  Colonel Morrell was interested when Don told him what Terry had learned. He had never known that young Gates had gone to Dimsdale. “It seems that a lot is coming out concerning that man all at once,” the genial headmaster remarked, running his hand through his gray hair. “Unfortunately, it does not happen to be of the best, either. I think I will write to the headmaster of Dimsdale and confirm that, because we don’t want to pin anything on Gates if it doesn’t belong there.” “No,” admitted Don. “He has a bad enough name now, and there is no use in adding to it.” After the big game the school settled down to a few quiet days of normal routine. Now that the old and bitter score had been settled the cadets felt satisfied and they found that outsiders had a deeper respect for them. The lofty airs of Dimsdale students had quite vanished and the two schools looked forward to playing annual games. The colonel informed Don that Terry’s information was correct. “Professor Strong, the headmaster of Dimsdale, writes to say that Gates was a pupil there some years ago and that he was dismissed for dishonesty,” the colonel said. “It appears very much as though his failings run along the one line.” On the following Wednesday after the big game a startling thing happened. A group of the cadets were talking around the door of the classroom when a cadet from Clinton Hall joined them. It was early in the day and none of the boys from Locke had been outside yet. “What’s the excitement, Apgar?” asked Jim noting the flushed face of the cadet. “Didn’t you fellows hear what happened last night?” the cadet cried. “The eagles are gone!” “What? The eagles gone?” a dozen voices cried out. “Sure, sawed right off at the base. Some of the fellows are out there looking at them now.” Instantly there was a wild rush for the front door of Locke Hall. Interest and excitement ran high. The eagles referred to were two huge ornaments placed on the wide steps leading up to the main hall, and they had been donated to the school by an army officer who had learned his first military tactics at Woodcrest. They were made of hollow brass, stood four and one half feet high, and had looked bravely out across the campus for a number of years, a very real part of the makeup of the cadet school. They had always seemed immovable, and to be told that they had been carted off was a distinct shock to the young soldiers, to whom they were a source of intense pride. Don, Jim and Terry reached the front steps as soon as any of the others and took in everything at a glance. The parapet of the steps looked strangely bare without the great brass birds, and the cadets hurried to look at the spot where they had stood. Sure enough, they had been sawed off close to the stone, and only an iron stem with some flakes of fillings remained to show where they had been. “Now, who in the world could have done that?” gasped Hudson, looking about him in a dazed way. “Whoever did it must have been awfully careful about it,” ventured Berry. “It was done in the night and no one heard it, apparently.” “Somebody had better hunt up the colonel,” suggested a cadet, and in a few minutes the headmaster was out on the steps, his face grave and thoughtful. They kept a respectful silence while the colonel looked on the stone rampart and examined the rough stumps of iron upon which the eagles had been mounted. He then looked over the assembled cadets. “None of you gentlemen heard any sound of sawing during the night, did you?” he questioned. None of the cadets had heard anything. By this time almost the entire corps had assembled. Barnes reminded the colonel that the previous night had been a very dark one. “True,” nodded the colonel. “It looked like a storm and I remember that there was no moon and no stars. Well, this is a pretty serious business, boys.” “It’s a pretty small kind of a trick,” growled Hudson. “We’ll have to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible,” the colonel went on. “No clues as yet, eh?” “Here is one!” cried Lieutenant Thompson, suddenly straightening up. He had bent down, looking around the ground just beyond the steps. They all looked curiously, to see that he held a small red book in his hand. The colonel took it and looked it over, and a gasp went up from those nearest him. “A Dimsdale year book, eh?” boomed the colonel. It was indeed a small instruction book with the words “Dimsdale School” printed across the cover. A murmur of understanding went up from the students. “A little revenge for the football defeat,” cried Vench, voicing the sentiment of all of them. “It looks very much like it,” nodded the colonel, pocketing the book. “A very unfortunate way to feel, to put it mildly. I’m glad you found that book, Thompson, though I’m sorry it had to be just the way it looks.” Before anything more could be said the class bell rang out and the cadets started for their classes, talking it over between them. Vigorous resentment was felt against the rival school. “Too bad those fellows have to be such poor sports,” growled Terry, as a group of the third class men made their way down the hall. “They can’t seem to take defeat graciously or even without crying about it,” Don said, regretfully. “Did you fellows see the date on that rule book?” Jim asked. “No, what was the date?” Vench asked. “I was near enough to see it plainly. It had 1938 on it. Isn’t that a pretty old rule book for a Dimsdale student to be carrying?” Jim asked. “It does seem odd, if you look at it that way,” Don assented. “You are sure it was a 1938 book?” “Oh, yes. I saw it at close range.” The school buzzed with the news all day and knots of cadets talked it over from every angle. The colonel was unusually silent and in the late afternoon he sent three seniors as a committee to Dimsdale to protest and lay the matter before the school authorities there. When they came back there was a session with the colonel and then more and eager talk around the building. Hudson had been on the committee and he entertained a big group in his room just before study period. The cadets stood around or sat on his bed and drank in his words. “The headmaster there was pretty well put out about it all,” the senior captain told his audience. “He looked through the book and was unable to identify it as the property of any of the students. Did you guys know that the book was an old 1938 one?” Some of them knew it. Hudson went on: “Professor Strong said that to his knowledge there is not a 1938 instruction book in the school, and he doesn’t know of a single student who has a book as old as that. He expressed his regret that such a thing happened, but he does not believe for a minute that Dimsdale fellows did it. The only thing that makes it look bad is the fact that they lost that game last Saturday and of course it looks exactly as though they were out for revenge and took it out on our eagles. The student council over there is going to take up the matter and push it hard, because it looks bad for the whole school.” “I hope they didn’t have anything to do with it,” Berry declared promptly. “I hope the little book was just a plant, because I hate to think those fellows are such downright poor sports. But, as you say, it looks bad in the face of the past game.” “We’ll all have to do a little detective work from now on,” Barnes suggested. “Let’s see if we can’t find someone who met suspicious characters around here on that night, or something that will give us a clue.” “It might be a good stunt to go over to Dimsdale and rummage around in their boathouse or the sheds back of the school,” a senior said, but the majority were against that. “Not right now,” Hudson declared. “That would be the surest way to start trouble. Let’s wait until something more definite than that little book points to Dimsdale as the guilty party. We all think somebody from that school took the eagles, but until we have positive proof we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt.” “But isn’t it funny that no one heard them cut the eagles off?” asked Vench. “I wouldn’t say so,” Thompson replied. “You see, they were cemented into the stone by a single rod. Now, it was no trouble at all to slip a thin metal saw in between the base of the eagles and the stone and saw through. An iron saw doesn’t make much noise and it probably didn’t take much time. Whoever did it knew just how to go about it.” There the matter rested for the time being, but the cadets continued to wonder and speculate. The student council of the rival school met and presented a resolution that they believed the students of Dimsdale to be not guilty in the matter of the theft of the brass eagles. Professor Strong talked with the colonel by telephone and informed him that he could not find a 1938 rule book in the institution nor could he find a single student who had a book as old as that. Further check, which was fairly accurate, revealed the fact that every Dimsdale boy had been in his room on the night of the mysterious affair, though there was nothing to show that some few students might not have sneaked from the building after lights were out. All these facts made some impression on the more thoughtful cadets, but it was not enough to make them feel altogether sure that the rivals had no hand in the affair. “Too bad about it all,” sighed Don. “Just when the relations between the schools were being mended so nicely! But we’ve simply got to find those eagles.” “Yes,” Terry agreed. “No one has found out a thing, as yet. Apparently no one saw any suspicious characters around on that night and nothing has been learned down in the town. I’m afraid we’ll have to look further afield for them.” On the following day Jim showed a dispatch from the weekly town paper to some of the cadets. Under an editorial heading, entitled “The Revival of Ancient Rowdyism,” there followed a long article about the notoriously poor sportsmanship of Dimsdale. “See who the author is?” Jim asked as they pored over the dispatch. “The editor, of course,” said Douglas. “No,” Jim denied. “Look at this passage.” He read it to them all. “‘A prominent citizen of this town, one of the newest and most influential of our local citizens, tells us that he is not in the least bit surprised at the turn things have taken. This citizen, formerly a trustee at Woodcrest, has stood out for years past as unalterably opposed to the resumption of relations between the two schools, having had occasion years ago to witness more than once the regrettable lack of honor and sportsmanship on the part of Dimsdale students. It is altogether too bad that young men, growing up in institutions of this kind, where they are fitting themselves to take an active part in the affairs of life, should have so little respect for the principles of decency and honor.’” “Now, who wrote that?” Jim challenged. “The editor,” said Don. “But Melvin Gates stood at his elbow when he did it.” “I can’t understand it,” Vench said. “He certainly seems determined to keep alive bad feelings between the schools.” “All in all, that editorial is quite unfair to Dimsdale,” Hudson declared. “Maybe a few fellows from that school did saw off the eagles, but there was no occasion to slam the whole school that way.” When Don, Jim and Terry were alone in their room Don said, “Melvin Gates is taking an awful chance by writing, or being party to the writing of, such a piece as that. What is to hinder someone from coming out and telling the truth about his son?” “Perhaps he figures that if they did, Woodcrest people would naturally take his part against Dimsdale. I wonder if you fellows are getting the same idea that I am?” Jim advanced. “Perhaps we are,” Terry replied, slowly. “Are you beginning to think that Gates had the eagles stolen to keep alive bad feeling and to make us think he was right all along?” “That is just what I think!” said Jim. “Just a sort of a petty revenge. Now all we have to do is to prove it!” |
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