IN THE ENEMY’S CAMP

Jerry fully intended learning how to swim just as soon as he could find the time, but the time wasn’t likely to come before spring, and so, having no desire for a watery grave, he got Ted Ingraham on the telephone Sunday noon and asked him to come over after dinner. Ted would have talked at some length over the wire, but Jerry unceremoniously cut him off. Ted appeared at the float about half-past two and Jerry was waiting for him. The afternoon was sunny, but a brisk breeze quartered the river and Ted had wisely added a white woolen sweater to his usual canoeing costume. A brief glance at his face would have confirmed Jerry’s suspicion that the journey to Holly had been rewarded with success, had Jerry required confirmation. But he didn’t, and it was not until the grinning and triumphant Ted had shot the craft well away from the school landing that he asked:

“Did you find it?”

Ted chuckled. “Sure! Easy as falling off a log! Say, those fellows over there swallowed everything, hook, line and sinker! They never once suspected me! I was all over the school, and they invited me to dinner――only I didn’t go because I thought it would be kind of a low-down trick――and I saw the game with Bayside and everything! Had a bully seat at the game, right in the cheering section; and if you fellows think you’re going to have an easy time beating Cumbridge, why, just let me tell you――――”

“Never mind that,” interrupted Jerry rudely. “What about that football? Did you see it? Do you know where it is?”

“Sure I saw it! And, say, they certainly played a cute trick! Why, I’ll bet a lot of North Bank fellows have looked right at it and never knew it!”

“Well, where is it?” demanded Jerry impatiently.

“Why, it’s――――” Ted stopped and chuckled again. Jerry began to think him the most exasperating fellow he had ever known! “No, I’ll start right at the beginning,” continued Ted, “and tell everything just as it happened. That’ll be better, eh?”

Jerry groaned. “I don’t care how you tell it if you’ll just _tell_ it,” he answered.

“I’m trying to, aren’t I?” asked Ted aggrievedly. “Gee, you want everything at once!” He laid his paddle across the thwarts and settled himself comfortably on his spine while Jerry directed the bow of the canoe toward a sunny cove near by. “I got over there at a little after eleven and went right uptown. It isn’t much of a place. Ever been there?”

Jerry shook his head patiently.

“It’s just a little village,” Ted proceeded. “There were four fellows in a drug store and I reckoned they were Cumbridge chaps and so I went in and asked the clerk where the school was. He told me to go straight on about a half mile and I could see that the fellows were kind of sizing me up. I bought a soda and after a bit one of them asked me if I’d come for the game. I asked him what game he meant and he told me and I said no, I’d come to see a fellow named Rogers. He said did I mean Tod Rogers and I said no, I meant Charley Rogers――――”

“That wasn’t the name,” interjected Jerry.

“I know, but I couldn’t remember the one you told me. It was too hard, anyway.”

“Was there a Charley Rogers there?”

“Wait till I tell you. ‘We’re going back,’ said this fellow. ‘You come along and we’ll show you where his room is.’ I ’most choked on my soda, Jerry! ‘Does he come from Baltimore?’ I asked. Well, none of them knew whether he did or not, but they said he was sort of a skinny chap with light hair and a lot of freckles, and I said I was afraid he wasn’t the right one. So then I treated to sodas――you owe me thirty cents on those――――”

“Hold on! Five sodas at ten cents apiece is only fifty cents, and half of fifty――――”

“Six,” corrected Ted. “I had one by myself and one with the Cumbridge chaps. I had to get friendly with them, didn’t I?”

“All right. Then what?”

“Well, I made out that this Charley Rogers came from Baltimore, which was my home, and told a long string about him. Said I hadn’t seen him since spring and that he’d told me then that he was going to Cumbridge this fall. I let them think I’d come from Baltimore that morning, but I didn’t say so. No use of lying, was there? Well, we went out to the school together, pretty chummy, and a couple of the fellows named Stanwood and Corey took me to the Office and a man there looked up the Rogerses. There were three of them, but there didn’t any of them come from Baltimore. I let on I was mighty disappointed and said something about getting a train, and Corey said why didn’t I wait and see the football game. He said it was too bad I’d had the journey for nothing. Well, I thought awhile and then said I reckoned I might as well. So they took me to their room and we had a long talk. They wanted to know what school I was at and I told them I wasn’t going to school but was thinking about it after Christmas, which wasn’t any lie. So then they said I’d ought to come there, and first thing I knew, I was being shown all over the shop.

“I made out I was awfully pleased with the place and they kept dragging me around. I saw the gymnasium and the field and the three dormitories and finally they took me back to the building where the Office is, which they call School Hall, and we looked into some of the classrooms and a big room with a stage at one end of it, and then they took me upstairs to one of their society rooms――I forget the name of it――and introduced me to a bunch of fellows, and told them maybe I’d be coming to Cumbridge in January, and I didn’t deny it.

“Well, by that time it was getting pretty close to dinner time and I hadn’t found out anything about the football, and so I thought I’d better drop a hint. There were a lot of pennants and photographs on the walls up there, photographs of football and baseball and track teams, and I got to looking at them and asked if they played baseball much; said I meant to try for the nine if I went there. Of course that started them off again, and pretty soon one of the fellows asked if they’d shown me the trophies. So they took me out in the corridor where there was a sort of space at one side with a table and chairs and two big cases with glass doors. One of the cases had a bunch of banners at the back and a lot of baseballs painted all sorts of colors in front, and Stanwood told me a lot of yarns about the track teams and the nines. Then they took me over to the other case and that was filled with footballs. They were all painted dark blue and had the scores on them in other colors, mostly white and light blue. Most of them were balls from North Bank games, you see, and they’d have ‘C. H. 10,’ or whatever the score was, in white, and ‘N. B. 6,’ maybe, in light blue. Must have been more than a dozen of those there. They said they’d won more games than North Bank had, and did a lot of blowing, and I made believe I was mighty interested. Corey said they’d have another ball there in a week and I said I reckoned they would. But all the time I kept looking and looking, and pretty soon I saw one ball that didn’t look quite like the others. The lettering was sort of uneven and both scores were done in white, and there wasn’t any date on it.”

“Was it the one?” asked Jerry eagerly.

“Sure! I asked what year that game was played, and they all laughed, and Corey said ‘Nineteen-fifteen,’ and Stanwood told him to shut up. ‘Oh, Dashington’s all right,’ said Corey, and Stanwood――――”

“Who was Dashington?” interrupted Jerry.

“Me; that was my assumed name; Paul Dashington.”

Jerry grinned. “You sure selected a fancy one! Then what?”

“Stanwood told Corey maybe I was all right, but he wasn’t supposed to talk, and he moved away like he wanted me to follow him. But I didn’t, and I winked at Corey and said, ‘Must be some joke about that ball,’ and laughed. And he winked back and said, ‘You bet there is! I’d like to show it to you but the case is locked.’”

“Was it?” asked Jerry.

“I reckon so. I didn’t dare try it, but it looked locked. After that we went downstairs again and they asked me to dinner, but I felt sort of sneaky and went down to the village and had something to eat at a lunch room. It came to forty-five cents and you owe me――――”

“Never mind that! They didn’t say that that ball was the one they swiped from us, did they?”

“No, they didn’t say it, but they _looked_ it! You could tell right off from the way they all snickered and the way Stanwood jumped on Corey for talking. It’s on the right of the case, Jerry, the last one in the fourth row from the top. It’s the only one without a date and with both scores in white. I suppose whoever painted it didn’t have any light blue handy.”

“If they had dark blue and white they could have made it,” objected Jerry.

“That’s so. I didn’t think of that. Anyway, they didn’t. Both scores are in white: ‘C. H. 10――N. B. 0.’”

“Painted out the old score, of course,” mused Jerry.

“I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why, Jerry. If you sort of look over the top of that ball you’ll see a lightish streak that might be gold. Anyway, it isn’t the same color as the front of the ball, and I think they left the score on one side and painted over the other and painted a new score. I’ll bet if you could see the back of it you’d find it just as it was. I suppose they think it makes the joke funnier! Anyway, Jerry, you were right, because it’s just where you thought it would be.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Jerry, “is why the faculty hasn’t found it out. Seems to me if they checked up they’d see there was one ball too many in that case. Unless――yes, they might have done that; they might have taken one of the genuine balls out and put this one in its place. Reckon that’s just what they did. What was the lock on that case like?”

“It looked like an ordinary old-fashioned lock like you see on bookcases and such things; takes a round key with a hole in the end of it, you know.”

“If you were in front of the case could any one see you from the corridor?”

“Not unless they were going by. You see, you come upstairs in the middle of the building. The corridor runs right and left. Then there’s one of these alcoves about halfway along on each side. I reckon they were put there to get light.”

“Ted, you’re a right smart detective,” said Jerry. “Old Sleuth ain’t got anything on you.”

“It was heaps of fun,” chuckled Ted. “If those fellows catch sight of me again they’re going to do a lot of thinking, aren’t they?”

“Reckon you’d better keep out of the way. If they did see you they might get suspicious.”

“Oh, they’ll be too excited about the game to notice. Besides, Jerry, you promised last week I could help.”

“All right. Trouble’s going to be in getting away from the field. Then, too, I’ll be in football togs. I didn’t think of that until just now. If those Cumbridge fellows see me making for the School Hall they’ll likely follow me up.”

“Gee, that’s so! Maybe you’d better let me do it. I could make believe I was looking for one of those fellows in that society room.”

But Jerry shook his head. “If they caught you they’d beat you up, I reckon. We’ll find some scheme. What I’m most afraid of is that they’ll take the ball out of there before our crowd gets there.”

“I don’t believe they will. I suppose they think it’s a pretty good joke to have it there in plain sight and nobody recognizing it.”

“Well, maybe so,” replied Jerry doubtfully. “Anyway, we’ve got to chance that. Did you notice if there was a telephone in that building?”

“Why, yes, there are two booths on the left as you enter, just inside the front door. Why, Jerry?”

“Nothing much, only I reckon I see now how it’s going to be done,” chuckled Jerry. “If some one was to call me on a very important matter I reckon Mr. Thorne might let me go to the ’phone!”

“Of course! That’s the idea! Get some one here to call you up!”

Jerry nodded. “Just the same, if I was playing then it wouldn’t do any good,” he said doubtfully. “Got to ponder that, I reckon. What do you say if we go home now? It’s getting sort of chilly.”