By following Lincoln Street and the path through the Seminary yard, Dick covered two sides of a triangle much more quickly than the pedestrian could the third side, the direct road from campus to academy. He leaned the bicycle against the gymnasium wall out of sight, and crept into the shelter of the high steps of Carter, whence he could command a view of the dormitories without being seen himself. Never had the old academy yard worn such an air of silence and desertion. Old Robeson was raking the driveway on the other side of the gymnasium; the Saturday cleaners were buried in the depths of the recitation building. Except for the indescribable roar of distant cheering, which came in bursts from the direction of the campus, or the noise of an occasional wagon rattling along the street, the green-turfed yard might have been some silent meadow afar from the haunts of men.

“Every dormitory window open!” thought Dick, as he glanced around the yard, “and half the doors too, I’ll bet. Those fellows really deserve to lose some of their things. But what a cinch for a thief!”

Some minutes passed before Bosworth appeared on the street and turned leisurely into the yard. When he reached the point where the path divided, he hesitated an instant before turning away from his own dormitory toward the middle entry of Hale. At the Hale steps he stopped again, threw a hurried glance over the yard, and disappeared into the dormitory entry. A moment later Dick was scuttling along the driveway toward the corner of Hale.

Hardly had he gained the shelter of the dormitory wall and begun to creep along beneath the windows toward the middle entry, when a sudden apparition at the farther corner drew from his lips an exclamation of wonder which would certainly have betrayed him if Bosworth had been near enough to hear it. There was Varrell, quietly working his way along the wall from the other direction, his face flushed red as if from a long hard run, but showing not the slightest surprise at this meeting with his confederate. They came together at the entrance, where Varrell, checking with an unmistakable gesture Melvin’s obvious intention to ask questions, crept stealthily in and crouched against the wall under the stairs. His friend followed close after.

“Shoes off!” whispered Varrell, with lips close to Dick’s ear. The order was obeyed without question. Varrell placed his straw hat beside his shoes; Dick imitated him.

“Can you hear him?” came in a second whisper.

Dick listened: at first absolute silence; then the sound from the second floor of a door being carefully shut, followed by the scrape of a sole upon the marble staircase above; then the click of a door-knob, and silence again.

“He’s just left a room in the second story and gone up to one in the third,” whispered Dick.

“Now is our time,” announced Varrell, and led the way up. Their steps were noiseless on the solid stone. The doors to both suites on the third floor were closed.

“Which?” whispered Varrell. Never had he envied his classmate’s quick hearing as at this very instant.

Dick applied his ear to the door on the right. He could dimly hear the distant cheering, a formless, threatening sound drifting in through the open windows of the room, like the far-away roar of an angry mob. Within the room all was silent.

He shook his head and tiptoed to the other door. Here too his ear at first detected no sound that did not come from without, but presently he heard footsteps on the other side of the room, and a grating noise as from the opening of a drawer.

“He’s here,” said Melvin’s lips. His nod and gesture would have told the story to a fool. Varrell motioned him aside and gently turned the knob. The door moved slightly on its hinges.

“Ready?” queried Varrell’s eyes. Dick nodded, and Varrell threw wide the door. There stood the long pursued, before the open drawer of a dressing table, with a pair of gold cuff-buttons in his hand.

Bosworth gave a start and wheeled round upon the intruders. He uttered no sound, but his eyes took on a wild, frightened look, while his sallow face faded to a paler shade and the red line of his lips became a whitish blue, as he faced the fierce looks of his two pursuers.

“So we’ve caught the thief at last,” said Varrell, sternly, “this time in the very act.”

Bosworth moistened his lips. “If you think I’m a thief, you’re greatly mistaken,” he began, rolling his eyes from side to side like a person searching for ideas under a great strain.

“We don’t think; we know,” answered Varrell. “There’s stolen property right in your hand.”

For a moment Bosworth hesitated, looking down. When he lifted his eyes again he was ready with an explanation. “I was just looking at them. I came in here to get a trot I lent to Morton. I couldn’t stand the strain of the game, so I decided to come back and work. I thought probably the door would be unlocked, and I could get the book for myself. I opened the drawer to see if the book was there,—it isn’t the kind of thing a fellow would show on his study table,—the buttons caught my eye, and I took them up out of curiosity.”

“Huh!” snorted Varrell, “and what about that scarf-pin on the table?”

“I know nothing about any scarf-pin,” replied Bosworth, with a show of resentment. “If there’s a scarf-pin on the table, I suppose Morton left it there. The fact that it’s there shows I’m not a thief; I should have taken it if I had been.”

Dick’s conviction began to weaken. It all sounded very natural and plausible. Had Wrenn’s infatuation put them both into a false position? He turned to Bosworth. “If what you say is true, we have done you a great injustice. You say you came here for the book. Did you come directly here?”

“Certainly.”

“Without going to any other room?”

“Of course not,” replied Bosworth, impatiently. “Didn’t I say I wanted the trot?”

A glance of intelligence flashed from Dick’s face to Varrell’s.

“He’s lying,” said Varrell, coolly. “We’ll have to wait till more fellows come, when we’ll search him and search his room.”

A look of apprehension appeared on Bosworth’s face. “You have no right to search me,” he cried. “I won’t stand it.”

“We’ll see!” was Varrell’s laconic answer.

A leisurely step now made itself heard on the stairs below, and soon the surprised face of little Eddy appeared on the landing outside.

“How’s the game going?” cried Dick, suddenly bethinking himself that the great contest was still on.

“I don’t know,” answered the boy, in sullen tones, peering curiously into the room. “I haven’t been to the game. I’ve been up the river.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m going up to my room.”

“Well, go on then,” commanded Varrell. Eddy started on. “Eddy!” called Bosworth.

With a hasty movement, quite unlike the indolent slouch with which he had crawled upstairs, Eddy hurried back and stood in the doorway, expectant, his big eyes full of fear, his whole expression that of a dog cringing before a cruel master. The sight stirred Dick to the depths of his heart. If ever he had felt a doubt as to Varrell’s course, or a lurking suspicion, born of his sense of fair play, that Bosworth might after all be a comparatively innocent victim of appearances, the doubt and suspicion vanished in the presence of that abject figure, like raindrops on the surface of the sea.

“I’d like to speak to him a moment,” said Bosworth, nervously.

“No, you don’t!” cried Dick. “You’ve had your last speech with him.”

“Oh, let them talk,” said Varrell, giving his friend a sharp look. “Only nothing must pass between you,” he added, turning again to Bosworth. “If you are willing to back up against the wall there and have the boy stand at one side so that there’s a clear open space between you, and both face this way, we’ll go out in the entry out of hearing, and watch you through the door from a distance. Otherwise there had better be no conversation until after the search is over.”

Bosworth agreed to the terms; Varrell stationed the two as he wanted them,—Bosworth in the best light,—and with Dick withdrew to the entry, where Varrell planted himself and fixed his eyes on the faces of the whispering pair in a long intense stare. Dick understood well the game his friend was playing, and his own eyes wandered helplessly from the observer to the observed, trying to guess from Wrenn’s expression his success in reading Bosworth’s lips, fearful of failure as the thief gradually bent his head in Eddy’s direction.

“Face this way!” cried Varrell.

“We’re through now,” replied Bosworth.

“Eddy, go up and stand on the stairs in sight till we call you down,” ordered Varrell. Then in a low tone to Dick he added: “Keep him there a jiffy till I can put on my shoes and get ahead of him to Bosworth’s room. Hang to Bosworth like grim death. Don’t let the fellow get away.”

“You can trust him to me,” answered Dick, eagerly. “What luck?”

“I can’t tell yet,” returned Wrenn.

Two minutes later Eddy was allowed to go, and sauntered leisurely down the first flight of stairs; the second he took more rapidly. At the dormitory entrance he broke into a run, which he maintained up the stairs to Bosworth’s threshold. The door was unlocked,—Bosworth had no fear of thieves,—and inside sat Varrell!

“Shut the door, can’t you?” was the senior’s sharp greeting to the amazed lad. “Now, what did you come here for? Out with it and don’t try to lie, for I shall catch you if you do.”

Eddy gaped helplessly around.

“His—knife,” he stammered, between gasps.

“Don’t lie to me!” said Varrell, sternly. “What did he tell you to get in the closet?”

“Nothing.”

Varrell jerked open the closet door, ran his hand over the clothing hung on the hooks, gave the shoes on the floor a kick, and pulled down an empty pasteboard box from the shelf. Then he turned to Eddy.

“Look here, boy,” he said in a gentler tone, “Bosworth is a thief and a rascal, as you are perfectly well aware. You’d better tell what you know, and save your own skin while you can.”

“I haven’t anything to tell.”

Eddy’s lips were trembling, and his eyes promised tears, but his face still wore the expression of stubborn determination.

“The little fool!” groaned Varrell, turning away. “He’s too thoroughly terrorized to let anything out. And to think that we are so near the goal and can’t quite reach it! If only the villain had not moved his head when he did! Yellow book! I could have sworn he said ‘yellow book in the closet,’ but there’s no yellow book in the closet or anywhere else!”

He opened the closet door once more, and stumbled over one of the shoes he had contemptuously kicked a minute before. In a burst of irritation he stooped to pick up the shoe and throw it where it would trouble him no more. As he lifted it into plainer view, its color caught his eye and his arm paused in mid-air. “What a blunderer!” he ejaculated. “It was ‘boot,’ not ‘book’; how could I have made such an error!”

Eddy stood mute, staring with anxious, fascinated face, as the senior ran his hand into the shoe, turned it over, shook it, and threw it down. He stooped for the other, inverted it, and tapped it upon the floor; then rose and felt carefully inside, while he fixed his eyes on the trembling boy.

“There seems to be paper here,” he said slowly, “or at any rate something like it that is fitted close to the lining of the upper.” The next moment he had dropped the shoe, and was unfolding a small, square piece of paper. It was the check stolen from the office safe on the night of March seventh!

Varrell’s first impulse was to let out a yell of triumph that would make the whole dormitory entry ring; his second, to make sure that his triumph was real. There was no question of the identity of the check; he had heard too much about the details of the case to have any doubt on that score. But would not a skilled liar like Bosworth be able to squirm out of even a predicament like this?

The senior turned again to Eddy, who was now leaning upon the table, his head buried in his arms, weeping in great despairing sobs. “I see how it is,” said Varrell, sternly. “You learned the combination and induced Bosworth to steal the money; he divided it with you, and when this was spent you stole from the rooms.”

“It isn’t so!” sobbed the boy. “I never stole a cent in my life. Bosworth did it all! I told him of the combination,—and that’s all I had to do with it. I didn’t know he stole it till long after, when he told me that the money he’d lent me had come from the safe, and I’d be arrested too if he was caught. But I never stole a thing in my whole life—and I’ve paid him almost up, too. Oh, I’m so unhappy! What will my mother do, if I have to go to jail!”

Varrell laid his hand gently on the lad’s quivering shoulder. The inquisitor’s heart was touched.

“You won’t go to jail at all if you brace up and make a clean breast of the whole thing,” said the senior. “You haven’t done anything wrong, except to cover up another’s villainy.”

He waited quietly for the sobs to slacken, with his hand still on Eddy’s shoulder. And while he waited, there smote upon his ear from the direction of the campus another roar, tumultuous and long drawn out, that rose and subsided and rose again, like the howl of the northwest wind on a winter night.

“Their game is over, too,” mused Varrell. “I wonder if they have had our luck.”