"What do you want?" she asked.
"I wanter see the Doctor!" said Jerry and glowered so fiercely that the girl started to close the door.
With surprising agility the old man thrust his foot into the crack and when the girl said: "The Doctor is very busy; he's received some bad news and he won't want to talk with you," old Jerry repeated: "I wanter see the Doctor!" and added an imperative "Now!" which caused the girl to come to the conclusion that here was a determined and desperate man. She announced to Doctor Wells that "that terrible looking old janitor" was outside and that he was "bound to come in."
Doctor Wells immediately came out to the door and ushered old Jerry into his office where the grizzled janitor's assistant sat on the edge of one of the big chairs and, holding his hat in his hand, announced to the head of the school the following:
"I got my ijeers and they ain't no common ijeers either, Doctor."
"I know you have, Jerry," said Doctor Wells, who from twenty years' acquaintance with the old-timer was aware that no small matter had induced him to invade what he had always considered as no less than sacred territory.
"Yes," said Jerry, "ijeers are common until they get backed up by facts, Doctor, and then they's uncommon. The boys was tellin' me the news about Bassett and Campbell. I says I knew them birds wouldn't come to no good end. I ain't one to talk agin one of them as has passed on, Doctor, but them was bad birds. Here's how I come to know it. I got eyes and ears sharper'n Tophet, even if I be nigh on to seventy and perhaps a little more, and I heard things along back that sot me to suspicionin' them two, and I kind o' says to myself it was my duty to the school to detect around a mite and find out what was goin' on. They didn't like Teeny-bits at all—not at all. They had it in for Teeny-bits (for some reason old Jerry added an l to Findley Holbrook's nickname) from the very start, and one night when I was standin' in a dark corner of the corridor I heared Bassett sayin' he'd get even with him. And then after the money and contraptions begun to disappear from the rooms I overheared 'em talkin' again and what they says, Doctor, was this: 'I got 'em in there all right. Now all you need to do is write the letter on your father's typewriter. No one'll know.'"
"Who said that?" demanded Doctor Wells.
"Them two birds I'm tellin' yer about,—Bassett, the feller they called the Whirlwind, and Campbell. Now I ain't no reg'lar detecative, Doctor, but I got my ijeers, and that sot me to thinkin' hard and I knew somethin' uncommon suspicious was goin' on. A friend o' mine who was kinder detecatin' round as my assistant, you might say, slid down a fire-escape rope about that time and climbed into Campbell's room, but he didn't find nothin' and come away empty-handed."
"Who was that friend of yours?" asked Doctor Wells. "Was it Teeny-bits?"