“Perhaps one of them was bribed—and perhaps a waiter was bribed too,” said Crabtree with something like a groan. “Oh, I know no longer whom to trust here!”
Both of the teachers followed the waiter to the kitchen. Here they found the cook and several others talking excitedly. Nobody could tell exactly what had been taken, but the cook was certain it was considerable.
“They have outwitted us!” moaned Pluxton Cuddle. “Now they will stuff themselves and be more ugly than ever!”
“I am going to find out if they are in league with anybody outside,” said Josiah Crabtree, and started without delay to interview all the hired help around the Hall and also the men from Cedarville. Each and every person, of course, declared he or she knew absolutely nothing of the missing food and had had no communication whatever with the cadets.
“We are following your ordars, sah,” declared the head waiter. “Right or wrong, we are following ’em.”
“Don’t you think I am in the right?” demanded Josiah Crabtree, sourly.
At this the colored man shrugged his shoulders.
“That is fo’ Cap’n Putnam to say, sah.”
“Ha! then you side with the boys, eh?”
“I ain’t sidin’ at all, sah. I obeys orders, that’s all, sah.”