After little Purdick had seen Larry put away a trayful of supper, which had to do duty for itself and two other missed meals, with an appetite that seemed to make no account of the left-over headache, he hoped Larry would tell him what plan he had in mind for getting square with Bryant Underhill and his unprincipled accomplices.

But there proved to be nothing doing in that line. With the supper despatched, Larry hurled himself upon his books after the manner of a fellow who has lost a whole day out of his calendar and is determined to make it up in the shortest possible interval of time. And when Purdick went to bed at half-past ten, his room-mate was still digging away, and nothing more had been said about the Underhill square-up.

The next day it was just the same. How Larry explained things to his professors, made up the lost day’s class-cuts, and contrived to get credit for the tests he had missed, were matters upon which Purdick was left uninformed. But Ollie McKnight, between whom and little Purdick there had grown up an intimacy which was as odd as it was comradely, brought in a bit of news that was calculated to key any friend of Larry’s up to the fighting pitch. It was to the effect that Brock, the head coach, had taken Larry off the foot-ball team; had either suspended or fired him, McKnight didn’t know which.

“That’s simply an outrage!” Purdick burst out, adding: “I suppose you know what it comes from?”

“Sure,” said the son of Consolidated Steel; “Brock’s heard the story that’s going around about Larry’s being off on a bat. How much do you know about it, Purdy? Is any part of it true?”

Purdick told what he knew, and McKnight gave a low whistle.

“Larry can’t deny it, eh?—or, at least, can’t deny anything but the intention? And his explanation, which you and I take at its face value, of course, won’t look very good to people who don’t know Larry; in fact, I shouldn’t wonder if a good many of the fellows wouldn’t call it a rather clumsy lie. What does Dickie Maxwell say about it?”

“Dick was up to the room last evening just before Larry came in. He hadn’t heard the story then. You couldn’t make him believe that Larry is telling anything but just the plain straight truth.”

“Of course he’s telling the truth. Trouble is, it’s going to sound too improbable to be believed. What Larry ought to do is to go right after this Underhill bunch and show it up—prove that it was a frame-up.”

“That’s what he said he was going to do, last night,” said Purdick.

“All right,” McKnight nodded. “You tell him when he’s ready to start in he can count upon me and all the fellows in our house. We’re for him, even if it takes a round robin to the faculty.”

Purdick nursed that little offer of help and held himself in readiness to spring it when Larry should again broach the subject of a just vengeance upon the Underhill plotters. But when another evening had all but passed, and Larry hadn’t once mentioned the “frame-up,” its perpetrators, or the humiliating blow that Coach Brock had dealt him, Purdick could no longer contain himself.

“Ollie McKnight says you’re put off the team,” he said, stooping to untie his shoes. “Is that so?”

Larry nodded.

“Did you tell Brock what you told me?”

Larry nodded again, adding:

“He didn’t believe what I told him, of course; nobody would.”

“Well?” Purdick broke out raspily. “Are you going to take it lying down from this bunch of money-rotten highbinders? You said last night that you were going after them for blood.”

Larry sat back in his chair at the study table, and the good gray eyes were a bit gloomy.

“I know I did, Purdy, and I meant it—then.”

“But you don’t mean it now?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Larry was silent for a moment.

“I don’t know as I could make you understand, though I guess maybe Dick Maxwell would. I’ve got a horrible temper, Purdy.”

“Yes you have!”—with what was meant to be scathing irony. “You’re just too easy for any common kind of use—chicken-hearted where other people are concerned, I’d call it!”

“Don’t you make any such mistake as that,” Larry said quickly, with the gloom in his eyes changing swiftly to the fighting glow that came into them when he was struggling for that extra yard on the foot-ball field. “I could smash every man in that gang and never turn a hair!”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“Well, partly because I don’t dare to.”

“Afraid?”—incredulously.

“Yes; afraid of myself.”

“Ump!” said little Purdick; “I wear a six-and-three-quarters hat. I guess you’ll have to make it plainer than that for a head the size of mine.”

“I’m just afraid to let go, that’s all. You’ve read in war stories how men, soldiers, who have been decent, sober fellows all their lives get to be brutes and devils when they let the brute-and-devil part of ’em come to the top. I’ve been holding my brute-and-devil down ever since I was a little kid, and I don’t dare to let it get up now. That’s all there is to it, Purdy.”

“So you’ll let this lying story go on spilling itself all over the place, and lose your chance for the ’Varsity, and maybe get a call-down from the faculty, all because you’re afraid you might let go all holds if you went after the fellows who are trying to do you up?”

“It’s as true as if you were reading it out of a book,” said Larry, and with that he turned back to his drawing-board, and Purdick went to bed.

To a man up a tree, that might have seemed to be the end of it, so far as Larry’s reinstatement on the team or his vindication on the campus was concerned. But little Purdick was of the tribe of those who stick and hang. He was pleased to believe that he owed Larry the biggest debt that one fellow could possibly owe another, and he didn’t propose to see his benefactor’s record smashed by any such vengeful plot as—he made no doubt—the Underhill conspirators had concocted and carried out. If Larry wouldn’t fight for himself, then he, Charles Purdick, would fight for him—and to the last ditch.

But just how to go about it, with Larry unwilling to say or do anything in his own defense, was a problem. Purdick waited for a day or two, hoping that Dick Maxwell would turn up; and on the third day after Larry had been dropped from the team, Dick did turn up.

“Where’s Larry?” he ripped out, bursting into the big room just as Purdick was settling down for the evening grind on his Math.

“He’s gone out somewhere,” said Purdick.

Dick flung himself into a chair.

“That miserable, low-down lie that’s going ’round about him!” he boiled over. “Did you know he’d been dropped from the team?”

Purdick nodded. “That was three days ago. I’ve been hoping you’d come over.”

“Conspiracy of silence!” Dick fumed. “No one of the fellows in the house wanted to be the first to tell me, and I haven’t been on the field since last Saturday. What’s Larry doing about it?”

“Nothing.”

“But, Great Moses, something’s got to be done!”

Purdick shook his head.

“Larry won’t do anything, and it’s just about breaking his heart. I’ve tried to buck him up and get him to make a fight and show the Underhill bunch up for what it is, but he won’t do it; says he’s got such a bad temper that there won’t be any end to it if he lets himself go.”

“Yes; he and his temper!” Dick snorted. Then: “It was a put-up job, of course?”

“Not the slightest doubt of it, in my mind. You know what they told him over there at ‘Pat’s Place’—that you’d gone off the hooks and were needing somebody to take you home. Larry fell for it, and then they managed to get him into one of the little card-rooms that had probably been ‘fixed’ for him—alcohol spilled around on the floor. That got him half sick to begin with, and then, when he asked for a drink of water, they doped him.”

“Huh!” said Dick. “So that’s the straight of it, is it? Naturally, I hadn’t heard that part of it. It was after that that Markley and Dugger found him, I suppose?”

“Yes. That part of it is probably true. They found him asleep and helped carry him out to the old cow barn. But it sticks in my craw that they didn’t need to have anybody tell them where to find him.”

“Of course they didn’t. That was part of the plot. And you say Larry won’t try to do anything to clear himself?”

“No.”

“Then it’s up to us,” said Dick promptly. “You owe him something, Purdy, and so do I. We’ll get together on this thing and show that money-rotten bunch up for what it really is.”

Purdick’s eyes narrowed.

“Your father is a rich man, too, isn’t he?” he thrust in quietly.

“What of that?”

“N-nothing; only I thought maybe you might want to stay on your own side of the fence.”

“Now, see here, Purdy; let’s fight this thing out once for all. You’ve got the same idea that Larry brought here with him at first—about the classes and the masses, and all that. I don’t know where you’ve been living all your life, but it certainly couldn’t have been in the America that I know the most about. You come out West with us next summer and we’ll show you the real America; a place where people—or most of ’em, anyway—will take you for what you are, and not for what you’ve got in the bank. It’s only in the crowded places that you soak up that ‘class’ stuff.”

Purdick looked away.

“I’d like to believe you, Maxwell; honestly, I would,” he said. “And you’re right about one thing. I’ve lived in cities—factory cities—all my life. But to get back to Larry: this thing is fairly killing him by inches. He doesn’t say anything to me, but I know. When he’s here in the room he just grinds and grinds; crawls back into his shell and pulls the hole in after him. And the minute he’s got his work up, he pulls his cap over his face and digs out. Sometimes he doesn’t came back until one or two o’clock in the morning.”

“I know,” said Dick; “takes to the woods. That’s what he used to do in the old days when anything went crossways with him. I know what he’s doing; he’s fighting that temper he told you about. He isn’t afraid of anybody but himself. I brayed about that temper thing when you spoke of it a minute ago, but he’s got it, all right. If he ever turned loose on Undy, he’d kill him. I know, because I’ve seen him fighting mad one or two times when he was just a kid in knee breeches.”

Purdick shoved his books aside.

“There’s no time like the present, Maxie. If we’re going to try to straighten this mess up for Larry, let’s go to it.”

“I’m with you,” said Dick, getting upon his feet quickly. “Only I haven’t any more idea than the man in the moon where to begin.”

“Perhaps I can help out a little on that end of it,” said Purdick, with a sort of crooked smile, adding: “I’m about ten years older than you are, Maxie, in some things.” And then he got his coat and cap and they went out together.

Most naturally, when they were in the street, Dick thought Purdick would head for one of the houses across the campus where the various members of the faculty lived. The only possible thing to do, as he saw it, was to get some one of the professors interested and so start a faculty investigation. But Purdick seemed to have a plan of his own, for when they reached the cross-street corner, he turned short and led the way toward the bridge and the town.

There was no pause made until they reached “Pat’s Place,” and none there, save that Purdick glanced up at the windows in the second story as if to see whether they were lighted or dark. Following the upward glance, Dick saw that there was a light in an upper room, and the next thing he knew he was climbing a narrow stair at Purdick’s heels. At a door near the stair-head, Purdick rapped, and a mumbling voice said thickly: “Come in, then!”

What Dick saw when the door opened under Purdick’s hand was a rather gaudily furnished room with a thick-piled carpet on the floor which looked as if it were rarely swept. There was a desk in the middle of the room, and in the pivot-chair belonging to it sat a man with a round, fat face, little pig-like black eyes, black mustaches curled at the ends, and shiny black hair plastered in a barber’s curl on his forehead. To keep up the color scheme the man had a black cigar clamped between his teeth, and on his feet, which were cocked up on the desk, were shoes which looked as if they had just escaped from the polishing attack of a bootblack.

Dick didn’t know the man from Adam, but he read the papers often enough to be able to guess at once that the upper room was the private—and unofficial—office of the most notorious of the little city’s board of aldermen, Mr. Patrick Clanahan.

“Little college lads, eh?” grunted the man in the chair, as they filed in and stood before him. “What’d ye be wantin’ o’ me at this time o’ night?”

Dick couldn’t have told to save his life, but little Purdick seemed to labor under no handicap whatever.

“It’s about your saloon down-stairs, Mr. Clanahan,” he said, looking the fat-faced man squarely in the eyes. “Last Monday night one of our fellows was taken in there and drugged. We want to know who hired your people to do it.”

“Lord love us!” chuckled the black-haired boss. “Would ye listen to the nerve av the little cockerel? ‘We want to know who hired your people to do it,’ says he!”

“That’s it,” said Purdick coolly. “We know they were hired, and we want to know who paid them for it.”

The fat alderman took his feet down from the desk and the little pig-like eyes snapped viciously.

“Ye little fool!” he bit out, “d’ye think f’r wan minute ye can run a bluff the like o’ that on Pat Clanahan? Get out o’ here, the both av yez, before I’d be t’rowin’ yez out!”

But little Purdick stood his ground.

“You’ll find that it isn’t a bluff. We don’t care anything about your people down-stairs, though it might make trouble if it was known that your place is one where a fellow could have knockout drops given to him in a glass of water. What we want to know—what we’re going to find out—is who bribed them to do it, Mr. Clanahan.”

It was just here that the real explosion came. Bounding to his feet and making a move as if he would come around the desk to throw them out, the fat-faced ward boss blew up.

“There’s the dure!” he shouted, pointing to it with a pudgy finger. “Shut it whin ye go out! ’Tis babes in ar-rms yez are to be comin’ here and talkin’ knockout drops to Patsy Clanahan! I’d have yez to know——”

Little Purdick led the way out as he had led it in, carefully closing the door upon the remainder of the explosion. On the sidewalk Dick drew a long breath.

“You sure had your nerve along with you, Purdy, just as he said,” he gasped. “Did you think you could do anything with a man like that?”

“I gave him his chance,” was the cool-voiced rejoinder. “You remember the story in the old spelling-book, about the farmer who caught the apple thieves up in his trees and threw clods at them first before he began to throw stones. I was just throwing a little clod or two; but now we’ll go and see if we can’t rustle up a few stones.”

The next place Purdick headed for was the Micrometer office, on the top floor of the Chronicle Building. Luckily, they found Havercamp there, and he was alone in the little editorial den of the college daily.

“Hello, you near-Soffies!” he grinned as they entered. “What are you doing out at this time o’ night?”

“Time o’ night’s time o’ the early evening,” said Purdick. Then: “It’s about Larry Donovan. Of course, you’ve heard the story?”

Havercamp’s grin faded.

“I never was so knocked out in my life. He was here with me up to eleven o’clock that night, and I remember when he left he said he had to go home and work on some test stuff that was still waiting.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“Not a sign of him. He’s chucked the reporting job, along with everything else. Hacked about being dropped from the team, I suppose.”

“Listen, Havercamp,” said Purdick; and he briefed the real facts in the scandal case for the managing editor in true newsman fashion.

“Oho!” said Havercamp; “so that’s it, is it?—tolled in with a smooth lie and then drugged. What have you done about it?”

Again, and in the same crisp speech, Purdick told of their late call upon Mr. Patrick Clanahan.

“Of course, you knew that wouldn’t get you anywhere,” said Havercamp. “You have to pull a gun on Pat when you want to hold him up. Wait a minute.”

He was gone possibly ten minutes instead of one, but when he came back his eyes were snapping.

“Just been having a little heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Bolinger, of the Chronicle,” he explained. “The Chronicle will back us if we want to make it a fight to a finish. Let’s go.”

Again Dick followed blindly, though this time it was Havercamp who was leading the way. Still, he wasn’t very greatly surprised to find that the way led back to the garishly furnished room over “Pat’s Place.” At the stair-head landing Havercamp didn’t knock; he opened the door and walked in. As when Dick and Purdick had presented themselves, the ward boss had his feet on the desk, and he was just lighting another of the midnight-black cigars.

Havercamp was even more brittle than Purdick had been.

“You know who I am, Mr. Clanahan,” he began, “and what we’ve come for. I’m only going to add one thing to what my friend Purdick here has already said to you. I have Mr. Bolinger’s authority for saying that the Chronicle will print all the facts in Donovan’s case if you don’t come across and help us get the man or men higher up.”

Dickie Maxwell, having had less than no experience in such matters, expected another explosion. But it did not come. Instead, the ward boss merely chuckled good-naturedly and tendered Havercamp one of the black cigars—which Havercamp didn’t take.

“I’m expectin’ ’twas on’y a rough bit av a joke on the young felly, Misther Havercamp,” he said. “You little college b’ys are always puttin’ thim up on wan another.”

“Call it whatever you like,” cut in Havercamp brusquely. “We want the man who did the job, with an order to him to tell us who put him up to it. We’ll do the rest.”

The boss pressed the ball of a fat thumb on a bell-push, and in a minute or two the stubble-bearded fellow who had led Larry to his undoing came in.

“’Tis the little joke ye played on wan o’ the college lads last Monday night, Jerky,” Clanahan explained to his henchman. “’Tis a peck av throuble ye stirred up—widout m’anin’ to. Ye’ll be going wid Misther Havercamp and these lads and doin’ what they want ye to do to take th’ kinks out av it.”

The man nodded as if the order were all in the day’s work, and with Havercamp for their leader the four tramped out and down the narrow stair. In the street Havercamp quickly called an auto hack, and in grim silence a swift run was made to the college suburb. It ended in front of the house assigned to Dr. Shotliffe, Dean of the Mechanical School, and the four passengers got out and ascended the steps. As he rang the door-bell, Havercamp gave the Clanahan henchman a final word.

“You’ve got your orders; all we ask of you is that you tell the straight truth, no matter whom it hits. If you do that, there won’t be any afterclap—for you.”

What took place in the Dean’s study after the four had been admitted does not form any part of the Old Sheddon records. But two days later a faculty meeting was called and four members of the Freshman class, Bryant Underhill, Alexander Crawford, John Dugger and Albert Markley were summarily dropped from the Registrar’s list of undergraduates, and Old Sheddon knew them no more.

And on the same day Larry Donovan—a Larry once more light-hearted and able to look the world and all the people in it squarely in the eye—took his old place at right half on the ’Varsity practice field.