“No, there isn’t,” insisted Dunk. “Look here, old man, this is a serious matter. It means a whole lot, not only to Mortimer, but to us. We don’t want to make a mistake.”
“We won’t,” said Andy. “We’ll get him right, whether it’s Mortimer, or someone else. But I can’t see how it could be anybody else. Everything points to him. It’s very plain to me.”
“You don’t quite get me,” went on Dunk, trying to get into a more comfortable position in their small hiding place. “I’ll admit that we may get the thief, and I’m willing to admit, for the sake of argument, that it may be Mortimer—in fact, I’m pretty sure, now, that it is he. But look what it’s going to mean to Yale. This thing will have to come out—it will probably get into the papers, and how will it look to have a Yale man held up as a thief. It doesn’t make any difference to say that he isn’t a representative Yale man—it’s the name of the university that’s going to suffer as much as is Mortimer.”
“That’s so—I didn’t think of that,” admitted Andy, rather ruefully. “Shall we call it off?”
“No, it’s too late to do that now. But we must consider what we ought to do once we capture the thief.”
“What do you suggest?” asked Andy, after a pause.
“I hardly know. Let’s puzzle over it a bit.” Again there fell a silence between them—a silence fraught with much meaning. They could hear revelry in other college rooms, and the call of lads on the campus. From farther off came the roar and hum of the city. It reminded Andy of the night he had first come to New Haven. How many things had happened in that time. He would soon be a sophomore now—no more a callow freshman.
“Do you know,” spoke Dunk, in a low voice, as he again changed his position, seeking ease. “I had an idea that Ikey might turn out to be the guilty one.”
“So did I,” admitted Andy. “That was after your watch was missing, and I found he had been in the room while I was out. But, for that matter, Link was in there, too. It was a sort of toss-up between the two. Poor Link, it’s been mighty unpleasant for him, to be accused wrongly. I wonder how that valuable book got in his room?”
“The quadrangle thief put it there, of course.”