Mortimer looked coolly at the three.
“I say,” he drawled, “what’s up? Are you looking for a rat?”
“No, the quadrangle thief!” exclaimed Andy. “He went in Frank’s room and took his book and silver cup, and lit out. Came down here and we’re after him! Have you seen him?”
“No,” replied Mortimer, slowly. “I came up here to get Charley Taylor’s mushroom bat. He said he stuck it in here when the season was over, and he told me I could have it if I could fish it out. I had the dickens of a time in there, pawing over a lot of old stuff.”
“Did you get the bat?” asked Dunk.
“No. I don’t believe it’s there. If it is I’d have to haul everything out to get at it. I’m going to give it up.”
As he spoke he threw open the closet door. An electric light was burning inside, and there was revealed to the eyes of Andy and his chums a confused mass of material. Most of it was of a sporting character, and belonged to the students on that floor, they using the store room for the accumulation that could not be crowded into their own apartments.
“A regular junk heap,” commented Frank. “But where the mischief did that fellow go who was in my room?”
“It is sort of queer,” admitted Andy, as he looked down. Without intending to do so he noticed that Mortimer did not wear rubber-soled shoes, but had on a heavy pair that would have made noise enough down the corridor had he hurried along the passage.
“Maybe you dreamed it,” suggested Mortimer. “I didn’t see anything of anyone coming down here, and I was in that closet some time, rummaging away.”