CHAPTER XIII
SOME MYSTERY
Frank gulped down his astonishment. Then he sat still without a rustle. He was afraid that Bob might snore, wake up talking, and had an idea to creep closer to his chum, wake him up softly, and warn him to remain perfectly quiet.
Before Frank could act, however, there came a sudden interruption to the conversation between the men below, Jem and Dan. There was a thundering knock at the door.
"It's the gov at last!" shouted Jem, jumping to his feet.
"No one else!" echoed Dan.
Jem opened the door and a man staggered in. His slouch hat, dripping wet, was pulled down over his face. He was completely enveloped in a great rain blanket. The hole in its center fitted about his neck and covered him nearly to the feet, even to his arms. These held something under the cloak, for its bulging surface showed that he was carrying something.
"Help me out of this," growled the newcomer, "Good I borrowed this blanket in a convenient barn, or everything would have been soaked."
"Borrowed!" guffawed Jem.
"Haw! haw!" roared Dan, as if it was a great joke. "There you are, mate."
If Frank had been surprised and startled at the secret concerning Samuel Mace's missing diamond bracelet, he was dumfounded at the face of the newcomer.
"Why," he breathed in wonderment, "it's the man I drove off from bothering that traveling scissors grinding boy at Tipton, Ned Foreman. Yes, this is the man the boy called Tim Brady, and—whew!"
Frank's thoughts seemed to come as swift as lightning. He had marveled at the strange series of events that had given him a clue as to the persons who had stolen the diamond bracelet that had got him into so much trouble. Now that the tramp, Brady, had appeared on the scene, Frank saw how it all could have happened, for Brady was in Tipton the day the diamond bracelet was stolen.
The only thing that mystified Frank was why these people should be at Bellwood, so far away from Tipton. There was scarcely a chance in a thousand that they could have come accidentally.
When the two men had pulled the blanket from Brady, he disclosed two packages in his hand, one resembling a hat box. He placed them on the floor.
"Got the togs there?" inquired Jem.
"Yes," nodded Brady. "I'm famished; give me something to eat."
Frank did not stir. He felt that it was important that he should remain where he was. These men knew about Samuel Mace's missing bracelet. That was one point of interest. They were up to something now; that was another.
Frank listened to every word they said, but they did not just then again refer to the bracelet nor discuss their plans. They talked generally of how easy the farmers they had met gave away meals. They discussed various stores and houses that might be robbed readily. Frank realized that they were very bad men.
Finally, having finished his meal, Brady got up from the box he had been seated on. He went over to the bundles he had brought, undoing one of them. He took out a long black dress coat. This he tried on. It buttoned up to his neck closely, like some clerical garb.
He opened the other box and took out a silk hat. As he put this on his head he straightened up and drew his face down in mock seriousness.
"My friends," he sniffled, "you see in me a penitent and reformed man."
"Hold me!" yelled Jem, rolling around on the straw in a paroxysm of laughter.
"Will it do?" smirked Brady. "Ter-rewly, my friends, I seek only now to make amends for my wicked, misspent life—a—ah!"
"Wow! Oh, you actor! It's enough to make a cow laugh!"
"Will it work?"
"Work!" chuckled the man Jem. "Why, you'd win over the president of the college himself.
Bang!
"What was that?" demanded Brady sharply.
Frank was in dismay. In his sleep Bob Upton had groaned, then moved. Probably, in some nightmare, dreaming he was back among his old tyrant masters on the farm, he had kicked out his foot, landing heavily on the floor of the loft.
"Oh, I guess it was the wind rattling some loose timber about the old ruin of a place," observed Jem.
Frank crept cautiously to the side of his sleeping comrade.
Bob was muttering restlessly in his sleep, and Frank feared another outbreak. He placed his hand over Bob's mouth.
"Wake up—quietly, now—there is somebody below," he whispered.
"What's the row?" droned Bob.
"S—st! Follow me. Get out of this. It's stopped raining."
Frank managed to get himself and his friend out of the place without disturbing the three men in the hut or apprising them of their presence. The rain had nearly stopped. Bob rubbed his eyes sleepily.
"Some tramps came into the cabin yonder after you went to sleep," explained Frank. "They are hard characters, and it is best to steer clear of them."
It took the two boys an hour to find their way to Bellwood School. Bob was tired out and sleepy, and Frank was by no means in a mood for chatting. He was absorbed in thinking out his strange discoveries of the night.
"I've got a clue to that diamond bracelet of Mace's," he reflected. "Mace don't deserve any favors from me after the outrageous way he's acted, but if I can do anything toward getting it back for him, all right. I wonder, though, what it means—that man, Brady, being here, and what trick he is up to with the high hat and the dress coat? His friend spoke of the president of the college and some 'kid.' Are they up to some thieving trick? If so, I want to be alert to balk them."
When the two boys reached the academy, they had some difficulty in locating a loose window, and they had to use caution in getting to their room. The bed felt so good after the rough experiences of the night that Frank soon joined his snoring companion in the land of dreams, leaving action as to the crowd at the cabin for the morrow.
They met their friendly persecutors of the evening before good-naturedly at breakfast. It was easy for Frank to see that Ritchie and his associates were ready to accept them as gritty comrades who could take a joke as a matter of course.
"You've paid your initiation fee in pluck and endurance, Jordan," said Mark Prescott, the able lieutenant of Dean Ritchie in his rounds of mischief. "You and Upton can consider yourselves full-fledged members of the Twilight Club."
"Good!" laughed Frank as he started for the campus. Before he was out of the building, however, Frank got thinking of his adventures of the evening before. And instead of immediately joining his fellows he strolled around to the side of the academy.
There was a walk, not much used by the students, leading past the kitchen and laundry quarters of the school. As Frank got nearly to the end of this a baseball whizzed by him and he saw Banbury and a crony named Durkin making for it.
Just at that moment, too, Frank noticed a boy wearing a long apron sitting on a stone step just outside the kitchen door.
He was peeling potatoes, and he was peeling them right, fully engrossed in his labors, as though it were some artistic and agreeable occupation.
"Well! well! well!" irresistibly ejaculated Frank. "If it isn't Ned Foreman!"