“Busting the old sus-skeleton is nothing compared with driving a chap plumb cuc-crazy,” groaned Springer. “Perhaps he’ll never get his wits back. Maybe they’ll have to send him to a mum-madhouse, and we’ll be responsible—think of that, boys, we’ll be responsible! I’ll nun-never get over it.”
“Who proposed this thing, anyhow?” asked Roy Hooker, looking around. “Was it you, Sleuth?”
“Not much I didn’t,” answered Piper instantly. “It was Barker’s scheme. He said Grant was a scarecrow who was even afraid of the prof’s old skeleton, and suggested that it would be great fun if we could only haze him the way college fellows do.”
“But you got the skeleton. If it hadn’t been for you——”
“Now don’t you try to shoulder all the blame onto me,” cried Piper, in terrified resentment, forgetting for the time being his artificial style of speech. “You were all in for it, every one of you. I simply had some keys by which I could get into the lab, where the skeleton was kept. You’re all as deep in the mud as I am in the mire. Barker is really the one who engineered this thing.”
“Where is he, anyhaow?” asked Crane, looking around.
“Yes, where is he?” cried the others, realizing for the first time that the fellow they had recognized as their leader was missing.
They called to him in vain. The outer door of the gym stood slightly ajar, and, after a time, looking at one another in dismay, they understood that Barker had slipped away.
“Now what do yeou fellers think of that!” rasped Sile Crane. “He’s skedaddled and left us; he’s run away.”
“Well, if that isn’t the tut-trick of a coward, I don’t know what you’d call it!” exploded Springer.