Long came to a decision. “Very well, boys. I’ll tell you everything. Perhaps I’ve been foolish to keep it all to myself in this way, but I’ve thought it the honorable thing to do. The reason I looked so glum at the time Arthur Gates won in the competition examinations and later again Roxberry, is simply because Gates won them dishonestly!”
“Both of them?” asked Jim sharply.
“Yes, both of them! Copied his answers out of textbooks for the elimination and later bribed a professor from Roxberry on the big examination! His money did it, and the professor mentioned gave him a complete list of the questions to be answered before the interscholastic contest. No wonder he won hands down!”
“How did you learn this?” Don asked.
“I knew, judging by our class records, that I should have defeated Gates in the eliminations. But I didn’t say anything until he won the big event with one hundred per cent. Then, on the night that I first placed that cup on my dresser, I pinned him down to the facts and made him confess that he had stolen the entire thing. Gates was always rather weak and he admitted it readily, even telling me the methods employed.
“As you can imagine, I was utterly appalled. We were always a school noted for our cadet spirit and our honor, and it had been literally smeared by Gates’ hideous act. The next day he was to step up on the platform and take a cup that belonged to another school, or at least one which he had not won cleanly, and he was going to do it with a smile on his face. Boys, I’m no cry-baby, but I did cry a bit then for the utter hopelessness of a man who would do that. Now I know where I was wrong. I should have dragged him to the colonel or have beaten the life out of him, but I thought I knew of a better way. I talked for two solid hours to him about honor and then left him alone in my room, after he had promised to write down a confession and stand clean. It wasn’t an easy thing to do on his part, but he agreed, and he said he’d write it where it would be eternal and there would be no mistake about it. I didn’t understand that, but I went outside for a walk, to cool off in the fresh air.
“And on the next morning the cup was there, but it later disappeared. He stepped up to the platform and took all the honors, and that knocked the theory I had held in the head. I thought that he had had the trophy stolen in order that he wouldn’t have to accept it, thinking that he’d back out altogether. But he didn’t. As I said before, he was mighty generous about it all, but of course, he had to be. He knew I was in a position to grind him to powder with a word, and he acted accordingly. I think that is the only reason his father didn’t prosecute me.”
“The story gets blacker each time we hear it,” murmured Hudson.
“That explains a whole lot,” Don said. “Now, I’ll tell you what we know.” He began at the point where he had read the notice of the resigning janitor in the issue of the Bombardment and told it to the finish. “So you can see, Mr. Long, that Gates stole his own cup. I guess he did it so as not to have to accept it.”
“Perhaps he was brazen enough to accept all of the praise, but the cup was too much for him, and he knew he could not face that,” Mrs. Long suggested.