“I’m not hungry,” answered his roommate dolefully.
“Oh, yes, you are,” said Dan laughingly. “Or you will be when you get to commons. Think of the nice hot biscuits, Gerald!”
Gerald, however, refused to be comforted and followed the others over to Whitson with lugubrious countenance. Truth, though, compels me to state that ten minutes later Gerald was doing quite well with those same hot biscuits!
Saturday morning came and the mystery of the Pennimore Cup was still unexplained. Mr. Collins made another plea for its return and threatened to expel the one who had taken it if it was not forthcoming at once. The students listened in respectful silence, but no one arose dramatically and produced the missing cup. All sorts of theories were going the rounds by now. The most popular one was to the effect that a professional thief had seen the cup in the window in Greenburg and had followed Gerald back to school and had later sneaked up to his room and stolen it. It was quite plausible and there was a general sentiment to the effect that Gerald had had a lucky escape from being robbed on the way from Greenburg, in which case he might have been killed by the desperate burglar. Few any longer believed that the cup had been taken as a practical joke, and, when dinner-time arrived and it had not appeared, even Alf and Dan and Tom abandoned their first suspicions. Only Gerald was obdurate.
“Hiltz took it,” he affirmed stoutly, “and he’s got it now.”
And nothing any of the others could say in any way affected his conviction.
Alf gave up hoping. His dejection, however, had turned to anger, and Dan was glad to see it, since it promised better results on the rink than the captain’s half-hearted, down-in-the-mouth condition of yesterday.
“As soon as the game is over,” declared Alf wrathfully, “I’m going straight to the police. That’s what we ought to have done yesterday morning instead of letting Collins sputter about it all this time. Maybe if we had we’d have the cup now.”
“I guess we’d better tell Collins first, though,” said Dan. “If the police are to be called in I suppose he’d better do it.”
“Well, I’ll tell him. But if he doesn’t get the police I will. The whole thing’s a disgrace to the school!”