He hung up his receiver and went out, finding Bucephalus still at work on the wagon.
“Did yo’ catch him, sah?” asked the man. “Werry conwenient little instrament, dat tullyphome, ain’t it? Werry myster’ous, too. Just think o’ hearin’ a man talkin’ a mile or two away, an’ yo’ unnerstan’ him as plain like he was right cluss up.”
“Yes, there is a bit of mystery about it, Buck,” laughed Jack, who had ideas of his own which he did not care to tell to any one else at the moment.
“There is a switch that those fellows have got on,” he said to himself, “and I was not talking to the station any more than I was talking to the President of the United States. Well, there’ll be a little fun in this, and I don’t mind taking the risk.”
Jack had gotten the idea that Herring was on another branch of the Academy telephone, and that the story of the express package was a fiction, meant to mislead him.
He knew enough of such characters as Herring’s to satisfy himself that the bully would not rest at one attempt to make trouble, but would try again as soon as convenient.
“If that was not Herring on the wire, I never heard him speak,” he said to himself as he ran off toward the house and then to the dormitories.
He was not upstairs more than a minute and then he appeared at the front of the Academy and set off down the road at a good pace.
When he had gone far enough to be out of sight of the building, he took a cut through the woods as directed by the supposed Jones at the little station below.
He walked with both hands in his side jacket pockets, and seemed absolutely carefree and happy, but he had his wits about him, nevertheless.