The New Falmouth game passed into history and Alton faced the next to the last contest with confidence. Oak Grove Academy was always a worthy competitor, and this year was to meet Alton on Oak Grove ground, but the Gray-and-Gold had reached her stride and the only question that concerned her adherents was the size of the score and whether Oak Grove would be represented in it. Kenly had played a stiff game with Lorimer Saturday and had won it in the last five minutes, the final score being 16 to 13. Although the best Alton had been able to do against Lorimer was to play her to a 3 to 3 tie, the Gray-and-Gold nevertheless found encouragement in the Kenly-Lorimer game, arguing that Alton’s present playing was fifty per cent better than it had been a fortnight ago, granting which a meeting between Alton and Kenly on Saturday would have found the former easily superior. Whether this reasoning was correct or not, certain it is that neither players nor adherents doubted Alton’s ability to beat Oak Grove Academy in most decisive fashion at the end of the week. But this was before Mr. Kincaid, physics instructor, put two and two together and beheld a great light.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
M’NATT TRIES PHOTOGRAPHY
Mr. Kincaid was a dapper, well-groomed little gentleman of middle age who wore a sandy mustache and squinted engagingly through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses because he was unusually near-sighted. On one occasion, when the instructor had removed his glasses to polish them and had subsequently mislaid them between the pages of a book for something like two minutes, things happened in Room G seldom witnessed! Being extremely fastidious, the instructor was a good customer of The Parisian Tailors, who occupied a small building on West Street. On the preceding Saturday, the day of the New Falmouth game, the instructor repaired himself to the tailoring shop shortly after dinner with a pair of trousers draped gracefully over one arm. He wanted those trousers nicely pressed for the next day’s wearing, and he must have them no later than this evening. Having enjoined Mr. Jacob Schacht to that effect, he remained a moment and watched that gentleman, who, by the way, looked most un-Parisian in feature, proceed to the long-delayed cleaning of a gray suit. It was a peculiar looking suit, Mr. Kincaid decided, viewing it through his strong lenses, and he made mention of his decision to Mr. Schacht. “An odd mixture,” he remarked agreeably. “I don’t think I ever saw one just like it, Mr. Schacht.”
“Them spots ain’t in the goods,” chuckled Mr. Schacht in an un-Parisian voice. “They’re paint, Mr. Kincaid. One of the young gentlemen at the school brought this here suit to me the first of the week just like you see it. All over the front is them spots, Mr. Kincaid, and I says ‘A fine job you bring me,’ I says, ‘because,’ I says, ‘paint that’s already got hard like this,’ I says, ‘you can’t do much with it, Mr. Grainger.’ So much I don’t like it, I keep putting it off, sir, and here now it’s already Saturday, and nothing ain’t done to it yet, Mr. Kincaid. If there was two of me I’d still be working till it was midnight just like now, Mr. Kincaid.”
His interest in the suit having vanished on learning that the peculiar appearance was due to specks of paint, Mr. Kincaid sympathized with Mr. Schacht in a few well-chosen words and withdrew. The incident did not again occur to him until Tuesday forenoon when his eyes again fell on the gray suit, now quite commonplace in appearance, adorning the form of Calvin Grainger. Just why at that moment Mr. Kincaid’s thoughts should have reverted to the last faculty meeting it is hard to say, but they did, and he recalled the case of a student, whose name he had now forgotten, which had been before the meeting for consideration. That student had used black paint to adorn the brick wall surrounding the residence of the Principal of Hillsport School, to the straining of the entente cordial existing between that school and Alton Academy. Mr. Kincaid removed his gold-rimmed glasses, closed his eyes, leaned back, and, while Rowlandson proceeded to prove how little attention he had given to today’s lesson, added two and two, with the result that later on that day Calvin Grainger called at the office on request and spent some twenty minutes with Doctor McPherson. When he left he looked chastened to a degree; chastened and very disgusted; possibly more disgusted than chastened. For, as he asked later of a very troubled roommate, what was a fellow going to do when he was asked point-blank like that?
“Of course,” he explained moodily, “I didn’t welch on you or Mart, but he’ll get you, Bob, because he will be pretty sure we were together. After that he’ll get Mart.”
“He’ll get me,” agreed Bob, with a sigh, “but I don’t see how he can connect Mart with the business.”
“You don’t? Well, it’s funny to me he hasn’t done it already. He knows that Brand and Mart room together, for one thing. Fellows who room together are generally in on things like that.”