The Girls of Central High at Basketball: or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Chet.

“Are you afraid of this man?” asked Billson.

Rufe nodded, and tried to crowd farther away from the bed.

“What you doing to that kid?” demanded Hebe, sitting up. “What’s the matter? Why! that’s the softy I saw – ”

“He’s a bad man. He said he’d kill me if I told!” gasped Rufus.

“Where was that?” asked Billson, with his hand on the boy’s arm. “Tell us all about it. He sha’n’t touch you, Rufie.”

“Aw! I wouldn’t have really hurt the gooney,” growled Hebe.

“He was in the place where Uncle Bill watches. I hate that old gymniasium! I wish it would burn down, so I do.”

“And when you were in there that night this fellow was there?” asked Billson, shaking the boy a little by the arm.

“Yes. And he broke things. And Uncle was worried afterward. But I never told,” Rufe urged, looking fearfully at Hebe. “I said I wouldn’t – ”

“Aw, drop it! You’ve told on me now, haven’t you?” demanded the fellow from the Four Corners. “Well, it don’t much matter, I reckon. I wanted to queer that Jackway so he’d lose his job. Henry Grimes told me that if he was discharged he’d speak a good word for me and I’d get it. That’s what I was after.”

“Yah!” said Billson, with scorn. “You certainly are one mean scoundrel, Pocock. And lettin’ folks think mebbe Miss Hester was mixed up in it. Nice feller, you are!”

“Well! I don’t see where it’s any of your funeral,” growled Pocock. “You make me tired!”

But the result of Rufe’s confession and Pocock’s admission changed the latter’s place of abode rather suddenly. Both Chet and Billson decided that the truth about the gymnasium raids should be made known at once, and the Board of Education took the matter up promptly. Pocock found himself in the infirmary of the county prison, with the chance of serving three months at hard labor when the prison doctors pronounced him able to work.

His attempt to work Jackway out of the job of watchman, so that he could be appointed to the position, had acted like a boomerang. Hebron Pocock was most thoroughly punished.

And Chet Belding hurried to spread the tidings of the discovery among the girls of Central High, too. He got hold of Laura before the spread the basketball teams were to enjoy, and she told Principal Sharp, who was present. When he made his usual speech of welcome, he tacked onto it a paragraph regarding the gymnasium mystery.

“Which is,” said Mr. Sharp, “a mystery no longer. As I said when first the matter was brought to my attention, no pupil of Central High, either male or female, could be guilty of such an abominable crime. Such a malicious piece of mischief had to be originated in a perverted mind; and we have no such minds at Central High.”

“But it has furnished excitement enough for us all to last for the rest of the winter,” said Laura, later, to her immediate friends. “I’m so glad for Hester! But we’ve all been stirred up enough about it, I guess. No more excitement this term, girls!”

Whether Laura’s wish came true, or not, the reader will be able to find out for herself in the perusal of the next volume of this series, entitled “The Girls of Central High on the Stage; Or, The Play That Took the Prize.”

None of them looked forward to a really “tame” winter, however. There would be other basketball games, and plenty of out-of-door sports as well. As Bobby Hargrew said:

“It’s all right to say that school takes up all our time; but it’s the fun we get out of school that makes Latin, and French, and mathematics, and – and – Gee Gee bearable! My! suppose we didn’t have athletics at all?”

“That would certainly be a state of existence perfectly unbearable – for you, Bobby,” Nellie Agnew said, gravely. “You’d burst, wouldn’t you?”

“Into flinders!” agreed Bobby. “Athletics is the ’scape-valve for me – and I guess it is for some of the rest of you. Now, tell the truth!”

And her friends had to admit the truth of her declaration.