“All right, two can do that. It’ll be probation for you just as soon——”
“That doesn’t frighten me. When a fellow’s conscience is clear——”
“Yah!” Cummings made for the door. “We’ll see! Just wait!”
“Right-o! But, I say, Cummings. If you want to know what I think, I think it’s spooks!”
Cummings slammed the door behind him and Jonesie looking past the green-shaded drop-light, fixed his gaze on a recently acquired article of adornment, a large, brightly-colored calendar, which hung on the knobless door, and winked gravely.
“Funny about Cummings’s spooks, isn’t it?” observed Jonesie later to Turner, of the Lower Middle.
“Haven’t heard,” replied Turner eagerly. “What is it?”
Jonesie seemed surprised at the other’s ignorance and enlightened it. He really made a very interesting yarn of it and when he had finished Turner was grinning from ear to ear. “Fine!” he chortled. “Oh, corking! And, say, Jonesie.” Turner’s right eye closed slyly. “Of course you know nothing about it, eh?”
“Me? Give you my word, Tom, I haven’t set foot in his room in weeks! Besides, how could I? How could any fellow, with his door locked and everything? It’s spooks, that’s what it is.”
Turner was Randall’s nearest approach to a town crier. If Jonesie didn’t want the story to spread he shouldn’t have told Turner. It was careless of him, for inside of two hours the mysterious happenings in Talbot Cummings’s room were known all over the school. Cummings attempted denial, but it was no use. Randall’s had found a new sensation and refused to be deprived of it. Cummings had to tell his story over and over, until he was sick and tired of it. It wouldn’t have been so bad had it been accepted seriously, but it wasn’t. His audiences invariably became hilarious and offered all sorts of nonsensical advice, like putting sticky fly-paper on the floor, erecting barbed-wire entanglements or ringing burglar-alarms. The younger boys, long intimidated, fairly haunted Cummings and with solemn countenances begged to be told about the spooks. His room became a Mecca for the curious and he had no privacy. Cummings was most unhappy, so unhappy that when he awoke the following morning and, in spite of having laid awake and watchful until well after two, found his counterpane abloom like a flower garden with his neckties, he metaphorically threw up the sponge. Those ties had been neatly arranged in the top drawer of his dresser, and the top drawer was now not only tightly closed but the key was turned in the lock! It was too much! It was—yes, sir, it was spooky! Cummings dressed hurriedly and tumbled down to Mr. Mundy’s study and incoherently told his tale. Mr. Mundy was young and a man of action. In four minutes he was at the scene of the crime.