“Yes, sir—I mean no, sir!” stammered Clif. “I’ll tell him. I don’t believe he’d want you to bother about looking in on him, though.” Then, seeing or fancying he saw, the dawning of suspicion in “Lovey’s” eyes, Clif abandoned that line quickly. “Well, thank you, sir.”
“Not at all, Bingham.” When the visitor had gone Mr. McKnight protruded his lower lip, closed his eyes slightly and stared thoughtfully at the ink-well. Finally he shook his head. “If it were any one but Bingham, now,” he murmured, “I’d be inclined to suspect that something had been put over on me!”
Upstairs again, in Number 34, Clif related to Billy Desmond, in a somewhat small voice, the result of his visit. “Gee, if he does come up it’s all off! What’ll I do, Billy? I didn’t lie to him, but he will think I did, and I’d hate that!”
“Huh,” said Billy, pinching his nose as an aid to concentration of thought, “there’s just one chance, Clif, and we’ll have to risk it.” From his closet he gathered an armful of clothing, turned down Tom’s immaculate bed, heaped the clothing on the sheet and pulled blankets and coverlet back into place. From the end of the room the illusion was only fairly successful, but when Billy had turned the light out, and opened the corridor door, admitting the wan radiance from without, none but the most suspicious would have doubted that Tom lay there fast asleep, his head covered by the sheet. Billy chuckled approvingly. Then he threw a pair of his own trousers and a towel, and an old coat over the back of the chair by Tom’s bed and tucked a pair of shoes underneath it. After that, still chuckling at intervals, Billy got his books and closed the door behind himself and Clif.
“That’s the best we can do,” he said, as they made their way down the stairs. “It may fool him and it may not. The rest, Clif, is in the lap of the gods!”
It was about half-past eight when Mr. McKnight finished Chopin’s Waltz in G Flat Major, and arose from the piano. Study hour was the one hour of the twenty-four in which he felt at liberty to use the piano to his heart’s content, and he was loth to lose the time entailed by a visit to Number 34. Even after he was on his feet another sheet of music caught his eye, and he opened it on the rack and tentatively fingered the first bars before finally and resolutely tearing himself away. The corridors were pleasantly silent as he made his way upstairs and tapped lightly at the closed portal of Number 34. There was no reply, and he turned the knob and thrust the door inward. The room was in darkness and no sound came to him. Evidently his advice had been acted on, for Kemble was not only in bed but sleeping extraordinarily peacefully. Mr. McKnight’s gaze took in the shoes beneath the chair, and the garments above. The sleeper remained undisturbed, oblivious of the intrusion. The instructor smiled as he closed the door softly again and walked noiselessly away.
“Nothing much wrong with him, I guess, if he can sleep like that,” he told himself as he sought the stairway. “Probably be all right when he wakes up.” Then his thoughts went forward to the piece of music on the piano rack, and his steps became swifter.
That ride to Danbury was long and wearisome to Tom. Waiting in the shadows of the station at Freeburg, after he had decided not to risk purchasing a ticket, but to pay his fare on the train, had been sort of exciting, and even after the station lights and the lights of the town itself had faded behind him a certain zest in the adventure had remained. But soon, what with the overheated car, the uncomfortable seat, the numerous stops and the dust that drifted in at every opening, the excitement dwindled fast. At the end of an hour he had begun to doubt the brilliancy of the exploit. For one thing, it was going to be extremely hard sledding to convince his guardian that he had taken the right course; the more so since Tom hadn’t yet succeeded in convincing himself. Mr. Winslow, an estimable gentleman despite Tom’s prejudices, was a lawyer, and, being a lawyer, his judgment was not easily swayed. You just had to have a good case, and Tom was horribly afraid he hadn’t! Well, one thing was certain. If Old Winslow insisted on his returning to Wyndham he just wouldn’t! No, sir, he’d run away first. Maybe he’d go to sea. No, he wouldn’t, either. You couldn’t play football at sea! But he’d go somewhere.
Then there was Clif. He had grown to be rather fond of Clif. Until six weeks ago he had never had a real chum. He had been friendly with lots of fellows, but close to none. He was going to miss Clif a whole lot; was missing him already, in fact. And there was Billy, too; and Loring Deane. They were, all three, corking chaps, and back home there wouldn’t be any one to take their places. If it wasn’t that it was already too late—