“Wha’ yo’ mean by dat, sah?” asked Bucephalus. “Wasn’ dere no tullyphome message? I done heard it mahse’f, sah, an’ Ah done give it to yo’ same as Ah heard it m’se’f, sah.”
“Then you did not know of any trick to get the best of me?”
“No, sah, ’deed Ah didn’t, sah.”
The man spoke so earnestly that Jack was convinced that he was telling the truth and believed him.
When he had finished washing his hands, he went to the doctor’s study, where he found the principal himself, and asked permission to use the telephone.
Finding the number of the station below, which was not the one given to him, he called up Mr. Jones and asked if there was any package for him.
The agent said that there was not, and the boy then knew that the whole affair had been a hoax and that probably Bucephalus was as innocent of it as the station agent himself.
“They must have come in here when the doctor was out, switched the barn line on to this one, and taken my call without Jones knowing anything about it,” he said as he hung up the receiver and went out. “It was a pretty good plot, but one little blunder will spoil the best of plots.”
He said nothing to Percival nor any of his new friends about the matter, being satisfied to have gotten the best of his enemies without publishing it, and feeling that he would be safe from further annoyance for a time at least.
It was said at the supper table that Holt and Haddon were sick from eating too much, and that Merritt had fallen into the brook and taken cold, and Jack did not take the trouble to correct the rumors.