Professor Tines reached the portal. Then he gave a sudden knock, and called:
“I demand to be admitted at once, young gentlemen! I know the nefarious practice that is going on in there, and it must stop at once! Open the door or I shall summon the janitor and have it forced! Open at once!”
The professor tried the knob. To his surprise it at once opened the door, and he almost stumbled into the apartment. He uttered an exclamation of delight, probably in the belief that he had caught the students red-handed, but the next moment he gave a gasp of dismay.
For, as Tom, Phil, and all the others could see from their vantage points in the shadowy recesses, the room was empty. It was lighted, however, and in plain view on a table in the middle of the floor was a large flask. In the top of this there was a receptacle which contained a pile of burning tobacco, and it was glowing as though some giant was puffing on the improvised pipe. From a glass tube extending from the flask there poured out volumes of the pungent odor, and, as the puffs came, Tom and Phil could hear the air pump being worked. It was a “studentless smoker,” the air pump, attached to a rubber hose which exhausted the air from the flask, producing exactly the effect of some one puffing a pipe. The room was blue with the haze of tobacco, and as the astonished professor stood and gazed at the strange sight more smoke arose from the flask. Then, from somewhere in the dark recesses of the corridor came a voice.
“Stung!” it ejaculated, and there was a hurried movement as the students fled in the darkness.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE ENVELOPE
Plunging on through the darkened corridors Tom and Phil reached their room. They found Sid still on the sofa.