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"Oh, no!" echoed Elmer. "Where could he have gone?"
"If you were a drunk gym teacher, where would you go?" demanded Bruno.
"I would stay home where I wouldn't worry my students!" muttered Boots
feelingly.
"We have to get him back to his room!" Bruno said. "Elmer, check the gym.
Boots, you look in his office in the Faculty Building. I'll take the staff
dining room. Come on, let's move!"
The three boys ran out of Dormitory 2 and were about to go off on their
separate errands when, across the road, Miss Scrimmage's outdoor public
address system sprang to life.
"Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam," sang a male voice loudly and
rather off-key.
"Flynn!" chorused Bruno and Boots, horrified.
As Flynn finished his song, a voice they recognized as Cathy Burton's howled,
"One more time!"
Obediently, Flynn began again.
Finally Cathy's voice returned. "Attention out there."
"You tell 'em!"cheered Flynn.
"We have a stray here," Cathy continued. "He's tall, red-haired, and answers
to the name of Al. Would someone please come to claim him immediately."
As Bruno and Boots rushed towards Scrimmage's, a nervous Elmer Drimsdale
stumbling along behind them, they could see a group of girls escorting their
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coach down the driveway to the side of the road. The boys ran up to them.
"Is Miss Scrimmage around?" Boots asked anxiously. "Did she see him?"
"Yes and no," offered Cathy. "When he walked into her sitting room and asked
her to dance, she fainted." She turned to Flynn. "Okay, Al, it's time for you
to go home now."
"Don't want to go," said Flynn sulkily."Like it here."
"Come again any time, Al," said Cathy genially. " 'Bye."
Bruno, Boots and Elmer hustled Flynn across the road and across the campus to
Dormitory 2. Luckily, they attracted very little attention from the student
body and were not seen by any member of the staff.
"Please, Coach," begged Boots as they placed Flynn on his bed, "please have a
nap."
"I know! Let's play cards!" Flynn suggested brightly.
"We can't, sir," said Elmer. "We have classes this afternoon."
"Then why are you wasting my time?" cried Flynn, starting for the door. "I'm
going back to that Scrimmage place! Asked a lady to dance& "
"Cards it is!" said Bruno quickly.
"Good! Didn't like her anyway." Flynn rummaged through a drawer for a deck of
cards.
Bruno noticed Elmer quietly sneaking out the door. "Drimsdale, get back here!
You're in this too!"
Red-faced, Elmer slithered back in.
"And just to make it interesting," said Flynn, "we'll play for toothpicks."
They all sat down on the floor and began to play poker. In half an hour Flynn
was fast asleep and Elmer had won all the toothpicks.
"Beginner's luck," mumbled Bruno. They tiptoed out, careful not to waken
their sleeping coach.
* * *
"Miss Scrimmage," Mr. Sturgeon snapped into his office telephone, "you have
made up stories before, but this one is beyond anything! No member of my staff
was over at your school running about in his underwear! They were all in class
except my athletic director who spent the afternoon in bed with a bad cold!&
Yes, I am sure! As a matter of fact, I am positive!& My staff does not drink
during school hours, and none of them ever drinks to excess!& Miss Scrimmage,
it simply cannot have happened!& No, I was not watching Mr. Flynn a hundred
percent of the time!& Mr. Flynn is an athlete! He does not smoke or drink! He
won't even eat fried foods!& Miss Scrimmage& Miss Scrimmage& ?" The Headmaster
buzzed his secretary. "Mrs. Davis, I'll be out for a few moments."
He left the Faculty Building and walked to Dormitory 2, going straight to
room 200 and tapping at the door. There was no answer. From inside he could
hear loud snoring.
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He shook his head. "That woman!" he said aloud. He strode back to his office.
* * *
"Investigation Fish Field Report Number Three Sergeant Harold P.
Featherstone, Special Division, reporting," dictated Sergeant Featherstone
into his tape recorder. He was locked in the motel bathroom and had the
shower, sink and fan all running.
"A further development has arisen," he continued softly. "I am being followed
by a tall, thin, dark-haired man with a long nose. He is staying in the room
next to mine. Everywhere I go, he goes. I am reporting from my bathroom with
the water running to render any bugging-devices ineffective. I suspect he is
one of the Fish's operatives, or perhaps the Fish himself. Whichever, it is
obvious that the Fish knows of my presence here in Chutney. I will take all
necessary precautionary measures.
"Featherstone out."
Operation popcan
Friday night after lights-out, few students were in bed. The woods behind
Macdonald Hall were crawling with boys, all setting out on the great pop-can
round-up. Most of the boys had had the same idea to take to the woods until
they were out of sight of the school and then cut over to the highway for the
long walk to Chutney.
Bruno and Boots trudged along behind Larry and Sidney.
"How come you're going, Larry?" asked Bruno. "What if The Fish needs a
messenger tomorrow and you're not back yet?"
"I'm just going as far as the drive-in movie outside Chutney," Larry replied.
"Pete and Wilbur are already there. Sidney'll go on with them, and I'll go
home with the cans from the drive-in." He squinted in the dark. "Say, where's
Elmer?"
"He's staying home," explained Boots. "He said something about a
remote-control thingamajig he's working on."
"Where are you guys going?" asked Sidney.
"Oh, we're going to Toronto," Bruno said airily.
Boots was worried. "Bruno, Toronto is awfully far. I thought we'd just sort
of hang around Chutney."
"If everyone just sort of hangs around Chutney," pointed out Bruno, "we won't
get enough cans, will we?"
Boots fell silent. He had decided quite a while earlier that the entire
pop-can project was ridiculous and rather out of reach, but from long
experience he knew there was no point in telling this to Bruno Walton, who had
his heart and mind set on it. Boots found himself wondering what Mr. Sturgeon
would do if he discovered that ninety percent of his students had walked out
in the middle of the night.
His thoughts were shared by many of the boys who trudged north on Highway 48
that night. They walked, for the most part, in silence.
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* * *
"Hey, look at this!" exclaimed Rob Adams as he and his companion, Marvin
Trimble, boarded the 10 P.M. bus for Richmond Hill. "A pop can right under my
seat! This is going to be easier than we thought!" He unfolded a green garbage
bag and tossed the can in. "One," he counted.
"We're really on our way," commented Marvin dryly as the bus pulled out.
* * *
Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Junior, reclined in the front seat of his
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