The Mark of the Knife

by Clayton H. Ernst

In the case of Harper's loss there was an additional interest because of the fact that Fred nearly succeeded—unwittingly—in discovering the identity of the thief. His room was on the first floor of Gannett Hall, and he remembered that on the Wednesday night when the theft occurred he had left the window wide open at the time he went over to Lincoln Hall for supper. He had gone from the table early and on arriving at the dormitory had immediately entered his room. As he opened the door he saw a dark form outlined in the window and it occurred to him that perhaps one of his schoolmates was attempting to play a practical joke upon him.

"What's the idea?" he had said. "Why don't you come in the front door like a human being?"

He had expected an answer in harmony with his question, but to his surprise the person in the window had immediately scrambled out, jumped down five feet to the ground and had lost no time in running out of sight around the corner of the building. Fred Harper had peered out of the window, still thinking that he had been the victim of a prank, and had not noticed the loss of his silver sailing trophy until he had turned on the electric lights and had seen that the place where it stood on the mantelpiece was vacant. He had then dashed out of the dormitory in the hope of intercepting the fugitive as he crossed the campus, but no one was in sight except his schoolmates returning from Lincoln Hall. To these he reported his loss, and a dozen of the Ridgleyites made a hurried search of the campus; they investigated all the shaded corners and unlighted doorways but found nothing that in any way offered a clew to the identity of the mysterious thief.

Within a week a dozen other thefts had been reported, and no little talk went the rounds of the school. Poor Jerry, the grizzled old-timer, who for years had been general helper to Slocum, the head janitor, was an object of suspicion in the eyes of some of the newcomers at Ridgley. There was no doubt about it, Jerry did have a most fearsome cast of features. Mr. Stevens, the English master, once remarked that he looked like an "amiable murderer." It was an apt description. Jerry had an expansive smile, but it was bestowed only upon those Ridgleyites—masters and pupils—who, for some subtle reason, loomed high in his esteem. All others he glowered upon with an expression ferocious and uncompromising. It was said that Doctor Wells was head of the school six months before he gained the reward of the smile that Jerry bestowed on the elect. But Jerry's heart was in the right place, and the older members of Ridgley School laughed to scorn the suggestion that he had any connection with the thefts.

"I'd as soon suspect my own father as Jerry!" said Snubby Turner, "but that gives me an idea."

What the idea was he revealed to no one except Jerry himself. For some reason Jerry had taken a great liking to the genial Snubby, and when he received a call from that young man down in his basement room, his seamed features took on an expression that might have caused Mr. Stevens to add the adjectives happy and harmless to the "amiable murderer."

"I have an idea, Jerry," said Snubby. "You know some one's been getting away with a lot of valuable truck from the fellows' rooms. It would be an awfully clever stunt to catch him. Why don't you snoop around and find out who it is?"

"There's ijeers and ijeers," said Jerry. "I got my ijeers too. I ain't got no need to snoop around. I got eyes an' ears as are uncommon good, even though I been usin' the same ones for nigh on to seventy year. I got my own ijeers as to who's sneak-thieving this school and bime-by somebody's goin' to get ketched."

"What are your ideas?" asked Snubby. "Do you know who's doing it?"

But old Jerry had no further enlightenment for his friend, even when Snubby pressed him further. "I got eyes an' ears," said the old man, "an' I got my ijeers too."