“Miss Willard! Look here!” put in a breathless voice at Jacquette’s elbow, and, turning, she saw Clarence Mullen, his small, dark face the sickly colour of fear. “What shall I do?” he demanded, as if consulting a confidante. “I told ’em he went down-town, but it wasn’t so. I’ve got him locked in the gymnasium, over at school, but I can’t let him out for the next half, even if I want to, because the janitor came out of the building when I did, and he locked the outside door, and I haven’t got a key to that!”
Jacquette whirled around, and towered above the boy’s shrinking figure. “What are you saying?” she cried out, seizing him by both shoulders in her excitement. “You locked Bobs in the gymnasium?”
“Yes!” He faltered under her wrathful glance. “I—I heard you talking to him yesterday, and I—I knew the Beta Sigs all thought it was dirty work that Granville couldn’t win his emblem, and—I had the chance! He was late, and he ran down to the gym alone to change his clothes, and left the key in the outside of the door, and while he was at his locker, I shut it and turned the key, and then the janitor came away when I did, so there was no one to hear him and I told——”
“I believe it’s true!” Louise broke in. “There goes Mr. Branch, now, with Bud Banister! We must tell them—quick!”
The grey-haired principal of Marston turned in surprise, as the girls, followed by Clarence, dashed up behind him, but, before their jumble of explanation was done, he started for the school, racing like a boy with Bud Banister. Mr. Branch had a key to the building, and, as they came near, they heard shouting and pounding, and saw Bobs’s flushed face looking out through the iron-barred basement windows of the gymnasium.
“Everybody in the block has gone to the game,” Bud panted, “or someone would have heard him, sure!”
It was the work of one excited moment to set Bobs free, and no time was wasted in words. The case of Clarence Mullen could wait; the game would not. All Bobs asked was how the score stood, and whether the second half had begun, and even this information he took on the run. Not one of them could keep up with him on the way back to the field. Bud Banister was at his heels; Jacquette and Louise trailed after, and, last of all, came Mr. Branch, with a stern hand on the shoulder of Clarence Mullen, questioning him sharply, as they hurried along.
The Sigma Pi girls on the grand stand received Louise and Jacquette in a flutter of curiosity, for only stray rumours of Bobs’s desertion had been passed along to them, but, before there was time for explanation, the whistle blew, and all eyes turned to the field.
Then a shout went up—bigger and wilder than any shout that had gone before. Bobs Drake was there! Marston was safe!
As the teams faced each other, just before he took his place as quarterback, Bobs had passed along the line, murmuring a personal word of encouragement to each of the boys. Up to that instant, they had been parts of a well-oiled machine; now they crouched there, every man of them ready to play that game with his head, his heart, and his whole soul.