“Oh, forget it,” advised Winans. “I’ve figured out that the fellows who took the pig out of Bartelme’s bed are afraid to say a word because they are as deep in the mud as we are in the mire.”
“I know that,” urged Larry. “That’s why I’m thinking about this. If we can find out who they are, maybe we could find the ‘Herr Professor’s’ pig for him.”
“Chances are, piggy, germs and all, has gone to pig heaven long before this,” yawned Winans. “I’m sleepy, and I refuse to worry about that pig any further. I’ve grown so sick of pig that I won’t touch my ham and eggs.”
Larry’s troubled evening was not without cause. Two days later he returned from class and found Winans and Trumbull awaiting him in gloomy forboding. Each had received notice to appear before the Faculty Committee at three o’clock that afternoon without fail. Another note of the same import was awaiting addressed to Larry, and a hasty scouring of the campus revealed little Butler in the throes of despair over an order of similar nature. The discovery that all of those implicated in the “peeg” plot had been summoned made it a certainty that the faculty at last had received information as to the identity of the culprits. Butler seemed much relieved.
“Gee,” he ejaculated, “I’m glad it’s that. I was afraid it was some confounded flunk in math. I’d rather be called up for first degree murder than to flunk in math. I think father would forgive me more quickly.”
“I’m certain father will be proud of me now,” said Winans.
The luncheon period was spent in idle speculation as to the manner in which the faculty had received its information. Larry, although his suspicions pointed strongly to Harry Baldwin, and who felt assured that Baldwin at least knew the faculty would be informed, decided to withhold his accusation until after the ordeal in the president’s office.
The quartette, a little awed, filed into the offices of the president promptly at the assigned hour. The president, cracking his knuckles, as was his wont, sat in state, flanked on the right by Professor Jervis, dean of the mathematical department and the terror of many generations of Cascade youths, ready and eager to enforce any penalty up to capital punishment upon any accused or suspected student, and on the left by Professor Weyrich, head of the college of chemistry, the jovial, twinkling-eyed, fat friend and defender of all boys, who loved them most when they had fractured college law worse than usual.
As the quartette entered, President Jamieson gazed at them over the rims of his spectacles, cracked his knuckles until they sounded like corn popping, and said:
“Ahem—young gentlemen, good afternoon.”