“Search me, but I guess we’ll find out if we wait.” The two pair of legs on the floor were beginning to move restively. Evidently the position was growing wearisome. The three boys inside heard a window above being softly raised, and they crowded around Joe and Arthur and watched. Suddenly, there descended a great stream of water straight onto the faces of the two initiates. Away went Arthur’s funnel, but not until he had swallowed enough water to almost choke him. Joe’s funnel had tipped sideways, so that he fared rather better; but when Dan and Tom raised the window and pulled them into the room, there wasn’t much to choose between them. Both looked like drowned rats, and were gasping and choking and sputtering wildly. They were soaking wet halfway to their waists. Alf came hurrying in, and the quartette sank into chairs and laughed until their sides ached. Joe was the first one to find his voice.
“A r-r-rotten joke!” he gasped. “You fellows think you’re plaguey smart, don’t you? L-l-look at me! I’m wet to the skin!”
“Yes, but you’re a member in good standing of the S. P. M.,” returned Alf, soothingly. “All that remains is to swear to reveal everything that you have witnessed at the meeting.”
“Yah!” said Joe, disgustedly, seizing a towel and trying to dry himself off. “You make me tired!”
Arthur, however, took it quite good-naturedly.
“Gee,” he said, “I thought I was drowned there for a minute. What was it, Loring, a cloudburst?”
“Yes, from Lingard’s pitcher. It was a peach of a shot, wasn’t it? Better take your shirts off, fellows, and get dry. Joe, you are elected to the office of Press Agent Extraordinary and Chief of the Bureau of Publicity. Thompson, you are First Assistant Assassin. Any little jobs too menial for me to attend to will become your duty; trifling murders that you can attend to in the evenings after study. And now, Brothers in the Cause, we will banquet.”
Alf had provided crackers and pâté and cheese, and six bottles of ginger ale; and Joe, who had wiped his shoulders dry, and hung his upper garments over the radiator, became pacified. Alf removed the initiation notice from the door, and replaced it with one announcing that a midnight orgy was in progress. They were disturbed several times by knocks and demands for admission, but no one was allowed in. When Tom Roeder became too obstreperous, Dan mounted a chair and dropped an empty ginger-ale bottle through the transom. He had to guess at his aim, but, from the subsequent sounds, and the fact that Roeder took himself off precipitately, it is probable that the aim was not so bad.
The meeting broke up late, and none of the six had any study to their credit that night. But then, as Alf pointed out, that didn’t matter very much, since in a very short time the faculty would be totally eradicated. That, he explained, would happen just as soon as he was able to decide which member to do away with first.
“The trouble is, fellows, that as soon as I decide on one, it occurs to me that another deserves the honor more. At present Old Toby and Noah are tied for first place.”