Ann Arbor Tales Part 19

"Plenty time," replied the operator calmly; and so there was, but little Green was enveloped in a haze of zeal that set perspectives all awry.

Presently the little machine on the gla.s.s-topped table began to click.

Little Green, standing at the counter, counted the clicks.

_Clickety--click--click--clickety--click--clickety._

"You got 'em?" he asked eagerly.

"Yep." Calmly.

Little Green emitted a sigh of relief and proceeded, carefully but hastily, to fill sheet after sheet torn from the block of blue-white paper. He scratched out, wrote in, amplified, condensed. He wrote in many tiny paragraphs; for little Green was wise beyond his years.

And while he wrote, oblivious of the _clickety--click--click_ of the little machine on the table, of the droning tick of the electrically regulated clock, of the rasp of his pencil on the paper, the indolent operator looked up.

"Rush three hundred," he called with a yawn.

Little Green grinned. Another page and he brought his "story" to a snappy end with a tiny, quick little sentence.

He knew the run of his own "copy."

He was conscious that he had exceeded the order by sixty words, approximately, and he hesitated an instant. Then thrusting the numbered sheets at the operator, he exclaimed: "Here, take it; I'll wait for another order."

In half an hour it came. It was for a photograph of Catherwood.

How little Green procured that photograph even after Catherwood's threat that he'd kill him if he used it, is a story in itself--a story for another time. But in less than an hour after the receipt of the telegraphic request it was in the post-office bearing on its plain wrapper a special delivery stamp.

It has been suggested that little Green was wise beyond his years. He was just wise enough not to tell _all_ his story to an afternoon paper at so late an hour.

So, with a confidence born of a short but crowded experience, he sent out by wire eight queries to as many morning papers in the middle- and the further-west.

Meanwhile that occurred which little Green had been far-sighted enough to expect would occur.

The tall, angular, boy-faced agent of the a.s.sociated Press in Detroit wandered into the office of the _Journal_ shortly after one o'clock.

Pa.s.sing the city desk he tickled the man sitting there, on his round, shiny, bald spot, and as he looked up with a scowl, asked blandly:

"Anything doing?"

The city editor growled and resumed reading the typewritten page that lay before him.

The agent wandered into the office of the state editor, where a man with long hair sat, fidgeting in a swivel chair and mumbling to himself under his breath.

"Anything?" asked the agent, tersely, at the same time reaching for the proofs that dangled from a hook at the side of the desk.

The state editor looked up, scowling. He disliked being annoyed when talking to himself.

"Pretty good one from Ann Arbor," he snapped. "Find it there."

The agent ran hastily through the proofs and retained one. The others he hung back on the hook.

"Much obliged," he said, and strolled out of the office.

At six o'clock that night the story was "on the A. P. wire," and being ticked off in every newspaper telegraph room from Portland to Portland, for the night manager at Chicago had called it "bully good stuff."

And when it came clicking into those offices to which little Green had wired shortly after noon, the desk men in charge recognized the incompleteness of the "A. P. story," and forthwith telegraphed their unknown correspondent for more. Regular correspondents were totally disregarded. Little Green was supreme; and no one realized that supremacy more keenly than little Green himself. He was the king of the night with his story; and sheet after sheet he filled with his jagged, irregular chirography, and the dreamy operator kept up with him.

But there came an end to his work at last, as there comes an end to all things; and when the end came in this particular case, little Green whistled, slipped his pencil into his pocket and sauntered out of the telegraph box jauntily. He did not recall until he reached the office of the _'Varsity News_ that he had not eaten since morning. He glanced at his watch. He would write the "story" for his own paper now--and then--Supper.

All of which may explain to the reader of this veracious tale why it was that the president of the University, as he glanced over his _Providence Journal_ in Providence the next morning, suddenly started in his chair, and calling for a telegraph blank sent this message to the dean of the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts:

"Take no action in Catherwood case. Sift it. Leave for Ann Arbor at once."

And likewise it may account for the sudden exclamation of the dean himself, as at breakfast, earlier that same morning in Ann Arbor, his eye chanced to fall upon a column-and-one-half story with a two column display head, that blazed forth to all the world many details unknown to him in the case of Frederick Edward Catherwood.

He had attended the faculty meeting the night before, when the case was threshed out to the finest grain, and he had heard no such explanation of the affair as stared at him now in cold black type from the front page of his morning paper.

A _secret_ secret society in the University, the function of which was to haze every one big or little who for one reason or another, might fall under its bann! He had never heard of any such organization. And yet--and yet----

Oh, little Green! Oh, little Green! Little did you dream to what ill end your rare invention, your insane imaginings, would result!

For, after partaking that night of a luncheon and dinner rolled into one big steak in "Tuts," little Green sought his room where he slept the sleep of vigorous youth till a beam of the winter sun, shining through his alcove window, fell athwart his eyes and wakened him.

As for Catherwood, he had not been commanded to appear before the faculty. Indeed, of what transpired at that momentous meeting he never knew; that is to say, definitely, but every one learned, in a general way, something of the wordy resolutions that were pa.s.sed and the learned opinions that were there put forth, all of which tended to no purpose save to obscure more thickly, rather than illumine more brilliantly, the strange affair.

The dean presided--a large man with reddish hair and pleasant eyes and a jerky, nervous manner.

Inasmuch as it was a.s.sistant professor Lowe who had found Catherwood, gagged and tied, that _savant_ was asked to give his opinion, first.

With much natural evasion of the subject, and a cloud of "ahs" and "aws," he explained as lucidly as his slow moving mind would permit how he had rushed into the room to discover his pupil stowed away upon the bed behind a barricade of chairs.

"And, professor," inquired the dean, "you can throw no light upon the case; you have learned nothing--that is to say--oh--ah--nothing that might serve as a clue to the apprehension of the offenders?"

The room became as still as the royal ante-chamber whilst the king dies beyond the arras.

The a.s.sistant professor fumbled in his pockets and finally drew out the crumpled note that Catherwood had given him, which he offered the dean, meekly, as becomes a serf in the presence of his master.

The dean pursed his lips and looked down at the sheet.

"Oh--ah," he muttered. And then added, pa.s.sing it back to the a.s.sistant professor, "I--oh--ah--make nothing out of this--nothing at all. It is very simple. It shows that Mr.--oh--ah--Catherwood was a.s.saulted by two--two--persons. But, _that_, gentlemen, we already know. What we now wish to learn is: _Who were they?_"

The a.s.sistant professor shook his head, wearily.

"Yes, yes," he muttered.

At this point an aged man at the rear of the room rose, and clearing his throat asked in a dry, metallic cackle: "Am I to understand that the young gentleman is a member of a fraternity?"

It was quite apparent that no one appreciated clearly the significance of the old gentleman's question.