“Of course,” responded Roylston dryly, “that goes without saying. I have suspected both Deering and Wilson, whom indeed several times before have I discovered in misdemeanors of a similar character; but, if you chance to have been observing of late, you will have noticed and wondered that those two charming youths no longer consort together.”
“Oh, boys of that sort,” said Beverly blithely, to hide his ignorance of the alleged coolness, “boys of that sort always fall out after a time. Mischief is a poor cement for friendship.”
“On the contrary it has been my observation that it often does cement it. But I am the less inclined to lay my annoyances to the two boys I have mentioned than I would be if they were as thick as they formerly were. Wilson simply has not the ingenuity or the wit to do such things for so long a time and escape detection; and Deering lacks the incentive of Wilson’s impulsive and malignant vindictiveness. I am inclined to feel that I will discover the miscreant in some other set. Alas! they are not the only boys not above such things.”
“I would keep an eye on my suspects, however,” remarked Beverly, with an air of conviction that he was offering very subtle advice.
“Oh, my eye is ever on suspects, my friend.”
At that moment Morris happened to come into the common-room, and the conversation was dropped.
Finch, impishly elated by the successful secrecy of his attentions to Mr. Roylston and finding a certain relief for his spleen in his malicious tricks, began to extend his operations, concentrating on Wilson. Kit, when he discovered the tricks that had been played upon him, would storm about noisily, berating possible miscreants right and left, but for some time with as little effect as had attended Mr. Roylston’s quieter efforts. Success, however, rarely waits upon the criminal faithfully. He grows inevitably careless and falls at last into the most obvious trap that is set for him. Poor Jake proved no exception.
Twice in a week Kit had come in about four o’clock from his run across country with the hare and hounds, an unpopular game that he was seeking to boom, to find his room “rough-housed.” It was not the general disorder familiarly known by that term, but a more systematic confusion, if we may so speak; a more malicious effort to injure his property. His prepared work for the next day’s recitations would be smeared with ink so that it would have to be completely rewritten; his desk drawers would be turned topsy-turvy; his clothes hidden away in unexpected nooks and corners. This had happened several times, and the character of the destruction was more wanton than is often the case when boys indulge in such misguided forms of practical joking. He determined to watch carefully for weeks, if necessary, and catch the culprit if he should attempt to repeat his vandalism.
As usual, one afternoon after two o’clock call-over, he went off ostensibly for his run in running drawers and shirt, his white legs and arms gleaming in the winter sunshine, as he dashed down the hill with his hounds. But this time he deserted them at the foot of the hill, skirted the path along the Rocks in the direction of Whetstone and returned to the school within half-an-hour by way of the steep-sloping south field, which faces Monday Port and which the boys seldom played upon. Unobserved, for his schoolmates were mostly far afield, he reached Standerland, tiptoed through the corridors to his room, and once inside hid himself carefully behind the curtains that screened the door into his bedroom.