“I’ve got some work to do,” answered Toby stiffly.
Arnold shrugged. “Oh, all right. I just wanted to give you this. Catch!” A crumpled envelope fell to the table with a tinkle in front of Will Curran, and the latter passed it on to Toby.
“What is it?” asked Toby.
“Money or something. Frank asked me to give it to you this noon and I forgot all about it.”
“Oh! Thanks.” Toby dropped the envelope in his pocket and turned away. Homer Wilkins smiled at his plate and Kendall and young Curran exchanged winks. Toby’s jealousy of Frank Lamson was no longer a secret. Arnold caught the wink, flushed, scowled and blamed Toby for the moment’s embarrassment he felt. On the way upstairs Toby regretted, just as he usually did, his churlishness, and hoped that Arnold would overlook it and come up to Number 22 later. He wished that he hadn’t taken sides with Gladwin, too. As little as he liked Frank Lamson, he thought that Frank had played a very good, steady game that afternoon and deserved credit. He felt that he owed Frank an apology, which did not tend to make him any more satisfied with himself. Up in his room, he pulled the envelope from his pocket and emptied the contents into his palm. A half, two quarters and a five-cent piece lay there. Frank had paid in full, and Toby started to find his memorandum book and scratch off the debt. But his hand paused on its way to his vest pocket and he stepped swiftly to the light and peered curiously at the coins in his palm. An expression of amazement came to his face. Dropping all but one twenty-five cent piece on the table, he took that between his fingers and examined it, for an instant incredulously, finally with satisfaction.
The only apparent point of difference between that quarter and the other one was that just over the date the letters “E. D.” had been punched into the silver. The D was indistinct, but the first letter had cut deep into the coin, as though some one had struck the cutting die an uneven blow. The letters were about half again as large as the numerals in the date, large enough to attract the attention of any one glancing at that side of the coin. There was nothing startling in the presence of the initials. Toby had frequently been possessed of coins having letters stamped or scratched on them. Nor was he at all concerned as to the identity of “E. D.” What accounted for his interest was the fact that over a month before, in New York City, he had received that identical quarter in change at a dry goods store and that as late as twenty-four hours since it had reposed in a little paste-board box in his second bureau drawer.
CHAPTER XIII
TOMMY LINGARD EXPLAINS
Toby seated himself at the table, rested his chin in his hands and, with the twenty-five cent piece before him, tried to think what it all meant. The quarter had been in the box, the box had mysteriously disappeared and now the quarter had turned up again. Logic told him that the person who had sent him the quarter had taken the box, but that, of course, meant theft, and, for all his dislike of Frank Lamson, he couldn’t believe him a thief. Frank might be overbearing and self-important and something of a snob, and possess numerous other faults that Toby couldn’t think of just at the moment, but dishonesty was another matter. Besides, Frank’s folks were well-to-do, if not actually wealthy, and Frank had plenty of spending money—even if he didn’t pay all his bills promptly.