“Borrow it?” repeated Sid.
“Yes, that’s all I did with your alarm clock. Oh, fellows, I didn’t mean anything wrong. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“You’d better,” said Phil, keeping a hold of the intruder’s collar. “Come inside.”
They entered the room, and Tom locked the door.
“Well?” asked Phil, suggestively, as he pointed out a chair to Lenton. “We’re ready to hear you.”
“I borrowed your clock to take a wheel out,” said the odd student, simply.
“To take a wheel out?” repeated Sid, in amazement.
“Yes. In an alarm clock there is a certain size cog wheel that I could find nowhere else. Fellows, I am making a new kind of static electric machine, and I needed a certain sized wheel. I tried everywhere to get one, and I couldn’t afford to pay for having one made. Then, one day, I happened to see your alarm clock in here. I thought, perhaps, that it would have in it the wheel I wanted. I made a false key, sneaked in, and took the clock out. Then I happened to think you’d want a timepiece, so I brought in that mahogany one—it was a present to me from a friend in Chicago, but I didn’t care for it. The wheels weren’t right.”
“I guess you’ve got wheels,” murmured Phil.
“Your alarm clock had just the right size wheel in it,” went on the odd student, “so I took it out, and made my electrical machine. Then I made another wheel that would answer as well in your clock, and I made the exchange back again. Now my electrical machine is broken, and I need another wheel from your clock, and——”