“Yes, but that doesn’t satisfy us,” said Bart. “We want the whole story.”
“There isn’t much to it,” Fenn declared. “You must promise not to repeat it.”
“We’ll promise but I guess John will tell it all over town,” said Frank.
“You know John and I used to be pretty friendly,” Fenn began, getting his chums off into a corner. “He lives near me and I used to go fishing with him once in a while. But he got down on me because I wouldn’t lend him my best reel one day, though for a while I didn’t know he wasn’t friendly.
“He’s always playing some kind of tricks in school, but most of ’em aren’t any worse than those we get up. But this last one was the limit.”
“What was it?” asked Ned.
“He’d been reading some book on India, and how they catch tigers by smearing bird-lime on the leaves near the water-hole. He made some of the lime. I helped him. Got some of the stuff from the laboratory. Then he put it all over the papers in Mr. McCloud’s desk, one night after school, and they got so fastened together they couldn’t be separated.”
“You don’t mean to say you helped him do that?” asked Frank.