“The headmaster there was pretty well put out about it all,” the senior captain told his audience. “He looked through the book and was unable to identify it as the property of any of the students. Did you guys know that the book was an old 1938 one?”
Some of them knew it. Hudson went on: “Professor Strong said that to his knowledge there is not a 1938 instruction book in the school, and he doesn’t know of a single student who has a book as old as that. He expressed his regret that such a thing happened, but he does not believe for a minute that Dimsdale fellows did it. The only thing that makes it look bad is the fact that they lost that game last Saturday and of course it looks exactly as though they were out for revenge and took it out on our eagles. The student council over there is going to take up the matter and push it hard, because it looks bad for the whole school.”
“I hope they didn’t have anything to do with it,” Berry declared promptly. “I hope the little book was just a plant, because I hate to think those fellows are such downright poor sports. But, as you say, it looks bad in the face of the past game.”
“We’ll all have to do a little detective work from now on,” Barnes suggested. “Let’s see if we can’t find someone who met suspicious characters around here on that night, or something that will give us a clue.”
“It might be a good stunt to go over to Dimsdale and rummage around in their boathouse or the sheds back of the school,” a senior said, but the majority were against that.
“Not right now,” Hudson declared. “That would be the surest way to start trouble. Let’s wait until something more definite than that little book points to Dimsdale as the guilty party. We all think somebody from that school took the eagles, but until we have positive proof we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt.”
“But isn’t it funny that no one heard them cut the eagles off?” asked Vench.
“I wouldn’t say so,” Thompson replied. “You see, they were cemented into the stone by a single rod. Now, it was no trouble at all to slip a thin metal saw in between the base of the eagles and the stone and saw through. An iron saw doesn’t make much noise and it probably didn’t take much time. Whoever did it knew just how to go about it.”
There the matter rested for the time being, but the cadets continued to wonder and speculate. The student council of the rival school met and presented a resolution that they believed the students of Dimsdale to be not guilty in the matter of the theft of the brass eagles. Professor Strong talked with the colonel by telephone and informed him that he could not find a 1938 rule book in the institution nor could he find a single student who had a book as old as that. Further check, which was fairly accurate, revealed the fact that every Dimsdale boy had been in his room on the night of the mysterious affair, though there was nothing to show that some few students might not have sneaked from the building after lights were out. All these facts made some impression on the more thoughtful cadets, but it was not enough to make them feel altogether sure that the rivals had no hand in the affair.
“Too bad about it all,” sighed Don. “Just when the relations between the schools were being mended so nicely! But we’ve simply got to find those eagles.”