of places, and I think my head’s hot, and――”

“Your appetite’s on the blink.”

“Yes, how did you know? I hardly ate any supper. And I’m sort of

nervous-like, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly,” replied Peaches, solemnly. “And I know your malady.

You’ve got ‘Just-before-the-battle, Mother.’ It’s very common at this

time of year among football artists.”

“You mean I’m――I’m scared?” began Barry, indignantly.

“I do not. I mean you’re jumpy. And I prescribe sleep, and lots of it,

Barry. Toddle off and hit the old hay. And forget all about the game,

Ace. All the thinking you can do won’t make you play one bit better

to-morrow.”

“Well, but do you think it’s just that? Did you ever feel that way?

Sort of――sort of――”

“More than once――hardened and blasé as I am! To bed with you. Sleep,

sleep deep and refreshing is the answer. Go to it!”

Peaches’ remedy worked wonders, as morning revealed. Barry was

fortunate in having but two recitations that day, and, as he had not

prepared for them the evening before, he was glad that both came late.

Breakfast over, he went back to the house in company with Zo. Zo was in

a fairly hectic mood and discussed football all the way.

“Mr. Banks won’t let me off to-morrow,” he announced dismally, “and

I’ll miss the first quarter of the game, sure. I don’t see why he

can’t cut one lesson!” Back in his room, Barry set his books out and

drew up to the old desk. He was still indulging in certain fidgeting

preliminaries to concentration when the squeak of the gate brought him

to his feet so that he could command a view of the sidewalk. It was not

Peaches entering, however, but Mr. Benjy sallying forth for his first

visit to the freight-office since his illness. He had on a shabby but

warm overcoat and walked with an almost buoyant stride. Barry thrust

the window up and hailed him.

“Hello, Mr. Benjy! Gee! it’s good to see you up and around, sir! How

are you feeling?”

Mr. Benjy turned, waved a hand, and smiled with pleasure.

“Good morning, Barry! I am feeling quite――er――quite myself again.

Yes, I may say that the rest has done me good, I think. I feel

extraordinarily――er――fit.”

“Well, take care of yourself, sir. Don’t throw too much freight around!”

It was Peaches’ fiction that Mr. Benjy handled all the freight,

personally and exclusively. Mr. Benjy chuckled at the ancient jest,

nodded, waved with something of an air, and set out along the sidewalk,

his shoulders thrust back and his head high. Mr. Benjy had assumed his

militant attitude. Barry smiled after him and then, closing the window,

settled back in his chair.

“Sort of a dear,” he reflected. “Hard lines to have to work as hard as

he does and then give most of his pay to those factory men! I suppose

Davy will be getting out to-night.”

Half an hour passed. Then the need of a fresh scratch-pad caused him

to pull open the second drawer at his side. It wasn’t the right one,

however, for in returning the drawers to their places, two nights

before, he had, it appeared, got them mixed. He was about to close

it again and open the one below, when his eyes were attracted to an

unfamiliar object lying on top of the other contents. He lifted it

perplexedly and turned it over and back again. It was an oblong fold of

heavy paper. In large engraved letters appeared the words: “Northern

Counties Light and Power Company.” Beneath he read, “$1,000.” He might

have read more, but he didn’t. Instead he hurriedly, unbelievingly

unfolded the crackling document. Of course it wasn’t really a bond. It

couldn’t be, because if it was, how had it got into his desk? But it

was. It said so in much detail, and there, below, in serried ranks,

were dozens of little yellow coupons!

Barry stared dazedly.