by Morgan Scott
CHAPTER VII.
THE ONE WHO LAUGHED LAST.
While they stood paralyzed Rodney Grant suddenly leaped to his feet,still jabbering and laughing wildly, seized the skeleton, tore it fromthe ropes by which it was suspended, and charged them with the grislything in his grasp. Right and left they scattered, terrified beyondwords, some of them actually uttering screams of fear. Their one greatdesire seemed to be to get out of the way and give Grant plenty of room.
Having driven them in this manner, the victim of the joke hurled theskeleton aside, rushed across the open floor of the gymnasium, caughtup a chair and dashed it through a window, carrying away sash andglass. A single step he retreated, and then, with a forward bound and ayell, he followed the chair through the broken window, disappearinginto the darkness outside. The appalled boys heard the sound of runningfeet swiftly die out in the distance.
“Well, we’ve done it!” said Cooper huskily, as he tore off his mask andrevealed a face almost as ghastly as that of the lad who had leapedthrough the window.
“You’re right, Chipper,” agreed Chub Tuttle, also unmasking. “We drovehim plumb daffy. It’s awful!”
“He busted the skeleton,” said Sleuth Piper, gazing ruefully at thebroken thing, which lay on the floor where Grant had flung it. “Theprof will raise the dickens about this.”
“Oh, hang the sus-skeleton!” stuttered Phil Springer. “Think of drivingthat fellow out of his wits! Gee! boys, it’s bad business.”
“Yeou bate it is,” agreed Sile Crane. “We’d orter knowed he wasn’t wellbalanced, for his old aunt has been half crazy all her life.”
Tuttle, his peanuts forgotten, had dropped his mask to the floor andsunk limply on a bench near the lockers, where he sat shivering like around jelly pudding.
“It’s awful,” he muttered over and over—“it’s awful, fellows!”
“I guess we’re in a bad scrape,” said Hunk Rollins, who was posing nolonger as Girty, the renegade.
“It’s awful!” mumbled Tuttle. “If we had ever stopped to think that hecame from a family of loose screwed people we might not have pushedthis thing so far.”
“He’s busted the skeleton,” complained Piper again. “Won’t the prof behopping about that!”
“Busting the old sus-skeleton is nothing compared with driving a chapplumb cuc-crazy,” groaned Springer. “Perhaps he’ll never get his witsback. Maybe they’ll have to send him to a mum-madhouse, and we’ll beresponsible—think of that, boys, we’ll be responsible! I’ll nun-neverget over it.”
“Who proposed this thing, anyhow?” asked Roy Hooker, looking around.“Was it you, Sleuth?”
“Not much I didn’t,” answered Piper instantly. “It was Barker’s scheme.He said Grant was a scarecrow who was even afraid of the prof’s oldskeleton, and suggested that it would be great fun if we could onlyhaze him the way college fellows do.”
“But you got the skeleton. If it hadn’t been for you——”
“Now don’t you try to shoulder all the blame onto me,” cried Piper, interrified resentment, forgetting for the time being his artificialstyle of speech. “You were all in for it, every one of you. I simplyhad some keys by which I could get into the lab, where the skeleton waskept. You’re all as deep in the mud as I am in the mire. Barker isreally the one who engineered this thing.”
“Where is he, anyhaow?” asked Crane, looking around.
“Yes, where is he?” cried the others, realizing for the first time thatthe fellow they had recognized as their leader was missing.
They called to him in vain. The outer door of the gym stood slightlyajar, and, after a time, looking at one another in dismay, theyunderstood that Barker had slipped away.
“Now what do yeou fellers think of that!” rasped Sile Crane. “He’sskedaddled and left us; he’s run away.”
“Well, if that isn’t the tut-trick of a coward, I don’t know what you’dcall it!” exploded Springer.
“He needn’t think he can get out of it that way!” blazed Jack Nelson.
“I’m sick,” moaned Tuttle—“oh, I’m awful sick! What do you s’posethey’ll do to us if we’ve really drove Grant batty? Oh, say! won’t Icatch it at home!”
“We ought to follow him,” said Nelson. “We ought to catch him. Notelling what he will do. Maybe he’ll jump into the lake or the riverand be drowned.”
“I’m going home,” wheezed Hunk Rollins huskily. “Somebody is liable tocome along and spot the whole of us here.” He edged toward the door.
“Yeou’re another quitter, jest like Barker,” roared Crane suddenly.“Yeou pranced around and made a lot of fightin’ talk to Rod Grant arteryeou’d figured it out that he wouldn’t take yeou up, and now yeou’re soallfired sca’t yeou want to skedaddle.”
“Somebody has got to help me take the skeleton back to the academy,”said Piper appealingly. “Don’t skin out and leave me, boys; let’s hangtogether.”
“If we don’t hang together,” muttered Cooper, with a rueful grimace,“we may hang separately.”
Little did they dream that at that very moment they were watched by twopairs of eyes gazing at them through the broken window.
Grant, having made his spectacular getaway, reached the road and ran asfar as the lower corner of the academy yard, where he stopped,breathing a trifle heavily, and leaned upon the fence. In a moment hewas startled by a voice coming from the shadows of a nearby tree.
“What’s the matter?” was the question that reached his ears. “What’sgoing on at the gym to-night?”
He recognized the voice as that of Ben Stone, whose figure he couldperceive in the denser darkness under the tree. For a moment hehesitated; then, with a short laugh, he answered:
“Oh, just a bit of a monkey circus, that’s all. A few of my friendstried to force me into playing the clown, but I sure reckon the laughis on them some. What are you doing here?”
“I knew something was up,” answered Stone, as he came forward, “and,while I didn’t want to butt in, I couldn’t choke down my curiosityentirely. Tell me about it.”
Grant did so briefly and concisely, beginning with his ambuscade by thefake Indians. Although a narrative unadorned and cut short, it wasvivid and interesting enough to absorb the listener.
“All the time,” proceeded Rod, “I was doing my level best to get myhands free, for I allowed I’d sail into that bunch right lively if Icould obtain the use of my paws. I was sure enough jarred some whenthey handed me into the dark room with the old skeleton and the thingrose up on its hind legs and groaned. That made me give an extra twist,and I broke the rope. I knew where I was, for Roger Eliot had shown meall over the gym. I likewise knew the powdered chalk for marking thefield was kept on a shelf in that closet. It didn’t take me long tothink of a plan to turn the laugh on that bunch of merry old roasters.I found the chalk and rubbed it over my face. Then, feeling around, Igot hold of a cake of soap on the washstand and bit off a piece, whichI proceeded to chew up so that I could froth at the mouth in fineshape. All the while I was chanting a funeral dirge a plenty doleful,punctuating it with occasional loud and mirthless ha-ha’s. The gameworked well. They were listening, and I reckon it set them guessing.When I heard the key turning in the lock I proceeded to drop down on myshin bones in front of the skeleton, and I turned off a bit of the madscene from Macbeth. Say, Stone, it knocked ’em stiff. Then when I saw Ihad them going I grabbed the old skeleton and made a dash at the bunch.They fell over one another in their urgent desire to give me ampleroom. I didn’t propose to let them get their hooks on me again, so Idropped old phosphorus bones, grabbed a chair, smashed a window, jumpedthrough and touched the elevated spots outside. I opine the merryjesters left behind are a plenty disturbed about now, and——”
“’Sh!” hissed Ben suddenly, grasping Grant’s arm. “Here comes somebody.”
They hastily retreated into the darkness beneath the tree, from whichshelter they saw a fellow pass at a run.
“One of my late entertainers on the way to his downy couch,” whisperedRod, smothering a chuckle of satisfaction. “I trust his slumbersto-night may not be disturbed by unpleasant dreams.”
“I believe it was Barker,” murmured Stone;
“Oh, Barker!” said Grant, with a snap of his jaws. “He was sort of ahigh cockalorum with the gang. I judge he put up the job on me. And nowhe’s quit his partners in crime and scooted. I sized him up for thatkind of a piker. Let’s slide down to the gym and see how the gang istaking it.”
And so it happened that, standing outside the shattered window, theywere more or less highly entertained by the talk of the frightened boyswithin the gymnasium. Also, as those lads had removed their masks, allsave Barker, who had deserted, were seen and recognized beyond anyquestion or doubt. After it had been arranged that Piper and Craneshould return the broken skeleton to the academy laboratory and theothers were preparing to scatter quietly to their various homes, Rodand Ben decided it was time for them to depart.
In Stone’s room at Mrs. Jones’ home Grant washed the powdered chalkfrom his face, combed his hair and made his appearance as passable aspossible.
“Aunt Priscilla will sure be a plenty worried by this time,” he said,“and I don’t want to frighten her into fits by showing up looking likea battered specimen from a railroad wreck. If you’ll loan me a coat,I’ll be much obliged. I can get mine to-morrow.”
Wearing Ben’s best coat, the young Texan finally said good night anddeparted, feeling well satisfied with himself and the manner in whichhe had turned the joke on his hazers.
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