CONSPIRATORS

Tom lingered after Mansfield and Duveen and Jackson had gone, and of course Jerry waited for him. Jerry, who had played the rôle of audience all the evening, now hazarded a question. “Who did he mean when he said we’d show those thieves how to play?” he asked.

“Hal? He was referring to our hated enemy, Cumbridge Hall School,” replied Joe. “I think his exact word, though, was ‘sneak thieves,’ Jerry.”

Jerry continued to look puzzled. “Sounds like they was sort of trifling,” he said. “What’s he got against them, Joe?”

“Against Cumbridge? Nothing much, I guess. When we get excited we’re likely to rake up old scores, and ‘sneak thief’ is a sort of pet name for those fellows.”

“I don’t believe Jerry knows about that,” said Tub Keller. “Ever hear about the football they swiped from us?” Jerry shook his head. “Well, it was three years ago and it’s rather an old story now. I don’t believe we’ve ever forgiven them, though. You’ve been in the Trophy Room in the gym, I suppose. Ever notice an empty space in the line of footballs? Well, there is one. It’s where the 1915 ball hung. Cumbridge has it now.”

“How come?” asked Jerry interestedly.

“Swiped it,” said Joe. “You see, we won that game by the biggest margin we’d ever piled up against the Dark Blue――24 to 2, it was. Cumbridge got a safety and that was all. We played at Holly that year and we brought the old pigskin back with us and gilded it as usual and painted the score on it and hung it in the case in the Trophy Room. I guess we sort of rubbed it in about that score.”

“Sure did!” chuckled Tom. “Remember the song we used to sing?”

Pile up the score, boys! Make old Cumbridge sore, boys! Another twenty-four, boys! We’re going to win to-day!

“Yes, and some of the fellows went over to Holly one Saturday night about a week after the game and printed the figures on the gate post. I guess that made Cumbridge sorer than all! It was rather raw and Cumbridge faculty raised the dickens and three of the fellows came mighty near being fired. They had to sign a written apology and go on probation, too. One of them was Haskell, our best basketball player, and we got licked all through January.” Joe sighed at the degrading memory.

“Well, I ain’t heard how those fellers got the football,” Jerry reminded.

“Oh! That was the next spring. In May, I think. We played Cumbridge here, the first game of the series, and a lot of fellows came over with the team. They licked us that day. I don’t remember the score. That was all right, but the next day we found that the 1915 football was missing. Of course we knew that Cumbridge had stolen it, but we couldn’t prove anything. Faculty here took it up with Cumbridge faculty and Cumbridge faculty said they’d investigate. Maybe they did, but we never got the ball back.”

“Didn’t the football captain get a letter or something?” asked Tom.

“Yes, two or three days later. It was just a sheet of paper with ‘Come and get it’ printed on it. But it was posted in Annapolis and didn’t prove anything. Lots of Cumbridge fellows still swear that they never saw the football and that Cumbridge didn’t swipe it.”

“Maybe she didn’t,” suggested Jerry.

“Don’t you believe it,” replied Tom. “She took it and she’s still got it. You see, they’ve got a sort of secret society over there called―――― What do they call it, Joe?”

“Brothers of the Owl.”

“Yes. Of course it’s sort of a joke. I mean it isn’t really a society, just a name to tack mischief on. We think two or three fellows did the stunt. Got into the Trophy Room during the baseball game and unlocked the case. They hadn’t damaged anything. Probably not more than a half dozen ever saw the ball after they got it. They say that the football captain keeps it and hands it on to the next fellow that’s elected. Then again there was a Brackett’s school chap who told Lord last year that he went over to Cumbridge with his baseball team and a fellow over there showed him the football in the trophy case. You can believe what you like.”

“Didn’t any one ever try to get it back?” asked Jerry.

“Did they! It got so that spring that faculty had to make a rule that any fellow found going to Holly would be fired! I guess we made about a dozen tries for that old ball. There was a regular free fight in June that year when we played a return game there. Some of our fellows tried to get into the trophy case. Cumbridge had three or four fellows on guard and there was a riot. Lory Browne had both eyes blacked and two or three more of our bunch got beaten up for fair. Afterwards we heard that the ball wasn’t in the trophy case at all, that they’d put guards there for fear we’d try to even things up by swiping one of their trophies.”

“I heard,” said Tom, “that they had the 1915 football for a centerpiece at their banquet last year.”

“You hear all sorts of things,” responded Tub. “I heard that they got scared when faculty was busy and destroyed it. Anyhow, no one from here has ever seen it, and I guess no one ever will.”

“Last year,” chuckled Joe, “Howard Castle conceived the brilliant idea of getting revenge by stealing the ball after the game. Cumbridge won, you know, Jerry, and the minute the last whistle sounded Howard grabbed the ball from the quarter back and sprinted for the gym. There was a great hullabaloo, with every Cumbridge player hiking after him, and the referee and Coach Thorne and a couple of the faculty butting in, and the rest of us toddling along to see the fun. Howard reached the gym all right and locked himself up in the director’s room, and the Cumbridge gang tried to break the door down and there were four or five nice little scraps going on all at once. Then Bob Logan, First Class President, and Hilltower and a couple of other fellows――you were one, weren’t you, Tom?――persuaded Howard to come out. The rest of us stood around and groaned. Howard meant all right, but that wasn’t the ball we wanted. He said afterwards that his idea was to exchange it for the one Cumbridge had.”

“A mighty good idea, too,” commented Tub. “Logan was a pill to spoil it.”

Back in Number 7 Baldwin, Jerry reverted again to the subject. “Where you reckon those fellers keep that ball, Tom?” he asked.

“Search me. Somewhere we’ll never find it.”

“If a fellow knew, I reckon it wouldn’t be hard to get it,” mused Jerry.

“Thinking about trying it?” Tom yawned and began to unlace his shoes. “Better not, son. Faculty’ll get you sure.”

“That rule about fellers going over yonder still hold good?” asked Jerry.

Tom considered. “Well, no, I guess it doesn’t. Anyhow, plenty of us have been over since then on peaceable errands. Still, I don’t believe faculty would hesitate to resurrect it if they had a chance!”

Jerry was silent for several minutes, undressing leisurely. Then: “Whereat’s this place they keep their footballs and things?” he inquired.

“Cumbridge? There’s a sort of alcove upstairs in School Hall. That’s their recitation building. There are two big cases there, one on each side of this alcove. They keep a lot of banners and baseballs and footballs in them. I was up there once. It was the day we beat them 24 to 2. I didn’t pay much attention to their old trinkets, though.”

“What’s this ball like they stole from us?”

“Oh, like the other balls over in the Trophy Room. Gilded, you know, with the score painted on it, and the date, in light blue and dark blue. Now don’t go to trying any funny business, Jerry. Better fellows than you have gone after that ball and failed. All you’ll get will be a long, hard look from faculty!”

Jerry blinked his very blue eyes. “Seems like if it belongs to us we’d ought to have it,” he said mildly. “Reckon it ain’t a crime to take back what’s been stolen from you.”

“I never said it was,” answered Tom, slipping into bed. “But that isn’t the question. The question is what faculty would do to you if they found out about it!”

Jerry pondered that a moment. Finally, “Just the same, Tom,” he said, shaking his head, “it ain’t right they should keep that ball.”

“Lots of things aren’t right,” replied Tom untroubledly. “For instance, it isn’t right for you to go to sleep on your feet there instead of going to bed and putting the light out. How about my beauty sleep?”

Jerry proceeded with his disrobing.

“Reckon,” he said dryly, “you-all ought to get a sight more sleep than you do!”

Just why the project of recovering the stolen football should have intrigued Jerry’s mind as it did all the next day is not clear. In a way, the affair was none of his business, for he was only a newcomer at North Bank, and the older fellows had apparently reconciled themselves to the indignity perpetrated by their old-time rival. But Jerry thought a good deal on the subject and pestered Tom for information the latter couldn’t supply.

There was a party at the Cabin the next evening――evening in Maryland, as in the rest of the South, begins after the midday meal――and the invited guests were Tom, Joe and Ted Ingraham. Ted had been over twice during the week, though practice had kept Jerry from seeing him for more than a few minutes on either occasion. To-day the quartet started out at a little after four and at five were replenishing the wood box beside the little sheet-iron stove, and at half-past six were reveling in the standard repast of ham and eggs and sweet potatoes. Coming back in the late twilight, with a young moon hung over the river, Jerry attached himself to Ted Ingraham and let Tom and Joe walk well ahead. As neither of the latter had taken much to Ted on this first meeting they were satisfied with the arrangement, although Tom once or twice turned to observe the dawdling pair.

“Wonder what Jerry sees in that chap,” he grumbled on one occasion. “Can’t say I like the duffer much. They’re jabbering away back there like a couple of long-lost brothers.”

“Oh, Jerry likes every one,” replied Joe. “Mr. Thorne was telling the other night about running across Jerry on the way from Washington the day he came. Seems that there was a dog in a crate on the platform out at Academy Junction and a lot of soldiers from the camp were trying to make him drink tonic. They poured the stuff in his drinking dish and Jerry almost lost the train putting fresh water back in it.”

“Yes, he told me something about that, although I gathered that it was Thorne who gave the water to the pup. Jerry’s mighty close-mouthed when he wants to be.”

“He sure is. He didn’t tell any one he’d pulled Ingraham out of the river once, either. Maybe he’s sort of ashamed of it, though. I don’t think he rescued much!”

“Well,” laughed Tom, “maybe the fellow’s all right when you get to know him better. One hopeful thing was the reason he gave at supper this evening for not wanting to come here to school. Said he wouldn’t mind if Purves Jordan wasn’t here!”

“Yes, that shows discernment,” commented Joe. “If Jerry has his way, though, he will come. Faculty ought to put him on a commission basis and send him out after students. He was plumb convincing! If I was Ingraham I’d be entering North Bank to-morrow!”

“Maybe that’s what he’s talking about so earnestly back there,” said Tom. “If he is I’ll bet he will have Ingraham nailed by the time we get back!”

But Jerry was talking of quite another matter, and although he was using persuasion, no great amount of it was necessary, for Ted was an easy victim to Jerry’s eloquence, and when they parted the plans of a deep-dyed conspiracy had been laid.

Followed for Jerry a most hectic week, a week of morning punting practice, of afternoon work with the squad followed by special instruction from Coach Thorne or “Jump” Tibbs or both of them. Jerry was taught to throw forward passes and to catch them, to take the ball direct from the center, Corben, the substitute pivot man being requisitioned to aid. Jerry progressed, although to him it seemed that progress was discouragingly slow. Yet, on the whole, the coaches appeared satisfied. More than once warm commendation rewarded his efforts and he tramped tiredly over to the gymnasium aglow with the inner warmth that comes of a knowledge of work well done. Yet of course there were discouraging moments. Sometimes his punts went agley, sometimes forward-passed balls slipped through his clutching fingers, sometimes he mixed his signals. One thing he didn’t do, however, was miss tackles. It seemed that when he had once laid a hand on a runner that runner had never a chance of further advance. He tackled hard and he tackled surely, and that was much in a back-field where loose tackling had been the coach’s bugaboo all the season.

On the offense Jerry was not setting the world afire. He worked as hard as he knew how and, once through the line, he could outdodge the opposing back-field nine times out of ten, but he was too light to have much effect as a plunger. He was still plainly but a substitute, with Omstead and Gray disputing the left half position with him, Omstead very successfully, Gray more precariously. Jordan was clearly no longer to be reckoned with by the end of that week. The daily scrimmage lasted now for thirty full minutes of actual play, divided into two fifteen-minute periods, and almost inevitably Jerry saw action for ten of those thirty. Sometimes he was run in in the first period when a punt was badly needed, but usually he started the second or relieved Gray before it was very old. Not infrequently he was popped in and out as the coach’s whim decided, running through a play and then punting and trotting off again, or taking part in a five-man forward pass as one of the receivers. But always he saw service, and always, returning to the bench, he received scowls and black looks from Purves Jordan. However, Jordan’s evidences of animosity troubled him no whit. He had long since learned that success on the gridiron held the penalty of jealousy, for he had observed more than one instance. Usually envy and jealousy were carefully hidden, but now and then they showed their ugly heads. Every position on the team had more than one claimant and the rivalry was keen and intense, purposely made so by the coaches. Perhaps it was not to be wondered at that disappointment sometimes found expression. Usually, though, animosities born on the field died in the gymnasium, drowned perhaps in the cleansing flood of the shower. Purves Jordan, however, treasured his ill feeling and cherished it, and on Friday night he took his woes over to Ellicot House and displayed them to the sympathetic gaze of Gus Ashley, with results quite out of proportion to them.

Most of the school went over the river to Annapolis the next day and paraded along College Avenue with light blue banners proudly flaunting and North Bank cheers awaking the echoes of that quiet town. Because the Naval Academy team had journeyed from home that day, football-loving Annapolis thronged to the St. John’s field and surrounded the dusty gridiron ten deep. It would be pleasing to narrate how North Bank took revenge for a multiplicity of defeats that day, but history would prove me wrong. North Bank scored once when a fortunate fumble by a cadet gave her the ball on St. John’s twenty-four yards and, when Duveen and Ashley had each failed to more than dent the purple-and-orange line, Jack Omstead slipped away around his right end and planted the pigskin just over the line in the corner of the field. Omstead failed at goal from a hard angle――the punt-out was no longer in fashion――and North Bank had to make the most of those six points. It was perhaps fortunate for her that she cheered her loudest and best then, for never again while the contest lasted did she have much excuse for enthusiasm. To be sure, the Light Blue team did put up a good defense, and it fought unwaveringly to the last second, but the local warriors scored thrice after that first slip-up and converted one of the touchdowns into a goal. The final score was overwhelmingly purple-and-orange, 19 to 6, and North Bank’s progress back to the railway station, while it was far from quiet, lacked ecstasy.

The best that can be said of such a defeat is that it teaches its lessons, and the St. John’s contest was no exception. It taught Coach Thorne and Coach Tibbs, who, when not engaged in priming the second team to overwhelm the first, acted as an assistant coach, that there was such a thing as sacrificing speed for weight in a back-field and that a back who didn’t reach the line until the opponent had sized up the play had very little chance of making a gain! Perhaps there were other lessons learned that day, too, but that was the big one, and on Monday, when the last fortnight preceding the Cumbridge game began, Coach Thorne showed that he intended to profit by it.