So first he went to the police headquarters and walked in as he had done many a time before, and they stared at him:
“I understand you’re looking for me?” he said, gravely with a new dignity about him they scarcely understood.
“Yes,” said the chief, embarrassedly, almost deferentially, for Darcy had been almost like one of themselves. “Yes.”
“Well. Here I am.”
They scarcely knew what to say to him. They treated him like a gentleman, a stranger. It cut him the way they went about it. They were not his friends any more. It seemed that they were afraid of him, as if they did not know how to take him. They had been prepared for rebellion, subterfuge. He gave none. He was his old grave self, with the old winning smile as he met them, his eyes upon them with the old question in them, the wistfulness. It disarmed them. They would have rather had to fight with him.
And by and by he asked to see Dan Peterson. He would find out if he had any friends left.
Joyce did not remember the Meadow Brook newspaper again after she had put it into her desk, for almost two weeks. It lay under a pile of copy books that were awaiting marks and she had been too busy to get at them. But one morning during study period she found time and drew them out and there was the newspaper. She took it out and was about to throw it in the waste basket, realizing how much out of date it must be. Then a longing overcame her to see some of the old familiar names again, and she slipped off the wrapper and decided to take just a moment to look it over before throwing it away.
It was well that the top of her desk was raised and that the eyes of her young pupils were occupied with their work, for the letters that met her gaze flaring across the top of the paper in the blackest of type made her gasp and turn white. They almost shouted at her as she read:
“BASEBALL IDOL IN TROUBLE!