CHAPTER XVI
THE HONOR SYSTEM
“Going back to the office, Mack, to write this up?” Lefty asked as hegot into the car.
The _Journal_ men had no way of knowing that the names of the twomissing Boyville School boys had meant anything to Joan and Chub, on theback seat. Joan had gasped when she heard the names and then stared outinto the darkness, speechless for a moment.
“No, Lefty, please wait!” She reached over and touched his sleeve.“I—we—we’ve just got to go in, Chub and I. We know that boy, Alex White,and he’s _nice_, isn’t he, Chub? And I—I’m just sure there’s a mistake.”
Mack slammed the door. “Little Mary Mix-up to the rescue.”
But Chub was her champion. “Don’t mind the old crab,” he whispered.“It’s a big story, and he’ll be glad enough to gobble it up, after wedig it up.” Aloud, he said, “That kid Alex wasn’t the kind that wouldbreak parole, and I think, too, that there’s something rotten inDenmark. You see, we know more about this than you three do. We heardthat Charley boy threaten to run away, and Alex was ready to fight him.”
“I’m afraid Alex got the worst of it—” began Joan.
“Say, let’s leave the kids here in case anything breaks,” burst outLefty, “and let us drive over the route again, for traces of the missingboys.”
“Oh, what’s the use?” yawned Mack. “Let’s go home and get some sleep. Wecan read all about the fire in _The Morning Star_.”
Chub was already out of the car, holding the door open for Joan. Inside,in the bright yellow light of the big hall of the main building, theystood still, a bit abashed now that they were there, especially with noplans as to what they should do.
Two long lines of boys stretched along the great, bare room, shufflinguneasily in the “sneaker” shoes they wore. Mr. Link was facing them, alist of names in his hands and his glasses on the end of his nose. “Now,boys, hold your places, and we’ll have the roll call over again to makesure. Abbott!”
“Here!” answered one of the boys, in a droning voice.
“Anderson!”
“Here!” came the same singsong answer as the roll call went on. That waswhat the low drone had been that they had heard before. On and on hummedthe voice of the principal and the boys responding.
Then, “Falls!”
Silence.
“Falls!” The principal looked up and glanced down the long lines as herepeated the word. He hesitated a brief half second and then went on tothe next name.
Chub and Joan stood, scarcely breathing, waiting for Mr. Link to callAlex’ name. Perhaps he hadn’t heard it before. Perhaps he was late informing in line. Perhaps he was there now, after all.
“White!” called the principal in a loud voice.
There was no answer.
“White!” This time there was a noticeable annoyance in his voice.
Still, no answer. Again, the principal glanced down the lines, over hisglasses, and then went on with the calling of the roll.
Oh, why didn’t Tim and the others hurry? Joan pressed her face againstthe glass of the door where they were standing, and looked out. The pathto the stone gates was deserted. Everything looked so lonesome out herein the country, at night like this. The stars blinked sleepily andpeacefully, just as though they had not looked down upon the burning ofthe West library, and were now looking down on perhaps two runaway boysscuttling over the lonely, moonlit roads. No, Joan was confident thatAlex had not deserted, had not broken the honor system. It meant toomuch to him, she was sure. Something must have happened to keep him fromreporting at the school with the rest of the boys. Something terrible.What?
“Do any of you know anything about these two who are missing?” asked theprincipal, sharply.
A boy at the end of the row volunteered. “They was both with us till wegot to the old hospital. Charley thought up going home across the lots’cause it was quicker, and Alex said all right. They marched us alongahead of them, then, and we just kept on marching, like they told usto.”
“Plain case of parole breaking,” Mr. Link said to his weary-lookingclerk. “I told you, Bassett, that it would never do to send them alone.I knew that honor system wouldn’t work.” His mouth became a hard, thinline. “This’ll give us a black eye with the state, I’m afraid. I’m notsurprised at Charley Falls, but I thought that White boy had good stuffin him. Might have known he was too innocent looking. He was the one whoadvocated the honor system, and I fell for it.”
“But why didn’t they run off on the way _to_ the fire, if they hadplanned to desert all along?” interpolated the clerk.
“No boy could resist the thrill of helping at a real fire,” replied theprincipal.
“Well, be a little lenient,” suggested Mr. Bassett. “The boys may bedelayed. Perhaps they went back to help with the fire, or something.Give them until ten o’clock to report.”
The principal stroked his rough chin. “Well, all right. That’ll do fornow, boys. Go to your dormitories, but don’t go to bed. We’ll haveanother fire drill in half an hour.”
The boys filed out, awed and quiet.
Half an hour! It wasn’t long, and they had to find Alex. Perhaps, afterall, he had been tempted to go with Charley. But Joan doubted that. Shefelt sure Alex had been hurt by that awful Charley, or he would havebeen here to answer to the roll call.
“Come on, Chub.” She pushed against the door, and they went out. Theprincipal had not even noticed them standing there. “Let’s do a bit ofsleuthing on our own.”
Lefty’s car clattered up while they were on the steps. “Come on, kids.No use hanging around any longer,” Mack said. “Those boys have probablygot to the railroad by now and have hopped the night freight to Chicago.We’ve about as much chance of finding them as a needle in the well-knownhaystack. We rode all around by that hospital building, and couldn’tfind a sign of them.”
When Joan and Chub said they wanted to hunt themselves, Tim surprisinglytook their side. “Why not let the kids try? Maybe they’ll findsomething.”
On the main road, good-natured Lefty stopped the car when they saw thedark, unused hospital building, off by itself in the empty fields, nowflooded with patches of moonlight.
“I wish we had a notebook, so we could be real detectives,” mused Joan,as she and Chub started across the dew-wet grass. The others had stayedin the car. “The Dummy mystery is nothing compared to this.”
Chub examined the ground near the clump of bushes by the hospital steps.The branches were brushed back as if a group of boys had pressed againstthem. There were bits of grass uprooted, as though with the toe or heelof a boy’s shoe, unmistakable signs of a struggle. Joan found a shred oftorn khaki on the prickly bush.
“They had a battle all right, those two,” decided Chub. “But Charleycouldn’t have carried a big kid like Alex very far. He must have _made_Alex go with him.”
It did seem so. For Alex wasn’t anywhere around. They peeped behindbushes, and walked around the hospital without finding anything. As theystarted to the car, they both stood still. A low moan drifted out fromsomewhere. They both heard it.
“Some sick guy,” guessed Chub.
“No. They haven’t used this hospital for a long time,” Joan said.
“Well, there’s some one in there, now,” insisted the other. “But maybeit’s only an animal, caught in a trap. We might hunt, anyway.”
Around the building they went, but all the doors were securely lockedand all the windows, too. Chub climbed up to examine a window higher upthan the rest, through which they hoped to gain entrance. “Locked!” hesaid, with his jaws set like a real detective. How serious he looked inthe moonlight, almost nice-looking, too, for his freckles didn’t show.
He jumped to the ground with a soft thud. “I wish the feller’d moanagain, so we could tell where he is.”
Then, it did come again. It sounded in a different place. Not in thehouse at all, as it had the first time, but—_underneath the ground_!
“Spooks!” C
hub’s plump face was sober. “I heard it sort of muffled, fromright over there, underneath the earth.”
“So did I,” affirmed the girl. “But it’d be no use telling theJournalites. They’d only laugh, and call us sentimental. Besides, Idon’t see how it _could_ come from the ground.”
“Neither do I.” Chub shook his head. “Unless it’s an animal or—maybe afeller buried alive.”
Joan shuddered. “But we must get into the house, some way. I think it’ssome one awful sick, and they _must_ be in the house.”
“We’ll have to break the lock. It may even be Alex in there. But whoeverit is, they need help.”
“I suppose we just imagined that it came from the ground,” said Joan.“Perhaps the echo sounded along under ground, some way.” It didn’t seempossible, but this had been such a stirring, mysterious sort of nightthat anything at all might happen.
“Um.” Chub was banging away at the lock on the back door. It wasn’treally locked after all, just held fast with a stout stick, that had tobe knocked out of place. Thump, thump sounded over the clear, night air.There, the door swung open, emitting a gust of damp, unused air. It tooknerve to go through the empty place, with only the moonlight to guidethem—especially a place that had once housed ill people. There stillhung an unearthly, hospital smell about it. Joan kept close to Chub, whostalked about each room, calling, “Any one here?” in a voice that didnot quaver. There was never any reply, and finally they had been inevery room.
“No use,” decided the boy, and they started toward the back door. Thenit came again, the low moan, only it sounded farther away than ever now,and certainly seemed to come from underneath the ground. “The cellar!”Chub led the way down the dark, narrow stairs, feeling for each step.But the place was empty.
“Why, the subway tunnel!” Joan remembered. “I never thought of it untilnow.” Then she explained, “It’s connected with the main building.”
“But can we find the opening?”
They began to feel around the wall of the room they were in. It was asmall cellar, and had apparently at one time been used as a kitchen orlaboratory. By an old sunken sink, which gleamed in the dimness like atooth in a darky’s mouth, a part of the wall moved under their pressureand swung inward, into an opening.
“Hot dog!” cried the boy. “All the earmarks of a real detective story.Sliding panels and everything.”
“It doesn’t slide, and it isn’t a panel,” objected Joan, as she watchedhim step into the darkness of the aperture. “Oh, dear, I don’t knowwhether to go or not. If we only had a flashlight or even matches. Ifeel like Alice in Wonderland! Oh, wouldn’t this be a wonderful placefor a person to hide, like that bookkeeper I read of—Richard Marat?”
“It’ll be a good place for Dummy to hide in after we prove him a spy,”conceded Chub’s voice from within the depths. Then he halloed ahead,“Anybody here?”
The answer was a low groan, sounding farther away than before. Joanstepped in, hands stretched out ahead.
She hurried till her hands felt the rough serge of Chub’s coat—at leastthat was familiar. Nothing else was in this terrible, eerie place. Ofcourse, having been in the tunnel before, she had some idea what it waslike, though she could not see. This seemed to be a smaller part of it,for she could almost touch the stone wall on each side with handsoutspread. Chub was crouching along, half stooped—he did not know howhigh the tunnel was. Joan was walking erect, when suddenly somethingbanged into her forehead. Something hard and cold and without anythingattached to it. It hit her whack in the middle of her forehead. Thesurprise as much as the shock quite stunned her for a second. Shestumbled, uttered a cry as she fell to one side, landing on the hardcement floor of the tunnel, her arms grasping something—something solidand bulky. A leg! With stocking and shoe with dangling laces! Someonemoaned.
“S’matter?”
Joan could tell from Chub’s voice that he was still ahead of her. In avoice weak with pain and fright, she called, “Ch-Chub-bb! Have I gotahold of your leg?”
“No.” His steps sounded on the stone as they came to her.
“T-then whose is it?” Was it part of the hospital equipment, anartificial leg abandoned here in this ghostly place? Or—was it a humanleg, left from some horrible accident? Joan shivered and her whole bodybecame icy cold. Just then, her worst doubts were eased, for the moancame again and the leg in her arms stirred of its own accord. Sheloosened her hold and let it drop, whereupon the owner gave anothergroan.
Chub was feeling with his hands where the body should be. “Yep, brassbuttons all right. It’s a Boyville School kid, and not big enough forCharley. It’s Alex.” His hand had now reached Alex’ head on the floor.He lifted it up. “Are you hurt much, old scout?”
Another moan was the only answer.
“It’s Chub and Joan—from the _Journal_,” went on Chub. “Can’t youspeak?”
Joan felt Alex’ hot breath upon her face as he struggled to answer.“That—that blamed Charley—he got away—”
“Did he beat you up and hide you in here?” Chub wanted to know.
“Yes,” Alex’s head wobbled unsteadily in the dark. “Charley put me inthere and locked the back door. Guess he forgot about the old tunnel.I was trying to get to the main building that way, and I—must havefainted. My leg’s hurt. But it’s not much farther, though. Think youcould help me?”
“Sure thing!” Chub got to his feet to help the injured boy, when whang!something smooth and solid struck him in the back of the head, aterrific blow that made him wince. “Gosh, that Charley guy must bearound right here in this tunnel, with an ax or something. Wish we had amatch or a flash.”
“I got hit, too.” Joan rubbed her forehead.
“I’ll fix him.” Chub swung his clenched fists wildly about in thedarkness, ready to fight, and Joan flattened herself against the chillwall. But though he battled in the blackness everywhere, he succeededonly in butting into the tunnel walls or against Joan or Alex. Thereseemed to be nothing there. And yet, both he and Joan had been hit, andhit _hard_. Could Charley have some mysterious contraption rigged up totorture them? Determined not to give up, Chub still swung at the air,and finally his fingers touched something smooth and round, just beforehim, about on a level with his head. Well, at least the unseen foewasn’t an animal. Still, it might be a bomb. No, too small for that, theboy decided as his stubby fingers went all over the surface of thething. Then his sudden laugh filled the cave.
“I-it’s an electric light bulb hanging down from the ceiling,” heannounced. “Wait a minute. I’ll see if it turns on.”
It didn’t, so they were still in darkness. Chub and Joan pulled Alex tohis feet. He could not muffle his cries. Joan’s heart ached for the hurtboy. Then, with an arm around the neck of each, Alex managed to walkalong. They decided not to attempt getting him up the cellar stairs.Better to go on to the main building.
“Gee, I’m glad it’s you, Jo, and not that simp of an Amy,” Chub said, asthey went along.
It was a slow and painful procedure, but as Alex had said, it was notvery far, and at last they reached the door that must lead to the mainbuilding. It was barred, and she and Chub thumped mightily on it. Wouldno one ever, ever hear? Would they have to go all the way through thetunnel again and across the fields to the car, and the long way around?Alex might not be able to stand such strain. He was weak, and seemed tobe bleeding, for Joan felt something warm and thick trickle against herhand when she brushed against him. His coat felt stiff in spots, too.
Chub would not give up. He kicked and pounded on the door till finallythey heard a bolt being slipped on the other side. The door gave way andthe three of them almost tumbled out into the big hall of the mainbuilding. The boys were lined up there again, and the principal wascalling the roll, in the same singsong drone as before.
“Edmonds!”
“Here.”
“Falls!”
Alex broke away with a painful effort and bolted weakly forward. “He gotaway! I tried—I tried
—” His voice trailed off as he toppled down into akhaki heap on the bare floor.
The principal, himself, picked him up. “My poor boy, whatever happened?”
The clerk went hustling out to summon the school nurse. When she arrivedshe bandaged Alex’ wounded leg. Soon the boy was revived enough toanswer the questions put to him by the principal. He was very pale, buteager to tell what had happened.
“You saved the honor system, White,” Mr. Link said when he heard thestory, and he patted Alex’ shoulder.
Just then, “the Three Musketeers from the _Journal_,” as Chub calledthem later, appeared at the big doors across the room. All three blinkedin the yellow light and stared at Joan and Chub and the scene beforethem.
“How did you get here?” was written on each of their faces. And howMack’s eyes snapped when he heard about the subway tunnel!
“We waited and waited for you two to come back,” Tim explained. “Then wewent all through that hospital and couldn’t find you. We came back hereto telephone the police you’d disappeared.”
“What luck!” Lefty was setting up his tripod. “I have one more exposureleft.” Mr. Link and Alex posed together for the picture.
“You can say that I believe in the honor system, now, after this night,”the principal told Tim. “Falls got away but White’s behavior proves tome the system is worth while. We’ll always use it, from now on. And I’llsee to it, myself, that this boy has some fitting reward.”
Alex smiled—a weak grin, but a broad one.
Joan smiled, too. She supposed that Amy would hope that the reward wouldbe pretty uniforms. Seeing that Mr. Link seemed a different person, sheasked, “Do you think that the appropriation might be used for a printingoffice? Alex is wild to learn to run a linotype machine, and there areno schools in Plainfield.”
The principal met her steady gaze, and then glanced back to the boy.“Why, I’m sure of it. There’s no reason why a fourteen-year-old boyshouldn’t learn to run a linotype machine if he wants to! Boyville willhave its own printing office just as soon as possible. You’ve earned it,Alex.”
* * * * *
The _Star_ had the story of the fire, of course, but not the part aboutthe honor system and about Alex’ bravery. So Joan felt she had helpedTim again.
Cookie had said once, “Fires are like bananas—they come in bunches!”
It did seem so, for only a few days after the West estate fire, theoffice, which had been placid enough a minute before, began to buzz.
“Big fire on Main Street,” shouted Mr. Nixon, slamming down his deskphone and jumping up. “And Mack’s out to lunch.”
There was no one to send but Tim. Lefty heard the news and came rushingthrough the office, from out back where he had been in his dark room. Hewas slipping the strap of his camera over his neck as he hurried along.
“You’ll have to go, Martin,” Mr. Nixon said. “You’ve been doing betterlately. A fire’s broken out in one of the buildings on Main Street—nearthe Presbyterian Church.”
Tim, grabbing his hat off the hook, started for the door on a run.
“Get details,” the editor yelled after him. “You know, the origin of thefire, owner’s name, who discovered it, loss, and amount of insurance.And, for Pete’s sake, be accurate.”
Get details! Joan, propelling herself out of the office, almost uponTim’s heels, bumped into Amy.
“Amy, there’s a fire on Main Street,” she gasped. “And Tim’s going tocover it.”
“Cover it?” echoed Amy. “What with?”
“Write it up, that means,” explained Joan, with mock patience. “Come onand go with me. We can watch and get details too. Oh, maybe Tim’ll makethe front page!”