CHAPTER XIV
THE PARADE
The inquiries made among the hired help of Colby Hall produced little results. Some of the servants were rather scared and declared to Colonel Colby that they were innocent of any wrong doing.
“I am not accusing any one here,” declared the master of the Hall. “I only want to find out, if possible, who was guilty of this outrageous proceeding.”
It was found that two men with wagon loads of supplies for the school had visited the place during the evening, but neither of these men had gone any further into the building than the storeroom, and both had departed as soon as their errands were finished. Outside of that, so far as the servants could remember, no outsiders had been on the premises.
“And yet those footmarks on the window sill and the fire-escape look as if it had been done by an outsider,” said Captain Dale to the head of the school.
“It’s just possible that it may have been an inside job and an outside job combined,” ventured Professor Grawson.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Somebody in the institution may be in collusion with some outsider—some professional thief. The inside person may have given the outsider a tip as to when the coast was clear and may even have stood on guard while the rooms were being looted.”