Chapter 3. Mr. Cantwell Thinks Twice---Or Oftener

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_ CHAPTER III. MR. CANTWELL THINKS TWICE---OR OFTENER

"Young ladies and young gentlemen," began the principal, "a very silly hoax was perpetrated on me yesterday. I do not believe you will have any difficulty in understanding what I mean. But the matter went beyond this school room. An account of the hoax was published in the morning paper, and that holds me up to severe ridicule. I trust that we shall not have any repetition of such childish, so-called jokes. I do not know yet what action I may or may not take in this matter, and can promise nothing. I can and do promise, however, that if any more such hoaxes are attempted I shall do all in my power to ferret out and summarily punish the offenders!-----"

Here the principal's own sense of prudence warned him that he had gone quite as far as was necessary or prudent. So he choked down his rising words and called for the morning singing. Yet, as Mr. Cantwell uttered his last words his glance fell very sternly on one particular young member of the sophomore class. Dick Prescott.

"Prin. has it in for you, old fellow!" whispered Dave Darrin, as he and Dick jostled on the way to a recitation. "But if he has---humph---it won't be long before he finds out that you had some help. You shan't be the scapegoat for all of Dick & Co."

"Don't say anything," Dick whispered back. "I'll find a way to take care of myself. If any trouble is to come, I think I can take care of it. Anyway, I won't have anyone else dragged into it."

But the principal said nothing more during that school session. In the afternoon, however, when Mr. Cantwell took his accustomed walk after dinner, he met several acquaintances who made laughing or casual references to the yarn in the morning's "Blade."

"I've got to stamp this spirit out in the school," decided the principal, again at a white heat. "If I don't I'll soon have some real trouble on hand with these young jackanapes! The idea of their making me---the principal---ridiculous in the town! No school principal can submit to hoaxes like that one without suffering in public esteem. I'll sift this matter down and nip the whole spirit in the bud."

In this Mr. Cantwell was quite possibly at error in judgment. Probably the High School boys wouldn't have played such a prank on good old Dr. Thornton, had he still been their school chief. But, if they had, Dr. Thornton would have admitted the joke good-humoredly and would have taken outside chaffing with a good nature that would have disarmed all wit aimed at him. Mr. Cantwell, as will be seen, lacked the saving grace of a sense of humor. He also lacked ability in handling full-blooded, fun-loving boys.

Wednesday, just before one o'clock, the principal electrified the assembled students by saying, in a voice that was ominously quiet and cool:

"When school is dismissed I shall be glad to have Mr. Prescott remain for a few words with me."

"Now it's coming," thought Dick, though without any particular thrill of dismay.

He waited while the others filed out. Somehow the big building didn't empty as fast as usual. Had Mr. Cantwell known more about boy nature he would have suspected that several of Dick's friends had remained behind in hiding places of their own choosing.

Dick remained in his seat, coolly turning the pages of his text-book on ancient history.

"Mr. Prescott," called the principal sharply.

"Yes, sir," responded Dick, closing the book, slipping it into his desk, and rising as though to go forward.

"No, no; keep your seat until I am ready to speak with you, Mr. Prescott. But it isn't necessary to read, is it?"

"I was looking through to-morrow's history lesson, sir," Dick replied, looking extremely innocent. "But, of course, I won't if you disapprove."

"Wait until I come back," rapped out the principal, leaving the room. He went out to see that the building was being emptied of students, but of course he failed to discover that a few were hiding as nearly within earshot as they could get.

Two or three of the teachers who had remained behind now left the room. The last to go was Mr. Drake, the submaster. As he went he cast a look at Dick that was full of sympathy, though the submaster, who was a very decent man and teacher, did not by any means intend to foster mutiny in the heart of a High School boy. But Mr. Drake knew that Mr. Cantwell was not fitted either to command respect or to enforce discipline in the High School.

When Mr. Cantwell came back he and the young soph had the great room to themselves.

"Now you may come forward, Mr. Prescott," announced the principal, "and stand in front of the platform."

As Dick went forward there was nothing of undue confidence or any notion of bravado in his bearing. He was not one of those schoolboys who, when brought to task by authority, try to put on a don't-care look. Dick's glance, as he halted before the platform and turned to look at Mr. Cantwell, was one of simple inquiry.

"Mr. Prescott, you are fully informed as to the hoax that was perpetrated on me yesterday morning?"

"You mean the incident of the pennies, I think, sir?" returned the boy, inquiringly.

"You know very well that I do, young man," retorted Mr. Cantwell, rapping his desk with one hand.

"Yes, sir; I am fully informed about it."

"And you know who was at the bottom of it, too, Mr. Prescott?"

The principal bent upon the boy a look that was meant to make him quail, but Dick didn't quail.

"Yes, sir," he admitted, promptly. "I know at least several that had a hand in the affair."

"And you were one of them?"

"Yes, sir," admitted the young soph, frankly. "I think I had as much to do with what you term the hoax, sir, as anyone else had."

"Who were the others?" fired the principal, quickly and sharply.

"I---I beg your pardon, sir. I cannot answer that."

"You can't? Why not, Mr. Prescott?" demanded the principal.

Again the principal launched his most compelling look.

"Because, sir," answered Dick, quietly, and in a tone in which no sign of disrespect could be detected, "it would strike me as being dishonorable to drag others into this affair."

"You would consider it dishonorable?" cried Mr. Cantwell, his face again turning deathly white with inward rage. "_You_, who admit having had a big hand in what was really an outrage?"

But Dick met and returned the other's gaze composedly.

"The Board of Education, Mr. Cantwell, has several times decided that one pupil in the public schools cannot be compelled by a teacher to bear tales that implicate another student. I have admitted my own share in the joke that has so much displeased you, but I cannot name any others."

"You _must_!" insisted the principal, rising swiftly from his chair.

"I regret to have to say, sir," responded Prescott, quietly, "that I shall not do it. If you make it necessary, I shall have to take refuge behind the rulings of the Board of Education on that point."

Mr. Cantwell glared at Dick, but the latter still met the gaze unflinchingly.

Then the principal began to feel his wrath rising to such a point that he found himself threatened with an angry outburst. As his temper had often betrayed him before in life, Mr. Cantwell, pointing angrily to Dick's place, said:

"Back to your seat, Mr. Prescott, until I have given this matter a little more thought!"

Immediately afterward the principal quitted the room. Dick, after sitting in silence for a few moments, drew his history again from his desk, turned over the pages, found the place he wanted and began to read.

It was ten minutes later when the principal returned to the room. He had been to one of the class rooms, where he had paced up and down until he felt that he could control himself enough to utter a few words. Now, he came back.

"Prescott, I shall have to think over your admission before I come to any decision in the matter. I may not be able to announce my decision for a while. I shall give it most careful thought. In the meantime, I trust, very sincerely, that you will not be caught in any more mischief---least of all, anything as serious, as revolutionary, as yesterday's outrageous impudence. You may go, now---for to-day!"

"Very good, sir," replied Dick Prescott, who had risen at his desk as soon as Mr. Cantwell began to talk to him. As young Prescott passed from the room he favored the principal with a decorous little bow.

Dave Darrin, Tom Reade, Greg Holmes, Harper and another member of the freshman class, came out of various places of hiding. As he went down the stairs Dick was obliged to tread heavily enough to drown out their more stealthy footfalls.

Once in the open, Harper and the other freshman scurried away, their curiosity satisfied. But, a moment later, when Mr. Cantwell looked out of the window, he was much surprised to see four members of Dick & Co. walking together, and almost out through the gate.

"Have they been within earshot---listening?" wondered the principal to himself, and jotted down the names of Darrin, Reade and Holmes. The two freshmen, by their prompt departure had saved themselves from suspicion.

On Thursday nothing was said or done about Dick's case. When Friday's session drew toward its close young Prescott fully expected to have sentence pronounced, or at least to be directed to remain after school. But nothing of the sort happened. Dick filed out at the week's end with the rest.

"What do you imagine Prin. can be up to?" Dave Darrin asked, as Dick & Co. marched homeward that early Friday afternoon.

"I don't know," Dick confessed. "It may be that Mr. Cantwell is just trying to keep me guessing."

"If that's his plan," inquired Reade, "what are you going to do, old fellow?"

"Perhaps---just possibly---I shall fight back with the same weapon," smiled Dick.

Mr. Cantwell had, in truth, formed his plan, or as much of it as he could form until he had found just how the land lay, and what would be safe. His present berth, as principal of Gridley H.S., was a much better one than he had ever occupied before. Mr. Cantwell cherished a hope of being able to keep the position for a good many years to come. Yet this would depend on the attitude of the Board of Education. In order not to take any step that would bring censure from the Board, Mr. Cantwell had decided to attend the Board's next meeting on the following Monday evening, and lay the matter before the members confidentially. If the Board so advised, Mr. Cantwell was personally quite satisfied with the idea of disciplining Dick by dropping him from the High School rolls.

"I'll protect my dignity, at any cost," Mr. Cantwell, murmured, eagerly to himself. "After all, what is a High School principal, without dignity?"

Monday afternoon Dick Prescott stepped in at "The Blade" office.

"Got something for us again?" asked Mr. Pollock, looking around.

"Not quite yet," Dick replied. "I've come to make a suggestion."

"Prescott, suggestions are the food of a newspaper editor. Go ahead."

"You don't send a reporter to report the Board of Education meetings, do you?"

"No; those meetings are rarely newsy enough to be worth while. I can't afford to take up the evening of a salaried reporter in that way. But Spencer generally drops around, at the time the Board is expected to adjourn, or else he telephones the clerk, from this office, and learns what has been done. It's mostly nothing, you know."

"Spencer wouldn't care if he didn't have to report the Board meetings at all?"

"Of course not. Len would be delighted at not having anything more to do."

"Then let me go and report the meetings for you, on space."

"My boy, a reporter would starve on that kind of space work. Why, after you put in the whole evening there, you might come to the office only to learn that we didn't consider any of the Board's doings worth space to tell about them."

"Will you let me attend a few of the meetings, and take my chances on the amount of space I can get out of it?"

"Go ahead, Prescott, if you can afford to waste your time in that fashion," replied Mr. Pollock, almost pityingly.

"Thank you. That's what I wanted," acknowledged Dick, and went out very well contented.

When it lacked a few minutes of eight, that evening, all the members of the Board of Education had arrived. It was the same Board as in the year before. All the members had been re-elected at the last city election, though some of them by small majorities. Mr. Gadsby, one of the members who had won by only a slight margin over his opponent, stood with his back to a radiator, warming himself, when he saw the door open.

Mr. Gadsby nodded most genially to Mr. Cantwell, who entered. The principal came straight over to this member, and they shook hands cordially. Mr. Gadsby had been one of the members of the Board who had been most anxious about having Cantwell appointed principal; Cantwell was, in fact, a family connection of Mrs. Gadsby's.

"Coming to make some report, or some suggestion, I take it, eh, Cantwell?" murmured Mr. Gadsby in a low voice. "Most excellent idea, my dear fellow. Keeps you in notice and shows that your heart is in the work. Most excellent idea, really."

"I have a report to make," admitted Mr. Cantwell, in an equally low voice. "I---I find it necessary to make a statement about the doings of a rather troublesome element in the school. Suspension or expulsion may be necessary in order to give the best ideas of good discipline to many of the other students. But I shall state the facts, and ask the Board to advise me as to just what I ought to do in the premises."

"Ask the Board's advice? Most excellent idea, really," murmured Mr. Gadsby. "You can't go wrong then. But---er---what's the nature of the trouble? Who is the offen-----"

Mr. Gadsby was rubbing his hands, under his coat tails, as he felt the warmth from the steam radiator reach them.

"Why, the principal offender is named-----"

Here Mr. Cantwell paused, and looked rather astonished.

"Tell me, Mr. Gadsby, what is Prescott, of the sophomore class, doing here?"

The principal's glance had just rested on Dick, who sat at a small side table, a little pile of copy paper on the table, a pencil in his hand.

"Oh---ah---Prescott, Richard Prescott?" inquired Mr. Gadsby. "Some of us were a bit surprised this evening to learn that Prescott, though he will continue to attend High School, has also taken a position with 'The Morning Blade.' Among other things to which he will attend, after this, Cantwell, is the matter of school doings in this city. He is to be the regular reporter of School Board meetings. Rather a young man to wield the power of the press isn't he?" Mr. Gladsby chuckled at his own joke.

"'Power of the press'?" murmured Mr. Cantwell, uncomfortably. "Surely you don't mean, Gadsby, that this mere boy, this High School student, is going to be taken here seriously as representing the undoubtedly great power of the press?"

"To some extent, yes," admitted Mr. Gadsby. "'The Blade,' as you may know, is a good deal of a power in local politics. Now, some of us---er---did not win our re-elections by any too large margins. A little dangerous opposition to---er---some of us---would mean a few new faces around the table at Board meetings. Mr. Pollock is---er---a most estimable citizen, and a useful man in the community. Yet Mr. Pollock is---er---Cantwell---er---that is, a bit 'touchy.' No matter if Pollock's reporter is a schoolboy, if we treated the boy with any lack of consideration, then Pollock would most certainly take umbrage at what he would choose to consider a slight upon himself, received through his representative. So at these Board meetings, young Prescott will have to be treated with as much courtesy as though he were really a man, for Pollock's hostility would be most disastrous to us---er---to some of us, possibly, I mean. But, really, young Prescott is a most bright and enterprising young fellow, anyway---a very likable boy. _You_ like him, don't you, Cantwell?"

"Ye-e-es," admitted the principal, though he added grimly under his breath:

"I like him so well that I could eat him, right now, if I had a little Worcestershire sauce to make him more palatable."

"The Board will please come to order," summoned Chairman Stone, rapping the table with his gavel. "Mr. Reporter, have you good light over at your table."

"Excellent, thank you, Mr. Chairman," Dick replied.

"Er---aren't you going to stay, Cantwell?" demanded Gadsby, as the principal turned to leave the room.

"No; the fact is---I---well, I want to consider my statement a little more before I offer it to the Board. Good evening!"

Mr. Cantwell got out of the room while some of the members were still scraping their chairs into place.

Dick Prescott had not openly looked in the principal's direction. Yet the amateur reporter had taken it all in. He was grinning inside now. He had taken upon himself the work of reporting these meetings that he might be in a position to block any unfair move on the part of the principal.

"I wonder what Mr. Cantwell is thinking about, _now_?" Dick asked himself, with an inward grin as he picked up his pencil.

That Board meeting was about as dull and uneventful as the average. Yet Dick managed to make a few live paragraphs out of it that Guilford, "The Blade's" news editor, accepted.

It still lacked some minutes of ten o'clock when young Prescott left the morning newspaper office and started briskly homeward.

"I didn't catch that Board-reporting idea a day too soon," the boy told himself, laughing. "Mr. Cantwell was certainly on hand for mischief to-night. But how quickly he made his get-away when he discovered that his culprit was present as a member of the press! I guess Mr. Gadsby must have passed him a strong hint. But I must be careful not to have any malice in the matter. Some evening when Mr. Cantwell does come before the Board with some report I must take pains to give him and his report a nice little notice and ask 'The Blade' folks to be sure to print it. Then---gracious!"

Utterly startled, Dick heard and saw an ugly brickbat whizz by his head. It came out of the dark alley that the sophomore was passing at that moment. And now came another, aimed straight for his head! _

Read next: Chapter 4. Dave Warns Tip Scammon

Read previous: Chapter 2. Dick Takes Up His Pen

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