CHAPTER I
CAUGHT IN THE ACT
“Gee whiz, but that was a hot one!” exclaimed Fred Martin, as he wrung his hands after throwing back the ball with which he and his chum, Bobby Blake, were having a little pitching practice on the Rockledge School campus.
“Had pepper on it, did it?” laughed Bobby, as he gripped the ball in readiness for another throw.
“It fairly smoked,” commented Sparrow Bangs, who was stretched lazily on the ground near by. “Bobby, you’ve got speed to burn this season.”
“If he pitches that way against Belden it will be all over except the shouting,” remarked Mouser Pryde, who was the second baseman of the Rockledge team.
“Bobby’ll need all he’s got when we tackle those fellows, if what I hear is true,” put in Billy Bassett. “A fellow was telling me the other day that they have a couple of new batters on their team who can fairly kill the ball, while the rest are pretty handy with the stick.”
“I’ll back Bobby against the bunch,” said Howell Purdy loyally. “He’s beaten them before and he can beat them again.”
“Don’t be too sure,” laughed Bobby. “There’s nothing certain in baseball, and they’re a pretty husky bunch to stack up against. Whenever we’ve beaten them we’ve known at least that we’ve been in a fight.”
“We sure have,” agreed Perry Wise, a fat boy who had been nicknamed “Pee Wee” in sarcastic reference to his size.
“We,” repeated Jimmy Ailshine, in derision. “Where do you get that ‘we’ stuff? You never caught a ball or hit one in your life.”
“Haven’t I always rooted for the team to beat the band?” asked Pee Wee, in an injured tone. “What would the nine do without somebody to root for it when the pinch comes? As a rooter, I’m a wonder.”
“Sure,” said Mouser soothingly. “And Shiner is wrong when he says you never caught a ball. I saw you catch one last winter—a snowball, right on the end of your nose.”
The boys laughed and Pee Wee glared.
“You fellows stop picking on Pee Wee,” said Billy Bassett. “With all your kidding, there are some things in which he’s away ahead of you boobs.”
“Name them,” demanded Fred.
“For instance,” remarked Sparrow incredulously.
“Well,” replied Billy, “he’s more polite than any of you, for one thing.”
Pee Wee began to look interested, though a little puzzled. Although his manners were fairly good, as boys go, he had never thought that politeness was one of his outstanding virtues, nor had any one else called this fact to his attention.
“How do you make that out?” asked Howell Purdy.
“Prove it,” challenged Mouser.
“All right,” responded Billy. “Here’s the proof. When any of you are seated in a crowded car where there are ladies standing, what do you do?”
“Stand up and let a lady sit down,” replied Mouser, while the rest nodded approval.
“Exactly,” replied Billy. “You stand up and let a lady sit down. And that’s where Pee Wee has it all over you in politeness. He stands up and lets three ladies sit down.”
There was a moment of silence while this sank in, and then the boys broke into a roar of laughter, while Pee Wee looked around for something to throw at his tormentor, who adroitly skipped behind a tree.
Just at this moment, Mr. Carrier, one of the teachers, came along. He greeted the boys pleasantly and they responded heartily, for he was a prime favorite with all of them. The athletic games of the school came under his special supervision, and he had the gift of imparting his own vim and enthusiasm to the players. He had been a star himself both in football and baseball in his college days, and his thorough knowledge of both great games made him a first-class coach for the Rockledge boys. Under his tutelage, winning teams had been turned out in the previous year, and he was eager that his teams should repeat their triumph this season.
“Practicing up, I see,” he said, with a smile, as he nodded to Bobby.
“Just enough to keep my arm limber,” Bobby replied. “I want to be in shape for our next big game.”
“And that comes off in less than two weeks now,” rejoined Mr. Carrier. “I hear that the Belden nine is going great guns in practice and that the victory they won over Somerset the other day has given them confidence. They figure, too, that since we’ve had the championship for some years the time is just about due for them to have their turn. But we don’t agree with them, do we?” he added, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“No, sir!” agreed Bobby. “They’re not going to carry off the Monatook League pennant if we can help it.”
“It does look pretty good on the Rockledge grounds, doesn’t it?” remarked Mr. Carrier, as he cast his eyes up on the flagstaff where the beautiful banner fluttered in the breeze. “I’m depending on you boys to keep it there. Don’t forget the practice game to-morrow between the first and second nines.”
He passed on, and the boys looked after him with respect and admiration.
“He’s a dandy,” commented Sparrow.
“I’ll tell the world he is,” affirmed Mouser. “He’s more like a pal than a teacher, though he’s a mighty good teacher, at that.”
“Oh, I say, fellows,” called out Billy, slipping out from behind his tree, though still keeping a wary eye on Pee Wee, “there was a man downtown this morning putting up posters for a big circus that’s coming over to Ridgefield in a week or two. From what it said on the posters, it’s going to be a humdinger.”
“Trying to get us on a string again?” asked Sparrow suspiciously.
“No, honest I ain’t,” asseverated Billy, forgetting his grammar in his eagerness. “This is straight goods. It’s going to be in Ridgefield a week from next Friday. Gee, how I’d like to go!”
“Who wouldn’t?” remarked Fred. “But what good does it do us to have it in Ridgefield? That’s twenty miles away, and you know the doctor won’t let us go.”
“Maybe it’ll come to Rockledge, too,” put in Howell hopefully.
“No chance,” declared Billy. “I asked the man who was putting up the posters, and he said that this town wasn’t on the list.”
“That’s too bad,” said Bobby regretfully. “I haven’t been to a circus for a long time and I sure would like to see it.”
“Like’s no name for it,” chimed in Shiner. “I’m just crazy to see it. Just think, fellows, the tightrope walkers and the bareback riders, the acrobats turning somersaults over the elephants, the fellows swinging on the trapeze and the horizontal bars—”
“And the clowns,” added Billy, as Shiner paused for breath.
“Billy likes the clowns because he can steal all their old chestnuts and pass them off on us,” was Pee Wee’s vengeful dig.
“But there’s something new in this,” went on Billy, not deigning to notice Pee Wee’s fling. “They show a real Eskimo band, headed by a chief named Takyak who has a trained walrus that can do all kinds of stunts. I never saw anything like that in any circus I’ve ever been to.”
“What’s a walrus?” asked Shiner, who was not very strong on the subject of natural history. “Something like a shark?”
“No, you silly,” returned Billy, who, fresh from his study of the posters, had the advantage over his mates. “It looks something like a seal, only it’s bigger and fatter—oh, it’s as fat as Pee Wee—” Here the latter gave an indignant snort—“and it’s got big tusks and as much whiskers as those fellows over in Russia—you know the ones I mean, those Bolsheviks—and it’s sure the kind of thing I wouldn’t like to meet up an alley on a dark night, and they say it can do anything but talk, and the Eskimos had a big fight when they captured it, but now they’ve got it so tame that it eats out of their hands, and it lives on fish, and it’s got a bellow that you can hear for a mile and—”
“For the love of Pete, somebody stop him,” cried Fred. “He’s getting black in the face. You’d think he was a barker for the circus.”
But Billy was not to be stopped altogether, though the current of his eloquence was changed by a thought that had come to him while he was talking.
“Say, fellows!” he exclaimed eagerly, “what I said about the Russians reminded me of a joke!”
“What have we done that we should be punished like this!” moaned Shiner.
“Men have been killed for less crimes than Billy’s,” asserted Mouser.
“But this is a good one,” Billy declared. “It made me laugh when I heard it, and I know a good joke when I hear one.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Sparrow. “If you’ve ever heard a good one you’ve never passed it on to us.”
“Billy’s jokes are so poor that they wear rags,” proclaimed Howell.
“Or so old that they’ve got false teeth,” added Fred.
But Billy, undaunted by the general chorus, persisted.
“I’ve got a dime in my pocket,” he began.
“I’ll bet it’s plugged,” put in Pee Wee.
“I have a dime in my pocket,” repeated Billy with dignity, “and I’ll give it to the fellow that can guess my joke before I can count twenty. That shows how good I think it is.”
As Billy had calculated, this secured the instant attention of the boys, for it was nearing the end of the term, pocket money was running low, and a dime—well, a dime was a dime.
“Let’s see it,” said Sparrow cautiously.
Billy promptly produced it.
“There it is,” he said. “Take a good look at it, for that’s the nearest any of you will ever get to it. You couldn’t guess this joke in twenty years let alone twenty seconds.”
“All right,” said Fred impatiently. “Go ahead! Shoot!”
Billy leaned forward impressively.
“What’s the quickest change of nationality on record?” he asked.
Shiner scratched his head in perplexity.
“Come again,” he said. “I don’t get you.”
Billy looked at him in patronizing scorn.
“Why, you poor fish,” he explained, “a change of nationality is when a man stops being a citizen of one country and becomes a citizen of another. It’s as if a Frenchman went to England and took the oath of allegiance to the English king. Instead of being any longer a Frenchman he’d then be an English subject. Or a Swede might come to this country and be naturalized here. He’d no longer be a Swede but an American. In other words, he’d have changed his nationality.”
“Cut it short, Billy,” interrupted Fred. “I want that dime.”
“You won’t get it,” retorted Billy. “Now I’ll put it to you again. To change a man’s nationality usually takes considerable time. What’s the shortest time it’s ever been done in? Now I’ll start to count. One—two—three——”
“I know,” shouted Pee Wee.
Billy, in some alarm, hurried on with his counting.
“Four, five, six, seven,” he rushed along.
“It’s this way,” sputtered Pee Wee, also in a hurry. “It was a man climbing a greased pole. He went up a Pole and he came down a rushin’.”
Billy, who despite his frantic haste had been able to get up only to seventeen in the count, turned scarlet.
“That’s right,” he admitted reluctantly. “How did you guess it?”
“Oh, I heard that ages ago,” returned Pee Wee airily. “That joke was old when Noah went into the Ark. He used to tell it to Ham and Shem and Japhet when he wanted to put them to sleep.”
Billy was crestfallen, but he was game and brought out the dime, which Pee Wee promptly stowed away in his pocket.
“Gee,” murmured Shiner, “I don’t see why climbing a pole and coming down in a hurry makes a man change his nationality.”
At this a roar of laughter went up. Finally it was Pee Wee, elated with his victory, who explained.
“You silly,” he said, “the man went up a Pole—you know what a Pole is—and came down a capital R-u-s-s-i-a-n, Russian. Now do you see?”
“Oh,” answered Shiner, crestfallen.
“Got any more jokes, Billy?” Pee Wee asked politely. “If you have, bring them out and I’ll guess them at the same price.”
Billy tried to think of a suitable retort, but the financial calamity that had come upon him had paralyzed, for the moment, his gift of repartee.
“Never mind, Billy,” laughed Bobby, clapping him on the shoulder. “You can’t always put it over. And, anyway, Pee Wee’s going to spend that dime to treat the bunch and you’ll have your share of the doughnuts.”
“Sure thing,” said Pee Wee generously. “I can get ten doughnuts for a dime, and I can’t eat more than eight of them. The other two you fellows can divide up among yourselves.”
“Don’t give things away so recklessly, or I can see where you’ll be going to the poorhouse in your old age,” chaffed Fred.
“He’ll never live to be old,” put in Shiner. “He’ll die early from enlargement of the heart.”
“Maybe he’ll strain a point and give us three,” suggested Mouser hopefully. “But, anyway, let’s go down to the store and get them now while Pee Wee still has the dime.”
“It’s a pretty long walk,” objected Pee Wee. “And what with that stone bruise on my foot and the way I’ve been working—”
“That’s right!” observed Sparrow. “We forgot all about that stone bruise. It isn’t fair to make poor Pee Wee go all that way. He can give us the dime and we’ll go down and get the doughnuts and bring him back his share.”
This appealed to all but Pee Wee, who had well-grounded fears that they would bring back his share inside of them.
“I guess I can make it,” he said, getting heavily to his feet. “But let’s take our time. There’s no use going at it as if we were running a Marathon.”
He led the way with the air of a monarch followed by his retainers, and not one of them stayed behind, for the lure of the doughnut was too strong to be resisted.
“Let’s take the short cut down the school lane,” suggested Fred, and as this met with general approval they turned off into a lane that led down past the private orchard of Dr. Raymond, the head of the school.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when Bobby gave an exclamation.
“Look at that big touring car at the side of the road,” he ejaculated, indicating a powerful looking automobile that was standing under the shadow of some trees close to the fence that skirted the orchard.
“What’s it doing there, I wonder,” remarked Fred. “This isn’t a public road, and I never before saw an automobile in it, except the doctor’s own car.”
“Maybe it belongs to some friends who have come to call upon him,” hazarded Shiner.
“Or somebody who switched off into the lane by mistake,” guessed Sparrow.
As the chums drew nearer they could see that the car was empty with the exception of the driver. He was a rough-looking fellow with a coarse, mottled face, shifty eyes and generally uncouth appearance. His cap was drawn down over his low forehead and a half-smoked cigarette dangled loosely from his lips.
“Looks like a tough customer, doesn’t he?” murmured Fred, in a low voice to Mouser, who was next to him.
“He sure does,” returned the latter. “No friends of the doctor would have a fellow like that to drive for them.”
Bobby had given one quick glance at the driver and then his eyes roved over to the orchard. What he saw gave him a start.
“Look, fellows!” he cried. “Those fellows are robbing the doctor’s orchard! And they’ve tackled that prize thousand-dollar tree with the early apples!”
He made a rush for the fence with his comrades close behind him.